Richard Garriott at GDC: The Evolution of Games

We’ve heard Ultima creator and private astronaut Richard Garriott’s “three eras of gaming” keynote speech before, so his reworking of it for GDC in Cologne this week certainly won’t shock regular readers with its content or thesis. Garriott looks over the history of gaming and splits it into three broad eras: the single-player era, the MMO era, and the social/mobile era (which we are presently in), and notes his achievements and experiments with each paradigm.

His GDC keynote, though, is worth remarking on for how much focus it puts on the Ultima games, particularly Ultima Online; Tabula Rasa doesn’t even merit a mention in the quotes that Gamasutra took from Lord British.

On single-player gaming, Garriott had this to say:

“One thing that I really lucked into was creating storylines with what I will call ‘social relevance’,” he said, pointing to the moral choices inherent in the Ultima games.

The “save the kingdom” story of the original games in the series is no longer enough, though it still has traction in the industry, he said. “The first Ultimas were very simple stories… And if you look at most games today they still are. Personally, I don’t know about you, after I told that story a few times I was done with it.”

“That story has no value in the future. It’s the antithesis of what I try to do and what we as a development community need to do,” said Garriott.

“I have found that it’s much more challenging and much more successful for a long period of time, if you can a find a storyline to embed into a game that speaks to current contemporary social issues, but cast in a storyline that is appropriate to the style or fiction of the world that you have created.”

He also cautioned audiences to not miss what he considers “an essential element” of games — “a visual style is easily identifiable and easily memorable, and thus easily able for you to recall.”

And the Ultima games certainly delivered on that last point, especially from Ultima 6 onward.

Moving on to MMORPGs, Garriott revealed a few details about Ultima Online’s history:

When he launched the Ultima Online project, EA’s “faith in the team and faith in the project was so low,” he said, that “projected sales were 30k lifetime.”

“Sales and marketing were not in favor of us working with the game,” he said. “It wasn’t until we put up a prototype and put up a web page… 50,000 people signed up to be beta testers in the first couple of weeks. When it finally did ship it was the fastest selling PC game in origin and EA history at the time. Within about two years had outsold all of the other previous Ultimas combined.”

Even so, he said, “Despite the success, lots of people were not convinced that this was a good future for gaming in general.”

This is because the game had dated graphics and a lack of story — putting it behind the current state of the art of single player games. “When a new era starts with graphics that are five or 10 years behind the state of the art, very quickly that changes.”

MMOs quickly caught up. In fact, new era games — while behind the times at first — “catch up and supersede the era… Which is a very important message when you talk about the third era” of social and mobile games.

Of course, we know that Ultima Online went on to quite a bit more success than that…but it did start from behind. And it’s worth noting that MMOs today still have the tendency to lag behind graphically when compared to single-player games. Then again, that’s not really a surprise; MMOs run for years, and their visual feel stays constant for most of that duration.

Moving on to social gaming, Garriott had this to say:

“I am now much more of a gamer than I ever been been in my whole life, but the vast majority of the gaming I have played has been on this machine,” Garriott said, while holding up an iPhone.

“I’m a devout believer that this is the current and near-term future of games.”

The key points of this era, according to Garriott, are:

– Games are free or very cheap to acquire
– Simple to use without instructions
– The people who you meet at first are the people you know really well in the real world
– The ability to engage your friends asynchronously

“The combination of these features have scaled the market tenfold… Crossing the threshold of hundredss of millions of players in each game,” he said.

“Just like with MMOs, [detractors] are not recognizing the power of the new era, and how they can not only be great contributors to this era, but even as players how much you will enjoy this new era.”

People — both developers and players — used to say about MMOs, “the graphics aren’t very good, there’s no story.” Today, the same groups say that social and mobile games have bad graphics and unappealing gameplay. But watch out, said Garriott: things are rapidly evolving.

As I noted previously: I agree with Garriott’s assessment in general. Regular readers of Aiera will no doubt have noticed that I’ve been quite open in voicing my belief that social and mobile games — despite the relative fluffiness and primitivity of the current crop of social/casual titles — are a field in which there will be explosive growth (both in terms of the number of games available and the quality/engagingness of these games) in coming years.

My first mobile was a primitive little Samsung flip phone, with some version of Solitaire and a primitive little driving game installed on it. And these were, admittedly, terrible games, and very poorly implemented. Now, though? I’ve got Infinity Blade (an Unreal Engine 3-powered game) on my iPhone. And Galaxy on Fire 2.

