Update: Richard Garriott: "Most Game Designers Really Just Suck" Pages PREV 1 2 3 4 5 NEXT | |
I have never played any of his games, but I automatically despise any person who says "very few people are as good as me". I don't care if you're a world-class surgeon who has saved more lives than penicillin, you are an arrogant ass and I refuse to take your opinion seriously. Which is a shame, I thought his point about designers lacking specific academic formation was an interesting thing to consider. | |
But does he say this? does he come out, hold up his hands and say "yeah, Ultima 8 and 9 were a mess, its really EA's fault but i let down my loyal fans and i'm sorry" no he bangs on about how wonderful he is. The day the guy apologises for how badly he let down his fans is the day i start taking a non-negative interest in him. | |
you do realize that most games suffer not just because of their design, but also the alienating art, the shoddy coding and, most importantly, executive douchebags meddling in affairs they should not? I'm sure you had plenty of experience with the last two, Mr. Garriot, remember Ultima 8: Pagan and Ultima 9: Ascension? It's still an issue today, the shoddy coding is caused by execs rushing the games out for some holiday or something and the execs in the publishing biz are the biggest problems because they do stupid shit like that. Bigger evils, sir. P.S. This is an era where anything a famous man like yourself says impacts his business by a lot, be careful what opinions you voice to the public, sir. I did like your Ultima series up until EA stepped in an rushed 8 and 9 to hell, of course. I don't want to see any of your future projects to be impacted by an offhand thought. | |
He disqualified himselfe when he named Molyneux as a great game designer, among the undeserved arrogance. Oh and: "Whats a paladin?" | |
I'd say they should design games the way supermarket brands figure out cake recipes. That is, the tasters get the final say not the cooks. While story and setting is best left to an auteur, game mechanics are about experimentation and should be decided by tests. Otherwise, the designer with the most power will put his ideas in regardless of merit, QTEs and all. | |
LOL - oh Richard, please never change... As funny / ironic as this is coming from the guy responsible for the sandalwood box SNAFU in Ultima V I think it's probably fair to say that he's got a point. Captcha: head case. Indeed. But it's how you wear it that matters ;)
I dunno that he's really all that famous any more, outside a select group of PC RPG geeks of a certain age. I count myself among that group but as a lot of others have pointed out, what has he really done lately? And by lately, I really mean the past decade or more... | |
What an asshole. I won't say that you're a bad designer, but I think of at least a dozen designers off the top of my head who have more talent than you do. | |
While I am inclined to agree with some of his points, I feel less of this is legitimate thought for the industry and more thought at the expense of the industry to stroke his massive ego. Yes, Richard, you made a good game once. An excellent game, even. Revolutionary, in a sense. And then you made a shit game later and now you are just criticizing the industry. Games aren't going to thrive if we only get one good game every 20 years. Think of these game designers you seem to consider peasants to your lordliness as holding the industry afloat while you come up with something else to make. | |
The real problem is that there is no way to prove that you are a good designer if you aren't also at least a programmer. Who's going to believe you can come up with really fresh new ideas if it's practically impossible to show anything for yourself. Entry level jobs in design are basically data entry / QA, or Level Design. The best games are ones that run on fresh new mechanics, but how many thousands of people have an awesome idea for new mechanics and never get to do anything with it? | |
Now remember, we are not talking about great programmers like John Romero who could probably get Doom to work on the Apollo flight computer, or artists who create pretty looking things and intricate scripts with philosophical point. We are talking about game design. Things like amazing character design or writing, those are good, but they could work just as well in a film. The point is the GAME part. I'd give an example like Shigeru Miyamoto, although he hasn't done much variety over the past 25 years his games have consistently hung on the brilliance of the design rather than the plot or artstyle or graphical performance. Mario, Zelda, Donkey Kong, they've always been refined in the game design if nothing else. Legend of Zelda just had good design elements that games take for granted these days like items progression. And getting heart-meters from defeated bosses gave a constant reminder of progress. It was how you would gain items through a variety of challenges and the items you won would be used in new and interesting ways to continue, like fighting an enemy who uses the boomerang then use the boomerang to continue and to fight the next major opponent. Suda 51, now he is a compelling and engaging writer, has an amazing visual style to always make striking imagery but in terms of gameplay design.... well. Suda 51 games have always depended on non-interactive parts for their distinctiveness, it's how things look and what is said. Killer 7 is not remarkable for its game design but for its writing and art-vision. That's good and all, and he deserves all the credit he gets, but games are games. There needs to be innovation in gameplay otherwise it's a bit like having a movie which consists of the narrator readign from a Pulitzer prize winning novel. Yes, it's a good novel, it may even be read well, but film is a show don't tell medium, gaming is a DO don't show medium. | |
