Interview "I'm going to reinvent roleplaying games again": Richard Garriott Interview at Gather Your Party

[FrancoTAU]

Brian Fargo seems to be the only RPG forefather who has respect for the quality of his past work.

The rest of them...I just don't understand what drives them. They made games that won many fans, but they inhabit a different mental universe from those fans, and probably always have.

I'd just add that the Sir Tech guys went down with the ship on both RPGs and TBS.

Garriott is by far the most disappointing guy in gaming for me. Molyneaux just seems like he got old and lost touch with what is interesting. Garriott just seemed like he knows what's interesting, but doesn't care to be so. It became about being more popular than creative, and he ironically became more and more irrelevant as he went after the lowest common denominator.

 

[Dexter]

But what is the essence of the decline? LARPing, or cinematic storyfaggotry? Because if you think about it, these are two different things, at odds even. An overly strong emphasis on story does not allow you to "LARP", just as it doesn't allow you to "RP" in general.

Working together with the likes of EA, Microsoft, Activision, Disney etc. for years, apparently it turns their brains to mush so the only things they believe in is some retarded MBA stuff and following the newest "trend" trying to get the new "audience".

When I was in the Ultima Online Pre-Alpha there was a huge amount of input from the testers regarding the game leaning too much on pleasing the PK crowd and leaving the roleplayers in the cemetery (literally). The basic response was that everything was fine, RPG gamers just don't know what they really want, blah, blah. Yeah, we all know how well that turned out.

PK and cleanloot is the best thing to happen to Ultima Online whatsoever, we got enough retardoland games after it for a lifetime where the player is only living in his bubble of safety bein' happy and questing.
It's sad that this is the only bigger game that'll inherit that from UO... http://www.gametrailers.com/video/e3-2012-wizardry-online/731800

 

[MurkyShadow]

Gametrailers wrote:

Wizardry returns to its hardcore RPG roots with perma-death, looting, and the inclusion of world-wide PVP.

I don't even know what to say. So, I'll have to revise my youth. It was all about hardcore looting.
Maybe that's the reason some people have problems throwing things away. They are hardcore
RPG gamers. Some will maybe never know it. So, when someone asks, why you don't throw
away that old C-64 Datasette, you'll cry out:" It's loot! You don't simply throw away loot!"

At first I didn't even think this really could be a reference to THE Wizardry. I haven't heard
this name in such a long time. It was always more my cup of tea than Ultima was. Guess it
was per chance that I just stumbled over The Bard's Tale and Wizardry first. But I'd always
thought that this Lord British must be cool guy. I guess it just works unto you think
you're the savior of *insert appropriate*.

 

[Darkion]

PK and cleanloot is the best thing to happen to Ultima Online whatsoever, we got enough retardoland games after it for a lifetime where the player is only living in his bubble of safety bein' happy and questing.
It's sad that this is the only bigger game that'll inherit that from UO... http://www.gametrailers.com/video/e3-2012-wizardry-online/731800

Pk and cleanloot was the best thing for players that liked doing that. The problem was not the existence of PK and looting, it was that there was no alternative at all for people that wanted a different experience. When the testers mentioned that it would create problems on the long run, we were ignored because "they knew what the players wanted". So, if you dislike the retardo land games that came afterwards, blame UO for ignoring the fact that there are different kind of players and refused to balance the game from the beginning. If they had listened, then the whole Trammel vs Felucca mess would never have happened.

Many of the testers, like me, came from the online Gold Box Neverwinter Nights community and we constantly mentioned that model and how it successfully blended PK and RP, but they would not listen. In Neverwinter there were three different player areas based on location. The city of Neverwinter was a small neutral social area, that's were the players started when they logged in and they could get quests, find a group to adventure with or go somewhere to roleplay instead, but even there, if you wandered down into the sewers you were on your own. There were a few surrounding areas that were safe for new people to gain a few levels and learn how to play before they decided what they wanted to do in the game, everything else was PvP and everyone was fine with it.

Most of my playing time in NWN was spent in PvP areas, what with all the guild wars and duels in the Arena, but once in a while I just wanted to log in for an hour or so and just hang out in an inn with some friends and I was glad to have that choice. That's what UO lacked from the start and when they decided to finally acknowledge there was a problem they messed up again by just dividing everything up instead of doing some integration.

