TIME FOR AN IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT REGARDING SIERRA ON-LINE. I know a lot of you wanted me to talk about something like this, so here we go. 
My announcement is that priorities are ridiculous, people are insane, and there is real work to be done that is being done by very good people, while the herd mentality seems to be almost perfectly focused in the entirely wrong direction.
The news wires (and my DMs, and my e-mails, and my discord, and my...) were burning up yesterday with the stunt announcement that Al Lowe had decided, after apparently feeling nobody wanted them and it was going to be thrown out? To sell all Sierra On-Line source code.
This narrative falls apart on every level - source code has been preserved for pretty much all of these games, and there are a lot of artifacts from Sierra On-Line out there, right now, that you can leaf through. But boy, has this taken off.. everyone's got a reaction.
Meanwhile, folks have been working with many other Sierra On-Line ex-employees to get the materials that are going to truly disappear - their stories, their experiences, and their lessons. The glue that holds the balsa-wood game industry together, and makes it historical.
So my real announcement is this: Two Ex-Sierra Online employees were among the people who lost their homes, totally burnt to the ground, in one of the California wildfires. These folks are Christy Marx and Randy Littlejohn.
Christy Marx is the designer, writer and director of two Sierra Online games, Conquests of Camelot (1989) and Conquests of the Longbow. (1992) Here's a full overview of her career in games, comics and cartoons, done by Polygon about 5 years ago. polygon.com/features/2013/…
Oh, and she's also the creator of something you might recall, called Jem and the Holograms.
Randy Littlejohn worked at Sierra On-Line for 4 years, as camera, lighting and director of photography on various projects, including Phantasmagoria and The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery. Pioneering work in interactive games and how to film them.
Randy's history (as well as Christy's) does not begin or stop with Sierra On-line, either. His resume (randylittlejohn.com/resume.html) can tell you about his stints in animation, video games and children's books. Interview: sierrachest.com/index.php?a=pe…
Al Lowe has sat for countless interviews and talked to many different historical folks about his works. I can't come up with the motivation for this narrative that he's sitting on a crate of one-of-a-kind goodies and has no idea of the value and worth of them. I call that false.
Al has generously opened his time to talk about his work and shared source code and other work product related to Leisure Suit Larry and Sierra On-Line many times. Whatever this new batch is, and why it's being played this way, I can't tell you. But I can tell you this:
Two sweet, wonderful people with deep stakes in Game History and the intersection of entertainment, writing and programming have entirely lost their home and things that were one of a kind to them, and they're asking for help. gofundme.com/oujuh4
So, my announcement is this: Please take that urge you had to bid stupid money on a set of floppy disks going for thousands of dollars, and throw $20, $50 or $100 at two people who created and worked on so many important things. gofundme.com/oujuh4
Yes, they hit goal, but because they set their goal so small because they assumed they would look crazy asking for more, and it's going to take a lot more than this for these two folks to start to rebuild their lives. Put your money where your mouth is, support them.
END OF IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT
