Lord British leaving the Throne?

Hello.  I found this while reading the same mailing list from which I steal so much material (I care more about that than being sued by the NY Times).  I´m not sure what "Today" means regarding the article's date, but it is surely near July 16, 1999.

From: "Joshua Rowan" <xxxxxxx@worldnet.att.net>
Subject: Richard Garriott

The following article was in today's New York Times. The title alone was enough to send shundders through me when I saw it. This is a must read article for every Ultima fan, so I hope you all take the time to do so:

START:
A Designer's Farewell to His Fantasy Realm
By J.C. HERZ

George Lucas isn't the only auteur who's been working on the same fictional universe for 20 years. In the lesser-known realm of computer games, Richard Garriott is the artistic marathon runner whose creations have sustained generations of rabid fans over the decades. As the creator of Ultima, the longest-running fiction in digital media, Garriott has tended his vision from the dawn of the PC era to the wired world of sprawling multiplayer online games.

Like the Star Wars trilogy, Garriott's computer games have evolved technologically. When Ascension, the ninth and final chapter in the Ultima saga, arrives this autumn, Ultima's fictional realm of Britannia will unfurl on computers that are 266 megahertz or more. But the underlying themes have always been compelling enough to make the story viable, even when computer speeds were in the low double digits.

The son of an astronaut and an art teacher, Garriott, 38, learned to program in the age of teletype (in the ur-Ultimas, graphics meant a 10-by-10 grid of asterisks for walls, spaces for corridors, dollar signs for treasure and fearsome alphabet letters in place of orcs, goblins and trolls). Systems were primitive, but they were sufficient to mimic the fantasy role-playing games of the time, which were also based on paper.

There was an affinity between Dungeons and Dragons and early computer games. Both allowed brainy teen-age boys to construct detailed, rule-based fantasy worlds filled with monsters, treasure and heroic conflict. Both took place largely in the player's imagination. Together, they spawned a dedicated
underground culture -- and the young Richard Garriott, a k a Lord British, ruler of Britannia, was an avid, card-carrying member.

The first Ultima was a product of this era: a medieval hack-and-slash game with simple graphics, programmed on the state-of-the-art Apple II while Garriott was 19 years old and a computer store clerk in Houston. "The manager saw some of the games I'd done," Garriott recalled, "and said, 'These are as good as some of the stuff we're selling. Why don't you put them up on the shelf?' So I put them in the cutting-edge packaging of the time: floppies in plastic bags. And one of those floppies made it off the store wall to a publisher in California."

The publisher called and offered to fly him out. "I signed a piece of paper, and they started sending me money," he said. "The company sold about 30,000 copies, and my royalties were about $150,000. For a high-school kid, for a few weeks' work, that's pretty good."

The next two Ultimas followed in quick succession. "That was my learning-to-program era," Garriott said. "Ultimas 1, 2 and 3 were about mastering Basic, then figuring out it would work much faster in assembly
language and teaching myself assembly language." The content was perfectly suited to the entertainment needs of a 20-something fantasy game fan: more monsters, more treasure, more hacking, more slashing, better graphics.

While Ultima was evolving stepwise, Garriott's life was changing in leaps. There were big 20-something decisions about moving out of the house, buying a car, dropping out of college and teaming up with his brother, Robert, to found a company, Origin Systems (now a part of Electronic Arts). Next to these real-life risks and responsibilities, medieval hack-and-slash seemed all too predictable, even pedestrian.

"I got bored with it," he said. "And at the same time, I was getting these letters calling me the antichrist because there are people who associate Dungeons and Dragons with devil worship. And while I certainly don't think I was corrupting America's youth by producing this stuff, I had to sit down and consider the ethical implications."

Ultima IV was a coming-of-age story, both for the designer and for the players. In the game, there was lots of combat. But you couldn't go around indiscriminately killing people. You couldn't slaughter villagers, ransack their houses for treasure and rack up experience points (a winning tactic in Ultima 3). Or rather, you could, but that made you public enemy No. 1, and the villagers would attack you. And needless to say, no one would help you.

You were accountable for your actions. If you shortchanged a blind old hag behind a shop counter, she wouldn't give you a crucial piece of information later in the game because you were a dishonest creep. It wasn't enough to be stronger than anything that crossed your path. Your character, the Avatar,had to attain and embody virtues like honor, spirituality and sacrifice.

Ultima IV was a true throwback to chivalric legends (in contrast with Dungeons and Dragons, which, despite its Arthurian trappings, embodies conquistador values: explore and pillage). Artistically, it was a huge risk;
in 1985, ethical consequences were a new frontier in game design. Arguably, they are still a new frontier in 1999. But the risk paid off for Garriott and company -- Ultima IV was Origin's first best-selling game.

For the last 15 years, Ultima has been a game where ethics made sense, not for their own sake but because what goes around comes around. There have been consequences for shady actions. Every new title has been a
chance for the player to test himself against this universe and to see its story unfold.

But alas, even the best stories must end. In the forthcoming Ultima Ascension, the first thing you learn is that this is your last journey into Garriott's fictional world. When this story ends, the Avatar can never go
back. So the whole adventure is tinged with a certain wistfulness. For some people, this is the end of a 15-year relationship.

That air of finality enhances the emotional impact of the story. It also transforms the game play. In Ultima IV, you had to be more than a wandering marauder. In Ultima Ascension, you have to be more than a hero who swoops in to solve problems when things go wrong. You have to teach the people in that world how to survive without you, giving them the tools they need to sustain themselves. At the end of the game, you have to leave Ultima behind. This is your last challenge as a player.

It's also Garriott's last challenge as Ultima's designer. To ascend from his own fiction, he has to leave behind a living world. Ultima Online (Origin's first and only networked Ultima) was a means to this end: a persistent
universe populated by 125,000 players, all capable of doing favors and holding grudges and sustaining their own dramas in a larger community, sans Garriott. With Ultima Ascension, the designer sees himself out, closing the door quietly and leaving his players to their own devices.

Lord British has left the building.

END

I'm not even sure what to say about this article. I hope the writer doesn't
know what he's talking about when he implies that Garriott is leaving Origin
at the end of Acsension. After all, what about UO2? And UO3? And UO4?????

Joshua Rowan

Humm, please can anybody get for me any more details on this possibility? Thanks.