Richard Garriott’s Stratics Interview, Part 1 of 3 (Updated Again!)
Stratics have posted the first part of their three-part interview with Ultima creator Richard Garriott. They’ve graciously posted a video of the whole affair to YouTube:
Portalarium & Ultimate Collector!
The interview mostly concerns itself with Portalarium, Ultimate Collector, and the baby steps Richard Garriott and his new company are taking toward crafting the Ultimate RPG. Their plan, overall, seems to be a methodical one; each title helps them to both raise funds and test new systems, all of which will ultimately be incorporated into the game that is their main goal. Or at least that’s how Garriott presents it.
And of course there’s a lot of discussion about MMORPGs and the shift in gaming; Garriott has flogged this concept before with his “three eras of gaming” talks, and the same mindset is on display here. Ultima Online and its sandbox role-playing merit a mention as well.
The most interesting aspect of the interview, I think, is when Garriott begins to discuss games in terms of synchronous and asynchronous features, and talks about giving players the option of playing with their friends or playing solo adventures…and seamlessly transitioning between the two.
Stratics also posted a discussion thread for the interview, which Richard Garriott signed up to take part in. Portalarium’s PR man, David Swofford also signed up, and had this to say:
As Richard stated, UC is really a mini RPG. Not the typical social game. Lots of questing…world building…shopping…trading. it’s not a fantasy game, but a lot of the elements you are familiar with in fantasy RPGs are there. There are even some direct call-outs to Ultima players. For instance, one of the houses you can purchase (at higher levels) is Britannia Manor. In tomorrow’s piece, I think there will be a lot of the dots connected with what’s going on in Collector and what Richard has planned for Ultimate RPG. The thing is, the current technology now allows for a more in-depth gameplay experience in browser games, mobile games and yes…in Facebook or other social platforms. Times they are a-changing.
Shortly thereafter, Garriott added his own summary of what the Ultimate RPG would and wouldn’t be:
I believe there are important unique qualities, which were a major part of Lord British Role Playing Games in the past, which must be continued into Lord British’s Ultimate Role Playing Game. What follows is the first couple shall and shall not’s, I shared with the team as we began our quest to make the Ultimate Role Playing Game.
Lord British’s Ultimate Role Playing Game WILL have:
• Fully Developed Reality
o Cultural History, Writing & Language
o Logically constructed internally consistent fiction
• Detailed World Interactions
o Diverse objects respond to use, it is not a static world
o Synchronous and asynchronous play mechanics
o Persistent player housing directly on maps
• Stories about current social issues and virtues
o Reflect the players behavior to themselves – cause and effect in complex circumstances
o You play as yourself, not an “alter ego”, akin to the gypsy test
• Close relationship between developers and players
o “Report thy feat to Lord British!” on major events, and LB will respond in person
o “Idea Storm” Player Feedback and Design Participation, starting early and often
• Free to play with kind asks for virality from non-payers
• Available cloth maps, booklets & trinkets!Lord British’s Ultimate Role Playing Game WILL NOT have:
• It is NOT classic medieval fantasy Ultima / LotR / D&D
o Not repeating the past Ultima / WoW, etc
o No elves, dwarves and other overused aspects
• It is NOT classic sci-fi ala Tabula Rasa
o No space marines in generic flak suits with guns
o Far too many sci-fi FPS games
• It is NOT anime or Asian magic themes
o Proven difficult to do right, and a niche
• Thus, we hope to deliver a “fresher” yet familiar aesthetic (announced later)I hope we can prove that we can make the spiritual successor to my/our previous work, remain true to what was important about those games, while delivering the game on diverse platforms and without high upfront cost or demand a subscription fees.
Take note of that last item on the list of what the game will have.
Now, this being Stratics, there’s no small amount of negative opinion focused on the idea of the Ultimate RPG, and on the whole concept of social gaming in general. And to be fair, some of the criticisms are valid; the sort of person who is going to be drawn to an MMORPG — or a good single-player RPG, for that matter — isn’t likely to be the sort of gamer that is drawn to a social game in the Zynga mold, or even (necessarily) something like Ultimate Collector. There’s management and there’s management; some people like the spreadsheet-style approach that many social games seem to favour, whereas others prefer skill trees.
