Whats the diffbetween Siera and Lucas?

[Trapezoid]

Well, there are the different GUIs, and various differences in puzzle, character and dialog styles. But the core difference, I think, is LucasArts games have a more cinematic style of storytelling, and they'll stick in your memory for that reason. Sierra games don't seem to based on the three act structure so much, but they're still great fun.

[Las Naranjas]

Sierra seems to draw great contrasts between the fantastic stories (gk series), the capable but unmememorable (Operation Iceman) to King's Quest, which is acceptable in context only.

[TheYak]

As to the dying thing.. I do like the freedom that I have in Lucasarts' games to try anything without penalty but I also enjoy the dying in Sierra games (at least the interesting ones).  Thanks to the save-game feature, I've played all the King's Quests and Space Quests both to win with as many points possible and to see if I could find all the different ways to die.  Maybe I'm just morbid.

[DragonRose]

Sierra is based upon a sierra...

CheapAlert, what does this mean? I've been trying to figure that out with absolutly no success. The company is based upon a mountain?

Anyway, I think that the main difference between Sierra and Lucasarts is the way they treat the players.  Sierra always seemed to want the players to have fun with the games, using things like that Trite Phrase thing in LSL2, or going crazy with easter eggs, or making customizable characters in QFG (yeah, I know it's partially because it's half RPG, but still).  Lucasarts is a lot like Lucasfilm- if there is anything they can do to milk more money from a franchise, they do it.  Canceling fangames, Monkey Island 4... you get the idea.

I must also say that I am incredibly biased, having never played LucasArts adventure games until I started getting involved with the AGS forums.  Take anything I've said with a grain of salt.

[Gonzo]

I think the franchise-milking thing with LucasArts is now true to an extent, as they pour out Star Wars tie-ins. But if you're gonna include MI4 in that criticism, Sierra have been just as guilty of overdoing franchises - King's Quest 8, the Leisure Suit Larry non-adventure game thing, Police Quest SWAT or whatever.

In the golden days of adventure gaming, LucasArts were a far more creative company, probably the more creative out of the two. In fact they were originally founded on the principle that they would not make SW or Indy tie-in games, it was only later than they starting milking that (specifically Star Wars here, Indy hasn't been exploited to that ridiculous extent).

But back in the day, they were making a lot of interesting and original stuff all the time, rather than the odd gem in between a dozen SW tie-ins. I love Star Wars, but 90% of those games are crud with a capital C...the Knights Of The Old Republic RPG coming this year does look interesting though.

[MillsJROSS]

The differences between the two, as they are today, are vast. Sierra can no longer be considered an adventure game company, whereas Lucasarts still puts out a game or two, Sierra hasn't made a proper one in about seven years (not that they haven't made great games, just not any adventure games). In the olden days the difference wasn't so great. Sierra was the first to make a graphic adventure game, and so really back then it was all experimentation. The stories, while present, could be written in a sentence. The puzzles were few. This mostly because of the hardware we had to work with, and the limited space we had available.  Lucasarts games and Sierra games are diffrent, while both making great games. Lucasarts is more cinematical and more plot dependant. Sierra, I feel, was more puzzle oriented. I love them both, although, I do have a stronger feeling towards Sierra as I grew up with its games, specifically Space Quest.

-MillsJROSS

[Las Naranjas]

Mills-They did put out GK3, which was awesome, but apart from that it's a dearth back to, well, GK2.

[uNdEaD pRiEsT]

lucasarts games are far bettethe monkey island series is the best out

[Ciro Durán]

Well, I've played games from Sierra and Lucasfilms(later Lucasarts) since a long time, and as the AGS manual says, Sierra games at the beginning where more action-oriented, as the text parser obliged you to type actions for the character, and Sierra made games much before Lucasfilms, and much before the mouse was a requirement more than a commodity (AGI and SCI0, Sierra's interpreters, were text driven, although SCI0 had mouse support, it was just for walking).  Then with SCI0 and SCI1, Sierra added a bit of conversation support (Quest For Glory is one of those games, where you can talk to a person with the "Ask about" phrase).

In short, Sierra almost never included some dialog options as Lucasfilms included. Thus, Lucasfilms entered the game business when mouse was beginning to be more common in the PC market, Maniac Mansion didn't include much talking, but the next games did, with multiple characters support.

Both companies were similar when they started in the sense that much of the game puzzles were of those annoying kind: "you didn't get that junk mail lying in the floor in your house in the first part of your game?, oooh, sorry, you need that to finish the game, please restart."    In Maniac Mansion you can "die" if the three kids get caught, in Zak McKraken you can die in even more ways, it was with DOTT when they began their "no-diying" policy.   Sierra, on the other hand, did include death scenes in almost all their games (I never played KQ7, I don't know if you can die there), and there was some hell of puzzles to die (I remember the rock stair in KQ5 ) .

