Well its not like this is the first time someone thought that a deeper and more interesting facebook game would be a good thing. Its the new "blog", the new "twitter", the new myspace/facebook social network. Its not revolutionary. Its just casualizing and making it accessible, basically the same thing that has been happening in gaming since 1980. We've been seeing things moving in the direction of social networking for years. Its a natural step and I'm glad to see Richard getting into it. At least that might save us from a few more years of farmtown and cafeworld before something meaningful comes to that platform/style of games. He brought us the first big step into graphical MMOG's and I don't see why he won't make a meaningful impact in this new area as well.
I imagine he'll meet with solid success. Facebook-style apps done right is where the money's at, and it's where you're going to entertain the largest group of people.
Honestly I had an interview Friday at Zynga for a game design position and found myself saying some similar things. Particularly the notion that you can create a deep gameplay experience without making things so complicated that there are barriers to entry (because barriers to entry are functionally barriers to fun.)
Chess is a simple game. You can explain it to a 6 year old. Yet despite being really easy to learn, it's a very deep game which you can spend years learning and never fully master. Facebook games currently have the "simple" thing down pretty good, but they need to work on the depth part of things. And with so many very skilled designers entering the space, I think it's likely we'll see some awesome games in the next few years.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Seriously Farmville? Yeah I think it's great. In a World where half our population is dying of hunger the more fortunate half is spending their time harvesting food that doesn't exist.
I've been asking myself if there is some inside joke here that I'm missing but I'm going to have to assume that you weren't joking.
So now I'm going to have to ask you...what are you doing about it and do you waste time playing games when you could be fighting world hunger? It seems incredibly hypocritcal to bash other people for playing a game (any game) when there are people suffering from lack of food and yet you yourself are pissing away valuable time posting on a gaming site and presumably (because you are on this site) you yourself play games.
What do you do in your games? Do you collect equipment to put on your characters? Well you know all those poor suffering people you mentioned? A lot of them lack decent clothes to wear. And yet there you are spending your time collecting clothes that don't exist. For shame! I hope you feel guilty about that.
Thank you for posting that response. I couldn't have said it better.
Seriously Farmville? Yeah I think it's great. In a World where half our population is dying of hunger the more fortunate half is spending their time harvesting food that doesn't exist.
I've been asking myself if there is some inside joke here that I'm missing but I'm going to have to assume that you weren't joking.
So now I'm going to have to ask you...what are you doing about it and do you waste time playing games when you could be fighting world hunger? It seems incredibly hypocritcal to bash other people for playing a game (any game) when there are people suffering from lack of food and yet you yourself are pissing away valuable time posting on a gaming site and presumably (because you are on this site) you yourself play games.
What do you do in your games? Do you collect equipment to put on your characters? Well you know all those poor suffering people you mentioned? A lot of them lack decent clothes to wear. And yet there you are spending your time collecting clothes that don't exist. For shame! I hope you feel guilty about that.
Thank you for posting that response. I couldn't have said it better.
More like, thanks for posting that response. I couldn't have cared less about world hunger or those people.
How many delicate flowers have you met in Counterstrike?
I got a case of beer and a chainsaw waiting for me at home after work.
Fast forward to 7:53 for the statement. Good interview otherwise, too. This interview shows that RG still "Gets it" with games and is ahead of the curve, even though TR failed. It re-enforced my faith in his abilities. We here might not think games like Farmville are the wave of the future, but the truth of the matter is, for better or worse, it's the direction publishers and developers are going to do next. .. I can't wait to see what he does next.
He looks younger than I thought that he would be.
So a browser game that looks like Ultima Online?
Hmm, technology sure has gone a long way since 1998.
Well, good luck to Mr. Garriott and his future endeavors.
All those memories will be lost in time, like tears in the rain.
Originally posted by Lobotomist I think that Garriot always got it. I said it before. And many people dont realise this. Tabula Rasa had excellent gameplay. Most games try to have good gameplay but simply can not do it. They do not know how. Tabula Rasa had it. Gameplay wise it was best MMO ever created. Problem was that TR didnt had any content, crafting, social aspect, pvp, story...etc Basically they made great gameplay but forgot to make the game around it
This is exactly what happened. He has great ideas, but he is unable to flesh them out completely. He must have ADD or something. He can never see any one thing to completion. Everything does is just...almost. But not quite.
