Let’s Begin Again - Sierra On-Line and the Origins of the Graphical Adventure Game - Laine Nooney

Oct 15, 2026

Retells the origin story of Sierra On-Line and its first landmark product, the graphical adventure game Mystery House, while reviewing how earlier academic and journalistic writing framed the tale almost solely as early computer-game narrative. Critiques that video-game history accounts are inaccurate and obscuring, then uses archival documentation and a counter-historical method to propose a different origin and to question presumptive beginnings in game historiography.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryLiterature

FormatPDF

Pages28

Reading Time43 min

AccessFree to download

The origins of Sierra On-Line

Mystery House and Mystery House’s connection to ADVENT

Competing frameworks in game historiography

Counter-historical methodology

Let’s Begin Again Sierra On-Line and the Origins of the Graphical Adventure Game • Laine Nooney The author retells the origin story of Sierra On-Line and its historic first product, the graphical adventure game Mystery House. She reviews the academic and journalistic writing that placed the story almost exclusively inside a narrative about early computer games, treating it as a saga of the competition between the graphic adventures Sierra On-Line produced and the literary games developed by companies like Infocom and dubbed interactive fiction. The author argues that such video game history proved both inaccurate and obfuscating, the she uses archival documentation and a counter-historical methodology to describe a different kind origin for Sierra On-Line and to deride the obviousness of presumptive beginnings within the discipline of game history. Key words: adventure, adventure game, game historiography, game history, genre, interactive fiction, Ken Williams, Mystery House, Roberta Williams, Sierra On-Line The most important thing to remember is to always map your way through this mythical land right from the very beginning. If you don’t, you will get lost right away, or miss out on some important places to go.—Roberta Williams “Winning Strategies for Adventures” The On-Line Letter, June 1981 Hindsight is most of what we know. In the introduction to the 1996 Roberta Williams Anthology manual, programmer and Sierra On-Line cofounder Ken Williams recounted his first experience playing the text-based adventure game ADVENT (more popularly known as Adventure or Colossal Cave), offering readers a rear-view reflection on the moment in 1979 that changed his and his wife Roberta’s lives. YOU ARE STANDING AT THE END OF A ROAD BEFORE A SMALL BRICK BUILDING. AROUND YOU IS A FOREST. A SMALL STREAM 71 American Journal of Play, volume 10, number 1 © The Strong Contact Laine Nooney at [laine.nooney@nyu.edu](laine.nooney@nyu.edu) FLOWS OUT OF THE BUILDING AND DOWN A GULLY. >SOUTH YOU HAVE WALKED UPA HILL, STILL IN THE FOREST. THE ROAD SLOPES BACK DOWN THE OTHER SIDE OF THE HILL. THERE IS A BUILDING IN THE DISTANCE. >GO BUILDING YOU ARE INSIDE A BUILDING, A WELL HOUSE FOR A LARGE SPRING. This is the beginning of the game that so captured my wife Roberta that she could not sleep for days while exploring the caves beneath the well. The year was 1979. I was programming an income tax program on a mainframe computer that was 3,000 miles from my Los Angeles home. To access the computer, I had a teletype machine. It was really just a typewriter with a modem and a printer communicating at 110 BPS; but it allowed me to get my work done. Although the teletype was at home solely for work, that didn’t stop me from exploring the mainframe for anything else interesting to do. I will always remember the thrill of discovery when I saw something called Adventure and typed it just to see what would happen. Back typed the computer,“You are standing…” Within minutes, I was calling over to Roberta to show her my discovery. No work got done that night.1 Little could Ken and Roberta Williams—sitting on the spare bedroom floor of their Simi Valley, California, bungalow home—have imagined that the adventure game, and this historic link with ADVENT, would come to define their relevance in video game history. Much has been made of the fact that the Williamses were, without knowing it, in the presence of“history.” ADVENT’s status as the first adventure game has long been deemed canonical by game scholars. Not only is ADVENT regarded as the first adventure game ever programmed, but it was a direct influence on two other games considered foundational to the genre: Infocom’s Zork, originally distributed by Personal Software in 1979, and the Williamses’ own Mystery House, a graphical adventure game released under the company name On-Line Systems in May 1980 (On-Line Systems changed its name to Sierra On-Line in 1982, which remains the name mo

FAQs

What origin story does the author focus on for Sierra On-Line?

The author focuses on the origins of Sierra On-Line and its historic first product, the graphical adventure game Mystery House, and how it connects to ADVENT.

How does the author evaluate mainstream writing about early adventure games?

The author argues that much video-game history writing is inaccurate and obfuscating, because it places the story inside a narrative that overemphasizes early computer games as a competitive saga.

What approach does the author use to challenge conventional game history accounts?

The author uses archival documentation and a counter-historical methodology to describe a different kind of origin and to critique the obviousness of presumptive beginnings in game historiography.

Oct 15, 2026

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