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Richard Garriott Claims Moon, Plans New Brittania
kennon42 writes: "Lord British says he is reuniting his old Origin team. Will they
rise again to dominate the industry? Lord British owns the moon!" Self-declared "Industry Elder" Richard Garriott may have been less visible for a little while, but if anything it sounds like he's gotten more ambitious as he plans his next venture. Funny, free-wheeling interview -- I only wish it had been a little longer, and addressed games for Open Source OSes, too. And yes, he's claiming the moon.
He was good at writing RPGs in basic for really old low end hardware, i think ultima 9 shows he has no clue about how to implement a 3d engine. Of course i say screw 3d, do it ultima 7 style, if he has sense and says screw the hype and goes 2d, it will be awsome. The guy knows how to make a pretty good story, although ultima 9 was also a little on the linear side. Ultima 7 was awsome, that was the ultimate. If he is smart he will get a kick ass artists, writiers, voice actors, and some programmers who can deliver a finished project by the deadline. Ultima 7 is masterpeice, ultima 9 was exceptable, after it was finished, unfortunatly that was several months _after_ it went on sale. ultima 8, that one was ok, beat it and all, so it had to be kinda engrossing, but if this guy is smart he will say screw the trendy shit and make a old style ultima 7 type with todays graphics and sound.
Look to Ion Storm Austin...many ex LG'ers now work there with Warren Spector, on the Thief 3 project. In fact, I believe that Terri "voice of SHODAN" Brosius is running the Thief 3 show over there as well...
Yes, he has read Tolkien and he's a Tolkien fan. There's hints throughout his games. In Serpent Isle for example, there is a swamp called "Gorlab", now read that backwards :)
Also, the runic alphabet he uses comes directly from Tolkien (with some minor adaptation of how it is mapped to out alphabet). I could read Tolkien's silverscroll map or whatever it was, because I knew the runes from Ultima... remember Tolkien was a professor for nordic languages, he made that alphabet.
There's probably more from Tolkien hidden in Ultima, don't know.
elen sila lumenn omentielvo if I remember correctly... (I know, the punctuation is wrong)
CU Drax
I only wish it had been a little longer, and addressed games for Open Source OSes, too.
What were you hoping to hear? "Yes, we enjoy losing money, so our next Ultima will be delayed while we waste time porting it to Linux"?
Blast those cheap Chinese flagpoles! To hell with them all I say! Next time we go to the moon we should use quality American made flagpoles that won't blow over when your lunar module takes off!
First off, how was my post offtopic? Do you moderators even bother to read the articles? This guy is claiming ownership of the moon because he bought a scrap of junk the Russians left there from an unmanned landing. If *anyone* can claim rights to the moon it'd be the USA. We're the only nation to ever set foot on another celestial body. That's a huge accomplishment that has never been repeated by any nation. As for the British... if they landed men on the moon hundreds of years ago I think that'd be news to everyone here. PS: Moderators, you really need to get a sense of humor. Sheesh. :-)
The United States of America owns Earth's moon silly people! We planted our flags up there and claimed it for the USA. If you don't like it, go up there and knock our flags down and put your own up. :-)
- Black and White
- Diablo 2
- FAKK 2 (well, that was last summer)
- Counterstrike
I'd have to say that there have been some good games out there.Actually, I heard Joseph Campbell attended a private screening of Star Wars at Lucas' ranch just before he died.
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Marc A. Lepage (aka SEGV)
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Marc A. Lepage
Software Developer
And then he'll have all the spawn to himself without having to worry about PKers - lucky bastard!
I believe Seamus Blackley was one of the original members, but I could be wrong, maybe he joined later. Now of course he's under the mind control of billg, and will attempt to further the interests of the dark side by devoting all his talent to xboxing.
Looking Glass had some kind of close relationship with Origin when they did Ultima Underworld. I suspect the Origin guys did much of the game design and QA, because I never did see anything quite like it in terms of play value, even later from Looking Glass/Blue Sky. I guess there must have been friction too, because after UW2 I don't think they ever worked together again.
