This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Latest On Lord British
Related Links Top of the: day, week, month.
He who steps on others to reach the top has good balance.
He who steps on others to reach the top has good balance.
EA's mismanagement? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:EA's mismanagement? (Score:5, Interesting)
With the possible exception of UO, which I personally didn't enjoy very much, but other people apparently groove to. And don't get me started about Ultima:Ascention.
I can't speak to Mr. Garriott's company management skills. Hell, I certainly wouldn't have the first idea how to run a company like that...I don't think anybody really does. He did, at one point, have a unique gift for storytelling in the medium of computer games. Unfortunately, that got buried under creeping featuritis. Hopefully, he'll be able to start with a clean slate (or a Tabula Rasa...wonder if that name is more than just coincidental? : ) and get back to his unique visionary roots.
I sure hope so. U6 is one of my favourite games ever.
Re:EA's mismanagement? (Score:1)
Re:EA's mismanagement? (Score:1)
Catscratch...that whiny ass little punk bitch...
WHAT?? (Score:2)
A big company stopping innovation and insisting on clones and sequels for constant, growing revenue and unattainable profits? Say it isn't so!
Sigh... what wonders have been lost but for the crushing weight of dull, grey, uninspired, witless corporate bureaucracy.
Re:WHAT?? (Score:1)
Avalon Hill (Score:1)
BTW, at The Underdogs [theunderdogs.org] you can still get the Advanced Civilization computer game, there are some bugs, but also patches to fix most of them. Not to far from the board game.
Re:WHAT?? (Score:1)
Of course, making good video games is a great way to go out of business or get bought out. I wish that were not so, but that's the way it seems to be.
EA made SSX. (Score:2)
I'd call SSX pretty inspired and even innovative, despite its debt to Tony Hawk.
Re:EA made SSX. (Score:1)
Lord British immortalised by Imanewbie.com- (Score:2, Interesting)
two [imanewbie.com]
Tribute- [imanewbie.com]
I just think the way the company mismanaged its projects(U7-10), basicly sabotaging them, is a shame. Origin had tons of kewl games, I'm just glad R.G. has found something productive.
Re:Tribute link- (Score:1)
Damn @#$^%& slashbox
Re:Lord British immortalised by Imanewbie.com- (Score:1)
Re:Lord British immortalised by Imanewbie.com- (Score:1)
He probably meant Ultima Online 2 [gamespot.com]. I realize that UO/UO2 don't really belong in the same class with the single-player series, but UO2 was highly anticipated, much hyped, and then quietly taken out back and shot by its masters. Not a good way to build customer confidence.
I had a look at it (Score:2, Interesting)
that Lineage would be the most popular
MMPORG in asia. So I downloaded the free
trial version (>200MB) and had a look.
Well - the graphics were ok. But there
really wasn't too much to do. Also there
were a lot of players on the server
complaining that they'd de facto beta-
test the game for $15 per month. It seems
like the free trial had just been introduced.
I now consider the message about the
popularity a plant. Hopefully things have
improved.
Re:I had a look at it (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I had a look at it (Score:2)
http://pc.ign.com/news/40083.html [ign.com]
Re:I had a look at it (Score:1)
But as I said this was a while ago and a free trial was introduced even shortly before I played.
Maybe the post hadn't been a plant and the game really is popular in asia. But all I could see was a game that looked unfinished and a few unhappy players.
And the game did not even have pathing implemented!
can't hope to succeed (Score:2, Insightful)
His games were stellar when the platform didn't have all the bells and whistles, today they are nothing compared to Neverwinter etc. (just imagine playing something like Never on an Apple II
Re:can't hope to succeed (Score:2, Interesting)
I do remember meeting him in the early '80s at a computer software store in Georgia. I agree that he was a pioneer and obviously very dedicated to what he was doing. What struck me, was that even though he was quite well known and successful, at that point he possessed a quality I've rarely seen in programmers : Humility
I imagine he's grown up and lost that quality, but that's the way I remember him...
And I still remember the original Ultima ( the C-64) version with fondness.
Sittius
Re:can't hope to succeed (Score:1)
A couple years ago - during my honeymoon of all things - I ended up standing in a line at DisneyWorld next to him. I couldn't help myself, so I started pestering him and talking about his games, having played them since grade school and recently finished one of them.
He was in fact a real polite, friendly guy. Tolerated the dumb questions with good humor, and seemed quite happy to talk about his games. This was after he bought his castle, so I guess it hadn't gone to his head then either
The Play's the Thing (Score:4, Interesting)
A few years ago, I saw the late Douglas Adams give the keynote address at Siggraph. He was just designing Starship Titanic at the time. He said one thing that has stuck with me: "Use your limitations, before they are denied you." By that I think he meant that computing power and graphics cards would advance to the point where it would become tempting to rely on flash and adrenaline for the success of a game and neglect thought.