That said, the combat system in TR was second to none for FPS-RPG style combat. I've never played anything (FPS) that was that much just pure fun. But then, FPS was never really my thing, so my opinions might be skewed.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
I said it before. And many people dont realise this. Tabula Rasa had excellent gameplay. Most games try to have good gameplay but simply can not do it. They do not know how.
Tabula Rasa had it. Gameplay wise it was best MMO ever created.
Problem was that TR didnt had any content, crafting, social aspect, pvp, story...etc
Basically they made great gameplay but forgot to make the game around it
This is exactly what happened. He has great ideas, but he is unable to flesh them out completely. He must have ADD or something. He can never see any one thing to completion. Everything does is just...almost. But not quite.
That said, the combat system in TR was second to none for FPS-RPG style combat. I've never played anything (FPS) that was that much just pure fun. But then, FPS was never really my thing, so my opinions might be skewed.
I hate to argue semantics. But TR wasnt 1st person, and for the VAST majority of gamers it was NOT fun gameplay. It had its good points mixed in with a huge majority of bad points.
Again, this game is 1 of the largest commercial failures in the gaming industry history. It was, the most expensive game ever created to that point and it failed in 1 year. Richard Garriot recieved a bigger paycheck from that game than any lead developer ever. It was completely his baby, and it will live in infamy as 1 of the worst major productions ever released. I am glad you liked it, but your not going to convince people it was "secretly good" because a huge number of gamers tried it in open beta and hated every bit of it. I have played MANY free MMos that were vastly superior in almost every way.
I not even going to mention the fact that once the game was released he litterally stopped developing it at all. He dumped his "vision" in the hands of underlings. He got his HUGE paycheck and walked away(or was fired depending on who you believe.) NCsoft took a HUGE loss after he siphoned away $ after $ and NCsoft had to finally put a deadline on the project or he would have continued to siphon away.
The man is now known FAR more for his failures than he is for a sucess that was only partly his.
Originally posted by Consequence Originally posted by Dubhlaith
Originally posted by Lobotomist I think that Garriot always got it. I said it before. And many people dont realise this. Tabula Rasa had excellent gameplay. Most games try to have good gameplay but simply can not do it. They do not know how. Tabula Rasa had it. Gameplay wise it was best MMO ever created. Problem was that TR didnt had any content, crafting, social aspect, pvp, story...etc Basically they made great gameplay but forgot to make the game around it
This is exactly what happened. He has great ideas, but he is unable to flesh them out completely. He must have ADD or something. He can never see any one thing to completion. Everything he does is just...almost. But not quite. That said, the combat system in TR was second to none for FPS-RPG style combat. I've never played anything (FPS) that was that much just pure fun. But then, FPS was never really my thing, so my opinions might be skewed.
I hate to argue semantics. But TR wasnt 1st person, and for the VAST majority of gamers it was NOT fun gameplay. It had its good points mixed in with a huge majority of bad points. Again, this game is 1 of the largest commercial failures in the gaming industry history. It was, the most expensive game ever created to that point and it failed in 1 year. Richard Garriot recieved a bigger paycheck from that game than any lead developer ever. It was completely his baby, and it will live in infamy as 1 of the worst major productions ever released. I am glad you liked it, but your not going to convince people it was "secretly good" because a huge number of gamers tried it in open beta and hated every bit of it. I have played MANY free MMos that were vastly superior in almost every way. I not even going to mention the fact that once the game was released he litterally stopped developing it at all. He dumped his "vision" in the hands of underlings. He got his HUGE paycheck and walked away(or was fired depending on who you believe.) NCsoft took a HUGE loss after he siphoned away $ after $ and NCsoft had to finally put a deadline on the project or he would have continued to siphon away. The man is now known FAR more for his failures than he is for a sucess that was only partly his.
I believe you are arguing for the sake of arguing, without actually trying to understand what I said.