 

[Dexter]

Uhm... that's what the guard zones were for and cities were protected?
Seriously there's enough games handholding and without any kind of consequence whatsoever for the player, Ultima Online did it right.
EVE does it right (I hate their skill progression system though...), Darkfall did it right.
There should be more MMOs with these mechanics, since that is the best thing about them, conflict, struggle, loss etc. not retardoland questing sandbox, LARP simulator and grinding for gear unto infinity. They can as well add perma death in limited cases to spice things up a bit.

 

[Alex_Steel]

Our goal with the ultimate roleplaying game is going to be to make sure that it comes out first round with enough depth that people get it, but just like Ultima, we’re going to fuck it deeper and deeper over time.

Fixed.

"Ultimate role-playing game". What kind of a retard uses a term like that? No wonder he plays only EPIC iOS games.

What a horrible interview. Someone has to teach Garriott to make his answers more brief and to the point.
Also, formatting.

 

[DraQ]

But what is the essence of the decline? LARPing, or cinematic storyfaggotry? Because if you think about it, these are two different things, at odds even. An overly strong emphasis on story does not allow you to "LARP", just as it doesn't allow you to "RP" in general.

LARP is when you have an open world of possibilities, but not the mechanics for handling them.
It can be fixed by developing the mechanics so that it's no longer LARP.

Storyfaggotry is when you have a scripted rail player rides.
It's hard to think of a way of fixing it, you can alleviate the problem by multiplying the rails and branching them, but each rail equals development effort and in the end you, as a player, are still stuck in the exact same box developers were stuck when figuring out solutions to your problems. You can make good storyfag games, but even then the approach is fundamentally flawed for proper RPG, it's like controlling the flow with GOTOs in an object oriented language.

Plus, you can stick stories into sandboxes, as long as they can withstand the sandbox mechanics. OTOH if they can't, if there is an easy, mechanical way out of your story, is it really a story worth telling if it hinges on player being unable to do logical things?

Also, I'm both amused and saddened by misappropriation and retarded parroting of the term "LARP" when used in cRPG context, it's even more hilariously glaring than Bethesda's PR picking up "Choices and Consequences".

I wish somebody would have balls to take CRPGs backward, for a change. Like, to 1992.

I wish someone had the brain to just see which way is forward.

So far I haven't seen any single of those clowns even mentioning the right way in passing, no indication of any of them even considering it or being capable of transcending their paradigm, it's like they are fucking flies relentlessly bouncing against the glass even though the window is partially open, incapable of grasping even the very idea of something like other direction.


...my Cleve transformation is complete, it seems.
*stretches titanium bones*


Also, what Dexter said about MMOs. I'm not into them myself, but carebears should go fuck themselves. A core aspect of MMO is whole world of other people so why the fuck should one play as an SP or local coop game, only worse?

 

[IDtenT]

The term "LARP" is only used by gamists (aka combatfags) who refuse to enjoy a game because there is no real reason to exploit the (generally easily exploitable) mechanics to win battles.

 

[Azrael the cat]

Of course Garriott has gone nutty for a long long time now, but man - it's like a once great rock band, you've got to respect the back catalogue. The Rolling Stones have been a shit band for 3 times as long as the time they spent making good music, same for Paul McCartney. Fuck, it's hard to even think of a rock band that stayed great for more than a decade.

Hell, U2 were always kind of dull for me, but if you were into that sort of stuff then they probably had the longest period between first and last 'great hits': Sunday Bloody Sunday in 82, to The Fly (off Achtung Baby) in 92 - 10 years, and they've been shit for at least 20 since then.