I think that time has come. There is a dreadful sameness to the games that are being produced today. Consider Alice. The art and texture are marvelous, as is the potential of the idea: the internal world of a madwoman. Yet the play reduces to running around and shooting, with a few Donkey Kong skills thrown in. All the big tasks consist of defeating bosses, a la Duke Nukem. A good play, no doubt, but it could have been so much more.
On the other hand, consider Deus Ex. The reasonably modern first-person graphics are very good, but it also weaves in RPG elements, interaction with characters, and a multipath plot.
Are older game designers extinct dinosaurs, useless in an age where form is king? Or are they, instead, people who remember when flashy graphics were not enough to ensure satisfactory Christmas sales? Are they, in fact, the descendents of dinosaurs: soaring birds?
I hope to see computer games emerge from the current state, which is like movies in 1910, and come into their own as a real art form. To do this, I think that we need art that does more than show off the technology. I think that the skills of the pioneers are still needed.
Re:The Play's the Thing (Score:3, Insightful)
I keep thinking about how the computer games industry compares to fiction publishing. Imagine walking into a book store and only finding 100 titles on the shelves. Suppose you bought the latest Steven King novel, and found that it was filled with 80 pages of full-color pictures, but only 10 pages of text, and cost $50?
Some more links (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Some more links (Score:2)
A short history (Score:4, Interesting)
For anyone who doesn't want to load that page up, it linked a very interesting TIME article here [time.com]. I suggest reading it -- in the Western world, the whole dollars-for-Diablo-items routine is normally as bad as this gets, but this is (if true) several steps beyond that entirely.
Re:A short history (Score:4, Informative)
They have televised StarCraft matches, complete with announcers, play by play analysis, and strategy talk. I've seen some shows go as far as have the players wear "futuristic" type wear while playing each other.
Diablo II is big too. I've seen televised duels between players.
Lineage gets a good amount of screen time too with talk about the world and items and skills and such.
There are entire channels devoted to computer games.
The fact is, they have PC rooms open 24 hours a day where you can use PC's for less than a dollar and hours. They almost always have people in them too playing one of the above games, or Go, or a game called Fortress 2 (Expanded Worms-like game), or whatever else. At 3 in the morning there are still plenty of males and females still playing games.
I've seen arcades take up three floors, people have made livings playign Video Games there. It's not something loser kids with no time do, it's part of the culture.
Now the sorry thing is some culturally insensitive prick's gonna mod this +1 Funny...
Last days at Origin (Score:4, Interesting)
And I saw Richard's car in the parking lot. Hella cool. =)
Anyway, now they're off on their own, striking out! With a new company and new ideas... "destination games." They were going to lead us back to their roots (which are our roots), back to greatness...
But now, even their email addresses are at NC... the makers of Bloodpledge. The reason is, for apparently financial reasons, they're porting games. Hardly a creative process. I can only hope they pick it up and get back on track after they're done with Bloodpledge. Otherwise, they changed the name of the masters from "EA" to "NC" and the game from "Ultima Online" to "Bloodpledge."
Someone else's ideas and blood, sweat and tears. We hope to see yours again, Garriot! All your fans are hoping you find the path again.
Ahh, yes, I remember Salon.com (Score:3, Funny)
What an inspiring read. I mean, if I had a chance to interview one of the premiere game designers around, poop is obviously what I'd talk about.
And gender exploration by pretending to be a burly male warrior or a female wizard with 3 foot long breasts. I mean, having a picture like that and saying it's me teaches me exactly what it is like to be a woman. Oh, those lousy androgenous graphics are going to squish my budding transexuality.
Come on, you've got a good subject, and some interesting dirt (what is this Tabula Rasa of which you speak?). Why can't you make something good of it????
Oh, I forgot. It's on Salon.com.
I used to work for Origin/EA (Score:1, Troll)
Its obvious that Garriott has incredible programming talents and innovative game design ideas, but with the Ultima 7 project he spent most of the time diddling with project numbers, budgets, the latest of his many bosses, etc. Most of the time he was trying to please EA which was not an easy task.
At any rate, about half way through the original project timeline (games weren't as late back then, but this one missed its milestones by a lot in many cases), it was apparent that the game was going to suck. People sort of stopped caring about not only Ultima 7 but the entire series from then on it. EA constantly bitching at programmers who have little to no ability to change anything didn't help better.
