Richard Garriott - Your Headline is Wrong

With a major difference in that this man created one of the most influent series of CRPGs ever. He has already delivered so, at least, show him what he deserves : some respect.

no kiddin. It's like it's cleve blakemore...
 
Joined
Apr 17, 2007
Messages
5,749
no kiddin. It's like it's cleve blakemore…

Were let me shake his hand. I love his posts. :p We always need negative people in a world or forum full of optimists.

Otherwise it would be boring.
 
Joined
Oct 1, 2010
Messages
36,185
Location
Spudlandia
"The average development budget for a multiplatform next-gen game is $18-$28 million…. high-profile games often breaking the $40 million barrier."

I'm sure he will do fine, he is going to have more money then obsidian had for theirs.
 
Joined
Apr 17, 2007
Messages
5,749
Game.

No I don't mean because he will make more on his kickstarter, but because he has external money in it as well.
 
Joined
Apr 17, 2007
Messages
5,749
Game.

No I don't mean because he will make more on his kickstarter, but because he has external money in it as well.

Yeah but, to be fair, his game is also trying something a lot more ambitious, in terms of infrastructure. Pulling off single, coop, and MMO-style experiences in one package is hard.. but also expensive. A game like PE really just needs a set of focused designers and writers to put the experience together. There's less need for the kind of technical infrastructure Shroud will require.
 
Joined
Sep 16, 2011
Messages
445
Yeah but, to be fair, his game is also trying something a lot more ambitious, in terms of infrastructure. Pulling off single, coop, and MMO-style experiences in one package is hard.. but also expensive. A game like PE really just needs a set of focused designers and writers to put the experience together. There's less need for the kind of technical infrastructure Shroud will require.

I agree but I have been thinking on this. Notice how they made a couple facebook money makers and richard isn't exactly poor. I'm betting a lot of money is being generated outside the game itself.
 
Joined
Apr 17, 2007
Messages
5,749
As far as I'm concerned, this is a lot of pressure to put on yourself - stating that you're a better designer than most people you've met (though he might not have met that many designers, I wouldn't know) - and that means he's even more obligated to deliver.

I hope for his sake that he's not just full of it - and that he's still a great designer. After these honest statements, people are very obviously ready to destroy anything he puts out - so it better be REALLY good :)

Unfortunately, what little I've bothered to read about his project doesn't impress me. Based on recent interviews and now this article - it seems that Garriott is stuck 20 years in the past or something. He mentions Molyneux and Will Wright as great designers? Well, they're great idea-men - but I think they're weak designers. Certainly if we're looking at what they're like today.

Chris Roberts, however, was a true visionary. I'm really looking forward to seeing how his kickstarter project develops.
 
Never waste a controversy, it makes traffic.

That person only stated that game designing is hard, that game designers in general were mediocre and lazy and that he was slightly better than the average.

Considering the number of game designs that have failed lately, the observation looks solid.

As to him being better than others, it might come to the fact he operated a decade ago or more when game designing on computers was still young.

At present days, game design seems to be in a ditch and game designers seldom managed to deliver on their ideas. They are failing to maintain a progression in their art and seems to have reached a point when all they can deliver has already been delivered in the past. They fail to add anything that was not done previously.
This condition might be the result of the situation, that is game design has reached its natural end. Therefore as a consequence, this game designer might discover that when it operates in the same situation, he is as bad as the others.
 
Joined
Mar 29, 2011
Messages
6,265
I think to understand him, you need to understand that he was never happy back in the day with just doing another game the same as the last. Not one of his Ultima's was just the same game as the last (well unless you include the parts of 7). He is a visionary in that he likes to push the envelope forward everytime.

And that's why he brought up will wright and Peter...these guys try to move forward, not just give you another call of duty or cookie cutter game. Does it always work? Well no. Experiments hardly do, playing safe does but we have seen what that creates.
 
Joined
Apr 17, 2007
Messages
5,749
That doesn't make them good game designers. As I said, those two have had great ideas - but they couldn't design great gameplay if their lives depended on it.

Even Populous had dreary gameplay, really - it was just extremely novel at the time. Raising and lowering land so people can settle there. That was basically it. Wow!

To me, there's a huge difference between having a great idea - and then making that idea into a brilliant game.

The same can be said about Ken Levine - though I'd say his ideas are more about story premises and not any kind of unique gameplay. He seems to have wonderful concepts of unique locations and moral dilemmas - but in terms of actual game design, he's been the lead of projects that did nothing for evolution of gameplay. He's just been imitating Looking Glass - and not doing that good a job, to be honest.

I've often wondered what games like Dungeon Keeper, Fable, Bioshock, Spore and the like would have been if they'd had great game designers behind them - instead of "just" great idea men.

To my mind, game designers should understand gameplay and game mechanics first and foremost. Examples of great designers of the past would be Sid Meier, the Gollop brothers, Steve Barcia, Chris Roberts, Doug Church, Warren Spector, Tim Cain, and others. Not saying they're great designers today - but they definitely used to be.

Garriott used to be one as well.

Ideas are a dime a dozen, as far as I'm concerned.
 