But — and I cannot stress this enough — not all social games (or, more generally: browser-based games) are like that, nor do they need to be. And the more we hear about it, the less it seems like the Ultimate RPG will have many of those trappings. Sure, some social features will be present…but will they crowd out the “fully developed reality” and “detailed world interaction”? I, for one, doubt it.
But I also don’t expect everyone to understand that. There is a certain category of gamer who can only see browser-based gaming and social gaming through Zynga goggles, and that’s fine. But those are the people who’ll miss out.
The First Age of Update: Stratics posted the second part of the interview today, which focuses on the Ultimate RPG.
I’ll comment on it more tomorrow. One interesting takeaway is that the game is expected to hit mobile devices before it hits social platforms. This makes me for to be a happy Dragon.
Revenge of the Update: Here’s the video:
The Ultimate RPG
There’s been some interesting speculation in the comments about what the subject matter of the game will actually be…guesses range from steampunk to near-future sci-fi. Which I suppose just goes to show that Garriott, for all he has spoken about the game, is still keeping many cards close to his chest.
Now, Stratics had initially promised that the third part of the interview would air Sunday evening, but it would seem that never happened. As soon as they do publish that part of the interview, I’ll update this article again.
Updatodus: Oh, look…the third part of the video:
Space, the final frontier...
Naturally, this one is all about Richard Garriott’s travels in space. Because apart from social games, that is the thing that Lord British loves to talk about.
Solid lists, and blissfully revealing.
I think the subtle difference between a social and MMO game is that in a social game you don’t necessarily have to watch random people moving around on your screen. In a MMO you often have unwanted or random interactions started by other players, disturbing your train of thought or mission. A hybrid could be made where one could buy “bother stranger” points with real-world money to interact with players they haven’t met yet.
I think the new RPG could very well be not all that brutal, violence-wise. A good thing, but it will be interesting to see just how the combat systems will work.
Cloth Maps and Trinkets ? You Play yourself ? Count me in !
I’m curious about the kind of setting URPG will be using too…
Regarding UCollector, I wouldn’t call as far as calling it a RPG, but there is some truth to it (still waiting for the end of the beta to post more detailed impressions).
As far as the anti social bias yeah well… I think we have enough proof now there can be quality gaming through browser and such so I’m defnitly giving Garriot the benefic of the doubt.
Interesting stuff. I’ve always felt the most underused setting for RPGs is the modern day. We have swaths of high fantasy, space faring, and post-apocolyptic settings, but very few game developers are interested in a more comtemporary setting. I think this great big world of ours offers more than enough variety to make a pretty interesting RPG world. I still love Earthbound!
Agreed. I’d proposed the idea that Ultima be licensed to Rockstar for one title to get a more “contemporary” feel.
As I watched the interview, I started to get the impression of a modern setting. I guess the idea is to combine a bunch of the small simulations like farmville and cityville into one place. So if you grow crops you can sell it to the merchants and have a more full simulation. Of course, it’d obviously be far superior to farmville on the foundation of it being Richard Garriott. Or that’s what I took from it.
In the Warren Spector interview he said if he did a virtue system again he’d want to model it after something closer to his own. It would be interesting to see how his new virtue system would work in a modern setting.
Nah, the -ville esque game from Richard Garriott is Ultimate Collector basically. He’ve very much insistant about how this is gonna a true actual RPGs.
I think he’s berining the various -ville games in term of how people can find interest in various different kind of activity : ie. farming games have success, city games have succes, fishing games have success. And in URPG you will be able to have all these non combat activity if you want (as in UO), so I think the idea is that the virtual sandbox aspect could bring of ton of people who woulcn’t necessarilly care about the usuaul RPG trops.
No elves! He knows exactly what we want!
With what the list says about sci-fi and Tabula Rasa. I’d venture a guess this is set in space.
I’m thinking that as well. He made a point to say that it was not about certain types or styles of sci-fi, aka not sci-fi like Tabula Rasa, not sci-fi with space marines, not a sci-fi FPS.
Instead of just saying “not sci-fi”.
Martian colony set a few decades off or set in a recognizable era that is not too far fetched? Something like Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy?
Nah I think it’s gonna be some form of Fantasy, just not your usual medieval fantasy fare.
The first concept art seen on Facebook is anything but Sci-Fi, and he does says in the second interview he want a art style that will resonate with Ultima, but in a more original way rather the using the usual medieval fantasy tropes.
