Ultima Forever in Chip PowerPlay

Courtesy of Dominus (from the Exult team), the Ultima Codex is pleased to present scans of select pages from the various Ultima-related features in this month’s issue of Chip PowerPlay. We knew these articles were coming, of course, and Dominus was kind enough to offer up his summary thoughts on the three relevant features from it: an interview with Richard Garriott, a retrospective look at Ultima 4, and an interview about Ultima Forever.

Dominus was also kind enough to provide a summary, in English, for those of us who can’t speak or read German.

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Power Play magazine, Issue #1, 2013 – This is the first issue of the magazine after being out of print for over a decade.

First article: A brief introduction to Richard Garriott and the history of his games and Origin. It includes a lengthy description of Ultima 3 and of course Ultima 4, which is very much praised. They also show, in a series of screenshots, which games they think were influenced by the early Ultimas. [These include Ogre Battle, Final Fantasy III, and Dragon Quest. — WtFD]

Ultima Forever article: They begin with telling of the cursed Ultima titles after Ultima 9 (mentioning that both Ultima Online 2 and Ultima X: Odyssey didn’t make it). This is their opinion, of course, and it makes for more drama. They also include a special small feature on Odyssey, concluding that it was axed because EA was worried that it would take too many players from Ultima Online (and that, eventually, WoW did that).

The more interesting part is where they write that Paul Barnett has been developing Ultima Forever for several years now with a small team, and how his major effort has been to keep management from “killing his baby”, that his team had to beg Ray Muzyka to put in a good word for their projects to keep EA from killing it. The magazine hopes that it doesn’t bode ill that Muzyka has left the company since then.

The second page finally begins to describe U4E. Probably nothing new there, but I’m not keeping up to date with what is known about U4E. [And I can’t speak a lick of German, nor read it, but given the length of the article and the proximity to both his GDC Online talk and the interview in Australia’s PC PowerPlay, it stands to reason that Barnett probably told the same tale in this interview as he has been telling elsewhere. — WtFD]

What’s interesting is that it is intended to be free-to-play title, but they aim to finance the game by selling goodies. Mostly visual things and smaller time-saving stuff, but nothing major to keep it fair for those that can’t afford to pay up.

The article concludes with the expressed hope that the Ultima curse will be broken.

Interview with Lord British:

1. Whether he has anything to do with U4E: No, he hasn’t, but he would still like to see them doing a good job with it, and see it be successful.
2. How relationship EA and LB is at present: The known fact that they were in very loose talks about maybe doing something together in the far distant future, but nothing came out of it…yet.
3. Are there more former Origin people at Portalarium: Garriott points out Dallas Snell and John Erskine are there, and says that the company is made up of half veterans and half newbies.
4. How the Ultima sounding “Ultimate RPG” came to be: It was the working title for Ultimate Collector, and the name stuck. It started out that he talked with a TV production about collectors and that name came up. He liked it and took it for Collector, and then realized that it could become the title for many of their planned games. It was not intended to sound so close to “Ultima“.
5. Target system of URPG: Tablet, although whether this will be iOS, Android, or Windows Mobile is not yet decided. There will definitely be a later release for PC, and maybe for smaller smartphones as well.
6. How URPG compares with other Portalarium games that have, up to now, been only casual titles: They took the easy route of establishing basics (client code, server code, account systems) with simple casino games. Then avatar-related stuff and inter-player trading systems for Ultimate Collector, and after all that is established and proven it will be time to develop “the big thing”. This saves money since underlying code alteady exists, and they are also able to earn money off the other games while developing URPG. [They just updated Port Casino Poker, actually. — WtFD]
7. What will URPG look like: This has not been decided. Maybe old-school and more sophisticated than classic Facebook titles. Definitely not a modern shooter look-alike. The game will be aimed at a mixture of former UO players and current Facebook game players.
8. How does he aim to appeal to new and casual players: Easy gameplay without long installation and study of the handbook required. It will be possible to play for just ten minutes instead of hours-long MMO raids. But it is still going to offer a much deeper experience than the common social MMO.
9. Besides fights and quests, will there be trade/craft: Here he gives a longish answer, mostly that he still thinks most MMO players want to be fighters, even though he admits that in UO there were a lot of people avoiding fights and instead engaging in trades and other stuff. He points out that the first successful Facebook games were farm and coffee shop games. So there probably will be trade and crafts in URPG.
10. About how many old gamers don’t trust the “free to play” games, and/or fear to be nagged constantly about buying stuff and getting friends to play as well: Lord British asserts that he is just such a gamer, so he is aiming to find a good and fair way to make money off the game through in-game purchases. (Personally I’m looking forward to see how both U4E and URPG are going to handle this.)
11. Why enter into a partnership with Zynga, when they are known for their annoying nagging: Garriott states that the answer has already been given in other interviews he has done.
12. Why is LB trying to sell his manor: To build a new and even more awesome manor.
13. What perspective did LB gain from his visit to space: He saw himself as an environmentalist but realized that he was a bad one, using too much water, energy, fuel and producing too much waste. He now wants to be part of the solution instead of the problem. For example, Austin is aiming to reduce their waste production to zero, and he is spokesman for a group that is giving advice to Austin in this matter.
14. Do you think computer games are still important: He is playing more than ever, especially on his smartphone (no brand mentioned). Not even visiting space did change that. [In previous interviews, Garriott has mentioned owning an iPhone. — WtFD]

In my opinion, it’s a very good interview. My apologies for not having the time to fully translate it for all of you. I have tended to be very critical of Lord British in recent years, sometimes thinking that he is too lofty. This interview presented him as being more down to earth than I had thought.

The magazine did a great job in these three articles; I’m rather impressed. They didn’t get everything right (claiming that the Worlds of Ultima games were the last ones not set in Britannia, for example) but that is hard to achieve anyway; the more you write, the more mistakes you make.

You can order this issue of the magazine online, both in print or as a download.