Roberta Heuer Williams

Roberta Heuer Williams (1953- ), the mother of the adventure game genre, is one of the most influential PC game designers of the 1980s and 1990s. Raised in southern California, outside LA,  she met her her husband, Ken Williams in High School.  They co-founded On-Line Systems (later, Sierra On-Line) when she was 26. The following year they wrote and designed Mystery House, the first graphic adventure game for the PC. Their second game, Wizard and the Princess (which launched the “Hi-Res Adventures” franchise), added color graphics. Their third game, King’s Quest, the first animated 3D (actually 2.5D) adventure game, featured an expansive world that could be explored by the player. In 1995, while working on King’s Quest VII, she also designed Phantasmagoria, a disturbing, horror-themed game which was the first in her career to be developed with full-motion video technology. Although she retired in 1999 from Sierra On-Line, Roberta worked on Odd Manor in 2011. In 2014, she was named as one of the top ten game designers of all time.