Authors? How many 'great authors' (not just popular hacks, nor just capital 'L' literature, but anyone whose books are loved for the writing rather than their franchise or the equiv of Bioware fanboys) make it past 5 good books? Ok, theatre writers tend to dwarf that, but that's because the theatrical tradition allows (even encourages) writers to explore the exact same plots and themes over and over again (e.g. Shakespeare in Julius Caesar, to the War of the Roses series, to King Lear - could reduce all of his plays to about 10 themes/stories, and that's the all-time-great). Conrad wrote the same brilliant story over and over again. Twain was possibly the most gifted novelist, but he spent most of his life writing whatever he could to pay the rent. Gibson did Neuromancer and a couple more then cruised for the rest of his career. King is, well, the King of pulp - the Beatles of book-writing (as opposed to the Mozarts and Wagners of the capital 'L' literature set, and as opposed to the Led Zeppelin and Pixies of better authors with lesser coverage), but the length of his career (which frankly went to shit decades ago, aside from the Dark Tower series, and that only retains its quality by virtue of him having the luxury of working on one every 5-10 years or so, writing his usual milllionaire pulp while waiting for inspiration).

In that context, should it be surprising that most great game developers don't make more than a couple of true greats - hell, by the context of other 'creative commercial' industries we should be expecting no more than 10 years out of the very greatest. In that context, Willy Loman Richard Garriot might not be a great developer anymore, but respect must be paid.

Also, for all that he talks about story, the Ultima games weren't Larping in the TES sense. It was about giving players the mechanics to have their actions reflected in game. Story-whoring perhaps, but even then it's more of the 'interactive setting' than a linear story in the modern Bioware sense. It's what Todd has never understood - the guy is very clearly wanting to remake Ultima 7, over and over again with newish tech (the guy is at his best in interviews when he talks about why he thinks U7 is still the best game ever made, not for it's time, but still the best of all time - he sounds like a downright Codexer in those moments) - but he has never got his head around that freedom without the world recognising your actions is just a souped up notepad. Take out factional clashes, consequences for dumb actions and the ability to 'break' the developer's desired plotline for a region, and you may as well just have your game on wheels. I never felt like that with the Ultima games.

And whilst MMORPGS aren't my thing, Ultima Online is arguably the best one that the western world has made. At least you can see some genuine ambition there - sure it's Larpy, but it was an attempt at true world creation, not a theme-park, not a grinding/raiding game, but a true attempt at creating a world where folks could be a farmer and crafter, just like they can be a warrior or a bandit. Sure, it didn't work out and eventually it became a working model of why Hobbes was right about anarchism being the worst of all possible states, where you'd get mugged for your boots on your way to the bank. But I can appreciate it as a game with ambition, rather than yet another cynical WoW clone.

So I'd probably put his decline after UO, with U9 being a managerially fucked up exception, and U8 again being a failure but one with a real sense of ambition underlying it (e.g. the spell system, but also means of interacting with the world that would later be put to much better use in Gothic 2).

 

[Infinitron]

Also, for all that he talks about story, the Ultima games weren't Larping in the TES sense. It was about giving players the mechanics to have their actions reflected in game. Story-whoring perhaps, but even then it's more of the 'interactive setting' than a linear story in the modern Bioware sense. It's what Todd has never understood - the guy is very clearly wanting to remake Ultima 7, over and over again with newish tech (the guy is at his best in interviews when he talks about why he thinks U7 is still the best game ever made, not for it's time, but still the best of all time - he sounds like a downright Codexer in those moments) - but he has never got his head around that freedom without the world recognising your actions is just a souped up notepad. Take out factional clashes, consequences for dumb actions and the ability to 'break' the developer's desired plotline for a region, and you may as well just have your game on wheels. I never felt like that with the Ultima games.

Can you describe exactly how Ultima was better than Elder Scrolls in this regard? (not necessarily disagreeing with you, just curious)

Let me remind you that Ultima generally did not have "C&C". There was one way to do each quest.

 

[Davaris]

to play with not random people equally devoted to a certain game, but with the people who they go to dinner with who hang out all day together anyway.

Griefing is going to take on a whole new dimension. ​

 

[Executer]

The term "LARP" is only used by gamists (aka combatfags) who refuse to enjoy a game because there is no real reason to exploit the (generally easily exploitable) mechanics to win battles.

I always thought LARP was used to criticise nice looking hiking simulators.

 

[Azrael the cat]

Also, for all that he talks about story, the Ultima games weren't Larping in the TES sense. It was about giving players the mechanics to have their actions reflected in game. Story-whoring perhaps, but even then it's more of the 'interactive setting' than a linear story in the modern Bioware sense. It's what Todd has never understood - the guy is very clearly wanting to remake Ultima 7, over and over again with newish tech (the guy is at his best in interviews when he talks about why he thinks U7 is still the best game ever made, not for it's time, but still the best of all time - he sounds like a downright Codexer in those moments) - but he has never got his head around that freedom without the world recognising your actions is just a souped up notepad. Take out factional clashes, consequences for dumb actions and the ability to 'break' the developer's desired plotline for a region, and you may as well just have your game on wheels. I never felt like that with the Ultima games.