That’s exactly the sort of revolution that’s about to take place in the social gaming space. And Garriott will likely be at the forefront of it.

Extra Reading: UO Journal links to this interview with Garriott at Soulrift, in which the father of Ultima goes into even more detail about the three eras, and about Ultima Online in paticular.

24 Responses

  1. Tammej says:

    The masses of smartphone games. Simple. Forgettable. Sometimes fun. Shovelware, is what it’s also called.

    Lots of money to be made there, no doubt. Still, how I wished that Mr. Garriott would stop to belittle his own roleplaying games indirectly. They are not a dying race, nor is there dwindling demand for AAA roleplaying titles.

    Whilst it is understandable that he may have gotten bored out of it, and doesn’t want to keep telling us the story of Briannia and the Avatar, the constant bloodletting of his golden age games for the sake of these oh-so-fantastic social games irks me on a level that surprised even myself.

    Other people may not find that story boring, at all. So yeah, there are a lot of other stories like it, which may not be all that attractive. So? The story of Britanna, and the Avatar, and his friends — is still quite original. And who’s saying that new Ultima games would have to have a boring plotline anyway? Just think of something new and imaginative. Or pay authors to come up with ideas. A lot of other fantasy content has to live up to standards like Tolkien, and would always fail miserably, but many still stand firmly on their very own two feet regardless.

    People still love the old games. People still buy roleplaying games today, and really expensive ones, complex ones, too! Some want more Ultima games, and have asked Origin, Gariott, and later EA for new games again and again, to no avail even now, after decades have passed. This is a loved franchise.

    BioWare, Bethesda, Obsidian – I’m sure these companies would all sell Ultima games, hypothetically – if they had the rights to.

    • WtF Dragon says:

      Two points.

      1) BioWare basically does have the rights to the Ultima name; Mythic — the studio that is in charge of UO these days — is a BioWare studio now.

      So they could, in theory, return to the IP whenever they wanted to. That said, I could also see them approaching companies like Obsidian or Big Huge Games/38 Studios to do a new Ultima as well; that almost happened (with Obsidian) back in 2006.

      Bethesda, though, will almost certainly never be tapped to do any development in the Ultima franchise.

      2) I think it is unfair to dismiss all mobile games as shovelware, though certainly there are mobile titles that deserve the label. But equally, there are mobile titles which demonstrate real design and innovation — and which offer quite compelling gameplay — that are obviously more than just a cynical attempt to cash in on a fad.

      The style of game design, like the style of play, is very different, though. The games need to be the sort that you can hop in and out of as you need, but also need to offer longer-duration playability for those times when you do actually have time to sit down with them. That’s no easy feat to deliver!

  2. Gileathane Dragon says:

    Speaking of being irked – labelling ‘smartphone’ games as shovelware is a massive generalisation.

    There’s a huge breadth of ios & android games. There’s new genres/tradition genres, innovative gameplay, some really creative stuff (not to mention ports of classics – i’ve been playing akalabeth lately on my way to work).

    There’s ridiculous amount of experimentation going on – far more interesting than the repetitive sequel churn of most AAA games. Quality varies, true – but show me a platform where that hasn’t been the case. Dismissing games on the platform is not what I’d say is a valid call.

  3. Sergorn says:

    Garriott has good arguments, but I can’t agree with this assesments as to how “MMOs quickly caught up” to single player games. I’ve yet to see any MMO which offer a storyline as good as what you’d find in SP RPG. I’m holding out hope for TOR but…

    “I could also see them approaching companies like Obsidian or Big Huge Games/38 Studios to do a new Ultima as well; that almost happened (with Obsidian) back in 2006.”

    It should noted however that this failed deal with Obsidian happened before the Bioware buyout, precisely because EA had no RPG studio of their own. My understanding too is that they also discussed this with other major RPG studios before Obsidian.

    But with the Bioware buyout, the situation has changed and it feels somehow unlikely that EA would contract an Ultima game to another company rather than having it done at one of Bioware’s studio.

