Garriott: "open" to working on a new Ultima @ Eurogamer

So what's stopping him? He's got the resources and time AFAIK.

What's stopping him, most likely, is having already spent 20 years making Ultimas. it's possible he got burnt out. Just saying...
 
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He certainly has the right to do as he pleases (and gamers are often spoiled brats) but surely if he is burned out he'd say that, instead of saying he'd love to work on more Ultimas and had tried contacting EA to do that. That's the whole point of this discussion, right? ;)
 
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He certainly has the right to do as he pleases (and gamers are often spoiled brats) but surely if he is burned out he'd say that, instead of saying he'd love to work on more Ultimas and had tried contacting EA to do that. That's the whole point of this discussion, right? ;)

The timelines in this thread are all crossed - can blame me. I think up until now Garriot was probably burnt out on Ultimas after having been involved making them for 20 years. But maybe now he's up to it. But I really hope it's not another MMO or strategy or social media type game...
 
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Well how do I said this..
Burnt out maybe???
Lots of money maybe???
He started a company making games out his parents house…
He was ground breaking…
EA gave him a crap load of money and most likely promised him the world…He most likely just didn't know it was going to be their world. Not the worlds he had full control over.
A hugh failure with his massive online game…
Now feeling what he was a hugh part of starting and now sitting on the sidelines it is time to show the world he still has it…
 
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What's stopping him, most likely, is having already spent 20 years making Ultimas. it's possible he got burnt out. Just saying…

Then why did he have discussions on it?

edit: too slow - already asked above :p Sorry.

So back to the original point, he's got the time and money, why doesn't he just do another game if he really wants to? Doesn't have to be an Ultima if he sold the rights for that one already.
 
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I don't think he got the money to self-found a new development project of his scale. These kind of games costs insane amount of money, and it is not sure if there is a publisher willing to invest that much money in him now. Especially after the entire ncsoft debacle.
 
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I think Richard Garriott really really wants to make a new Ultima game, he's actually been talking about this for a few years now - and even said he'd like to do a new single player RPG at some point. (That was when he was still backed at NC Soft, he expressed he'd love to do a new RPG... but obviously couldn't since NC was a MMO company).

The thing is though, is that Garriott loves to look to future and try new stuff. This is what made Ultima so special, though also what made some of his endeavours fail. And he sees the social media games as a the new "frontier" to explore nowadays. Now I know the idea of social games and brower games tends to make anyone go "Meh" and roll their eyes in disgust. I share the skepticism trust me... but if anything Garriott has repetedly stated that his aim for Portalarium is to basically bring new form of "gamer's games" into the social network, far off from your usual -ville crap.

I don't know if you guys heard about a game called "A Mystical Land", but it's actually a good demonstration of what these kind of games might offer down the road. It's a browser based MMO, in 3D, playable in Facebook as well and it actually use the Portalarium Player to work. It's basically click and play. And how does it feel ? Like a regular MMO in essence... It's kind of a EQ/WoW-lite, but it's a far cry from the usual crap you find on social network and I think it really shows some promise about the kind of game we could potentially find there down the road.

Now about Ultima and Richard Garriott, he obviously can't do an Ultima because EA has the rights, and I'd assume the reason EA declined to license him the rights to do a Portalarium Ultima game is related to that rumoured Bioware Mythic Ultima IV remake.

But do you know what his upcoming game at Portalarium is called at this time ?

"Lord British's New Britannia"

Which personally just screams "Ultima without the IP". And you can sure it'll have the Lord British character in it.

And from what we can gather, he seems to imagine this game as some sort of Ultima Online 2.0, with a big virtual world aspect but most importantly a strong story component. I'm not saying the project will necesarilly be good or great... but I'm cautiously optimistic about it and in any case, curious to see what will come through. I will not in any case dismiss it without having seen it.

To be honest, I'd probably be more skeptical if Garriott was actually handling a big budget AAA RPG game. I feel the later years at EA and the whole Destination Games debacle kind of demonstrated that Garriott might not exactly be the most at ease in the big AAA coporate environment. I'm actually more excited to see him now working in a new small independant company even if it's in the social media space and I'm really crossing my fingers he manages to do something interesting in there for us old time Ultima fans.

And in truth, I'm actually more hopeful of a social/browser based kind of game being able to recapture some of that old school Ultima feel, than any big budget AAA 3D RPGs (with all the limitations that these kind of project offer) could.

-Sergorn
 
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I don't think he got the money to self-found a new development project of his scale. These kind of games costs insane amount of money, and it is not sure if there is a publisher willing to invest that much money in him now. Especially after the entire ncsoft debacle.

right, I think he blew most of his money on space tourism but keeping enough to still be set for life. My guess is he's bored and wants to stay relevant.

The thing is though, is that Garriott loves to look to future and try new stuff. This is what made Ultima so special, though also what made some of his endeavours fail.
...

this...

I honestly don't think that U6-U9, UU, UU2 were as successful as the first 5.5 because they were too ambitious. U6, U7, U9 and the UU's required hardware that most people simply didn't have.

The beauty of U1, U3, and U4 was that they were innovative while working within the limits of the hardware - in fact, that's where most of the innovations were: the workarounds, such as the blow up combat.

...

Now about Ultima and Richard Garriott, he obviously can't do an Ultima because EA has the rights, and I'd assume the reason EA declined to license him the rights to do a Portalarium Ultima game is related to that rumoured Bioware Mythic Ultima IV remake.

But do you know what his upcoming game at Portalarium is called at this time ?