The end result: a buggy, incomplete game. Whoop!
Utter crap... (Score:2, Insightful)
U7 and SI saw the involvement of Warren Spector (who later went to Looking Glass where the true spirit of Origin was kept alive), and had probably the best storylines of the entire series. The only -good- to come out of Ultima VI were the highly underrated spin-offs, the Worlds of Ultima games (Martian Dreams and Savage Empire, both based on the U6 engine).
Crap? Hardly. These were classics. Why do you think the outrage against the horrid Ultima: Ascension was so great? U:A didn't even come close to living up to the standard set by U7.
And have you forgotten the Ultima Underworlds? They were post U7 and are legendary. Ultima Underworld 1 was the -first- 3D engine on the market (beating Wolf3d by two months), and was a joy to play. UU2 had probably the most intricate story in a 3D RPG I've ever encountered. These games were the spiritual predecessors of Thief: The Dark Project, System Shock and Deus Ex.
These games were -not- crap. They were great IN SPITE of Electronic Arts' meddling. Things went downhill with Ultima 8 simply because they wanted to "expand the userbase" by dumbing the game down into a Super Avatar Brothers-style game. Even the U8 engine wasn't wasted in the end: it was successfully used to create another fantastic game called Crusader: No Remorse/Regret.
Re:Utter crap... (Score:2)
Re:Utter crap... (Score:1)
Garriot does nothing for Lineage (Score:2, Informative)
He's just a figurehead for marketing the game in the US more or less; I really don't see why he's getting all the credit.
Re:Garriot does EXACTLY what he was hired for (Score:1)
I don't think anywhere you'll find him getting "all the credit" for Lineage's success, or even part of it for that matter. Now if you said he's getting all the attention in the North American release, I would agree, but it's hardly the same thing, and it's exactly what they wanted.
Richard Garriot's involvement isn't about how successful Lineage is in Asia, it's not about downplaying the work of its Korean's developers, it's about having a successul North American launch.
Sure he's a figurehead, but that's the whole point. An icon in the gaming industry decided to associate with this game, an association which got me, by the way, to check out the game. Mission accomplished, except in my case, I don't find it particularly interesting and won't likely continue to play.
The days of yore... (Score:5, Interesting)
Picture this: it's a Saturday morning in the late '80s and 300 restless geeks are packed into a Georgetown University auditorium waiting with baited breath for Lord British himself to unveil the Ultima V beta.
We were the GameSIG of the Washington Apple Pi, and Richard Garriott was our guest and our friend. He wasn't just showing us a preview of Ultima V, he was showing it to us before anyone else got to see it.
Already, Ultima IV had blown our minds, and we all wanted to see where the series went next. For many of us who were at an impressionable age (I was 11), the Ultima series was a big part of our intellectual lives. Lord British was our guardian in the game and our hero in life.
When Garriott stepped onto the stage wearing armor and carrying a sword and shield, we just went nuts. Better still, he came bearing gifts; he reached into his satchel and threw handfuls of silvery ankhs out to the roaring crowd. I caught one and still treasure it.
Then the lights dimmed and we waited for the moment of truth. Lord British put the 5.25" diskettes into the Apple IIGS (256K). He fiddled with the projection system a bit and them blam: Ultima V blasted onto the screen.
The graphics and sound just blew us away, and Garriott explained each improvement as he took us through an hour-long tour of the game. You could see (and hear!) grass sway in the wind, waves rolled, trees blocked light while windows let it in... And the music!!!
The climax came when he showed us the lighthouse. You could see and hear the surf pounding on the rocks, while a beam of light swept over land and sea, just like a real lighthouse. And all of this before the backdrop of convincingly forboding music. Inside the lighthouse awaited a surprise: the keeper was none other than the don of our GameSIG, Ron Wartow. Somebody we knew was in Ultima V!
After talking to the Wartow character and getting him to crack a few jokes, Garriott looked up at us and then paused for a full ten seconds. Breaking the silence, he asked: "Well, shall we attack Ron?" We yelled back an affirmative reply. 8 turns later, Ron was a bloody pulp and our party was 5 gold and a ham sandwich richer. We were in stitches... the kid next me laughed so hard he puked through his nose.
On his way out, Lord British gave us cloth maps and whispered to us about Easter eggs he'd sprinkled throughout the series. We were on cloud nine, and I was ready to devote my life to becoming a pixelated Avatar. I wanted to grow up to be Lord British. I wanted to make games, I wanted to be in them, and I wanted to live them.
Sadly, I never got to play Ultima V. The game was delayed and the 'rents wouldn't spring for the IIGS. By time I had the resources to play the game, I'd moved onto the PC and was hooked on a series of games by a guy named Sid Meier, but that's another story for another day...
