Editorial The Digital Antiquarian on Ultima III and the founding of Origin Systems

[Infinitron]

Tags: Origin Systems; Richard Garriott; The Digital Antiquarian; Ultima; Ultima III: Exodus

After a long hiatus from the topic, the Digital Antiquarian is back with a new retrospective article about the dawn of the CRPG genre. It's a continuation of last year's Ultima I and II retrospectives, covering Richard Garriott's departure from Sierra On-Line, the founding of Origin Systems, and the release of Ultima III: Exodus. Like all of the Digital Antiquarian's articles, it's very long and very interesting. Here's an excerpt:

Given its flagship status, Garriott felt compelled to try to remedy some of the shortcomings of his earlier games. In particular, he was obviously eying the Wizardry series; for all of the Ultima series's stellar reviews and sales, the first two Wizardry games had garnered even better and more of both. Much of what's new in Ultima III is there in the name of addressing his series's real or perceived failings in comparison with Wizardry. Thus he replaced the single adventurer of the early games with a full party which the player must manage; added a new strategic combat screen to make fights more interesting; added a full magic system with 32 separate spells to cast to replace the simplistic system (which the player could easily and safely ignore entirely) of his previous games; added many new class and race options from which to build characters; made some effort to bring some Wizardry-style rigorousness to the loosy-goosy rules of play that marked his earlier games.​

Notably, however, Ultima III is also the first Garriott design that doesn't simply try to pile on more stuff than the game before. Whether because he knew that, what with his family and friends all counting on him, this game needed to be both good and finished quickly or just because he was maturing as a designer, with Ultima III he for the first time showed an ability to edit. Garriott was never going to be a minimalist, but Ultima III is nevertheless only some 60% of the geographical size of Ultima II, the only example of the series shrinking between installments prior to everything going off the rails many years later with Ultima VIII. Also gone entirely is the weird sub-game of space travel, as well as — for the most part — the painful stabs at humor. Yet it's safe to say that Ultima III will take the average player much longer to finish, because instead of leaving huge swathes of game — entire planets! — dangling uselessly in the wind Garriott this time wove everything together with an intricate quest structure that gives a reason to explore all those dungeons. In fact, there's a reason to visit every significant area in the game.​

Viewed from the vantage point of today, Ultima III is perched on a slightly uncomfortable border, right between the simple early Ultimas that predate it and the deeper, richer works that make up the heart of Ultima's (and Richard Garriott's) legacy today. I don't know if any other game in the series sparks as much diversity of opinion. To some it's just a long, boring grind, while a small but notable minority actually name it as their favorite in the entire series. Personally, I can appreciate its advances but take issue with many aspects of its design, which strike me as cruel and rather exhausting. My favorite of the early Ultimas, the one that strikes me as most playable today, remains Ultima I. But I'll talk about Ultima III at much greater length in a future post. For now let's just note that it gave CRPG players of 1983 exactly what they wanted — a big, convoluted, epic experience that pushed the technology even further than had the previous game — without the bugs and other issues that had plagued Ultima II.​

[...] Ultima III began shipping in late August for the Apple II. Versions for the Atari 8-bit line and the Commodore 64 soon followed. Both ports were done by Chuck Beuche, whose role as a creative and technical force with Origin during these early days was almost as significant as Richard's. The game was a huge hit across all platforms; Ultima III became the first Ultima to top 100,000 units in sales, a mark that all of the following titles would surpass with ease. Indeed, this moment marks the point where Ultima pulled ahead of the Wizardry series once and for all to become simply the premiere CRPG series of its era. Despite the occasional worthy competitor like the Bard's Tale series, it would not be really, seriously challenged in that position until the arrival of the officially licensed D&D games that SSI would start releasing at the end of the decade. Happily, Ultima and Richard Garriott would prove worthy of their status; the next Ultima in particular would be downright inspiring.​

The Antiquarian intends to follow this article up with a retrospective playthrough of Ultima III, and also with a writeup that will "set the record straight about another one of those persistent myths that dog fan histories of Ultima". What could he be referring to?