  4. Sanctimonia says:

    From what I’ve gathered the idea of a “social game” shouldn’t even be a genre, much less an era. We have single player, local/network multiplayer and MMOG. Playing a game on your phone isn’t much different than what the Game Boy, Lynx, etc. did other than being online, so other than crappy controls and a small screen mobile gaming isn’t much of a distinction. Integration with your Facebook friend list is a nice feature for certain types of games, but it’s just that; a feature.

    I’d love to know how a single feature can define an era of gaming, outside of being a marketing department’s wet dream due to pyramid style spam invites between “friends”. Friend lists have been around forever in multiplayer games, so how is an automatic friend list pulled from Facebook anything close to innovative?

    This whole thing just makes me think of developers salivating over the possibility of having games running on every device that uses electricity with zero entry barrier so that market penetration is near 100% of every man, woman and child alive. I think it’s more about money than real innovation, and if anything will further dumb down what games have become due to the gameplay ramifications of integrating these characteristics.

    Unless we’re talking about poker or something abstract, a game allowing immediate participation by anyone in your friend list as well as allowing you to start and stop playing at any given moment without consequence will cripple anything close to realism in many game types.

  5. Deckard says:

    I would think any new Ultima games would be handled within BioWare. They do seem intent on reviving all three of their existing MMOs including Ultima Online, and then the Ultima Forever thing was definitely out of BioWare.

    However, Big Huge Games/38 Studios – if Kingdoms of Amalur does well, they want an MMO out of it. As far as I know, they are not staffed, both in size and experience, to handle a huge MMO. It’d almost be logical for BioWare to take that over. Given the experience behind the single-player Amalur, it would make sense for Big Huge Games/38 Studios to take over a single-player Ultima.

    Also Dragon Age III is supposed to be under development, tying up BioWare assets for a single-player game.

    As for mobile games, there’s a lot being done. It feels like we’re in the early days of Apple and PC gaming, complete with shareware, when all kinds of little startups were doing some pretty amazing things.

    Lest we forget, at the time that Garriott got his start, computer games, especially in the home, were, well I won’t say they were looked down upon or mocked, but they were casually dismissed by many people, just as some dismiss gaming on iPhones or iPads. A lot of people felt they should remain on the consoles back then or in the arcades, and that they were a waste of time and resources.

  6. Sergorn says:

    I think the Kingdom of Amalur MMO is already in development actually in 38 Studios and not at Big Huge Game.

    IIRC, when 38 Studios bought BHG they had already this MMO in development and they decided to bring both games (Reckoning was then known as Crucible) into the same IP/Universe.

    Keep in mind as well that while EA is publishing Reckoning through their EA Partner program, 38 Studios remains an independant company and they own the KOA IP – so there’s no way they would bring their MMO to another EA company, unless EA somehow buys out 38 Studios.

    Contracting Ultima through an independant company is conceivable though… I do feel however that before something like this happen, that Ultima Forever that is supposedly cooking at Bioware Mythic will first have to run its course (meaning being released or cancelled) because I don’t see EA greenlighting two separate Ultima projects.

    Regarding the social gaming things, I think one should not confuse mobile gaming (which will most likely kill out portable consoles in the future) and social gaming which can involve mobile, but not exclusively.

    The Portalatrium app is actually interesting in that in theory it should be able to run on anything, from Facebook, regular browsers, Iphones, Android, Ipad…

    The idea behind this is that you could theorically play a game on your computer and continue it on your phone, or tablet or such. Garriott is not the only proponent of this, Hideo Kojima for instance envisiones things like this and there are plans to offer things like this between the PS3 and Sony’s upcoming PS Vita. I think this is a nice concept really and I Could honestly see this kind of platforme becoming the norm in the long term.

  7. Deckard says:

    As for Garriott and his comments about single-player games and MMOs. I kind of mentioned this on my website, but I’ll go a little further in detail. I’d point out that of the best RPGs in many years, Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, came out after MMOs started to take off, and even today, 5 years later, many still respect it and play it.

    Bethesda could easily turn it into a huge MMO, but they chose to keep it single-player with Skyrim.

    What I said on my site, I have question how much of Garriott’s attitude is sour grapes.

    Ultima Online for the most part it initially flew under the radar until it was launched. People were aware of it, people were talking about it, but it wasn’t getting nearly the kind of attention that later MMOs were getting before their launches. Garriott and the others had to bend over backwards to get it done, and they faced a lot of obstacles from EA to get it done.