Re:The days of yore... (Score:2, Interesting)
Yeah back during the halcyon days of creativity when they churned out such classics as Ms. Pac Man and Jr. Pac Man, and who could forget ET? And then there all those Great Games like Tapper, LED Storm, Cupfinal, and Chase HQ. Wait, you mean you don't remember them? That's because they sucked. They had horrible gameplay. Hell, try going back and playing Dig Dug or Pac Man or Paperboy and tell me the gameplay on those things doesn't suck ass.
The problem with nostalgia is you only remember the best of the past and you're comparing it against the average from the present. How is Diablo's gameplay any worse than the original Gauntlet's? How is Thief or Half-Life less engrossing than Shinobi? How is Ghostbusters better than X-COM? Is Gran Tourismo less interesting than Pole Position?
The current complaints about style over substance might seem valid unless you haven't excised memories of Cinemaware and Dragon's Lair.
Re:The days of yore... (Score:2)
Pac Man and Dig Dug certainly don't "suck ass". I play them often even today, thanks to (x)mame. Now ET, I grant you, was pretty bad.
The problem with nostalgia is you only remember the best of the past and you're comparing it against the average from the present. How is Diablo's gameplay any worse than the original Gauntlet's?
That point isn't that it isn't worse, the point is that it is hardly better. With all the resources available to us today, games should be awesome. Instead, the best they can do is remakes. Just like Hollywood. I hear that they are going to remake the 1970's SF classic "Rollerball" (minus the anti-corporate overtones -- can't have that today, now can we?). Why? Can't they come up with something original?
Chase HQ (Score:2)
Chase HQ? I loved that game. Tapper? Bring it on! How about Crisis Mountain, Burger Time, Lode Runner (with its 256 levels), and GhostBusters? I play those games for hours in my apple][e emulator.
Paper Boy was awesome, but it doesn't translate well to nintendo for the same reason HardDrivn' doesn't. Too much of the game play is the interface.
How about Spy Hunter? Available on Shockwave.com!
No but I get your point. Neither of them suck, any more than 1950's cars are better or worse than cars in the 1990's.
Re:The days of yore... (Score:1)
Wow! Great post!
My first Ultima game was Ultima III on the Amiga. My wife and I beat it together. We worked very hard, and she figured out the final puzzle. Then we did Ultima IV together.
After that I departed from the Ultima series until Ultima Online came around. Ultima Online is amazing. The community within the game spills out into the real world. I played UO from 4/98 to 7/00, and then left until late last month. When I returned it truly was like a homecoming.
The best part is that my eight-year-old son is now able to play (he types a bit slowly, but other than that I don't know how many people would know he's eight).
So, if you play UO on the Pacific Shard and run into a Schizophrenic Ranger named Leo (GoL; Ranger Emeritus), or a slow-of-speech fighter named David. Stop and say "Hi" we'd love for you to be part of our community.
Re:The days of yore... (Score:2)
Why am I afraid? I'm afraid because I'm going to have to confess to him that about once a year I still have a dream set in Britania, circa Ultima 4.
Non-asian gaming tactics != inferior (Score:1, Insightful)
Maybe that means that American players respond better to causes than fealty, or that they tend to form or volunteer for skills-based groups to accomplish specifc tasks (for varying motivations) and vote for the person they think can best lead them. The citizen-soldier ideal America fields results in vastly superior lower-level performance as units can react to events they face quicker and better than, say, heirarchial-based phalanxes or some shit.
The point being that looking at cultures as impediments to success rather than seeing that as a challenge to improve gameplay is narrow-sighted and wrong. If he can't figure that out about his own country of residence, I think he's blinded by his own success.
Re:Non-asian gaming tactics != inferior (Score:1, Insightful)
Maybe because he sees Lineage as a game catering more to Asian (Korean) tastes than American? Maybe Lineage was developed to work with Asian tactics and overlooked American? Maybe that's why Lord British is there, to balance it out?
Re:Non-asian gaming tactics != inferior (Score:1, Informative)
Sick of it (Score:2, Interesting)
The number of "foreign" products, games, whatever, that are seeing tremendous success here is staggering, but the "yeah, but" crowd just continues to bury their head in the demographics reports. I'll guarantee that some tie-wearing cynical #*@&!~*@%& at some arrogant company said Harry Potter would never be a "success" either. Can't you just hear it? Some haircut in a grey suit holding his hand over his #%&@#*()%# cell-phone and saying "a kid with glasses and a broom? Give me a break!"