 

[Infinitron]

Early days in the garage at Origin. Top row, from left: Ken Arnold, Mike Ward, Laurie Thatcher, James Van Artsdalen, Helen Garriott, John Van Artsdalen. Bottom row: Richard Garriott, Robert Garriott, Chuck Bueche.

 

[Jack Dandy]

I did really enjoy 4 and 5 a lot. Maybe I should give an Exodus a go sometime- I really like it's music.

 

[Country_Gravy]

Chuckles looks like his name should be Chuckles.

 

[Infinitron]

Chuckles looks like his name should be Chuckles.

 

[Jasede]

One of these days I will buy a crossbow from Iolo.
http://www.crossbows.net/index.php


I wonder if he'd make a triple crossbow. For old Ultima's sake.

 

[Infinitron]

Here's that myth.

The Legend of Escape from Mt. Drash: http://www.filfre.net/2013/05/the-legend-of-escape-from-mt-drash/

As befits a Holy Grail, a legend sprung up around Drash that consisted of a few known facts woven together within a tapestry of conjecture. Drash, the story went, was an attempt by Sierra to make a quick buck off the Ultima name by releasing a slapdash game to the VIC-20 market, terra incognita to Richard Garriott, without his knowledge or consent. The implication is that someone at Sierra eventually got nervous about this dubious scheme and buried the game — in some versions of the story literally, by dumping remaining copies into a landfill in a tale that echoes the (itself likely exaggerated) tale of Atari’s dumping of millions of E.T. cartridges into a New Mexico landfill that same year. It’s a glib story which seems to explain much about the game’s obscurity while also investing it with a nice dollop of the nefarious, a plus for collectors of an industry that, let’s face it, isn’t exactly rife with the sort of dark secrets and forbidden fruits that their pals who collect, say, vintage records get to enjoy. Yet it’s also a story that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, to an extent that it’s hard to understand how so many bright people could buy into it. There are two serious objections, either of which would make it highly improbable. Together they make it impossible to believe.

We should first of all take note of the author of Drash: Keith Zabalaoui. Zabalaoui was a member of what I somewhat facetiously called Garriot’s “entourage” in my previous post, one of his old high-school running buddies who hung around with him in Houston and helped from time to time with his various projects. It could only have been through Garriott that Zabalaoui came into contact with Sierra in the first place. So, the legend requires us to believe that Zabalaoui met the folks at Sierra through Garriott and sold them a game, then agreed with them to secretly release it as an illegitimate knockoff of his friend’s work. Finally, after publishing the game and receiving at least some sort of royalties he continued to keep the whole affair a secret from his buddy. That’s behavior that borders on the sociopathic. There are also some serious plotting problems to this little narrative; didn’t Richard ever say, “Hey, Keith, whatever happened to that game you were working on for Sierra?”

And then let’s look at this from the other side, from the viewpoint of Sierra. Yes, the company may have started with a game package pasted together from newspaper clippings around Ken and Roberta Williams’s kitchen table, but those days were already long gone by early 1983. Sierra was by then negotiating licensing deals with Big Media players like The Jim Henson Company and accepting millions from venture capitalists who saw them as major players in a major emerging industry. Can we really believe that such a company, which by now employed a substantial legal team, would risk their reputation by sticking someone else’s trademarked name on a game in the hopes of making a quick few (tens of?) thousands of dollars and maybe sticking it somehow to Garriott, the man who had recently jilted them? As John Williams says, “Sierra On-Line management was young but not stupid.” Ken Williams had been closely involved in the complications of securing for Garriott and Sierra legal right to the Ultima name from the now defunct California Pacific after Garriott had first agreed to sign with Sierra. To imagine that he would then just blatantly steal the trademark is… well, absurd is perhaps being kind. To imagine that the legal team the venture capitalists insisted be in place would even allow him to do so is to fail to understand how such relationships work.