    It turns into a success, EA is happy, and Garriott, feeling that UO was already outdated, turned his attention to Ultima Online 2, which was going to be bigger and better and address UO’s shortcomings. He gets a better backing than he had with UO, more resources, the media is all over him, UO2 is getting covers on gaming magazines before anybody could even demo it and they are singing Garriott’s praises. Fast forward a bit, EA stirs the pot and yanks the rug out from under UO2, and decides to only support UO.

    It’s almost the equivalent of EA saying that because Ultima VII had done so well and people were still buying it and playing it, that they should cancel Ultima VIII and just work on Ultima VII expansions. Okay, that’s not entirely accurate, but everything is brought crashing down.

    Don’t forget that in the years prior to and after UO2’s cancellation, that EA had canceled other Origin projects such as Privateer Online, that they had rushed two Ultima games to market with bad results (VIII and IX) and that not long after UO2’s cancellation, EA began to dismantle Origin in earnest and ship the remnants off to California and eventually Virginia. Some have said Origin was out of control at points and that contributed, and while that’s true to an extent, but that was typical of the industry. What EA did to Origin and other studios at the time was beyond dealing with a studio that went over budget or that were used to doing their own thing, they were out to just destroy studios because of turf wars between EA divisions.

    Garriott realizes he’s not wanted, bails along with many of his friends and developers. They head to NCSoft, things sound really good, he’s going to do Tabula Rasa. What happens? NCSoft interferes with Tabula Rasa and Garriott’s vision, the game bombs and is cancelled a year after launch.

    It’s 2011. NCSoft has since given other developers more freedom, and EA…yeah, EA. EA has changed over the last decade from not having an online strategy and not treating its studios well and not supporting MMOs as well as it should have to 2011 where EA is allowing BioWare a lot more autonomy and support than they ever allowed Origin, allowing BioWare to finish their games on their own schedules for the most part and not EA’s schedules, and Star Wars: The Old Republic has more support than Garriott ever had for his online projects.

    It has to be a very bitter pill for Garriott to swallow, given that BioWare is now on the same level as some of the groups within EA that worked to hurt Origin in the late ’90s and early ’00s. Had EA been run in 2001 the way it is in 2011, Origin would have remained an actual studio, and would probably have several MMOs under its belt, and we might have seen another single-player Ultima or two.

    In short: I think part of Garriott’s views are heavily clouded by some incredibly bitter experiences at the hands of large companies over the last 15 years or so. Now he’s got a small company, he doesn’t have to deal with big publishers or big companies, he can directly sell to and interact with the customers, and it’s a much more personal experience, on par with the experiences he probably had in his early days when he was selling games in ziploc bags.

  8. Sergorn says:

    Okay I gotta say that you are mistaken about a few things and notably in terme of the the chronology of events, so I’d like to offer some clarifications.

    “Ultima Online for the most part it initially flew under the radar until it was launched.”

    Not really. I mean of course, it didn’t had the kind of attention say WoW was having or TOR is having pre-release: but it got a lot of attention, a LOT more than any other online game before it.

    While EA didn’t believe in UO originally, keep in mind that they rapidely understood its potential when 50 000 people signed for the beta in a couple of weeks. I mean this is why they put U9’s development on hold and had the Ultima teams focus solely on getting Ultima Online ready and that because they saw the commercial promises before the release.

    “It turns into a success, EA is happy, and Garriott, feeling that UO was already outdated, turned his attention to Ultima Online 2, which was going to be bigger and better and address UO’s shortcomings.”

    No. Richard Garriott had very little involvement in Ultima Online 2. He was probably consulted and involved in early design meetings, but it probably never went farther than that since at the time he was solely focused on Ultima IX: Ascension.

    But point is, Ultima Online 2 was mostly Starr Long’s baby – even after U9’s release Garriott had no intention of working on Ultima Online 2 and wanted to create a new kind of MMO focused on a hub and instanced gameplay (note he was basically the first person to ever mention the concept of instance gameplay in MMOs) in a futuristic fantasy setting. The plan was to have Ultima IX’s dev team working on it and it was to be called “X” (as in the roman numeral ten) because Garriott considered it the spiritual successor to the Ultima series. This project basically evovled into Tabula Rasa 1.0.

    But EA was not interested, and wanted Garriott to work on more Ultima Online games instead. Since Garriott wanted to try other things, he left in March 2000 (this coincided with the layout of the Privateer Online team and the cancellation of all non UO related OSI projects) and had to sign a non compete agreement that lasted a year.