*Sigh*
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Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
Do you actually own something that was left on the moon?
Yes. I purchased Lunakod 21 from the Russians. I am now the world's only private owner of an object on a foreign celestial body. Though there are international treaties that say, no government shall lay claim to geography off planet earth, I am not a government. Summarily, I claim the moon in the name of Lord British!
Meanwhile, John Carmack is busy trying to build serious rockets.
Something is going on here.....
Actually according to PC Data of Reston, VA The Longest Journey sold 351 copies from 1 Jun to 31 Dec 2001. Yes, the game was excellent according to every reviewer and gamer I talked to about it, but it was also independantly published by Funcom (soon to be MMORPG entrant for Anarchy Online. To win market share, you need big bucks. I hope Funcom can do better with AO than it did with TLJ.
Meanwhile, I just bought Sam and Max from the Lucasarts retail page. There's big bucks for you. And it runs on a 386.
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Now that UO2 has been cancelled and there's almost an entire dev team frothing at the mouth to start work on TNBT, Gariott's non-compete runs out...
Buckle your seat belts, kids. It's gonna be a fun ride.
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We've had a lull in the gaming world for the past few years. All technology, no development in gameplay.
Is this guy gonna change anything?
I think we might be alright here. I saw a special report on FOX a couple of weeks back that PROVED that man hasn't been on the moon, and can't go. You see, there's a crater on the ground in Area 51, and a building big enough to shoot a movie in, so the whole moon thing was faked. Plus, there is radiation in space, so we can never get to the moon alive. An investigative reporter said so, so it must be true!
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
computer games will be an art form like film and books. the time is here.
April 15, 2001: Richard Garriott, also known as Lord British, has claimed the moon. He was the leader of a company named Origin, which produced the successful game Ultima Online. Among his ambitious plans, he sees a future for the currently arid moon. Natalie Portman has sanctioned his plans for a petrified-people museum, much like a wax museum. This museum will be the first one of its kind on the moon, and a small city will be built around it. The city will include numerous strip joints and restaurants, some of which will only serve hot grits.
Meanwhile, the United Nations is sending an army corp of 6,352 soldiers to combat the 1,202,379 "Knights of Lord British" that have set themselves up on the moon through secret launches sponsored by Origin, which had, incidentally, been losing money and laying off employees.
Local "Slashdotters" tend to side with Lord British, although some side with the UN, as Lord British also plans to set off atomic explosions on the surface of the moon in such a pattern that the side of the moon facing the earth will look like a smiley face.
*** Work like a king, command like a slave, create like a dog.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Because the moon is already owned. (Link is in Spanish only; use the Fish or the Gist)
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--- Sueños del Sur - a webcomic about four young siblings
I think what he was trying to say is that console rpg's suck, especially when compared to the breadth of experience found in PC rpg's.
I know a lot of people are going to start screaming "FF!" "Chrono-something!" But get over it. Poster above identifies the two major distinctions between a popular console rpg and a pc one, I'm simply going the step further by making a value judgement (tho that doesn't excuse my potentially trollish behaviour, ah wellL:)
It is funny how old classic game makers getting together sounds a little like old rock-n-roll bands doing reunion tours. I have I hopes for a breath of fresh air, but like most old reunions, you still just want to hear the old songs. 'cause the new stuff is flat and uninspired.
-Moondog
Plus, the relative simplicity of U7's engine (compared to today's 3D games), and the lack of voice-actors, made it possible for the developers to create huge plots, with almost a novel's worth of conversations. If you disassemble Serpent Isle's 'usecode' file, you get around 10Mb of plot and text.
The trouble with games like UO isn't that they're online, but that they don't have plots. I don't want to spend my time talking to a bunch of computer geeks like myself! I want to be entertained by someone who writes better than I can, and has different thoughts and ideas.
uhm, to whom? I'll just claim sovereignty over the moon, and he can pay his taxes to me.
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Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
What I mean is, Ultima, and most of it's PC bretheren, are mostly non-sequential, non-scripted, "do what you will" environments in which you happen to "game".
