Disappointed with the other text adventure games available at the time, Roberta mapped out her own game and presented Ken with a stack of papers containing the script, maps and puzzles for her idea. To make her project of interest to Ken, who at that time thought of computers as serious machines meant only for serious problems, Roberta suggested that they include pictures. And Ken took up the challenge. He created the tools to produce the game art, programmed the logic for the game and devised a way to cram 70 pictures on a disk (keep in mind that this was way back in 1979 and the process the Williams' developed for including pictures was revolutionary), while Roberta wrote the text and designed the art.

Disappointed with the other text adventure games available at the time, Roberta mapped out her own game and presented Ken with a stack of papers containing the script, maps and puzzles for her idea. To make her project of interest to Ken, who at that time thought of computers as serious machines meant only for serious problems, Roberta suggested that they include pictures. And Ken took up the challenge. He created the tools to produce the game art, programmed the logic for the game and devised a way to cram 70 pictures on a disk (keep in mind that this was way back in 1979 and the process the Williams' developed for including pictures was revolutionary), while Roberta wrote the text and designed the art.

From the very beginning, more than16 years ago, Roberta decided she wanted to improve with each new piece of software she designed. After MYSTERY HOUSE, she created her first of many fantasy tales. THE WIZARD AND THE PRINCESS was the first computer game to use color graphics. Roberta then explored science fiction with MISSION: ASTEROID. Then came a Roberta had changed the industry yet again and gamers everywhere clamored for more adventures in color. Her next milestone was the world's first micro-epic, TIME ZONE, which featured more than 1,300 color images compacted onto six double-sided floppy disks. Heralded as the first expert-level adventure game with graphics, TIME ZONE took an incredible 12 months to complete and earned special recognition by the Smithsonian Institution.

In 1987, Sierra released a new kind of Roberta Williams game, MIXED-UP MOTHER'S GOOSE, which earned an award for Best Early Education product by the Software Publishers Association in 1991. As a mother of two children, Roberta felt it was time for a Sierra game that would appeal to the very youngest players. In the game, children look for missing objects belonging to familiar nursery rhymes and after finding them by having the rhymes acted out to musical accompaniment.

"I hate to call what I do 'games,'" says Roberta. "I think of them more as interactive stories. Every story has to be well-written and engaging, but it's up to the designer to add the interactivity -- the roundness of exploration and the challenge of the puzzles."

Flexibility was necessary in 1990 when Sierra changed from a text-input interface to an icon-based means of controlling the gameplay, a technique used in the subsequent KING'S QUEST sequels. "Getting away from designing around typed commands allowed us to create deeper stories, more intricate puzzles, and characters who can become more fully developed as the game progresses," says Roberta. It really freed us to build the kind of interactive fiction that's emotionally involving and challenging at the same time."

When Roberta wrote King Graham's first adventure in 1984, she could not foresee the devout following the series would create. Since then, millions of people have followed the adventures of the first family of Daventry, making it arguably the most popular computer game series in history. When asked to explain its appeal, Roberta responds, "The KING'S QUEST series is a chronicle of old-fashioned values, heroism and truth. People find they can win by using their heads, and through good acts, hard work and intellegence, kindness and honesty."