So I’m expecting a fantasy MMO – perhaps in some form of deep Renaissance or industrial era ?
Quite right. It could be some primordial, stone age civilization. Something dirty and human, but that could evolve over time. Wonder if Garriott’s a fan of Game of Thrones on HBO. It’s an alternate, “medieval”-inspired rendering though a bit high-born at times. Or he could allow users to have different parallel texture sets which showed the world according to their taste.
Hmmm… I’d have to go with humankind making their way in space (assuming a sci-fi theme). Maybe trying to push the private space travel agenda. That opens it up to ethical dilemmas having nothing to do with there being some big bad guy/group. Humans making contact with aliens, etc.
Of course, cloth maps don’t really make a lot of sense for a space game. Unless it is like Firefly/Serenity, where technology is kinda backward in some ways.
I’m pretty sure he has said that “Lord British” is going to return. So, it really has to be a situation where someone could be called “Lord Something”. Which does lend itself to being in the past (especially medievalish time periods)
Yeah, I mean he’s talking Cloth Map, he’s talking about Lord British, and keep in mind that for a long while he codenamed this game “New Britannia” 😛
I could see going in a way that say, a world like Britannia could have evovled after a few more centuries. Ultima VII was already getting more Renaissance-ish – I could see him trying a world more like Renaissance or perhaps even farther in time. It could perhaps as well be some sort of mevieval/technological mix, or something along those lines.
And I’m pretty sure this is gonna be Fantasy. A lot of people doesn’t seem to graps that, but Fantasy can include a wide variety of setting and not just medieval worlds (the original Tabula Rasa was definitly pure Fantasy for instance)
Guess we’ll have to be patient to see how that goes.
The word you’re looking for is “Steampunk”.
http://codex.ultimaaiera.com/wiki/UDIC_FAQ
5.22) Ultima 10
5.22.1) Is an Ultima 10 planned?
Ultima X: Odyssey was billed by EA as a successor to Ultima Online,
after UO2 was cancelled. The game would have been set on a new
world, Alucinor, with only the Virtue system and the prospect of
ascending to Avatarhood linking it to the original series. However,
U10, too, has been cancelled — the official statement from the
producer can be found here: http://www.uxo.ea.com/
For historical interest, Richard Garriott’s initial game concept was
somewhat different, as the author of the interview mentioned in
Section 5.21.1 explains:
“Ultima X [is free to start] from a completely fresh perspective of
what I’ll call pseudo-science. [This] will be drawn from the early
era of Victorian science such as Leonardo da Vinci’s experiments.
[Garriott is not sure] what exactly that will mean for the Ultima
world, [but] he is sure that the player will no longer control the
Avatar. The Avatar will likely show up as a character.”
[Source: interview with Richard Garriott in October 1996’s PC Gamer]
Wait, Leonardo da Vinci – Victorian? O_o
Could be Steampunk… but Steampunk tends to have that gritty steamy dirty looks (ie. the Logosian part of UO2) which is not necessarilly needed I think.
That tidbit from 96 is interesting too. I could perhaps see Garriott doing something reminiscent of the Victorian era for URPG.
We’ll see.
But I think whatever kind of era he will be setting on, this will be with its amount of magic and supernatural elements as well.
I”m pretty sure that what Garriott called “pseudo-science” was basically some variant of steampunk, which was not a well-known term back then (although it did exist)
That’s very possible, altough there’s no way to say if he would follow a similar road now with URPGs.
When you look at some of the story concept they had for Ultima IX and beyond back in the ’90, they had some interesting stuff that would have felt almost new back then… but not so much anymore (it the original BWP with its ancient master “Ultima” race with its antique power and all that, that would have felt original by ’97 standard… now it’s been done to death in CRPGs).
Stupid FireFox. I blame it for the double post. Ignore this one.
I trashed the shorter of the two.
I just noticed the facebook concept art. Not much there, it’s pretty ambiguous, and it’s just that, concept art. Although I wouldn’t doubt the symbol of the snake and the cross will stay in.
Then there’s the weird metal mask with electric popping out of it’s head. It’s pretty badass if you ask me. But it could be from any somewhat modern type of time period. Although it has that sort of head hunter tribal thing going on. Could be from just about any time period. And as for the shield, I could see that on a government building at any time period. The mask could be some sort of Wizard of Oz talking head.