FPS-RPG style really is just a description of the style, and you can call it Third-Person-Shooter if it makes you feel better. However, my point was not that it was "secretly good," and in fact I did not enjoy the game as a whole. There was nothing meaningful to do, and the entire world fell flat. It felt like one big shooter arena with nothing to back it up. But then, telling me that the VAST majority of gamers did not enjoy the gameplay does not really matter in relation to my point. I don't care what the VAST majority of players think about anything. When I say something, that is my opinion on the subject, because I am not any final authority on games. Neither are you.
I never tried to argue that it was a good game, or that it should not have failed, because I think it was a bad game, and I am glad it failed. Its failure might serve to show developers that you cannot create an MMO around one thing (in this case the combat system, which I maintain was highly enjoyable to me, even if it was the only enjoyable thing in the game - I hope that is more clear for you) and ignore the rest of the game and fail to implement anything else worthwhile.
I would never argue that Garriott was a good person or a good designer. He only does anything halfway, or less than halfway. I did say that he had good ideas, but he cannot flesh them out to reality for whatever reason. You might not like anything about TR, but I think the idea behind the game was quite good, and if nothing else, I am glad someone tried to do something different. But that does not mean the game on the whole was terrible. This is because once Garriott did enough to get paid, he stopped caring and he stopped working. That is what he does, and that is what he will do on the new game.
So, I think we all know the story of Garriott, and the failures that he helped create. But I do not think you needed to rant about things that most people know about, and that I never argued in the first place. I am sorry if you are quite upset by TR or Garriott for whatever reason.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
So, I was trying to get over the fact that Facebook app games suck ballz, and that maybe this guy knows something, but I sure as hell can't see it. I log on to Face Book to play a game, and that's going to make it better?
You may not get it, but 81 Million active monthly users do.
Do you know anything else about DICE, where this interview takes place?
Do you know where ALL developers are going?
The casual market, where the money is. WoW, believe it or not, isn't casual enough for most people. You know why Facebook app games "suck ballz"? They're new! Kinda like how games started with PONG and got better? Does no one remember history?
Am I saying it's not simple or not fully developed? No. Of course it's simple stuff that looks bad compared to your typical blockbuster PC title.. But then again, I doubt you paid attention to anything in that interview.
It's a stepping stone. Sweet Ass Poker is about showing how a web designed game can look just like one installed locally on your machine. Simple games get people who DON'T game (Which is the vast majority of people, despite what you may think) into the market. After that, you step it up. You give them something with more difficulty and more complexity, or they go and seek it if they have the desire too.
As, again, said in the interview, not everyone will make the switch from simple games to more complex ones, but it' just like any other product - No one will buy what you sell if you can't even get them to try it for free. Did we mention it was free? How many of those 81 MILLION players do you think actually played games before Facebook, let alone something persistent like Farmville? How many of them do yo think are now paying MONEY for a FACEBOOK app? Enough to make the game profitable, apparently.
Am I saying what game he makes is going to be great? No, because I have no clue what his plan is. I'll make that decision when the time comes. But making small, simple games that attracts large amounts of people is a hell of a way to get funding for a startup. And if technology improves, and he can make an MMO that looks and feels like a local install, only it runs on a browser, I don't see that as a problem.
To say that his approach is flawed shows an incredible lack of understanding about the current state of the games industry. He does get it, the numbers back him, and in time, weather or not you like the approach, for better or worse, it's where EVERYONE is going. Small apps like this are cheap to develop, it draws in more people, have room to grow, and are, for all purposes, a great "gateway drug" to more complex games.
Garriott will go wherever there is anyone gullible enough to back him. Seems to me since the EA days he has always put personal profit above pretty much anything.
Richard Garriott needs to go back to making single player role playing games, and not facebook games or browser games. I know there are those who don't agree, but Tabula Rasa had some excellent game play elements involved in it. The FPS aspect of an MMORPG along with doing away with the Everquest fighting style for a machine gun/sword going nuts kind of warfare was such a refreshing change to the genre. What got in the way was what always gets in the way of problems caused by Garriott: His ego. Whenever he takes himself out of the game and lets the game play as it does, the game is a great game. The more involved he is, the more Richard Garriott we see and the less Lord British we experience. What killed Tabula Rasa was really a few simple problems: Lack of higher end content and a bad vision from the company that was controlling the purse strings. I stopped playing the game because I felt like I was playing it alone, not because it wasn't a fun game to play. They did nothing to advertise it, and when I started hearing about it (while playing it), it was to make this stupid connection between the game and RG's space flight ("we're saving the universe by bringing a disk with everyone's name on it from the game"...really?).