Can you describe exactly how Ultima was better than Elder Scrolls in this regard? (not necessarily disagreeing with you, just curious)

Let me remind you that Ultima generally did not have "C&C". There was one way to do each quest.

True - the games were simpler in that regard, and the first few in particular had the luxury that simply providing an outside world in a crpg was mindblowing to most of us at the time (Ultima 3 now is treated as forgettable, but at the time people's minds were blown - it seemed to have a whole series of the dungeons that most crpgs consisted of, but connected by an overworld and a long-term goal like a PnP game).

But by U7 whilst the options were still lesser, the ones there meant something. Robbing the bank was an act of player initiative, not a series of spelt out player steps (same with killing Lord Brittania each game) - and rewarded you handsomely. Same with the NPC routines - in an environment where pretty much anything can be picked up, knowing where people are and whether you can get into their places had more practical relevance than Oblivion's 'stare at walls' routines. Same with finding the hidden passages through Castle Britannia.

There wasn't any C+C in the Black Isle sense, that's true - it's a fundamentally different kind of game, and I'd argue that the peak is really the Gothics (G2 or the heavily patched version of G3 depending on one's tastes) - they managed to combine the 'create a world' crpg with C+C, and I can't think of another game series that really did that. I'm also happy to accept 'create a world' games as not having C+C - just mechanics for the player to learn and exploit in interesting ways. Morrowind did that pretty welll, come to think of it - I probably should have clarified that I meant post-Morrowing TES, not Daggerfall and Morrowind. Morrowind was VERY much like a modern Ultima - no real choices about how to complete quests, but the things you could find affected the game, you could break both local and major plotlines (and be warned that you've just killled the world, rather than having immortal NPCs - and the game still gave a 'backdoor' that alllowed you to win anyway, and given that killing Vivec is one of the things that you're likely to try if screwing around in a 'dead world', it's one that you'd have a chance of finding). Most of the best quests were found, not listed - things like the cure to vampirism, for example, by sneaking around various libraries trying to find the missing volume of the series on vampires, with only your common sense to point you to that as an idea. That's the kind of thing I'd expect from a modern attempt at a Ultima game - not story choices, just let the player off the rails. Bethesda are terrible at working with their writers, so why cosntrain the players to a main quest anyway? It's always the worst part of their games post Morrowind, and it's because it destroys everything that can make an open world game fun.

 

[Average Manatee]

Could someone please go ahead and reinvent Richard Garriott?

By reinvent I of course mean give a lobotomy to.

 

[Infinitron]

Azrael the cat

Okay, I can agree with that. To me, Ultima and Elder Scrolls have a very similar design framework. The Ultima series at its height was better because:

1) With all due respect to TES's voluminous lore, the actual content was a lot more interesting in Ultima. Spreadsheet NPCs for the lose.
2) Ultima deemphasized the tiresome "loot whoring" aspect of RPGs. TES wallows in it.

 

[Bruma Hobo]

Let me remind you that Ultima generally did not have "C&C". There was one way to do each quest.

There were various solutions to each problem... In Ultima V, if you want to go to New Magincia you can buy a ship, steal it, learn to use the moongates, or cast the moongate spell. Want to steal the Crown from Blackthorn's Castle? Well, you can use the magic carpet to outrun the guards, fight them all (hard as hell, but possible), use invisibility rings, or join the Oppression to get the black badge so you can befriend the guards and enter peacefully. It wasn't "C&C", just flexibility to solve problems.

Also, if you want C&C:

https://invidio.us/qM-Krb_zBj0


Edit: Damn, ninja'd.

 

[Infinitron]

Let me remind you that Ultima generally did not have "C&C". There was one way to do each quest.