Final Fantasy, and it's ilk, are quite a bit different. Relying mostly a strongly scripted, entirely sequential, total lack of freedom environments in which you can count yourself lucky enough to even have a say in the combats.
The only portions of an FF game that you get control over are those where you are running aroud the overland map doing "level runs" just so you can beat the next "boss" monster.
Traditionally, in Ultima, you are also responsible for the inter-character conversations as well as runnning around the overland map on "level runs". However, in many of them, you are also able to bypass entire portions of the game through sheer cleverness (anyone remember the magic carpet in U7?), which isn't likely in a console RPG that keeps things under such a tight rein.
The difference is obviously the fact that the interactive portions in the two style of games are entirely different. I believe it's the interactive aspect that differentiates the two, and what Garriot is talking about in his interview.
Though I do agree that he probably should've mentioned Square, as they are the leaders in their branch of the RPG milieu. Though maybe he's only concerned with the PC space.
-- kwashiorkor --
Leaps in Logic
should not be confused with
-- kwashiorkor --
Leaps in Logic
should not be confused with
Jumping to Conclusions.
Not to sound lazy, but at this point of our lives we would not want to devote our entire existence to this, but want a good foundation to build on later. Thank you, for any suggestions
I seek not only to follow in the footsteps of the men of old, I seek the things they sought.
...until of course anything valuable is discovered on it... or we need it for something (like to store stuff - or launch large rocks at foreign countries).
...and then take it by pure brutal ignorant millitary force.
That's even cooler if all he is done is "claim it" but still lives in a house on earth... roll in the tanks, and bombers... better make sure you don't live next door to that guy... he's a target now...
...oh wait a second... he owns an object on the moon... and based on that has laid claim to the whole thing...
Blast him anyway... carnage... chaos... destruction! Wait a second... all of that isn't embodied in millitary force...
Ferrets! Chaos with fur, claws and an odd smell. Release the ferrets! They'll teach him a fuzzy lesson he won't soon forget - and the therapy won't be cheap either.
BlackNova Traders
Brittannia is owned by the Queen of England! :P
Mode (3) smart-aleck mode. Press * to return to main menu.
The odds of Mr. Garriot doing a game for any of the Open Source OSes are slim-to-none, because Garriot is not a visionary like the rest of you Linux users. Garriot is a gamer and buisnessman, cut and dry. He's going to have his work cut out for him just developing for Windows and the majour consoles, let alone adding support for MacOS and others like Linux.
This is why the X-Box could be such a hit. The X-Box graphics drivers should look at least a LITTLE like that for Windows; DirectX is something of a standard and I can't imagine them deviating from that too much. Programming for something that they're already familiar with and something that ports VERY easily to the PC will be a big incentive for developers. Why get their hands dirty with Linux for the few thousand copies it would sell? It's just like adventure games in America; the Europeans make plenty of them, but we never get them over here because they simply don't sell. For instance, The Longest Journey got rave reviews, but sold only a pathetic 500 copies in America last year. How can the Euros justify publishing toward that? It's the same thing for Linux & company.
student of animation and the fine arts
You'll be hard-pressed to find an Ultima fan who would agree that U8 was a brilliant success.
Slashdot: come for the pedantry, stay for the condescension.
He owns Lord British. EA owns the trademarks and/or registered trademarks on Britannia, Avatar, Ultima, Origin, and "We Create Worlds."
Nah. He just thought the name was cool.
As a Tolkien fan, I'd like to inquire whether Akalabeth, one of R.G's first games has anything to do with Numenor, the downfallen island kingdom of the Edain.
In the Elvish tongue of Sindarin, Akalabeth means "The Downfallen". It is also a name of a part in the Silmarillion that describes the downfall of Numenor.
As a side note, the name does not come from Arabic (since the L in the definitive particle A(l) not cancelled before K, but Q).
At least so he says. He's even been selling plots. Here's the link .
What about a britannia far flung from into the future?