There WAS a story within Tabula Rasa that actually got me to play it in the first place. That opening cut screen in the beginning sold me on the game. I WANTED to be in that world and kick some alien butt for what they did to our world. That's the thing with RG and his games; he gets you really interested in the universe he creates. Story has never really been a problem. Of course, after that, there was really little left to do because he wasn't the creative designer, just the lead and that meant others were going on autopilot while he was cashing paychecks.
The Ultima series is why RG will always be famous. The story line of that series was powerful and ground-breaking, often putting it at direct odds with some of the other biggies in story at that time so you'd end up with geek-off contests between those who loved FF and Ultima, convinced theirs was the greater story universe. Some of the game play elements he incorporated into the Ultima series were groundbreaking. The story was wonderful (surprisingly, there are a lot of people who played Ultima Online who haven't a clue what the story behind Britannia is, although there are those, including me, who are as guilty while playing WoW, even though they enjoy it).
I know a lot of people like to just hate on things, but as much as I despise the attention seeking RG does, I can separate that from the fact that he is one of the greatest game designers of our time. It's funny how there are people who refuse to admit that, because they like another game better, or didn't like his games personally. Personally, I hope he manages to do great things with whatever games he creates in the future, because the more good games that are created the better off all of us are because it gives us access to fun games and it forces the crappy designers out there to up their game a bit more on the next thing they work on.
I said it before. And many people dont realise this. Tabula Rasa had excellent gameplay. Most games try to have good gameplay but simply can not do it. They do not know how.
Tabula Rasa had it. Gameplay wise it was best MMO ever created.
Problem was that TR didnt had any content, crafting, social aspect, pvp, story...etc
Basically they made great gameplay but forgot to make the game around it
This is exactly what happened. He has great ideas, but he is unable to flesh them out completely. He must have ADD or something. He can never see any one thing to completion. Everything does is just...almost. But not quite.
That said, the combat system in TR was second to none for FPS-RPG style combat. I've never played anything (FPS) that was that much just pure fun. But then, FPS was never really my thing, so my opinions might be skewed.
I hate to argue semantics. But TR wasnt 1st person, and for the VAST majority of gamers it was NOT fun gameplay. It had its good points mixed in with a huge majority of bad points.
Again, this game is 1 of the largest commercial failures in the gaming industry history. It was, the most expensive game ever created to that point and it failed in 1 year. Richard Garriot recieved a bigger paycheck from that game than any lead developer ever. It was completely his baby, and it will live in infamy as 1 of the worst major productions ever released. I am glad you liked it, but your not going to convince people it was "secretly good" because a huge number of gamers tried it in open beta and hated every bit of it. I have played MANY free MMos that were vastly superior in almost every way.
I not even going to mention the fact that once the game was released he litterally stopped developing it at all. He dumped his "vision" in the hands of underlings. He got his HUGE paycheck and walked away(or was fired depending on who you believe.) NCsoft took a HUGE loss after he siphoned away $ after $ and NCsoft had to finally put a deadline on the project or he would have continued to siphon away.
The man is now known FAR more for his failures than he is for a sucess that was only partly his.
Never played the ultima series? People that did, still remember who was responsible for the series. He may have lost his way since then, but anyone who classifies those as "failures" is demonstrating their ignorance and bias to the world.
Wow! The guy releases one game that didn't have mass appeal and everyone hates him now. Okay U8 was nothing special either, but this guy has an amazing average on games. Give him a chance.
He made amazing graphical RPG's when computers didn't have much capability to do graphics. Then me made the first big graphical MMOG when most people didn't even have dial-up connections yet. What the hell have YOU done?