There were various solutions to each problem... In Ultima V, if you want to go to New Magincia you can buy a ship, steal it, learn to use the moongates, or cast the moongate spell. Want to steal the Crown from Blackthorn's Castle? Well, you can use the magic carpet to outrun the guards, fight them all (hard as hell, but possible), use invisibility rings, or join the Oppression to get the black badge so you can befriend the guards and enter peacefully. It wasn't "C&C", just flexibility to solve problems.

True, I'm using the traditional Codexian definition of C&C.

 

[Pablosdog]

I think it's also the result of the big budget game, as we can only really count on the indie developers for any type of true blue rpg experience. I mean, what else can we do but soak up that casual decline? I can only replay eye of the beholder so many times. I haven't given up. Oh yeah, I'm back. What the fuck happened to this place? Who are these people?

 

[Pablosdog]

Yeah I've seen the news, I'm pumped. I heard about it while still attending college. I hope it gives us a glorious rpg for my raising ziggeraut

 

[Excommunicator]

Maybe he was a businessman first and foremost after all

This is exactly the situation, unfortunately. He was in the right place at the right time under just the right amount of pressure and limitation to produce good games. He is like John Romero in that sense, and these people are rampant in the upper tiers of small to middle sized businesses and corporations, but usually don't get to the top of the big corporations because to take that extra step requires an order of magnitude more competence and understanding than those on the rungs just below. The gap there is huge. They play the business game really well - which is why people continually give them millions and millions even after multiple failures - but this is a result of the charisma and the fame and the enthusiasm, because if you really test them on the specifics, you find they have this kind of loose grip on basic ideas and, well, on reality in general. This inability to get to the heights they aspire to results in a kind of depressive state or productivity-catatonia where they dream big and ramble on about changing the world and how people just don't understand it all.
The same goes for the likes of Peter Molyneux and Warren Spector (to a lesser extent, as he is both less fanatical and as I understand somewhat more competent and grounded in general) and many others too. The games industry apparently just draws these people in like moths to a light presumably because of its strange mixture of casual artistry, popular entertainment value, technological driving forces and high competitiveness. These are all the things to draw these people in, and they just can't let go of the prize once they touch a part of it, no matter how many failures or how much reality seems to be moving away from them.

Anyway he was always better at having a general game vision and exciting the people around him than the technical stuff. You might think of him more as the oil to lubricate the cogs in the mechanism rather than as one of the cogs themselves. Of course we all know of stories with him and those like him where they are very difficult to work with at times, but even in a solid mechanism there is only so much oil you can add to it before it fails completely...

I also figure the thing keeping him from something like kickstarter is that not only does it not yet have big enough numbers to appeal to him, but it seems his ego might not be able to come to terms with the reality of the extent to which people (don't) support him, and the disparity between his dreams and what really makes a quality product.

 

[Alex]

sgc_meltdown, Excommunicator

I think I disagree with you there. Mr. Garriot may have been after the money focused, but he obviously knew his craft very well. I don't mean to downplay the importance of those working with him by any means, I am sure that Ultima 7, for example, is far from being solely a result of Garriot's knowledge. But I do think that all the games put out by him spell that he knew what he was doing. I think the problem here isn't so much that he relied on other people (being the oil of their cogs, like Excommunicator said), but that he now wants to do something different, in a way I think is sure t not work.

I think LB's idea is that all this talk about powerful interactions and having asynchronous play, is because he is attempting to get to what makes P&P games tick. A big problem I see in MMOs is that the little interactions people have are usually not important for the game. They are "weak" instead of "powerful" in that they affect very little about gameplay. They are also bound by the people who are interacting. Anything cool two people roleplaying together can come up won't affect peple playing at other times, unless you have a way for player to affect each other asynchronously.

So, what I think he is trying to do is solve these problems so the roleplaying aspect of an MMO can be more comparable to what happens in a real game. His folly, I think, is that the cool interactions of a P&P game rely in there bing a small number of players. In an MMO, you are severely limited on how much you can affect of the world. If you are able to raze a city, the players there will all be pissed you spoiled their RP environment. So, in order for a lot of people to not be overly unhappy, no one must get to do real fun things.

Anyway, I am not trying to defend Richard Garriot here. But I still have a bit of hope he will one day make a good game, and I am thought I would share why I still hope for that.