    Now coincidentially, his agreement ended exactly at the time one year later when EA cancelled UO2, this lead to most of UO2’s team to join the newly created Destination Games.

    “not long after UO2?s cancellation, EA began to dismantle Origin in earnest and ship the remnants off to California and eventually Virginia.”

    Sorry but you’re confusing things. UO2 was cancelled in 2001. OSI was closed down in 2004 and they kept working on multiple projects at the time, not just supporting UO. Notably of course: Ultima X Odyssey which was very much a AAA game.

    “What EA did to Origin and other studios at the time was beyond dealing with a studio that went over budget or that were used to doing their own thing, they were out to just destroy studios because of turf wars between EA divisions.”

    I don’t think this was about turt wars at all. It’s just simple economics. EA wanted to consilidate all its studios in Redwood, California because it was cost effective. They did that succesfully with both Maxis and Westwood studio where most of the staff moved in these cases, and so intented to do the same for OSI. Except the OSI staff didn’t want to leave Austin. It really is as simple as that – EA didn’t set out to destroy Origin out of evilness, they simply wanted to move out of simple economics as a way to cut cost… and that failed. They really did wanted to OSI team to move to Redwood and finish UXO. Sad but true.

    And in true they would probably not do so today, because there is less sense in trying to focus everything in a same place with today’s tech which allows studios halfway across the world to collaborate flawlessly – but in the early 2000 that was a different story.

    That being said, I’d agree Richard Garriott probably has some bitterness from his later years at OSI and his years at NC Soft. I tend to think however that Garriott is not just really cut out for the big AAA corporate studios which is perhaps also why things went a bit awry… but this is also why I’m cautiously optimistic about Portalarium, because having Garriott in his own smell independant company, it feels to me he is more in his turf there and will me confortable in term of creating quality gaming without having to deal with all the corporate crap.

  9. Deckard says:

    UO didn’t have the kind of attention and support that later MMOs had. Obviously that changed because of UO’s success, but until the beta, it had very little support. To start off development, Garriott had to go to the CEO for money – he couldn’t get his superiors to support him. Don Mattrick believed in sequels every year like any good person whose worldview is shaped by sports games, and he and other executives wanted Ultima IX. Ironic since when the beta hit, at one point I think they asked Garriott to shut down Ultima IX and move everything into UO.

    As for UO2 and Ultima IX, Garriott took those very personally. His name was tied to those and he was good friends with many on those teams, and cancellation or lack of success due to EA’s interference was felt pretty hard by him. You go from 1994 when Ultima VIII was released, which Garriott considers his biggest regret, to Ultima IX and then UO2, that was just a really bad 7 year run for Garriott and Ultima, with UO as the major bright spot.

    I will give Garriott credit – he has publicly stated that some of the problems were caused by him and other leaders within Origin at the time, and Warren Spector said EA had a very positive influence early on after the acquisition, but the biggest problems that hurt Ultima were still EA pushing games out too early or not supporting others or getting cold feet about anything that could compete with UO. It’s especially tragic about UO2 when you think about the fact that by the time UO2 went into production, it was already understood that 3D was the future. EverQuest was putting up the kinds of numbers that should have made EA executives jealous and it should have made them want to go all out on MMORPGs. Instead, projects were getting canceled.

    “Sorry but you’re confusing things. UO2 was cancelled in 2001. OSI was closed down in 2004 and they kept working on multiple projects at the time, not just supporting UO. Notably of course: Ultima X Odyssey which was very much a AAA game.”

    I happen consider three years to not be long after 2001.

    As for economics, UO was profitable in Austin, and as for the other titles, including Odyssey – when it came to them trying to move the Odyssey team to California, first of all, if you move the team halfway across the country while the game is still being worked on, that’s not economical at all. You’re introducing major delays which cost money. You’re looking at a lot of time and money being wasted on the move itself, and on the team getting things together quickly after the move is completed. If you can get them all to move, the first few months after the move, they aren’t going to be focused as much on development either, because they are going to be worried about housing, about their kids in new schools, about their spouses getting jobs, etc.

    EA knew many weren’t going to move to California up front, and as Warren Spector said, management had looked down upon the whole Austin developers scene. Ironic given how much has happened since then, but things were different.