Lots of people quoted me. Please don't take what I said out of context. What I said wasn't meant to be about world hunger. I'm trying to make fun of Lord British for thinking Farmville is an innovation. It's only an innovation from the viewpoint of making a profit. The idea behind it is to gain an audience whom otherwise wouldn't play games. The reason I'm against this is because I believe it creates more games that aren't designed for the gamer but for the masses. Games that appeal to the masses usually suck (I think some games with mass appeal are pretty good like Modern Warfare). Maybe Richard can make the game that appeals to the masses and doesn't suck. I just highly doubt it if it's of the RPG genre.
Comments
Well its not like this is the first time someone thought that a deeper and more interesting facebook game would be a good thing. Its the new "blog", the new "twitter", the new myspace/facebook social network. Its not revolutionary. Its just casualizing and making it accessible, basically the same thing that has been happening in gaming since 1980. We've been seeing things moving in the direction of social networking for years. Its a natural step and I'm glad to see Richard getting into it. At least that might save us from a few more years of farmtown and cafeworld before something meaningful comes to that platform/style of games. He brought us the first big step into graphical MMOG's and I don't see why he won't make a meaningful impact in this new area as well.
I imagine he'll meet with solid success. Facebook-style apps done right is where the money's at, and it's where you're going to entertain the largest group of people.
Honestly I had an interview Friday at Zynga for a game design position and found myself saying some similar things. Particularly the notion that you can create a deep gameplay experience without making things so complicated that there are barriers to entry (because barriers to entry are functionally barriers to fun.)
Chess is a simple game. You can explain it to a 6 year old. Yet despite being really easy to learn, it's a very deep game which you can spend years learning and never fully master. Facebook games currently have the "simple" thing down pretty good, but they need to work on the depth part of things. And with so many very skilled designers entering the space, I think it's likely we'll see some awesome games in the next few years.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I've been asking myself if there is some inside joke here that I'm missing but I'm going to have to assume that you weren't joking.
So now I'm going to have to ask you...what are you doing about it and do you waste time playing games when you could be fighting world hunger? It seems incredibly hypocritcal to bash other people for playing a game (any game) when there are people suffering from lack of food and yet you yourself are pissing away valuable time posting on a gaming site and presumably (because you are on this site) you yourself play games.
What do you do in your games? Do you collect equipment to put on your characters? Well you know all those poor suffering people you mentioned? A lot of them lack decent clothes to wear. And yet there you are spending your time collecting clothes that don't exist. For shame! I hope you feel guilty about that.
Thank you for posting that response. I couldn't have said it better.
I will be sad if he spends the next few years creating "deep" facebook games that 80 million people only play while bored at work.
Naw, his new game will be like Fallout 3, but set in a medieaval fantasy setting. It will come out for consoles first, PCs second.
Well shave my back and call me an elf! -- Oghren
Good luck Mr. Garriott.
See you in the dream..
The Fires from heaven, now as cold as ice. A rapid ascension tolls a heavy price.
I've been asking myself if there is some inside joke here that I'm missing but I'm going to have to assume that you weren't joking.
So now I'm going to have to ask you...what are you doing about it and do you waste time playing games when you could be fighting world hunger? It seems incredibly hypocritcal to bash other people for playing a game (any game) when there are people suffering from lack of food and yet you yourself are pissing away valuable time posting on a gaming site and presumably (because you are on this site) you yourself play games.
What do you do in your games? Do you collect equipment to put on your characters? Well you know all those poor suffering people you mentioned? A lot of them lack decent clothes to wear. And yet there you are spending your time collecting clothes that don't exist. For shame! I hope you feel guilty about that.
Thank you for posting that response. I couldn't have said it better.
More like, thanks for posting that response. I couldn't have cared less about world hunger or those people.
How many delicate flowers have you met in Counterstrike?
I got a case of beer and a chainsaw waiting for me at home after work.
He looks younger than I thought that he would be.
So a browser game that looks like Ultima Online?
Hmm, technology sure has gone a long way since 1998.
Well, good luck to Mr. Garriott and his future endeavors.
All those memories will be lost in time, like tears in the rain.
This is exactly what happened. He has great ideas, but he is unable to flesh them out completely. He must have ADD or something. He can never see any one thing to completion. Everything does is just...almost. But not quite.
