Video game designer extraordinaire Roberta Williams has repeatedly displayed her leadership skills by doing whatever the hell she wants. Whenever the hell she wants.
That was true way back in 1980 when she combined her enchantment with mystery author Agatha Christie and her fascination with the board game Clue, and designed "Mystery House."
"Mystery House" is widely credited as being the first graphic adventure game.
It was also true back in 1995, when the longtime Stephen King fan also designed "Phantasmagoria," a terrifying, full-motion video that turned the industry on its head by combining terrifyingly frightful scenes — even one that featured a husband apparently assaulting his own wife — with live actors painstakingly acting out much of the 500-page script.
Stay Relevant Like Roberta Williams
It is also vividly true right now, with the feisty, 71-year-old video game design legend — whose games have sold more than 15 million copies — recently opting to make a professional U-turn after more than 25 years of retirement. She recently returned to a cosmically different video game industry where her sterling credentials as one of the industry's most influential creators are being seriously tested by a young audience that mostly doesn't know her.
Each one of these is a challenge that only a top-flight leader could take on. Yet, Williams says, she's never even thought about herself as a leader.
"No one has ever asked me about my leadership before," she said. "It's always been about my creativity."
Find A Partner So You Focus On Strengths
Williams and her husband Ken launched a wildly successful video game company called Sierra On-Line. The company was ultimately sold to CUC International for more than a billion dollars. The company's finances had been mostly overseen by her CEO husband, Ken Williams, the super-programmer and tech guru with the industry acumen that not only got Sierra off the ground but made it an industry force for decades.
But Roberta Williams provided the creative leadership. And it all comes down, she says, to the single quality that every great leader must possess: confidence.
"You have to be very self-confident," she says. "If you question yourself, you will show weakness and you'll lose your best people."
It was that boundless self-confidence that led to the unlikely creation of "Mystery House."
Follow Your Passion Like Williams
Way back in 1975, Ken Williams brought home a copy of something called "Colossal Cave Adventure," the first text-only adventure video game that he stumbled upon. Roberta Williams saw it and instantly fell in love with it. It was a text-only video game where you could basically move X's and O's around, but not much else.
"It was my light bulb moment," she said. "Something opened up in my mind that told me I had to develop something like this game. Never mind that I'd never done anything like that before."
She was in her early 20s and had done a smidgen of programming, but not much. So she posed the question to herself that any great leader would; "How can I do this?"
That's when she gathered lots of paper — massive pieces of construction paper that she could roll and unroll and use as a flow chart. "I was basically developing a storyboard, but I didn't know what I was doing."
Just Get Started
Most great leaders don't know exactly what they're doing — at least, at the beginning, she says. They just have to do it.
She went wild. Williams started scribbling with a pencil on the construction paper. She drew a house with huge circles for each room — modeled after the Clue board game. But it kept getting more and more complex. She added more and more rooms, characters and objects.
Even as Roberta worked on her project, husband Ken had huge ambitions to start his own company where he could create software for personal computers. "He initially thought my flow chart was silly, while he was doing the he-man programming work," said Roberta.
Williams: Win Allies With Preparation
So how could she ask her ultra-skeptical husband to program her flowchart into a video game? By preparing, of course.
She took him out to his favorite restaurant one evening, but before arriving she figured out a very detailed plan to simply, quickly and convincingly spell out her request. When she finally asked him if they could discuss programming her game, he flatly told her that she had 10 minutes to explain why.
"I was ready," she said. She had practiced and compacted her whole proposal and speech down to less than 10 minutes. "That's leadership," she said. "When you see an opportunity, you take it and run with it."
Her husband listened. And, as they say, the rest is history.
Now, her husband says, he's absolutely enamored with her leadership qualities.
"Part of Roberta's success came from her ability to have a clear vision of the final product, and to refuse to allow anyone to mess with her game," he said.
Envision Where You Want To Go
Leadership also requires vision, Roberta Williams says. "If you don't have the vision of where you want to go, you're not a leader at all," she said. "And you have to have the vision to pick a good team to make your vision come to life."
Has she ever.
"Roberta was magic in being able to manage her people and make them implement her vision," said Ken.
The key to being a successful visionary, Roberta says, is to never give up on a great idea. "You can't get tired of it after a while and then just leave," she said. "If things aren't going well, keep at it and things will change."
Harness Your Childhood Curiosity
She traces all of that potential for vision way back to when she was six years old.
At the time, Roberta was a first-grader struggling to learn how to read while attending an elementary school near Whittier, Calif.
Her teacher was desperately trying to teach her to read phonetically — letter by letter. The books were the familiar Dick and Jane books. The teacher would stop at each word to spell it out and then slowly, painstakingly pronounce it phonetically.
That's when Roberta suddenly got it. "I remember looking at the book and saying the word C-A-T phonetically, and suddenly I got it," she said. "It just infiltrated my brain, like a new code I suddenly understood."
That new code of reading that she learned ultimately evolved into the codes of creating incredibly successful video games. And, yes, leadership.
Go For Adventures Like Williams
Great leaders also tend to be attracted to adventure. Few are more adventurous than Roberta.
Perhaps that explains why she sometimes says yes when caution would appear to be more prudent.
Back when they were filming what was supposed to be just a "kissing scene" of a husband and wife in bed for the groundbreaking video game "Phantasmagoria," the director turned to Roberta and suggested that the scene get more racy. Williams started to say no — then changed her mind. "I was in charge, though I could have said no at any point," she says. "But I said yes."
That "yes" arguably led to the creation of a video game that supercharged the industry. The game wound up turning into a massive bestseller.
Keep Yourself In The Game
Her most recent, utterly unexpected "yes" was her decision to return to the video game business after more than 25 years of retirement.
During that time — among other things — Roberta and Ken took a multiyear powerboat trip around the world, along with their two kids. "I like adventures," said Roberta. "Anything adventurous I'll do."
Which might explain why, during the heart of the epidemic, Roberta and Ken opted to dive back into the video game business. "We got bored," explained Roberta.
They created a new version of "Colossal Cave." It's done so-so in sales. A new generation of video gamers didn't fully get it. But surely there's more to come.
Roberta says that she has absolutely no plans to fully retire again. "I'm never going to retire. What does that mean, anyway?" she asked.
Trust Your Creativity
Her success has come despite a stumbling block that she says she's mostly kept secret for years: She's introverted.
"I come off as social and fun and bubbly and perky," she said. "But in reality, I'm very shy and probably would be called an introvert."
She's powered through all of that by fully trusting her creativity. "I'm into my own brain. My favorite part of me is my brain," she said.
So, when she's out in public and feels that pull of introversion trying to take over, she feels something click in her brain that energizes her through the moment.
Nothing has surprised her more, she says, than the fact that her fans haven't forgotten her.
"What shocks me to this day is the interest people still have in little old me," she says. "Not only have I not been forgotten, but people still seem to really care."
Her true fans get it. She's still doing whatever the hell she wants.
Roberta Williams' Keys
- Considered the pioneer of graphical video games with "Mystery House." Co-founded software industry powerhouse Sierra On-Line with her husband.
- Overcame: Technical limitations to computers that, at the time, were unable to keep up with her creative designs.
- Lesson: "If things aren't going well, keep at it and things will change."