"Lord British's New Britannia"

Which personally just screams "Ultima without the IP". And you can sure it'll have the Lord British character in it.

And from what we can gather, he seems to imagine this game as some sort of Ultima Online 2.0, with a big virtual world aspect but most importantly a strong story component. I'm not saying the project will necesarilly be good or great… but I'm cautiously optimistic about it and in any case, curious to see what will come through. I will not in any case dismiss it without having seen it.

-Sergorn

interesting.

If they had talks that broke down, then it seems to me that Garriot wanted more than a consulting role.

I don't expect much from Bioware with Ultima. It may have been a franchise the Dr's loved but they, like Origin, seemed to have strayed too much from what made them successful in the first place.
 
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If they had talks that broke down, then it seems to me that Garriot wanted more than a consulting role.

I'd assume he basically have wanted EA to grant him a license to create an independant Ultima game on Portalarium and not work on some in-house EA project.

-Sergorn
 
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My hopes boil down to this: I hope Garriot will make a single player RPG that is totally offline and in the spirit of the first 7 core Ultima games. Further, I don't care if he can't use the Ultima IP - in fact it would free him to create a really focused and cohesive 'universe' and lore (the early Ultima games were 'cohesified' after the fact) and would resolve a lot of problems continuing the Ultima series given the mismanaged storyline trainwreck that is U9. I will hope and dream.
 
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All good points on this subject. My bottom line is I grew up playing his games. If he does ever make another single player RPG I will buy it. If it sucks well I have spent money on those in the past. But chances are he has at least one good game in him. If it is called ultima or not I don't care
 
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As for u9 it was a really good game after a fan's site( i can't remember the name). Tore it down and rebuilt it…all the EA bugs were out of it and played very nicely.
Wasn't aware of this, Very nice, i might have to give this another shot. Thanks for the info.
 
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I highly doubt Garriott would make another game I would enjoy. He's always been wanting a more social aspect to his games which made his early single player games great. He tried his best to give the world a lived in aspect to it and he succeed. During that time the technology wasn't there for Garriott to create his dream games where everyone joins in and plays.

Of course the technology did catch up and he created UO which a lot of people enjoyed, but I never played. More power to him I say, but as for him creating a great Ultima game again I highly doubt I would be interested.

Forget Ultima and bring on The Witcher 3,4,5,6,7. At least I know those games are made for people like me who could give a rat's behind about this social/MMO nonsense. :p
 
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While I would love a new Ultima game, I have serious doubts it would be anything resembling the old Ultimas in feel or gameplay. And while I have enormous respect for Richard Garriott, I fear anything he would do nowdays, would be something utterly different from the old Ultimas, even if he tried to make a new Ultima game.

I'm not saying a new Ultima game would have to be a copy of the old ones to satisfy me, but given the state of games industry now, I fear the result of any "spiritual successors" to Ultima (i.e. modern takes on them) would become something so completely different that they'd be Ultimas only in name.

Ultima 7 uses one of the most advanced 2.5D game engines I know of, even until now. The Infinity Engine wouldn't do it justice.
QFT. Couldn't agree more.
 
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While I would love a new Ultima game, I have serious doubts it would be anything resembling the old Ultimas in feel or gameplay. And while I have enormous respect for Richard Garriott, I fear anything he would do nowdays, would be something utterly different from the old Ultimas, even if he tried to make a new Ultima game.

I'm not so sure. Past behavior is one of the best predictors of future performance - an argument that works both for and against what you say.

I've view Garriot as a sort of out-of-order entreprenuer. Most entreprenuers usually struggle with several to many failures before success. In Garriot's case, he had the opposite experience with a great deal of success at first (Ultima, Wing Commander etc. and all that led up to and including Origin Systems in general) followed by a number of failures.

I think Garriot's passion for technology and storytelling can lead to both great and disasterous results. Now that he's had a taste of both, maybe it will give him perspective on what works and what doesn't work.
 
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He could start from somthing small like make remakes of old ultimas for padsters. But thats propably too small for a man who has travelled to space and lives in a castle. Hes a bit like michael jackson of game industry.

I mean he lives in a castle and calls himself lord british? Perhaps the reason why he was successful earlier was because he still lived in real world instead of fantasy one. What ever he proposed to EA was propably fantasy that had no connection to reality.
 
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I caught the CRPG bug in a big way with Ultima III. But everything after game five was a disgrace, IMO. I tried really, REALLY hard to like Ultima IX (I think I started it 4 times) but it just wasn't that good. I'd love to see Garriot do another single player rpg, and I agree with the previous comment that he needs to do it on his own and with a new 'world.' The hardcore single-player CRPG genre is a lost art; it'd be nice to see Garriot champion a new dawn.
 
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He could start from somthing small like make remakes of old ultimas for padsters. But thats propably too small for a man who has travelled to space and lives in a castle. Hes a bit like michael jackson of game industry.

That is hillarious. And quite accurate!
 
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The thing is social sites are the "new frontier" from a money making perspective.

If Lord British made anything new I'm pretty sure, like Hellgate before it*, it would get all its good intentions mixed in with a load of total crap designed to pull money from people at several angles.

Sure, he'd like the players to love it. But the best example of players loving it is them spending MILLIONS of cash on it. That'll please the publishers and shareholders and theres nothing in gaming these days truly too sacred to destroy in order to meet that financial goal.

Jaded? me? Shutup and eat your DLC.


*ya, i know garriot didnt make Hellgate. :p
 
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