That said, the combat system in TR was second to none for FPS-RPG style combat. I've never played anything (FPS) that was that much just pure fun. But then, FPS was never really my thing, so my opinions might be skewed.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
WTF? No subscription fee?
This is exactly what happened. He has great ideas, but he is unable to flesh them out completely. He must have ADD or something. He can never see any one thing to completion. Everything does is just...almost. But not quite.
That said, the combat system in TR was second to none for FPS-RPG style combat. I've never played anything (FPS) that was that much just pure fun. But then, FPS was never really my thing, so my opinions might be skewed.
I hate to argue semantics. But TR wasnt 1st person, and for the VAST majority of gamers it was NOT fun gameplay. It had its good points mixed in with a huge majority of bad points.
Again, this game is 1 of the largest commercial failures in the gaming industry history. It was, the most expensive game ever created to that point and it failed in 1 year. Richard Garriot recieved a bigger paycheck from that game than any lead developer ever. It was completely his baby, and it will live in infamy as 1 of the worst major productions ever released. I am glad you liked it, but your not going to convince people it was "secretly good" because a huge number of gamers tried it in open beta and hated every bit of it. I have played MANY free MMos that were vastly superior in almost every way.
I not even going to mention the fact that once the game was released he litterally stopped developing it at all. He dumped his "vision" in the hands of underlings. He got his HUGE paycheck and walked away(or was fired depending on who you believe.) NCsoft took a HUGE loss after he siphoned away $ after $ and NCsoft had to finally put a deadline on the project or he would have continued to siphon away.
The man is now known FAR more for his failures than he is for a sucess that was only partly his.
maybe after this time he will STAY in space
This is such a wonderful quote.
These are like facebook games? He's right, I dont get it.
Play some of the Facebook apps before making such ridiculous statements.
Worst designed games on the planet, all designed to keep you occupied 24/7.
For anyone with a life, these games are jokes. I tell anyone who plays them, time to get a life.
I think Richard is done, I have not seen one innovative idea from him in a long time.
This is exactly what happened. He has great ideas, but he is unable to flesh them out completely. He must have ADD or something. He can never see any one thing to completion. Everything he does is just...almost. But not quite.
That said, the combat system in TR was second to none for FPS-RPG style combat. I've never played anything (FPS) that was that much just pure fun. But then, FPS was never really my thing, so my opinions might be skewed.
I hate to argue semantics. But TR wasnt 1st person, and for the VAST majority of gamers it was NOT fun gameplay. It had its good points mixed in with a huge majority of bad points.
Again, this game is 1 of the largest commercial failures in the gaming industry history. It was, the most expensive game ever created to that point and it failed in 1 year. Richard Garriot recieved a bigger paycheck from that game than any lead developer ever. It was completely his baby, and it will live in infamy as 1 of the worst major productions ever released. I am glad you liked it, but your not going to convince people it was "secretly good" because a huge number of gamers tried it in open beta and hated every bit of it. I have played MANY free MMos that were vastly superior in almost every way.
I not even going to mention the fact that once the game was released he litterally stopped developing it at all. He dumped his "vision" in the hands of underlings. He got his HUGE paycheck and walked away(or was fired depending on who you believe.) NCsoft took a HUGE loss after he siphoned away $ after $ and NCsoft had to finally put a deadline on the project or he would have continued to siphon away.
The man is now known FAR more for his failures than he is for a sucess that was only partly his.
I believe you are arguing for the sake of arguing, without actually trying to understand what I said.
FPS-RPG style really is just a description of the style, and you can call it Third-Person-Shooter if it makes you feel better. However, my point was not that it was "secretly good," and in fact I did not enjoy the game as a whole. There was nothing meaningful to do, and the entire world fell flat. It felt like one big shooter arena with nothing to back it up. But then, telling me that the VAST majority of gamers did not enjoy the gameplay does not really matter in relation to my point. I don't care what the VAST majority of players think about anything. When I say something, that is my opinion on the subject, because I am not any final authority on games. Neither are you.
