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Is Richard Garriot an ego-maniac ?
Kaynos1972
Member Posts: 2,316
in Tabula Rasa
I mean i know this guy is the creator of this game, but is it really necesseray to put his name on the game box ? Today's games takes years and hundreds of peoples to develop. It's not like in the 80's when it was possible for some nerd to develop a whole game by themself.
I mean if everyone was putting their name on their product, that would be weird ! Hey i bought the new Bill Gates Windows Vista operating system !!! 
Comments
i did some playtesting for origins at their austin office in the 80's...
and for me finally meeting Dennis Loubet was a bigger deal than Lord British. And I got to muck about with Todd Porter.. but back to richard--
He is/was "king" of the local sca folks or some such and has quite a few followers. At truth; i'm sure to some degree he IS an egomaniac...how could he NOT be? And how could he have even TRIED most of what he's succeeded in without an ego?
but at least when i met him; he amicably chatted with a 15-yr old kid about doing tile-based wave graphics; and about crossbows. He certainly doesn't come across as anything BUT a good fellow. An act?
I don't think his name on the box is about his ego - it's about marketing.
Lord British - Richard - IS a brand. This project is so far from what tabula rasa started as (when i had acquaintances that were still developing it ); with so much turnover in people and ideas; i wonder if any outsider really has any idea how much of this is his; as opposed to the other financial backers'; idea - including slapping that brand on the box.
I have a friend who's met him, and she thought he was pretty cool/nice. I agree with Badger.. it's all about marketing and was most likely the publisher's idea.
Sid Meyer do the same and for the same reason, both are pioneers of the gaming scene and their name is recognized by many older (and younger I would say) players.
Why do you think "Tiger woods" golf game is called like that?
same reason here.
"If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, if you teach him how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime"
wow i knew he made alot of games but i didn't know he made that much.
Jeez he deserves his name on that box.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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Curt teh Juggler: our graduation ceremony was today, and right when some gamer nerd got his diploma, someone in the audience played the zelda "get item" music and he did the zelda spin-hold-out-item stance
Curt teh Juggler: it was quite possibly the most amazing thing ever.
with his name on the box, i think you feel the game is up to his standard, which should be pretty high. the story seems well thought out, so far.
I am in the closed beta... and lets just say... This game sucks ass.
I was a die-hard UO fan for MANY years, and Richart Garriot is a legend, but Tabula Rasa Is bad.. really bad. I expected much more from such a legend.
Yeah, I'd have to say Richard "Lord British" Garriot is the mack-daddy, original gangsta godfather of the computer RPG world. Ultima was the first PC-based RPG I ever played, and it made a convert of me back when I was a wee lad.
I thought he had faded into the woodwork with his amassed Ultima franchise fortunes, but I cannot tell you how excited I am to see him back in the limelight again. Although Tabula Rasa isn't exactly my kind of MMO genre, I'll probably give it a spin, mainly because it's got his name slapped on it. Call me a sucker, I know, I admit it.
Dear god yes..living on yesterdays dreams sadly..its chronic in the games industry
The only reason I read Tabula Rasa forums is because I found out the game was created by Richard Garriot. I think it was an excellent idea for the man's name to be put on the box. After what he did for MMOs with the creation of UO he really does deserve all the credit he gets. I'm sure many, like I, will try the game based on his name.
Garriott is "The Man". He can do anything he wants and deservingly so.
Doesn't he live in a castle in RL?
He always reminded me of the singer from Iron Maiden lol
If he worked on CoH/V it must have been an extremely small part since hes not listed on any of the team lists.
The whole "famous designer" crap needs to GO. they tried to do it with David Jaffe and he basically said "f**k off" cause he has the sense to know that crap is stupid, and we all know how Brad McQuaid's last project turned out. These aren't movies where a good director or producer can make or break it, and I would contest that about movies anyway.
Since the NDA has been lifted, I can tell you I have been playing TR for months and at this point theres no way I'd pay $15 a month to play it. The spin on the features is really pissing me off too. This "ethical parables" stuff is stupid, I've played tons of MMOG's with similiar quests and missions and theres a reason why they don't have tons of them, their not that interesting. Battlefield Control Points, ooo haven't seen those used since 90% of the FPS games in existance.
any grown man sporting rattails down to his ankles is most certainly a maniac
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Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become character.
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.
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Kiddos, Richard Garriot is a friggin LEGEND! Much of the things ppl value in gaming today was first implemented under his leadership! I followed his career for 25 years now, and all I know about him since then tells me he is a modest man, despite his flamboyant manor and his showman style. The true thing is, of course its marketing and PR, but calling him an egomaniac... goodness, I think he has made more killer game and genre shaping games than ANY other developer! Ultima IV, VII and Underworld were HALLMARKS of gaming, and many ppl feel Ultima VII is still the unbeaten best RPG of all time! Ultima Underworld created first what we now feel as 1st person action games!