    As for turf wars, they were definitely going on. In Garriott’s own words: “there were others who got into politics, who very clearly would get into the mode of ‘Your success will work against my success. EA caring about you will mean they care less about me.’ The politicians began to look at us as the enemy, and would actively work against us.”

  10. Deckard says:

    I could have summed up my argument as this: To this day, Garriott still wears Ultima-related jewelry and he is still talking about Lord British games.

    He’s got a grudge.

  11. Sergorn says:

    “UO didn’t have the kind of attention and support that later MMOs had. Obviously that changed because of UO’s success, but until the beta, it had very little support”

    I know that of course, but what I’m saying is that after the beta UO *did* get a lot of support and press. No way the amount later MMOs got of course, but way more than say… Meridian 59 ever got for instance.

    “As for UO2 and Ultima IX, Garriott took those very personally. His name was tied to those and he was good friends with many on those teams, and cancellation or lack of success due to EA’s interference was felt pretty hard by him.”

    Again: Garriott had very little involvement on UO2. Preliminary work on UO2 began while Richard Garriott was directing Ultima IX (and that really was his focus because he had to fight bits and nail NOT to have U9 cancelled), and he left mere month after UO2 was officially announced. UO2 was very much into giving a new team an opportunity to do something different with Ultima (indeed, lead writer Aaron DeOrive didn’t even worked on any other OSI project than I recall) and Garriott wanted to work on something non-Ultima. So UO2 was not his baby by a long (or short) shot. No doubt he officially had an “executive producer” role or something before he left EA, but that doesn’t neceserrilly means a strong involvement in the game (for instance he was producer on Underworld 1 and voiced a character in the intro, but by Looking Glass’ account he basically had no involvement whatsoever)

    While he obviously was good friends with the UO2 team, I actually doubt he took UO2’s cancellation hard at all. If anything the cancelattion of UO2 in March 2001 is the *best* thing that could have happened to Richard Garriott at that time – and he even admitted so himself. While he had registered the name Destination Games as soon as he left OSI and had his concept for “X” – he had no studio, and no team. By cancelling UO2 and laying off all its staff and quite a few other OSI people though, EA basically gave him a full dev team on silver plater, most of ’em went on to join Destination Games which allowed DG to exists, the NC Soft deal to come and Tabula Rasa to be created.

    So no, I seriously doubt that Richard Garriott “took hard” the cancellation of UO2 since it was all benefits for him. If I look at it cynically, I would say a part of him probably rejoiced at this even 😛

    “I could have summed up my argument as this: To this day, Garriott still wears Ultima-related jewelry and he is still talking about Lord British games.”

    Except this is all non-Ultima related in truth.

    The Silver Serpent necklace he wear was crafted by his mother to him long before Ultima was created and he has been wearing him ever since. Likewise, Lord British has been his alter ego before Ultima since he got the nickame “British” while at university. He just integrated these two elements within the Ultima games.

    But the necklace is a very personnal thing, and Lord British has been his alter ego for most of his life (even in Tabula Rasa, his alter ego was “General British”) to the point he registered it, so of course he’s gonna keep using showing and using them.

    That’s not to say he doesn’t hold a grudge – I’m actually pretty sure that Richard Garriott would *love* to buy back the Ultima rights from Electronic Arts, as his New Britannia game screams of “I want to do a new Ultima game but can’t use the IP”. But neither the jewelry nor his use of Lord British are part of this possible grudge, they’re just part of his persona.

  12. Sanctimonia says:

    We could second guess Garriott and EA ’til the end of time, but does anyone have an opinion on my comments about “social games” being a new genre/era?

    I find the idea pretty weird. The characteristics that have been ascribed to social games have been around for a while. What exactly is the definition of a game belonging to this so-called new era? “Social” is pretty vague. Tying in to a social media web site like Facebook is convenient but hardly revolutionary. Is that all there is to it? Wikipedia is suspiciously void of information on the subject, which adds to my doubt about it being anything more than marketing bullshit.

    I know I’m the “get off my lawn” type more often than not, but I don’t hate everything new. I just wonder how much there really is to see here. I’m actually a bit worried about Garriott hyping this so much, as games are ultimately just games, and being able to bother your friend list with whatever inane crap you’re playing around with isn’t often a good thing.