Just a reaction to the "far too foreign to make a truly successful crossover title" remark in the article. What is truly successful? How much? A billion? A hundred billion? What?
This is what causes the money-grab mindset of businesses now. If it doesn't lead to a 100000% market-cap increase and an IPO and put us in the Fortune 100, and the creative team can't PROVE that will happen, then we'd rather just have another meeting.
I just read a few articles about "Dance Dance Revolution." Here's another product that U.S. companies probably laughed at. Yet, whenever I see the game, some kid is putting money in it, and 437 other kids are lined up around the corner to play it, and 300 other people are watching, and 10,000 other people are putting up web sites about it.
Keep having meetings and keep running your mouths, U.S. corporate-types. There's a million little companies out there with a million little really neat ideas that are eventually going to eat your %#&@$()* lunch.
return rant();
Re:Sick of it (Score:1)
HOWEVER, in this specific case you are wrong. I have played Lineage, and while it may be all the rage in a country where people find their way into someone else's house to rent computer time by the hour, frankly, the game sucks by the standards of AC, EQ, or the new MMORPG king, Dark Age of Camelot. You will note that LB was kind of reserved in his praise...sounded more like someone being a good corporate citizen while biding his time until the completion of Tabula Rasa.
Recently, a Norwegian company named Funcom also made a big splash on the scene with a game called Anarchy Online, and then quickly began fading into the background as their game was plagued by latency issues, over-ambitious graphics, terrible maintenance and bug resolution, and horrendous customer relations. Meanwhile, Mythic has done nothing but succeed with Dark Age since launch.
While you may be right in the long run, right now, US game companies have this market cornered in North America and Europe because they are making better product, not because of entrenched positions. Lineage is at least two years behind Dark Age IMHO.
Re:Sick of it (Score:1)
However, that doesn't change my original point: Lineage is miles behind even EQ, and no one other than a US gaming company has turned out a decent MMORPG yet. TR does sound interesting and I didn't say anything negative about it. It is of course, being built by a US company with US coders that happens to have merged with an Asian one, so I don't see how that's contrary to my original point...
MBAs as Stupidity Barometers (Score:1)
Re:MBAs as Stupidity Barometers (Score:2)
Re:Sick of it (Score:1)
Sure Blood Pledge has so-so graphics, but so did UO and Pokemon.
Re:Sick of it (Score:2)
Re:Lineage is abysmal (Score:1)
Re:Lineage is abysmal (Score:1)
The Once Great Lord British... (Score:1)
Maybe still great. (Score:1)
All the Ultima games were pretty typical of the way software was being developed at the time they were made.
U1-4 were made by pretty small teams over amazingly short periods of time, considering what tools they had to work with.
With U5 and U6 the projects start getting much bigger U7-10 and UO had pretty huge groups working on them.
These big groups may have been able to do something great but the task required different skills. More "suit" less h4x0r. My guess is that Lord Brittish had a hard time learning how to run a big team. Give the guy some slack this was not an easy thing to do!
He has lots of expierence now maybe he can pull off another great game.
I loved U4 and U5 and hated UO. He seems to have a handle on some of the things that went so badly wrong with UO. (I have no need to pay $10 a month to be virtually mugged) I will give his next game a chance if it looks like he solved the killer problems.
Ultima Online story (Score:2, Funny)
Now normally British was immortal, but there had been a server crash and someone neglected to reset the immortal bit. When British saw the flame wave coming he typed "Ha, Ha, nice try" and then was surprised when the "you're dead" message popped up on the screen. Everything paused for a few seconds. .
If anyone else knows where the URL is for that magazine story, or BETTER YET if you were there (in a virtual sense) please let me know.
Thanks
Re:Ultima Online story (Score:1, Informative)
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/9738/lee.php
And there is a reference here I belive...
http://slashdot.org/articles/01/04/10/1515214.s
(search for smirkleton, about 1/3 the way down.. )
And now for some death screenshots:
http://members.home.net/dhughston7/ultima/histo
Enjoy!
Lineage in the US (Score:2)
A separate Lineage game in the US probably wouldn't work very well-- people want to play the "main character", or one of a band of adventurers, while the world must be made mostly of minor characters who are important in groups. On the other hand, if the world has 2 million people playing people in groups, the addition of a few hundred thousand freelance people would probably work fine for game mechanics.
It would probably be very interesting to go on quests in a fully-fleshed-out world inhabited by a large number of PCs and NPCs in realistic arrangements. Thinking about LotR, there are a ton of groups of people who clearly ought to be PCs who don't fit the adventurer model, and it would be very interesting to have a MMRPG with people who actually want to play those roles.