Well, I'll end this post saying that Lucasarts also included 'cinematic' scenes in the middle of the game, which complemented the game very well, whereas Sierra had very sparse cutscenes. I hope this gives you a more objective view of the differences between the two companies, more than some biased opinions I've seen here .

[Trapezoid]

Loom was their first non-dying game, not DOTT.

[Ciro Durán]

Well, looks like Loom was one of those games I didn't played too much .    I didn't like too much the interface.

[Scavenger]

My two cents and a small pepperoni pizza:

The Interface:
Both the Sierra and Lucasarts adventures were based upon the text adventure. Sierra first used the AGI Parser, and on the advent of the mouse based interface (SCI) they wanted to get as far away from the parser as possible, due to it's complexity, and need to be able to spell. So they created an icon based interface, which was much simpler and more user friendly. It also was able to be translated into different languages easily. While Lucasarts was a sentimental old soul, and didn't want to go far beyond the parser. Notice the statusline. -Look at item-? Seem familiar? Also, their first interface, SCUMM (Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion), was very much like a mouse based text parser. Even like the EGA AGI. But from the text parser, two distinct interfaces evolved.

Gameplay and Animations:
As has been proven, Sierra had less of a budget than LucasArts, so it had to tell the story through a narrator. Notice in the early Sierra games that you get a description more often than an animation. This is partly because in the early AGI games you couldn't have many animations, due to the extra low resolutions, and text adventures were the previous step in this genre. LucasArts, on the other hand, had started just beyond AGI, in the Lo-Res era (not the XLo-Res, like AGI) and had a bigger budget, so that meant lots of animations. While Sierra had sprites that were too small for talking animations (the portraits were not the sprites) LA did, and could make talking animations, as they were more used to drawing in a higher resolution, while Sierra wasn't.

Story:
N/A, haven't played enough Sierra Games

Theres my opinion

[Esseb]

For me, LEC has several games I remember more fondly than Sierra's, but that's only because I've played many more LEC games so I can't participate in this debate.

* Esseb goes to finish kq6 and mumbles "stupid god damn poisoned berries, I only asked Graham to pick one up, not eat it"

[Krynge]

Well there's no point in rehashing EVERYTHING the others have already mentioned, so I'll try my best to avoid doing so...

 Firstly in terms of gameplay, Sierra titles (in general) were more challenging than LA, but on a more 'technical' basis. For example, in games like the KQ series, the old-school KQ3, and the newer KQ5, you had to guide the character around ledges or cliffs by clicking the mouse to EXACTLY where you wanted the character to go. If you didn't, Gwydion of K. Graham (Sierra) would tumble down a cliff face. Whereas Guybrush (LA), would simply walk to most locations with the click of a single mouse key.
 The second example is the hotspot. LA games revolved around clicking the 'Verb Coin' or action bar combined a little cursor which would a display a descrition of a particular item/character/object on the screen, as the player 'scanned' across the screen. By use of this description, players had an eaiser task of accomplishing objectives in comparison with Sierra titles. This is because in Sierra titles (I'm now referring to the later SCI titles (PQ3, SQ4 etc,) not the older SCI or AGI titles (LSL1, QFG2)) you had to select an icon for the top menu and click on the object you saw on screen. For example, you would have to LOOK at a perculiar object to find out what it was, and then interact with it, without getting a description of it first.
 One more thing in regards to technical gameplay was the use of saving/loading games in Sierra titles. This referred to more of the older AGI titles like LSL1 and KQ3 where you had to save/ load to win in blackjack or the slots if you ran out of money (LSL) and make sure you got the spell components written in the parser EXACTLY as they were in the manual (KQ3).

(By the way, I don't think this description was inaccurate, but remember this is coming from a dedicated Sierra fan BECAUSE THEY WIN THE GAMES BATTLE HANDS DOWN!! But for any LA fans who think I may have written something untrue or misleading, feel free to correct - K)

[Trapezoid]

They only win the "games battle" in terms of challenge. LucasArts games, in my opinion, had more integrity, and were simply much better written (Sierra's stories were rather hit and miss. Gabriel Knight is among the best, though.) Sierra told plenty of stories, but LucasArts understood how they worked.
I think there was a lot more theory and careful design behind the stories and puzzles of LucasArts games, or at least once they hit their stride around Loom and Monkey Island. Maniac Mansion and Zak McKracken were sort of Sierra-ish... And Last Crusade must've woken them up to the idea that they had the power to tell a story as good as any film. After all, it was based on an awesome movie.
Sierra had their own strengths. They were very prolific, and their good games outweigh their bad games. While most of them lacked any interesting art design, they still have a strong nostalgic effect. And the puzzles were pretty intricate and well designed, even if they weren't very well tied into plots, which were usually rather thin.
In conclusion. Sierra = better games. LucasArts = better Art (not only in the graphical sense.)