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
>Most console games are stats based games? More stats based than
>Ultima? It's always appeared to me that PC RPGs have far more
>statistics and complicated math than console RPGs. Perhaps he
>has more complex in mind in his "stats-based" vs. "playing a
>role" categories.
I think what he's really trying to compare are the different styles of MMORPGs... Look at his mention of EverQuest, for example. In EQ, the only real goal is to "get better." Get items and level up. Get items and level up. Get items and level up. It's really a boring routine and it tends to prohibit a lot of interaction - if you're just starting out, few EQ gods are going to take you under their wing, because you'd just be getting in the way.
UO, on the other hand, is all about interaction, or at least that's what I took from it. Stats aren't the real priority for most people. Sure, when your mage is sitting there at 99.8 and you can't get those last two tenths no matter how much 8x8ing you do, you're gonna be concerned about stats... But I spent a lot more time in UO just talking to people and making spontaneous adventures with random people, than I did worrying about having 100int or GM parrying, etc.
I never got into Final Fantasy. I've played a few times with friends, but it's always seemed like too much for me. I'd sit there watching a friend get ambushed by a group of monsters, then he'd flip through pages upon pages of items, spells, etc etc only to finally die or beat the monsters, and check (you guessed it) his stats. There was never anything to show for all that page-flipping and button pushing. Maybe I'm just more suited to online games.
Garriott's on to something, I guess we'll just have to wait to find out what. But I know I won't be disappointed.
Shaun
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
He must pay property taxes by the acre.
Actually, I believe that Queen Elizabeth owns "Britannia" and the royal family's "I.P." rights pre-date ultima............
"Laws are like sausages, it is best not to see them being made" Otto Von Bismarck
Playing Ultima to win
Getting bored, making a backup, and trying to kill Everything, including Lord British
Greatest disappointment was getting to the bottom of the volcano and finding I didn't have an answer to some stupid question, which I had no clue would be required. (this at 4:00 am after a marathon 6 hour descent into it)
Still, U2 is probably my favorite. Can be played in a couple hours and the dungeons aren't even necessary.
I still think some middleground between the Unix Moria game, Ultima 4 and a mud would be great fun.
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A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Or Ultima 9 for that matter. Ultima 7 was the pinnacle of Ultima games IMHO.
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I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks so!
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Is it just me or does old Richard bare more than a passing resemblance to Tom Greene?
Panzer Dragoon Saga for the Sega Saturn is one of the greatest innovations that have ever been introduced to the gaming world. It really is too bad that only 10,000 copies were made in the States, but that just shows how braindead the Americans at SoA truly are.
Sega/Sonic Team/Overworks/Team Andromeda are the only ones who know how to make a game correctly. Squaresoft, Lord British, and all these other lame ass companies don't know how to make a game worth shit...sure, they make nice eye candy, but that's all their good at; they don't know how to make good music or a decent story and therefore, they don't deserve a penny from the consumer.
Why can't all games be like Panzer Dragoon Saga? Why? I think I have an answer to my own question; I think it's because there are far more braindead people than there are intelligent people, and since the braindead fools value money over art, the consumer suffers with a crappy product.
Yes, I have played most of Squaresoft's 'shit' and the only game that had a 'decent' story in it was Xenogears (and it was only cool because Nanotechnology was in the plot). If you are one of those 'idiots' who thinks that the Final Fantasy series contains any substance whatsoever, you're crazy. Final Fantasy has lame stories, it's not epic, and the music gets worse with each new version (you would think that since Squaresoft makes such good graphics, that they would at least make their music stop sounding like midi quality, and make it sound like red book audio or something instead) But do they do this? Nope. It's because there is no talent there in their sound and story development departments.
Sure, Squaresoft makes 'wonderful' graphics and CG - but, as I said before, that's all they are good at, especially since the team who made Xenogears disbanded.
Sega, on the other hand, has one hell of a 1st party development team (Sonic Team, Overworks, and Team Andromeda)...they know how to make graphics, sound, and story and combine them into one brilliant game. Phantasy Star and Panzer Dragoon Saga are perfect examples.