  13. Sanctimonia says:

    On a different subject, as WtF pointed out to me Garriott’s mother didn’t craft his serpent necklace. He made it himself with her guidance. Cool mom, no?

  14. Sergorn says:

    Whoa, I hadn’t yet read the entire piece on Gamasutra but there is two things I noticed :

    * That’s the first time I see him saying that he wish he had stuck with Tabula Rasa’s original vision and basically admit changing the game was a mistake. I can’t even being to say how much I agree with this – Futuristic Fantasy Tabula Rasa looked fun, Generic Halo crap with magic: not so much.

    * Even 12 years after the fact, he stil doesn’t list Ultima IX as a regret yet still go on about Ultima VIII. Which very much prove my point that in essence Ultima IX was the game he wanted to make 😛

    Please make a great New Britannia my liege!

  15. Matthew Seidl says:

    I think you’re taking a bit of a narrow view here, Sanctimonia.

    Look at Words with Friends. Sure, online gaming has been around for a long time — I bet people have been playing Scrabble over the ‘Net for years. But you had to be in front of your computer, go to a separate Web site and play against people you didn’t know — or a narrow list of friends that identify themselves as gamers enough to create and maintain such a list.

    But now you can download a free ad-supported app and instantly see who among all of your Facebook/Twitter friends is playing — and if they’re not you can invite them, or maybe they’ll see from your feed that you’re playing. It’s asynchronous so you don’t have to arrange a time to be online together — you can get a few rounds in while you’re waiting to see the doctor or in line at the grocery store. You can trash talk, post high scores and accomplishments.

    These are some of the things that differentiate traditional online gaming from social gaming IMO.

  16. Sanctimonia says:

    I think I understand the definition now, although what you’re describing sounds like a mix of social and casual. I’m still pretty underwhelmed by the idea and don’t think that these features are revolutionary enough to mark a new era in gaming. Nice for some games and for those who like playing them, irrelevant to others. The most profound and impactful effects of the social/casual movement will be market penetration, similar to the F2P versus subscription models in MMOs.

  17. Infinitron says:

    Asynchronous gaming – is that a defining attribute of the “social gaming era”? I think it might be , but none of its prophets seem to be mentioning it (am I wrong?).

  18. Francois424 says:

    I’m extremly bitter as to where the gaming industry is going these days. Why would you sacrifice the total awesomness of a 25″ monitor with a 750$ video card, and double 3 terabyte systems, for some Crappy, VERY SMALL, clucky control, shitty sound/video card of Cellphones or other damn consoles ?

    I’m all for a new “Social-Genre” Ultima game. If it has a PC interface that takes advantage of what my money can buy. I would jump on the chance of playing another Ultima-esque game from Richard Garriot, especially in a fantasy / steampunk world. But I am not going to sacrifice my 25″ monitor. No way

    But Lord British really got one thing right: the one thing the market is missing nowadays are game in which (should you choose to) your character arent fighters. It’s all about classes and Levels, and i’m getting sick-tired of it. What I wouldn’t give for a nice MMO that allows you to be whatever you want, wear anything you want (UO had dresses, other MMO are struggling to have something like it).

    Looking forward to what Richard will bring nonetheless
    Good night All !
    — Francois424

    • WtF Dragon says:

      Francois:

      Why would you sacrifice the total awesomness of a 25? monitor with a 750$ video card, and double 3 terabyte systems, for some Crappy, VERY SMALL, clucky control, shitty sound/video card of Cellphones or other damn consoles ?

      Because despite the awesomeness of the monitor, and the graphics card, and/or the consoles…none of those can easily travel with you in your pocket. They aren’t there beside you on the train or the bus to work in the morning, nor are they there beside you on the train or the bus home. They aren’t there with you in the cab ride to the airport, and they aren’t there on the plane (and unless you’re flying first class, most plane seats are just too cramped for effective laptop use). They aren’t there with you at the coffee shop, in the lunchroom, or in the bathroom for that matter.

      But your mobile is almost always there. And that is key.

      The style and detail of games differs wildly between mobiles and fixed gaming systems, although the lines are blurring; John Carmack was remarking today that an iPad 2 has about half the computational and graphics “oomph” of a PS3, and the upcoming (handheld) PS Vita is supposedly as powerful as that same console. Even my iPhone 3GS can handle some quite decent 3D games. Heck…a modified version of Unreal Engine 3 even works on iPhones and some Android devices! And you know…the small screen works to the advantage of the games and the player; a low poly-count model actually looks pretty good on a small screen.