Sure, there were always others too, and I dont know his acutal influence on TR. Trust me, in reality Garriot is quite a shy man, he only doesnt show, because he is able to play a showman. The fact alone he is the only slim gaming develovper is worth a pulitzer, haha.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Well one things for certain about having his name on the box, when this bombs hard as it will, he'll get the brunt of the blame and be lucky to work in the industry again...
Yeah, it's too bad. I think he did a lot of great games way back when. (I even played Ultima I when it first came out, and played most of the other Ultimas as well.)
But I don't know what he's been smoking with this game. It is a bland MMO without skill variety and a bland FPS with sticky aiming. It is difficult to call it anything except average. And "average" subscription-pay-to-play MMOs coming out in the last year or so have done one thing: fail.
Having his name on all the boxes when it tanks isn't going to make him super-employable or anything.
I met Richard at a GenCon convention years ago, i was just attending the con as a fan and he was at the Origins booth and took the time to shoot the breeze for several minutes about games and development in general . He just talked like some regular nerdy guy who liked computers and games, there was no sense that he thought of himself as a "legend" or some epic figure in gaming history.
One charactreristic that describes him is one of the Virtues from Ultima: Humility.
People forget what a deeply profound philosophical adventure the Ultima series was - check it out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtues_of_Ultima
imo the Ultima series is a glimpse into some Life discoveries RG made when he was younger, answering for himself questions like what does it really mean to be Honorable, what really is Self Sacrifice, heavy stuff like that.
I dunno, that many shitty games, maybe you don't deserve to have a job?
You really think it will be as bad as Brad McQuaid's reputation?
Akalabeth
Autoduel
This is like saying the ceo of sony is an amazing game maker becuase sony has made a ton more games than Richard Garriott or NCSoft has. But really what has the ceo of sony done to MAKE these games, and in-turn what has Lord British done to make these listed games?
That being said in the day he did develop and work on quite a few games, of late i know that he had his hands in TR, which is trash. CoX had nothing to do with him , other than his company dropping some bills and selling it around the world. SAme as the CEO of sony mind you for many more games.
Honestly other than ultima games what does he have they he really worked on. (played U1 U3 and U7 and you need not play the rest for sure).
L1 and L2 he didn't even have a hand in hardly. More l2 than one.
You can attach his names to all these games for sure, but if you wanted you could proably find an accountant or simpile programmer that has worked on more games than this.
That being said, in the world of games he is famous and soon to be, if not already, infamous.
"Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one ..." - Thomas Paine
This is like saying the ceo of sony is an amazing game maker becuase sony has made a ton more games than Richard Garriott or NCSoft has. But really what has the ceo of sony done to MAKE these games, and in-turn what has Lord British done to make these listed games?
That being said in the day he did develop and work on quite a few games, of late i know that he had his hands in TR, which is trash. CoX had nothing to do with him , other than his company dropping some bills and selling it around the world. SAme as the CEO of sony mind you for many more games.
Honestly other than ultima games what does he have they he really worked on. (played U1 U3 and U7 and you need not play the rest for sure).
L1 and L2 he didn't even have a hand in hardly. More l2 than one.
You can attach his names to all these games for sure, but if you wanted you could proably find an accountant or simpile programmer that has worked on more games than this.
That being said, in the world of games he is famous and soon to be, if not already, infamous.
I requote this, because it is accurate analysis.
I don't know if RG is an egomaniac, but he gets far more credit than he deserves. Some of the Ultima games were fun, specifically I liked VI, some of VII (they beat it to death) and Stygian Abyss was my favorite of the series. Some were quite horrid and I was a much bigger fan of the Might and Magic/Wizardry game series back in the day.
Most of the modern games people have listed like L1/L2 and COX he had little to do with.
I won't buy a game based on his name.... he's bombed about as many times as he's had a hit.
Even UO, revolutionary as it was, shipped as a bug filled, poorly implemented game, so much so that it won the Coaster of the Year at CGW..... and didn't fair much better a year later when it was re-reviewed.
Sounds like he didn't learn from previous mistakes if initial beta reports are to be believed.....but hey, lets wait until its released and judge the game then for its merits and faults.....
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
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Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
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"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Honestly, TR isn't perfect, it's true.. But I'd say it has a lot more potential than Vanguard. At least TR won't be "broken" upon release (Though some may argue this). Richard is at least sticking with his project, unlike Brad who pretty much abandoned the game months before it even saw the light of day.