Want to hear what Panzer Dragoon sounds like? Log onto Napster or WinMX and download Track 18 and the ending theme to the game and you will get a small taste at how wonderful this game is.
Though programming a game by yourself is impressive, I'm still one who prefers quality over anything. One person, alone, can't make quality...and the Ultima games are not quality whatsoever - I know, because I'm an old school gamer just like you. Dragon Quest, was a much better rendition of what Ultima should have been, but never was.
By the way, I'm not putting down the 'legends' of the gaming industry by any means...I'm just saying that, as an artist, they need to put a little more effort into their work instead of rushing thing and giving a crappy product to the public and expecting them to pay $50-$60 for utter garbage.
How do you feel about the new console RPGs?
There are two kinds of "Role Playing Games" in my mind. Stats-based advancement games, like Diablo and EverQuest, which are very popular, but less interesting to me, and games where you play a role first and the leveling up is less a focus, like Thief and Ultima. Leveling games are easier to build and often more popular. Yet, I feel that when the craft of role-playing is mastered some day, they will be the most desirable. Most console games are stats based games, thus less interesting to me.
Most console games are stats based games? More stats based than Ultima? It's always appeared to me that PC RPGs have far more statistics and complicated math than console RPGs. Perhaps he has more complex in mind in his "stats-based" vs. "playing a role" categories. Yet I fail to see how you could call advancement in Final Fantasy stats-based, and how could you describe console RPGs without describing Square?
Maybe he, like the rest of the industry, knows that Linux will never be anything more than a hobbyist's OS and could care less about writing software for it?
"The good thing about Alzheimer's is that you can hide your own Easter eggs."
"People should be allowed to keep midgets as pets."
- Gov. Jesse Ventura
I jsut got it 6 months ago or so. Well I have a PIII 700 with 384MB of ram, and a GeForce DDR. Ok, so you figure the game ought to run steal, after all the on box recommendations are a PII 400mhz, 128MB ram and a Voodoo 3 (that's the recommended, not the minimum). Ha. The performance is best described as "barely adiquate". There is noticable shearing in many scenes and it drags in all occasions unless I'm in a cave or something. On my friends PII 450 with a Vooodoo 3 it's unplayable.
For your friend, is he running it in Glide (3dfx's proprietary 3D API)mode or D3D? It will run much much faster in Glide mode. The game was originally coded to Glide and then "ported", so-to-speak, to Direct3D. This was because the game began development way back in the day before Ultima Online and 3dfx was king of 3D API's and Direct3D was barely a blip on the radar.
Also, there were some definite issues with GeForce cards. I don't know if this was resolved with the GeForce2 or if later drivers eliminated it, but with some tweaking most GeForce owners got it to run fine. I had a K6-III 450 and an original TNT1 card and I got it to run just fine with some tweaking.
Basically I feel Orign has really been going down hill lately, much to my dismay.
Run into the ground by EA is more like it. Can't blame them tho, they're in it to make money the only way they know how, not by releasing quality engaging games that become instant classics. Think about what EA excels at. Quickly and cheaply producing games of average quality that sell for 3-6 months and then get shelved when the next version comes out (sports games). Lather, rinse, repeat. I liked them better when they were just a distributor.
It's kinda sad though that Origin was what saved EA back in the day and then EA kept shitting on them. But it's that way ANY time a company buys out another company. The buyee always gets shit on.
Each successive Ultima has been an even bigger dissapointment and now UO2 got canceled. I know many people are quick to get mad at EA for it but think about it: They wouldn't have canceled it without a good reason. MMRPGs are HUGE cash cows, there must have been some serious problems with it for them to put the axe on it.
Depends on how you look at it. From the article, I gather that EA spent something like $10 million developing it and it still wasn't complete yet. Then the economy takes a temporary downturn, and the bean counters find out that it's going to cost another couple million to keep UO2 floating until release when they can begin recouping their money. Not knowing how long the economy is going to be down, they make a knee-jerk reaction that is better for short-term profits by killing the game. They write-off the money they've already spent, nobody knows where long-term profits will lead, but the investors stay happy.