[Teh Crabe]

I think there's a divide over how much "story" you need in your games.  Sierra games were more "game"y while LA's were more "story"y.  If that makes sense.  Sierra did try to do more storytelling later on, but they weren't as successful as LA in my opinion.  I don't think either is "better".  I've played both companies games extensively.  They're both well made and thoght out.  Just had different design goals.  If anyone has a preference, it's really a matter of taste.  They're both fruit, but one's apples, one's oranges.  

[big brother]

The problem I had with Sierra games was not the content or the game design (though dying sucks, and being able to unknowingly screw yourself over does, too).

I didn't like the "feel."

This may sound petty, but the sprite movement in Sierra games (all the ones I've played, KQ, Longbow, GB1, QFG1, etc.) was far too sluggish. The characters seemed to painstaikingly struggle across the screen and there was no way to adjust the speed.

Also, in many Sierra games, the player has no way of telling the hotspots from the background. In some of those beautifully detailed scenes, some of those tiny objects are game objects, while some of the larger ones exist only as art. However, even as early as LEC's (then Lucasfilm Games, I think) MM, you could use the "look" command to scan the screen for hotspots.

With a LEC game (besides MM), I know that the character will move at the right speed, that I'll be able to skip cutscenes with the ESC key, and dialogue with the . key (I can even adjust the dialogue speed, imagine that). It was almost that every LEC game came with an implied guarantee of quality, while Sierra games varied wildly depending on their designer.

Naturally, both companies were very creative, and their games featured many unforgettable characters (Sierra: Larry Laffer, Gabriel Knight, Laura Bow, etc. LEC: Bernard Bernoulli, Ben Throttle, Guybrush Threepwood, Manny Calavera, etc.), and comparing them on this scale is totally subjective.

[Punch]

You didn't die in MM if everyone was caught, all you had to do was get one guy to push the loose brick and then walk the other two out. This left two people free, which was enough to finish the game. Plus, you could get a key and just let people out at will.

Also, the cutscenes could be skipped in MM and Zak. It was one of the function keys. I can't remember which. Right clicking did it in the PC version.

Lucasarts' design philosophy outlines the differences very well:

"We believe that you buy games to be entertained, not to be whacked over the head every time you make a mistake. So we don't bring the game to a screeching halt when you poke your nose into a place you haven't visited before. We try to make it clear, however, when you are in a dangerous situation.
"We think you'd prefer to solve the game's mysteries by exploring and discovering, not by dying a thousand deaths. We also think you'd like to spend your time immersed in the story, not typing in synonyms until you stumble upon the computer's word for a certain object.
"Unlike conventional computer adventures, you won't find yourself accidentally stepping off a path, or dying because you've picked up a sharp object. There are a few dangerous situations which will bring the game to a premature end, but to avoid them takes just a little common sense, not excessive paranoia. Save the game when you think you may be entering a dangerous area, but don't assume that every wrong step will result in death. Usually you'll get another chance."

Sure, it's tilted towards Lucas' way being 'better' because it was written by them, but it gives all of the main points.

- Punch

[DragonRose]

I hadn't played any of the Sierra "Quest" games in quite a while, and I recently reloaded SQ5, because I have a french translation of it and I wanted to practice my french.  I was actually shocked by how many times I died. I died because I didn't get to class quickly enough.  I died because I couldn't tell if I'd cleaned the crest or not.  I died because I got caught cheating on a test.

I don't remember death being quite so pervasive the last time I played.  It's bloody annoying, now!

It's kind of interesting: the Sierra games that I really like and want to play again and again, it's quite hard to die.  If there is a sequence where there is sudden death, I can't stand that part.  

Take KQ6.  Most of the time wandering around doesn't get you killed, except maybe in the labyrinth, and it's easy to tell when you're not supposed to do something, because there'll be ominous music or the genie.  The only problem is in the land of the dead, when you have to avoid the ghouls.  I always had to get my sister to playthrough that part for me, because I would panic and end up running right into the darn things.

The Gabriel Knight games: You're only in real danger at the very end.  The rest of the time, though there's a real sense of tension, Gabe is never in any real danger.

Quest for Glory: The deaths are slightly more random in this one, but they usually aren't UNEXPECTED.  If you go out into the woods, yeah, you're going to find monsters.  You can always run away.

[xenogia]

Sierra is an excellent company and so is LucasArts .. but both companies are now shitty.

Point 1: Sierra was bought by Yosemite Entertainment in 98 I think, and 3/4 of the original employee's left the company.  This explains why no more adventures are being made at all.  It isn't really Sierra anymore as such.

Point 2: LucasArts now just churn out Star Wars games, the new Full Throttle game is sorta Resident Evil in its interface.  Eurgh!

What has happened to original gameplay!