Ken Williams

Ken Williams

Ken, alongside his wife Roberta, co-founded Sierra On-Line in 1979 and ran the company as its CEO for nearly twenty years. Sierra was known for its technology leadership, and pioneered such technologies as vector graphics, sound and music in computer games, avatars, and network games. In his role as Sierra’s CEO, Williams focused on innovation: “I’m not sure how typical I am of other CEOs. Most of my time is spent looking at product. To me, everything is about being able to build awesome product. Any game which does not push the state of the art leaves an opportunity for a competitor’s game to look better.” Sierra’s extensive list of hit products include: Leisure-Suit Larry, King’s Quest, Phantasmagoria, Space Quest, Red Baron, Nascar Racing, Hoyle’s Card Games, Dr. Brain, Mickey’s Space Adventure, Half-Life, Ultima, and many more. Ken and Roberta retired to Mexico and visited over twenty-five countries on their small, rugged ocean-crossing yacht. In 2021, while locked down by the Pandemic, Ken found time to write about the “Sierra days” and captured the history in the bestselling book, “Not All Fairy Tales Have Happy Endings.” With a renewed interest in games, Ken decided to dig into how modern games are produced and spent time learning the Unity 3d Engine. In a loop back to their earlier history, Roberta suggested Ken program a game. Thus, was invented their new company: Cygnus Entertainment.