Honestly though, it looks like the next move for Ultima Online is going to have to be a fully first-person 3D perspective. Now that they have all the models done already (Third Dawn) and a 3D engine that looks pretty sweet (UO2), it shouldn't be too much work to begin melding them together. Otherwise, it's gonna be bye-bye UO in a couple years and there won't be an EA product to take it's place.
But "Utlima" is of course, so I bet it will defintily not been called like that :)
Actually, from what I was reading around the time that Ultima IX released he wasn't planning on doing any more "Ultima" games. The intent was to make games of similar interest and depth but that with Ultima IX the world of Brittania and Ultimas (as far as he was going to be involved) was done.
He was working on something called simply "X" before he left EA, and I gather that's what he was referring to in the interview.
BTW, ya know you yanks are nothin' but a colony anyway. Soon, the British government will claim what is ours...BWAAHAHAHAAAA!!
RM
Tron Software -= Kickin' Butt and Writin' Code =-
RM
Tron Software -= Kickin' Butt and Writin' Code =-
Is this the end of the Ultima universe and Lord British/Blackthorne?
I own/am Lord British. A New Britannia shall rise!
The question I'd like to have answered is, does Richard also own the rights to Britannia, or does Electronic Arts ? If a "new britannia" is indeed to rise, it may have to be one that lacks Britain, Yew, Buc's Den, Moonglow and all that good stuff that makes up the Britannia we know and love. (or perhaps that's what he means by "new")
-- Maciek
Ultima 7: The major problem was the insane memory requirements. That game was a real bitch to get to run because it needed a redicilous amount of convential memory. I had a whole set of DOS boot menus (remember those?) and I actually had a special entry jsut for Ultima 9 to get it all the memory it wanted. It came out during the day of the DOS/4GW and CWSDPMI hybrid mode compilers too, so there really was no excuse.
Also, I had a number of crashing problems with it. This really isn't excusable in DOS, since you can't blame the OS, all it does is disk services, basic memory management, and the mouse (if you used the MS mouse driver).
Ultima 8: What's to say really, I mean the interface was jsut a dog. I couldn't get past that so I never really got into the game, same goes for all my friends. Even Origin wasn't happy with that one.
Ultima 9: This game is so problematic it's jsut unbelievable. I mean the actual sotry is great, the intrface is cool, the music owns, but the programming is so poor I want to beat the programmer with a rolled up newspaper. Ultima 9 crashes all the time. Not regular crashes either, it just dumps me to the desktop with no error, so something internal to its code is terminating the program. Also, the game has real problems internally. I remember once completeing a dungeon only to find the critical item had not spawned, so I had no choice but to reload and try again. Finlayy the game is SLOW in the purest sense of the word. I didn't get it when it came out at first, because I was too busy with AQ2, I jsut got it 6 months ago or so. Well I have a PIII 700 with 384MB of ram, and a GeForce DDR. Ok, so you figure the game ought to run steal, after all the on box recommendations are a PII 400mhz, 128MB ram and a Voodoo 3 (that's the recommended, not the minimum). Ha. The performance is best described as "barely adiquate". There is noticable shearing in many scenes and it drags in all occasions unless I'm in a cave or something. On my friends PII 450 with a Vooodoo 3 it's unplayable. This, and it's not nearly as detailed as say Quake 3 or Tribes 2, both which run great.
Basically I feel Orign has really been going down hill lately, much to my dismay. Each successive Ultima has been an even bigger dissapointment and now UO2 got canceled. I know many people are quick to get mad at EA for it but think about it: They wouldn't have canceled it without a good reason. MMRPGs are HUGE cash cows, there must have been some serious problems with it for them to put the axe on it. Hopefully Garriot will pull things together and start producing great games again, the Ultimas were some of my favourite games throught my childhood.
The people at moonshop.com have already claimed the Moon. Silly goose.
"Five is right out."