I never tried to argue that it was a good game, or that it should not have failed, because I think it was a bad game, and I am glad it failed. Its failure might serve to show developers that you cannot create an MMO around one thing (in this case the combat system, which I maintain was highly enjoyable to me, even if it was the only enjoyable thing in the game - I hope that is more clear for you) and ignore the rest of the game and fail to implement anything else worthwhile.
I would never argue that Garriott was a good person or a good designer. He only does anything halfway, or less than halfway. I did say that he had good ideas, but he cannot flesh them out to reality for whatever reason. You might not like anything about TR, but I think the idea behind the game was quite good, and if nothing else, I am glad someone tried to do something different. But that does not mean the game on the whole was terrible. This is because once Garriott did enough to get paid, he stopped caring and he stopped working. That is what he does, and that is what he will do on the new game.
So, I think we all know the story of Garriott, and the failures that he helped create. But I do not think you needed to rant about things that most people know about, and that I never argued in the first place. I am sorry if you are quite upset by TR or Garriott for whatever reason.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
WTF? No subscription fee?
Honestly if he makes a game that's like Runescape + Ultima Online, especially with a graphics update, I'll play the shit out of it!
"The question that sometimes drives me hazy: Am I, or the others crazy?" - Albert Einstein
He's not. He's making an updated version of Mob Wars.
You may not get it, but 81 Million active monthly users do.
http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=102452128776
Do you know anything else about DICE, where this interview takes place?
Do you know where ALL developers are going?
The casual market, where the money is. WoW, believe it or not, isn't casual enough for most people. You know why Facebook app games "suck ballz"? They're new! Kinda like how games started with PONG and got better? Does no one remember history?
Am I saying it's not simple or not fully developed? No. Of course it's simple stuff that looks bad compared to your typical blockbuster PC title.. But then again, I doubt you paid attention to anything in that interview.
It's a stepping stone. Sweet Ass Poker is about showing how a web designed game can look just like one installed locally on your machine. Simple games get people who DON'T game (Which is the vast majority of people, despite what you may think) into the market. After that, you step it up. You give them something with more difficulty and more complexity, or they go and seek it if they have the desire too.
As, again, said in the interview, not everyone will make the switch from simple games to more complex ones, but it' just like any other product - No one will buy what you sell if you can't even get them to try it for free. Did we mention it was free? How many of those 81 MILLION players do you think actually played games before Facebook, let alone something persistent like Farmville? How many of them do yo think are now paying MONEY for a FACEBOOK app? Enough to make the game profitable, apparently.
Am I saying what game he makes is going to be great? No, because I have no clue what his plan is. I'll make that decision when the time comes. But making small, simple games that attracts large amounts of people is a hell of a way to get funding for a startup. And if technology improves, and he can make an MMO that looks and feels like a local install, only it runs on a browser, I don't see that as a problem.
To say that his approach is flawed shows an incredible lack of understanding about the current state of the games industry. He does get it, the numbers back him, and in time, weather or not you like the approach, for better or worse, it's where EVERYONE is going. Small apps like this are cheap to develop, it draws in more people, have room to grow, and are, for all purposes, a great "gateway drug" to more complex games.
Sorry, but that's just the way it is.
All that chump needs to do is "UO2" with current tech, all the UO stuff and something on top and he's hit gold.
oh well RG had his prime time with Origin Systems, and its over now for quite a while.
He needs to retire , his name wont save him again with another fail such as TR
Garriott will go wherever there is anyone gullible enough to back him. Seems to me since the EA days he has always put personal profit above pretty much anything.
Richard Garriott needs to go back to making single player role playing games, and not facebook games or browser games. I know there are those who don't agree, but Tabula Rasa had some excellent game play elements involved in it. The FPS aspect of an MMORPG along with doing away with the Everquest fighting style for a machine gun/sword going nuts kind of warfare was such a refreshing change to the genre. What got in the way was what always gets in the way of problems caused by Garriott: His ego. Whenever he takes himself out of the game and lets the game play as it does, the game is a great game. The more involved he is, the more Richard Garriott we see and the less Lord British we experience. What killed Tabula Rasa was really a few simple problems: Lack of higher end content and a bad vision from the company that was controlling the purse strings. I stopped playing the game because I felt like I was playing it alone, not because it wasn't a fun game to play. They did nothing to advertise it, and when I started hearing about it (while playing it), it was to make this stupid connection between the game and RG's space flight ("we're saving the universe by bringing a disk with everyone's name on it from the game"...really?).