So, the true story is, as these things so often go, more prosaic than the legend. Zabalaoui did visit Sierra in Garriott’s company, where he was inspired to start work on a simple maze-running action game. When he eventually showed the finished product to them, they were doubtful. It wasn’t a terrible game, but it wasn’t a great one either. And by early 1983 the huge but breathtakingly short-lived VIC-20 software market had already passed its peak and started on a downward slope that would soon turn into a veritable cliff as the ever-plunging price of the vastly more capable Commodore 64 made the older machine more and more irrelevant. And Zabalaoui’s game required more than just a VIC-20: one also needed to have the 8 K memory expansion (to boost the machine’s RAM from just 5.5 K to 13.5 K) and a cassette drive, since it was too large to be installed onto a cartridge. Most of the kids who owned VIC-20s as learning toys or game machines didn’t equip them with such luxuries. Sierra hemmed and hawed, and then made a suggestion: if they could maybe market it as an Ultima that might help… Garriott was perhaps not thrilled with Sierra at this point in time, but he was always good to his friends. When Zabalaoui came to him with Sierra’s request, Garriott agreed, likely more as a personal favor to someone who had helped him out with his own projects quite a bit in the past than anything else. Today, of course, when the industry is so much more mature and so much more sensitive to the power of branding, one in Garriott’s position would never risk tarnishing his trademark in such a way. But in 1983 both Garriott and his industry were still very young.

 

[Infinitron]

From Sierra's InterAction magazine: http://www.pixsoriginadventures.co.uk/ultima-5-nes-part-7/

 

[Dehumanizer]

Weird. Sierra's own magazine making Ken Williams look bad?
Also, they misspell "Garriott".

 

[Luzur]

screwing your friend for a quick buck using his work isnt" Sociopatic", just greedy and cold.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

screwing your friend for a quick buck using his work isnt" Sociopatic", just greedy and cold.

Except that's what sociopatic means.

 

[Luzur]

screwing your friend for a quick buck using his work isnt" Sociopatic", just greedy and cold.

Except that's what sociopatic means.

isnt Sociopathy worse then that? people usually screw eachother over for cash and if they get away with it like daily.

i was sure Sociopathy is when you have a short fuse, blame others of your mistakes and have a life of hard crime.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

isnt Sociopathy worse then that? people usually screw eachother over for cash and if they get away with it like daily.

i was sure Sociopathy is when you have a short fuse, blame others of your mistakes and have a life of hard crime.

Nevermind. Still screwing each other over for cash sounds like some serious personality disorder. Or maybe simply not enough Neanderthal admixture.

 

[RK47]

....you mean like prostitution?

 

[mondblut]

So we owed the entire cloth map gimmick to Monty Pythons? That's pretty cool.

 

[Lady_Error]

screwing your friend for a quick buck using his work isnt" Sociopatic", just greedy and cold.

Except that's what sociopatic means.

isnt Sociopathy worse then that? people usually screw eachother over for cash and if they get away with it like daily.

i was sure Sociopathy is when you have a short fuse, blame others of your mistakes and have a life of hard crime.

Sociopaths are basically non-violent psychopaths with no conscience or empathy for others whatsoever. The problem is that they are often attracted to positions of power. According to statistics as much as 1% to 5% of the population are sociopaths. Some hide it better than others though.

 

[Absalom]

Man, remember when Origin created worlds? :tear: Also

It's not well known that back in the old days Garriott like to call himself "Lord British"

I'm pretty sure he still calls himself that lol.

 

[Infinitron]

Here's DA's Ultima 3 playthrough: http://www.filfre.net/2013/05/ultima-iii-in-pictures/

In that spirit, let’s note that Garriott himself sees the Ultimas through Ultima III as essentially technical exercises, written “to satisfy my personal interest in seeing how much better a game I could put together with the skills I’d acquired while creating the previous game.” While his technology would continue to improve, with Ultima III it reached a certain point of fruition at which it was capable of delivering more than an exercise in rote mechanics, was capable of sustaining real experiential fictions. Garriott didn’t entirely realize that at the time he was writing Ultima III, and thus the game takes only the most modest of steps in that direction. When he started on the next one, however, it would all come home. In a way, it’s with that game that Ultima really became Ultima as we remember it today. We have much else to talk about before we get there, but I hope you’ll still be around when we do. With Ultima III Garriott had his foundation in place. Next would come the cathedral.