f13.net

Interview with Lord British

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4xfrVUj_c0

Bit I found interesting is blame shifting for TR flop.

Summarize?

Not my fault, they made me do it.

He also voices interesting ideas by the end of the interview - I liked his "combatant" vs "non combatant" distinction. Too bad most of UO ideas got drowned in DIKU, it would be interesting to see that idea fleshed out and properly balanced.

Huh. I'm really skeptical about his talk about bridging the gap between "hardcore" and "casual" gamers. It sounds like trying to sell hamburgers to vegetarians. You can make a really tasty burger, the best burger in the world, but a vegetarian just isn't going to be interested.

Casual games, from all that I have seen, are defined by the people playing them, as people who are not hardcore gamers. Maybe the market is larger, but that market also has certain likes and dislikes. Make casual games. Great. But don't go all underpants gnomes and try to shoehorn unwanted casual aspects into hardcore games. Nor try to force casual gamers to become hardcores.

There will be some overlap. I liked to play Peggle and Bejeweled while waiting for a raid to come together  :grin:, but I've never spent a dime on casual games. I'm just not interested.

Having sued NCSoft over that game and won $28 million, he's entitled to shift blame.

A good summary of his "vision" and what he plans to do starts from the question the guy poses at approx. 29:45 and onwards.

I remember seeing copies of Ultima II in ziploc bags hanging from hooks in the toy store when I was 10 or 11.

He's probably not as incompetent as the last decade or so worth of public exposure makes him out to be.  But, I still don't think I would trust him to much as far as knowing what needs to happen next in gaming today.

So, basically he wants to remake ultima online with inspiration from Zynga.

To be honest, even with directives on high to sacrifice his baby, TR was almost a really good game. I had a ton of fun playing it, but toward the end of beta they added a lot of stuff that moved it away from the fun.

Not to mention that Garriott (and his team at NCSoft() talked about dynamic events in TR during the first incarnation of the product in 2004, then implemented them in the final version, well before Rift. Also, like I think I wrote once in the SWTOR forums, TR first tried to introduce a more heavily, "story-driven" idea, with deeper and more tailored instances (solo or group).

Sure, you can say that everything of the above was implemented VERY badly, but I'm merely trying to pass the idea that, with all his supposed wackyness and stuff, he always tried to push the envelope or, at least, trying to look at things in a different way.

FFXI would like a word.  :oh_i_see:

Wow, I totally forgot about those. The initial implementation showed a ton of promise, and it's definitely where Rift nabbed their implementation. It was a lot more random than the rifts, but they didn't have to worry about terrain deformation or anything, either. I played with a grenade launcher, as I do in most games that feature them, it was a hell of a lot of fun. There was one outpost in particular, out in the middle of nowhere wedges between a few POIs, that had a massive dynamic spawn table, even with a group it was brutal...but the loot table was also cranked up on it so everyone got decked out in some pretty awesome gear. Good times.

He knows what goes into a good game, but he kind of took a break from development between UO and TR, and he seems to not care what he missed in there. I think he needs to spend some time just being a developer for a while, working with others who understand this business more than he does.