ultima online

  • Ultima Online’s 25th anniversary

    Hours Categories Game talk, Gamemaking
    Comments 7 Comments

    Well, twenty-five years is a long time. Half a life, in fact!

    Given that I actually started work on UO on September 1st 1995, it’s actually more than half. The fact that the game is still running is a testament to the devoted community and the ongoing maintenance over the years from countless people.

    I note a lack of thinkpieces and articles, this time around. The fact of the matter is that the most frequently targeted gamer audience wasn’t born when UO came out. A lot of the folks streaming about games weren’t born yet either.

    I saw a post on Reddit yesterday that asked “how come no other MMOs have done open world housing, besides ArcheAge?” Ah well….

    In many ways the influence of UO is so pervasive that it isn’t visible. Whether it’s Runescape, Minecraft, Eve, DayZ or Neopets, those younger folks probably played something that was inspired by UO in some fashion, and don’t realize how big a shift from prior games it represented. These days, when people say they are sick of crafting being in everything — it makes me want to apologize a little bit. Won’t apologize for games that let you sit, decorate a house, or go fishing, though.

    I’m running low on specific stories about UO and its development, so instead, I’ll just point back at older ones:

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  • Sandbox vs themepark

    Hours Categories Game talk
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    I just watched a couple of videos about sandbox vs themepark games (in particular one by NerdSlayer and another by Josh “Strife” Hayes)… One thing that struck me about the ways players often talk about this (because at this point the history is so old) is that people think of sandbox as the older version of MMOs, and themeparks as newer. But that’s not right – sandbox is not the older form.

    Sandboxes are the evolution of themepark MMOs, not the antecedent.

    Part of the reason why this isn’t clear is because most players today haven’t played what themeparks were originally, back on the text virtual worlds called MUDs that led directly to MMOs. Given that I suspect I am partly to blame for these two words having currency in the first place, I thought I’d put in my two cents.

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  • Micael Priest

    Hours Categories Misc
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    Portrait of Micael Priest by Sam Yeates

    Really broken up over the news that Micael Priest has passed away. Such a sweet man, so ridiculously talented and totally a symbol of an Austin that has faded away.

    He did the early art — like, most of it in the early days before we had an art team — for Ultima Online. He was a famed poster artist for Armadillo World Headquarters, rendering inked versions of Zappa and Willie Nelson and countless others in a detailed, hatched and stippled, bold cartoon style.

    He was colorblind — I still remember when he thanked us for letting him know that he had made green people for UO by accident. I remember when he defended us during the run up to alpha, when Richard came to complain about the artwork in the game that Kristen and I had put in as placeholders until we got the real work, and Micael said “it’s not programmer art… it’s designer art! So it’s better!” I also remember walking into his office one day and being surprised by the presence of Peter Yarrow (of Peter, Paul, and Mary fame); I fled in the presence of one of my heroes, and he told me after, “you should have stayed, I’d have introduced you!”

    I thought of him often, but we had lost touch, because I am lousy at staying in touch with people. He wasn’t active online, and these days notifications are what passes for friendships. During UO crunch we all lived in each other’s pockets for months on end, and then… distance, and time.

    It’s hard to imagine such a vital presence gone, but he leaves behind so much work, such a stamp on Austin culture. There was even a Micael Priest Day declared by the mayor, long ago.

    Today also comes the news that Threadgill’s World Headquarters is closing; Micael’s art hangs all over the walls. Everything becomes ephemera, I suppose, to be auctioned off. We are left with the memories of smiles and warmth, of talent, and the unmistakable twinkle in his eyes.

  • New book POSTMORTEMS

    Hours Categories Game talk, Gamemaking, Writing
    Comments 3 Comments

    POSTMORTEMS book coverMy new book Postmortems is now available at various booksellers. The print edition ships on the 26th. Various sites may have the ebook already, some may not just yet.

    This is the first volume of a projected three that gather together many of the essays and writings that I have been sharing on this blog over the last several decades. This book focuses specifically on games I have worked on, from LegendMUD up through social games, and is a book of design history, lessons learned, and anecdotes. Richard Garriott was kind enough to write a foreword for the book.

    It’s not a memoir or tell-all; the focus is on game design and game history. There’s still nowhere near enough material out there in print covering things like the history and evolution of online worlds (MUDs especially), in-depth dives into decisions made in games by the people who made them, and detailed breakdowns of how they worked. So I hope that this will be useful to scholars and designers, and that players might find it a fascinating glimpse behind the scenes. Just don’t expect salacious stories and secrets.

    Those of you who have been reading the blog for a while will find much in there that is familiar; if you have ever wanted the SWG postmortem series in book form, here it is in expanded form. If you have ever wished that the various articles on the UO design were gathered together, here they are, along with new chapters covering things like all the things we tried doing to curb excessive playerkilling. If you ever wondered what happened with Metaplace, this is how you find out, as there’s a new and extensive postmortem. Many blog commenters make cameos in footnotes.

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  • UOForever livestream

    Hours Categories Game talk
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    I spent a lovely few hours on UOForever yesterday, wandering around and seeing what UO looks like for the first time in fifteen years. Much of that time was spent doing a livestream where I told tales of UO’s development, and showed off pictures out of my design sketchbook from back then, many of them things that no one has seen publicly before.

    It was a real trip to wander around Trinsic and point out art of mine that is still in the game, the rippled terrain that I still remember painstankingly making, and seeing objects that still act the way I coded them two decades ago (though of course, UOForever actually reimplemented everything themselves).

    Here’s the video:

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