 

[sgc_meltdown]

I think LB's idea is that all this talk about powerful interactions and having asynchronous play, is because he is attempting to get to what makes P&P games tick.

Looks like this is a matter of interpretation. All I see (re: 'powerful', or 'compelling' by another name) is him referring to social relationships as a pliable 24/h motivational force that will get people to start/continue playing a game, not because it's a good rpg per se but because john yahoo just messaged his college friends about his armor dye stall, or because ms. catgirl glittergoth wants to breed more rare celestial cats than her bitchy friends and get on the halfling town hall's notice board.

Asynchronous just means they can do so and tend to their characters whenever they have time for it, like a bejewelled session that has a panel that tells you what your rival jewelers have done recently and their new messages and achievements at jewel court. Wait, what's that new message? You unlocked a winged amethyst coat for helping eight lower level heroes in one day with a jewelquest!

Richard Garriot presents.

 

[commie]

Brian Fargo seems to be the only RPG forefather who has respect for the quality of his past work.

The rest of them...I just don't understand what drives them. They made games that won many fans, but they inhabit a different mental universe from those fans, and probably always have.

Maybe those games were 'accidents' on the road to what they considered 'awesome'? I've read a lot of developer interviews where they actually regret not being able to put in all they wanted due to a lack of money or technological constraints. Perhaps if today's tech was available in the early 90's, those games we regard as classics wouldn't have been made in the first place, replaced by the next gen shit these devs are peddling now.


As For Garriot, I'm just disappointed that he never reached that point in his life to just want to try and make the best RPG ever. It's not like he's strapped for cash so why give a shit if only 100,000 people play this uber game rather than 10 million to play some flash facebook crap? It's a real shame that the only RPG game dev with a shitload of personal cash to do a RPG for the ages, chooses not to.

 

[Excommunicator]

I agree with your observations about MMOs Alex but I just can't accept the idea that he is really trying to further RPGs through substance and quality or trying to solve the lingering problems of the genre

I would be extremely surprised if he was still pursuing these ambitious ideas if he was no longer able to motivate himself via the promise of potentially massive financial returns. We can't pretend that isn't his prime motivation here.

I think it's also likely that he barely plays games any more (if at all), let alone RPGs. He discusses connecting people, making money and the brilliance of his own past games. That is the extent of his enthusiasm.


Edit: And a bit more towards the centre of the topic:

I find this repulsive in just about every way possible.


Edit 2: Yes here is the relevant quote

Almost 100 percent of the time that I play games, other than Ultimate Collector which is on a web browser, 100 percent of the games that we didn’t make that I play, is on my iPhone or my iPad

Read it and weep about the future of RPGs. Even Bethesda and Bioware employees play real games sometimes, even if it is a console or if we are really optimistic, occasionally even a PC. There is no uncertainty here I am sorry to say Alex.

 

[mondblut]

Maybe those games were 'accidents' on the road to what they considered 'awesome'? I've read a lot of developer interviews where they actually regret not being able to put in all they wanted due to a lack of money or technological constraints. Perhaps if today's tech was available in the early 90's, those games we regard as classics wouldn't have been made in the first place, replaced by the next gen shit these devs are peddling now.

Depends on the man, I guess. Some genuinely loved the medium that can do so much more number-crunching, some just tolerated the "limitations" they had to work around while realizing their "innovative vision". It is perfectly clear the Garriott himself loved D&D solely for an ability to put on his robe and a wizard's hat and didn't gave a rat's ass about memorizing to hit tables - hence, his "vision" was to make larping games from day 1, the precious few RPG mechanics increasingly absent from the later Ultimas were only there because he didn't have Gamebryo and Radiant AI back in the day. Storyfags gonna storyfag no matter the medium.

OTOH, some people wisen up with years. Take Mike Singleton, back in the day he was daydreaming about turning Lords of Midnight into a bunch of akshun minigames now that the advances in technology finally allow him to scrap that silly turn-based mode and numbers-driven gameplay (and to an extent, he did with the disastrous LOM3, which is still a pinnacle of strategy next to his dream of a LOM game he used to describe in interviews). Fast forward 20 years, and he is making a faithful TB remake of the original LOM (and then possible the "true" LOM3, the fabled Eye of the Moon originally envisioned in 1985) without any intent of making it play more like GTA.