      Plus, companies like EA and Sony are both talking about having games that cross multiple platforms and use a technology not unlike Amazon’s Whispersync to migrate your in-game progress between the platforms you play on; you play the high-fidelity version of the game on your console before work in the morning, then pick up where you left off in the lower-fidelity version on your mobile whilst on the bus, and then resume where you left off on your mobile when you get back to your console.

      I don’t have concrete numbers, but I am aware that the gaming market has basically exploded since mobile phones established themselves as the premiere mobile gaming platforms, beating out (in most cases) the dedicated offerings from Sony and Nintendo. “Gamer”, as a term, now refers to people in almost every demographic group you could care to name, almost everywhere in the world. And social gaming — which, to be fair, is quite closely related to mobile gaming — has added to that number even more. Moreover, the graphical quality of social games is improving, and there are even some 3D engines that support browser-based gameplay.

      To be fair, I don’t think that the emergence of social/mobile gaming will utterly wipe out the AAA gaming market; your graphics card and massive monitor won’t be going to waste.

  19. Sanctimonia says:

    People staring at their phones all the time really pisses me off. They don’t acknowledge your presence, you can’t talk to them without “interrupting” whatever they’re doing, they haven’t a clue about what’s going on around them and they often do it while driving or at work. Why don’t they just stab a fiber optic cable into their spinal cords and get it over with?

    For example, I was watching the Braves game tonight on TV and commenting about it to my wife, who supposedly loves the Braves. She had her head ass-deep in a laptop and wasn’t paying attention to anything else, including my comments and the game. If it’s not the laptop then it’s the Blackberry. After saying something to her and realizing she was really only half “there”, it dawned on me that I wasn’t doing what I thought I was doing. There was no quality time being spent, no shared experience; it was like we were in different rooms. Fuck that shit man.

    There are very few times when I find myself standing or sitting for any length of time with nothing to do. The idea that I should fill every spare second of my time with a cell phone game, whether I’m waiting in line at Walmart or taking a shit, is just crazy.

    Granted there are times when a portable computer is nice, for example lengthy airplane flights or being away from home for days or weeks. That’s not the trend, however. The trend is zombie-like hordes with their heads down, oblivious to their surroundings, sending text messages, playing games and posting on Facebook.

    People in well-to-do countries have been out of touch with reality for a long time now and the state of constant connectedness and constant distraction provided by phones, etc., is bringing it to the point where someone wouldn’t know they were being robbed until they woke up with a knot on their head and wondered where the hell their wallet was.

    Before I die I imagine the cell phone will be more powerful than my PC rig, the size of an earring, and will project an image directly onto the retinas to integrate the HUD with whatever you’re focusing on at the time. They’ll focus the audio into a beam which penetrates the cartilage of your outer ear and stimulates the eardrum. Before my kids die they’ll be living in the matrix.

    Actually all of this reminds me of the Borg.

  20. Matthew Seidl says:

    “I’m extremly bitter as to where the gaming industry is going these days. Why would you sacrifice the total awesomness of a 25? monitor with a 750$ video card, and double 3 terabyte systems, for some Crappy, VERY SMALL, clucky control, shitty sound/video card of Cellphones or other damn consoles ?”

    Because the vast majority of people don’t buy expensive video cards. Heck, most people don’t even buy desktops any more.

    That said, I’d be surprised if his new game wasn’t playable on the PC in some form.

  21. Matthew Seidl says:

    “The idea that I should fill every spare second of my time with a cell phone game, whether I’m waiting in line at Walmart or taking a shit, is just crazy.”

    I play games on my iPhone mostly at home. I have a decent gaming rig and a PS3, but it’s such a hassle to boot them up, download mandatory updates, etc. Sometimes I just want to kick back on the sofa and screw around for 10-15 minutes… in those cases, mobile gaming is far more convenient. (and frankly I’m starting to prefer small, experimental indie games to big-budget blockbusters)

  22. Sanctimonia says:

    @ Matthew

    That sounds pretty reasonable. I suppose it’s all the people I see taking it to the extreme that rub me the wrong way.

    I agree about the indie games. You don’t have to worry about multi-gig installs, crazy DRM and unoriginal gameplay. Indie games are slowly taking the industry back to its roots.