Re:Sierra was captured, then killed, by an accounting fraud
by amw on Friday November 06, 2020 @06:58PM
(#25012241)
Pretty sure all the comments above you are intimating is that there's no such thing as "better designed" without a "to what (specific) goal?". If the goal was enjoyment, then Sierra games were well-loved by lots of people, and like the guy says, that's proof by itself that the design goal was met. You can (and Maher does) argue that there are ways to take frustration out of the experience, or highlight other parts of the experience more (parts that people generally find enjoyable), but that still doesn't allow an authoritative, non-subjective, statement about "better" without some sort of qualifier.
Sierra games have a lot of "dead man walking" scenarios where you end up in a situation where an action you took hours earlier locks you out from finishing the game. They also have lots of instant death scenarios that you can only find by trial and error. Is your last save several hours old? Too bad, you get to play that part again.
Their games also feature a lot of "dream logic" puzzles where you really have no way of figuring out the intended solution short of clicking on everything. The "cat hair mustache puzzle" is a great example of this - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_hair_mustache_puzzle. To be fair, that one wasn't created by Roberta Williams, but I think it typifies much of the Sierra design approach.
Again, Jimmy Maher at The Digital Antiquarian has gone into a lot more depth on these issues in Sierra games (and plenty from other companies), comparing them to better designed games from companies like Infocom and others.