Even Populous had dreary gameplay, really - it was just extremely novel at the time. Raising and lowering land so people can settle there. That was basically it. Wow!
IMO, Populous was limited in its lasting appeal due to the lack of variation in gameplay but Populous 2 was a huge and signifiant improvement making the 1st one obsolete as so many new God powers were introduced allowing for varied tactics and challenges.

Simply put, the gameplay in Populous 2 was awesome and if you claim otherwise then, as the great DArtagan himself would say, you are not in touch with reality ;).

EDIT:
On a general note, I agree that "idea" and "execution" are two separate things.
 
Last edited:
Joined
Jun 22, 2011
Messages
613
Location
Madrid, Spain
IMO, Populous was limited in its lasting appeal due to the lack of variation in gameplay but Populous 2 was a huge and signifiant improvement making the 1st one obsolete as so many new God powers were introduced allowing for varied tactics and challenges.

Simply put, the gameplay in Populous 2 was awesome and if you claim otherwise then, as the great DArtagan himself would say, you are not in touch with reality ;).

EDIT:
On a general note, I agree that "idea" and "execution" are two separate things.

Yeah, the God powers were great. But I remember thinking - even back in those ancient days - that the core gameplay was just more of the same with very limited variation.

I seem to recall the game having 999 levels - and there was almost no variation. Probably just generated by some simplistic formula.

No, I've never cared for the gameplay in any Molyneux design. Dungeon Keeper was close - but it couldn't hold my attention. Molyneux never understood mechanics or design if you ask me. All his strategy games including Populous, Powermonger, Magic Carpet (action strategy), Dungeon Keeper and Black and White have used the same tired and boring level progression during the campaigns. Nah, he's the guy with the idea and the big mouth, but that's about it.

The best game Bullfrog ever put out was Syndicate - and Molyneux wasn't design lead on that one.
 
Never waste a controversy, it makes traffic.

That person only stated that game designing is hard, that game designers in general were mediocre and lazy and that he was slightly better than the average.

Actually, the part of what he said that you refer to would put him far above average in his estimation - since he said that he met virtually (he gives a few exceptions) no game designers as good as he is. He elaborated to explain that it is not so much that he is particularly great, but that virtually every game designer he's met is just that bad. The difference between this and how some had interpreted is the difference between him saying "Almost everyone else in my field is clueless" and "I'm less clueless than almost everyone else in my field." The latter is more accurate of an interpretation, but neither comes across particularly well.

Now the points about how and why most game designers traditionally haven't been well prepared or well trained for their ultimate tasks - absent experience at least - are very good ones. They do also tend to get ignored in the examples of the most negative and reflexive reactions to these articles. That he could have made those points without naming himself idiot-savant among idiots makes me question the wisdom of saying that bit. Sure he very well may have intended it to bring attention to his points, but I think that though the articles discussing it may be getting more clicks the valid points he tries to articulate are being overlooked in the face of the more entertaining controversy. I think he would have done better for his reputation amongst his colleagues and potential backers if he brought up those points sans-snark in one of the many interviews he's been offered regarding his kickstarter instead of whatever he was trying to do here.

Overall I think this may have been a miscalculation in terms of saying something controversial in order to bring attention to a real failure to adequately educate, train, and prepare prospective game designers (as well as quality control in your talent pool.) I think it was an opportunity less than ideally utilized in this regard - if not quite entirely squandered. It may suggest an arrogance and condescension on RG's part, though I think it may be far more likely to suggest a lack of self-awareness on his part that many of us who grew up as geeky kids might be able to recognize in ourselves at times.
 
Last edited:
Joined
Nov 20, 2006
Messages
1,710
Yeah, the God powers were great. But I remember thinking - even back in those ancient days - that the core gameplay was just more of the same with very limited variation.

I seem to recall the game having 999 levels - and there was almost no variation. Probably just generated by some simplistic formula.
In Populous 2, at each level you were normally given a limited selection of your God powers so you had to do with whatever was given to you. Sometimes, the conditions were set that you weren't allowed to alter land at all.

Additionally, the further you advanced, the more disadvantageous your initial conditions were wrt to your opponent so there was an increase in challenge and difficulty.

I remember starting with only one follower while my opponent started with an entire civilization and every time my follower built a hut, the enemy God would cast a volcano on that hut. At first I was at a loss as I couldn't build my civilization but eventually humans will outsmart an AI and it ocurred to me to send that single follower to the edge of the enemy territory, build a hut and then send him away quickly before being attacked. The AI could then cast that volcano on my hut and by doing so he would also partially destroy a little bit of his own territory. I repeated this process so that the enemy AI would little by little destroy his own land untill it was sufficiently reduced so that I could start building my own civilization without constantly being terrorised by volcanoes.

What I liked about Populous 2 was being put in difficult situations and then to be creative in getting the upper hand. Using your powers in onorthodox and devious ways made it incredibly fun for me. I played it all the way to the end (1000 levels) in a span of several years, though not continuously of course, and I consider it to be a fine example of excellent and fun gameplay.
 
Last edited:
Joined
Jun 22, 2011
Messages
613
Location
Madrid, Spain
I think(my opinion) it is easy to look at these features and say they were easy or not very inspiring nowadays. But at the time, there was nothing like it. IT wasn't copying someone else's work, you had to invent that wheel and move forward. It was the building blocks of a lot of what we see today.
 
Joined
Apr 17, 2007
Messages
5,749
Back
Top Bottom