There WAS a story within Tabula Rasa that actually got me to play it in the first place. That opening cut screen in the beginning sold me on the game. I WANTED to be in that world and kick some alien butt for what they did to our world. That's the thing with RG and his games; he gets you really interested in the universe he creates. Story has never really been a problem. Of course, after that, there was really little left to do because he wasn't the creative designer, just the lead and that meant others were going on autopilot while he was cashing paychecks.
The Ultima series is why RG will always be famous. The story line of that series was powerful and ground-breaking, often putting it at direct odds with some of the other biggies in story at that time so you'd end up with geek-off contests between those who loved FF and Ultima, convinced theirs was the greater story universe. Some of the game play elements he incorporated into the Ultima series were groundbreaking. The story was wonderful (surprisingly, there are a lot of people who played Ultima Online who haven't a clue what the story behind Britannia is, although there are those, including me, who are as guilty while playing WoW, even though they enjoy it).
I know a lot of people like to just hate on things, but as much as I despise the attention seeking RG does, I can separate that from the fact that he is one of the greatest game designers of our time. It's funny how there are people who refuse to admit that, because they like another game better, or didn't like his games personally. Personally, I hope he manages to do great things with whatever games he creates in the future, because the more good games that are created the better off all of us are because it gives us access to fun games and it forces the crappy designers out there to up their game a bit more on the next thing they work on.
My blog:
http://www.littlesarbonn.com
This is exactly what happened. He has great ideas, but he is unable to flesh them out completely. He must have ADD or something. He can never see any one thing to completion. Everything does is just...almost. But not quite.
That said, the combat system in TR was second to none for FPS-RPG style combat. I've never played anything (FPS) that was that much just pure fun. But then, FPS was never really my thing, so my opinions might be skewed.
I hate to argue semantics. But TR wasnt 1st person, and for the VAST majority of gamers it was NOT fun gameplay. It had its good points mixed in with a huge majority of bad points.
Again, this game is 1 of the largest commercial failures in the gaming industry history. It was, the most expensive game ever created to that point and it failed in 1 year. Richard Garriot recieved a bigger paycheck from that game than any lead developer ever. It was completely his baby, and it will live in infamy as 1 of the worst major productions ever released. I am glad you liked it, but your not going to convince people it was "secretly good" because a huge number of gamers tried it in open beta and hated every bit of it. I have played MANY free MMos that were vastly superior in almost every way.
I not even going to mention the fact that once the game was released he litterally stopped developing it at all. He dumped his "vision" in the hands of underlings. He got his HUGE paycheck and walked away(or was fired depending on who you believe.) NCsoft took a HUGE loss after he siphoned away $ after $ and NCsoft had to finally put a deadline on the project or he would have continued to siphon away.
The man is now known FAR more for his failures than he is for a sucess that was only partly his.
Never played the ultima series? People that did, still remember who was responsible for the series. He may have lost his way since then, but anyone who classifies those as "failures" is demonstrating their ignorance and bias to the world.
Wow! The guy releases one game that didn't have mass appeal and everyone hates him now. Okay U8 was nothing special either, but this guy has an amazing average on games. Give him a chance.
He made amazing graphical RPG's when computers didn't have much capability to do graphics. Then me made the first big graphical MMOG when most people didn't even have dial-up connections yet. What the hell have YOU done?
Lots of people quoted me. Please don't take what I said out of context. What I said wasn't meant to be about world hunger. I'm trying to make fun of Lord British for thinking Farmville is an innovation. It's only an innovation from the viewpoint of making a profit. The idea behind it is to gain an audience whom otherwise wouldn't play games. The reason I'm against this is because I believe it creates more games that aren't designed for the gamer but for the masses. Games that appeal to the masses usually suck (I think some games with mass appeal are pretty good like Modern Warfare). Maybe Richard can make the game that appeals to the masses and doesn't suck. I just highly doubt it if it's of the RPG genre.