Remember when Sierra had to hire an outside company to do King’s Quest 8, and they completely ignored Roberta Williams’ notes, instructions, and design simply because “You’re a woman, you don’t know anything about games, shut up and let us work. This is going to be an RPG, not an Adventure game, and you’re going to like it little lady!.. Who is also the wife of the owner, the co-founder of the company, and the creator+headwriter of the series we’re currently working for.”
And it kept happening no matter how much she complained, so eventually they had to kick them out, but there wasn’t enough time to make a new game so the “Not King’s Quest” King’s Quest game had to be released to try to make money back…
And it was basically a shitty version of Ultima 9, an already shitty game, and was so bad and tonally out of place with the rest of the series that the King’s Quest Collection on Steam only has 1-7 and the Reboot?
Yeah I normally like to root for the underdog game of a franchise and try to defend it, but KQ8: Mask of Eternity can get fucked.
I’m not even a King’s Quest fan, but it’s one of the most infuriating cases of sexism I’ve ever had the displeasure of learning about.
Imagine this happening in any other context. Imagine Square Enix hires a bunch of white guys to do Dragon Quest, sends in a higher-up to make sure it stays on brand, and they just tell him “You’re asian, what do you know about good games?”, and turn in a grimdark first person shooter that just happens to be called Dragon Quest, and Square Enix is in such a dire financial state that they’re forced to publish it as a mainline entry.
Remember when Sierra had to hire an outside company to do King’s Quest 8, and they completely ignored Roberta Williams’ notes, instructions, and design simply because “You’re a woman, you don’t know anything about games, shut up and let us work. This is going to be an RPG, not an Adventure game, and you’re going to like it little lady!.. Who is also the wife of the owner, the co-founder of the company, and the creator+headwriter of the series we’re currently working for.”
And it kept happening no matter how much she complained, so eventually they had to kick them out, but there wasn’t enough time to make a new game so the “Not King’s Quest” King’s Quest game had to be released to try to make money back…
And it was basically a shitty version of Ultima 9, an already shitty game, and was so bad and tonally out of place with the rest of the series that the King’s Quest Collection on Steam only has 1-7 and the Reboot?
Yeah I normally like to root for the underdog game of a franchise and try to defend it, but KQ8: Mask of Eternity can get fucked.
I’m not even a King’s Quest fan, but it’s one of the most infuriating cases of sexism I’ve ever had the displeasure of learning about.
Imagine this happening in any other context. Imagine Square Enix hires a bunch of white guys to do Dragon Quest, sends in a higher-up to make sure it stays on brand, and they just tell him “You’re asian, what do you know about good games?”, and turn in a grimdark first person shooter that just happens to be called Dragon Quest, and Square Enix is in such a dire financial state that they’re forced to publish it as a mainline entry.
That’s basically what happened.
Jeez. I played and enjoyed that game as a kid, but I had no idea why it was such a bastardized tonal shift from the other games.