Though it was initially surprising to see Kotaku — which site is not exactly known for being able to see that far back in time, as far as gaming history is concerned — put a mention of Ultima out there, that surprise evaporated rather quickly when I noticed the name of the author of the piece. Peter Tieryas has written a few articles about Ultima, especially Ultima 4, some of which have been published at Kotaku in the past.

And so, in his latest writings, Tieryas examines the genesis of the Eight Virtues and the development of moral decision-making as a gameplay mechanic in the series.

My first Ultima game was the third in the series, the Nintendo Entertainment System port of Exodus released in 1989, six years after the game’s initial release on Apple II. It was a difficult, but enjoyable, experience. But 1985’s Ultima IV, which I played on the Nintendo as well, was the game that I fell in love with, because it went so much against the grain of a traditional RPG.

There weren’t villains you had to vanquish or an evil that had to be defeated. Your main goal was to be a good person and go throughout Britannia helping people. 1988’s Ultima V flipped morality on its head by pushing the virtues of the avatar into a moral absolutism that was terrifying.

Further games in the series would push the boundaries of ethics, forcing players to question the binary values they’d normally associate with simpler gaming narratives.

Recently, I had the chance to talk via email with Richard Garriott, aka Lord British, creator of the Ultima series, about the games as well as the spiritual successor to the series Shroud of the Avatar to know more about the stories behind their development.

We’ve heard this story before, and then a number of times, and in a few different iterations. But here’s how Richard Garriott explains the decision to make Ultima 4 focus so heavily on moral choice to Tieryas, and through him us:

“I was very surprised to see the consistent pattern of the letters people would write about their experiences with my games,” Garriott said. “Generally, they would first state how much they enjoyed the games to date, but then there would be pages and pages of critiques.”

Garriott hoped that players, faced with the game’s open-ended moral choices, would choose to be good. But all those letters said otherwise.

“Players loved to kill all the NPCs in all the towns and steal from all the shops, and especially to kill my character Lord British in order to level up as fast as possible to become powerful enough to kill the main bad guys in the games,” Garriott said.

“That was not being very virtuous. I realised that in all three Ultimas, I had created games in which the best way to min-max the game was to be un-virtuous. Everyone was doing that in order to win as fast as possible. I was not going to allow that ever again!”

For Ultima IV, Garriott set out to make a game that would tempt players to take moral shortcuts. On the surface, the game would appear to allow such behaviour.

At the same time, there would be repercussions showing the appropriate side effects of these actions. “I set out to explore the best real moral codes I could find and began a long and deep era of personal research in philosophy and game design that manifested in Ultima IV,” he said, “its Virtues, its conversation systems, the term Avatar, the Virtues, and numerous other tropes that are now standards of gaming.”

Tieryas only goes as far as Ultima 6, skipping Ultima 7 through Ultima 9 in favour of looking at Shroud of the Avatar:

I asked Garriott about Shroud, and what he learned from Ultima in approaching the new game.

Garriott said that when he begins a new game, he usually asks himself two questions: “What is the compelling moral outrage happening in the world these days?” and “What is the technical area we hope to advance this game?”

In answer to the first question, for Shroud of the Avatar, Garriott says: “Sadly we seem to have gone backwards in my book and tolerance and racism are back on the front burner again.” As for the second: “For SotA we are creating a “selective multiplayer,” where the game can throttle from solo to MMO-like states, for storytelling and even offline play.”

“Each new game faces new challenges. We toss out failed experiments of the past. Learn from great innovations of our competitors. Plus, of course there is new hardware to master,” he said. I asked about some of those failed experiments. “Oh, so many failed experiments,” he said.

The odd gap in considering how the Ultimas approached morality in gameplay notwithstanding, it’s a good article overall, and worth a read.

(Hat tip: My friend Kathy.)