Ultima Forever at GDC Online: Reimagining a Classic

The GDC Online schedule has been updated with details about the Ultima Forever “post-mortem” that BioWare Mythic’s creative director, Paul Barnett, will be hosting.

SPEAKER/S: Paul Barnett (BioWare-Mythic)
DAY / TIME / LOCATION: Wednesday 3:30- 4:30 Ballroom E
TRACK / DURATION / FORMAT / AUDIENCE LEVEL: Design / 60-Minute / Lecture / All
GDC VAULT RECORDING: Video
DESCRIPTION: Revisiting one of the most beloved RPGs of all time, Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar, with a new free-to-play and online rendition is no easy task — especially under the scrutiny of the seminal game’s fans. But senior creative director Paul Barnett and his team at BioWare-Mythic rose up to the challenge with Ultima Forever, which completely modernizes the 27-year-old game with a new look, new controls, new features, and a new business model. Barnett will deliver a talk on Ultima Forever, sharing what went right and wrong while attempting to bring the classic Western RPG into the 21st century. Art thou humble?
ELIGIBLE PASSES: All Access Pass

Sounds interesting!

Note also that the term “post-mortem” is a highly misleading one, and is thankfully not used in the description above. In a game development context, a post-mortem is typically something held once a game completes its development and ships, although the popular understanding of the term would lead the casual listener to believe that the game under discussion might instead have been cancelled or shut down. But clearly that’s not the case here, and I think we can all hope that the holding of a post-mortem signals that the game is nearing a completed state!