To make them to think twice before clubbing peasants who stood between them and a cool new sword, he had to convince them that they owned the body they inhabited. Still, telling players that they, not some made-up character, inhabited the game world was only the first step. Garriott dubbed Ultima IV's player-character the avatar, a Sanskrit word defined as a deity's human incarnation-the flesh-and-blood form they took when it became necessary to descend from the heavens and walk among their human subjects. Even though you, when you manifested in this world, might have gone from a skinny little computer nerd to a big, buff, heroic warrior, and maybe even changed genders, it was important that it feel like your soul, your spirit, inside your character so that you feel responsible for the deeds and actions your character performs." You couldn't be playing Conan the Barbarian. "It was important to me that you weren't playing a character. Characters in video games were just vessels used to encapsulate attributes and items. The first item on his to-fix list was the player-or, rather, the character they controlled. If players felt no compunction at misbehaving, he would have to scare them straight. Like a domino effect, this realization sparked another that set his imagination aflame. They were out to win and cultivate greater power. Their goal was not to free a land under the thumb of tyranny and oppression. In effect, players were treating his games like games. "There was something fundamentally wrong about their actions, but I couldn't really blame the players because they were doing exactly what the game has instructed them to do, or what the game seems to have encouraged them to do-even if not explicitly, then implicitly, through the game's mechanics, they were encouraged them to behave that way."Įqually disturbing was the fact that players who cleaved a bloody path through Ultima games made his games look tame. In video games, those who threw morals out the window got ahead much faster than those who played by the rules-just like in real life. To his horror, many players copped to killing off vendors so they could loot their shops with impunity.Īs confessionals stacked up, Garriott realized he was responsible for the unscrupulous actions of his players. When they needed gold, they admitted it was easier to bribe or steal than earn money killing monsters and looting crypts. In painstaking detail, these players explained that when the going got tough, they got nefarious. Garriott might have found the claims ridiculous and easy to dismiss if not for the methods that an alarmingly large percentage of his players seemed to employ. Every so often, religious zealots would write sternly worded letters complaining about the winged, horned demon that adorned the front of Ultima III's box, which they believed provoked the youth of America to run around killing goats and tendering bloody sacrifices to Satan. Looking past fans' tendency to play armchair general, Garriott took many responses to heart. but.' And then the rest of the letter, which could be anywhere from one paragraph to ten pages, is their personal diatribe of what was wrong in the game and what they would do to fix it." "When anybody writes to you about your game, it's usually one paragraph of 'Hey, I really liked your game, really enjoyed it. To his amusement, he picked out a pattern existent in nearly every missive. Receiving letters, postcards, and packages from fans directly was exciting. Garriott had written his previous games in a vacuum, handing in code to publishers and waiting for royalty checks to roll in. Tearing open envelopes and poring over the good, bad, and ugly of fan feedback was a new experience for him. "What was interesting about Ultima III being our first product was that when people had something to say about the game, good or bad, they could write in to Origin at our home address, and we began to get fan mail. Switching off the monitor, Richard Garriott rolled up his sleeves and dug into the mounds of unopened letters on his desk. In this chapter, a controversial scene in Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar pits Richard "Lord British" Garriott and his family members against each other as they argue over whether to keep the scene intact, or cut it from the game. The book chronicles the making of over a dozen groundbreaking PC games, featuring interviews with their developers and details how they went on to influence the games of today. Craddock, available in hardcover from Schiffer Publishing. The following excerpt comes from Break Out: How the Apple II Launched the PC Gaming Revolution by David L. Some content, such as this article, has been migrated to VG247 for posterity after USgamer's closure - but it has not been edited or further vetted by the VG247 team. This article first appeared on USgamer, a partner publication of VG247.
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