I have several issues with Mr. Garriots comment. First of all, he didn't meet any good designers? I met several good designers, several bad ones, many of them better than me, but many also better than Mr. Garriot. I mean, this guy invents a new alphabet and calls this "good game design". Well, that's nice and all, but it doesn't make you the best game designer ever. | |
Looks like someone has had dealings with Turbine, Inc. But still, "close to as good a game designer as I am" sounds just a little bit arrogant there, Mr. British. | |
As someone who would like to one day work as Designer, I've come across hundreds of courses for art and programming, yet not one for actual game design. I think, in this regard at least, he really has a point. | |
My guess is focus groups are the blame for that infamous example of Ultima fail, all the rage in the late 90's when it was made, to almost every business they touted the idea that you can make anything you do more popular with the public by simply taking random members of the public and tailoring the game to those few random people. Of course if you take a random population sample (lured in with the promise of free sandwich bar and some attention they crave) a heck of a lot are going to say "what's a paladin" when shown this game they hardly care about, they just want to be in out of the cold. Even if a proportion of the genuinely interested posed such a question, a good game designer would not have an established character ask that just because the player might be new. At least, not without establishing some amnesia plot-line. Or he would be creative as in "Well what do YOU consider a Paladin to be?" which doesn't betray the questioner's ignorance, only implies contradiction on what people see Paladins as. I speculate it was caught in the 3D trap. This may seem hard to believe but 3D development even that basic was extremely expensive back then, the expertise on animation and AI was very limited and expensive, but now you can get such software for free. Coming off the back of 2D games, you could make those almost like collage books, just draw pixel art and have it move around over pixel art backgrounds, all within Garriott's established capabilities. But a full 3D world was something else. So it was expensive, and tried to justify it with "broader market appeal". But he clearly lost sight of why he was even making a 3D Ultima game, it's one of the earliest examples of developers thinking they can dumb down to appeal to a wider audience yet somehow won't lose their established audience. And they don't appreciate what a springboard their established audience is. | |
Garriot is a decent designer but like many of the aging "superstar" designers from that generation is an arrogant egotistical twit with an overinflated sense of his own importance and abilities. That is why I didn't back his Kickstarter, or Molyneux's and only reluctantly backed the Elite Kickstarter. Also the only Ultima games i liked were the Ultima Underworld ones. That is my other concern, with the rise of indie gaming and crowdfunding, we are probably going to see another generation of egotistical "superstar" developers. But I'd rather have egotistical superstars producing good games than faceless, hostile corporations mass producing rubbish. | |
I could see people understandably having very knee-jerk reactions to Mr Garriotts statements but I for one agree with him completely. Every time I play a game and think "this part of this is crap why didn't they just do this" it's because whoever decided that it had to be that way designed it that way and even some of the best games I've played in the last decade suffer from design flaw, in a lot of cases even things I swear were solved in the decade prior. Graphics, animation, sound, AI, all the ingredients can be fantastic but if the design is still bad its a bad game. We do need smarter people working in the industry who are willing to not just take an established thing and have it redone a bit different. If we had better designers we'd have fewer boring tedious CoD, Halo and Gears clones. | |
SO he apperently has no logn tern memory and catn even remember what he said in the interview? | |
After Update: Maybe what he said in tone didn't transcribe so well in text. The point is this is his "Shtick" he went by the name Lord British for a while, it's expected for him to make grandiose statements about himself, not in total seriousness. PC gamer magazine is used to this sort of humour, it's where Charlie Brooker started his deadpan writing style. I can't really fault Escapist for having sensationalist headlines, it's kind of their job, but maybe some context, and I appreciate them adding the update. | |
Uhh, the original quote: But other than a few exceptions, like Chris Roberts, I've met virtually no one in our industry who I think is close to as good a game designer as I am. I'm not saying that because I think I'm so brilliant. What I'm saying is, I think most game designers really just suck, and I think there's a reason why." Escapist kind of left out the middle part of that quote when they cut it in half. As is standard journalistic practice if you cut a quote in half you don't have to include everything from in between. Even omit an entire sentence. See this is what Escapist posted:
Missing out the "brilliant" qualifier, as they are well within their rights, this is all above board, journalistic integrity, everyone does it, yadda yadda yadda. Escapist DID give a link to the original article, it's the done-thing to click through and give PC gamer the page view for the story that Escapist reported on. Also, any regular PC Gamer Magazine reader would know Garriott regularly uses hyperbole for humour not narcissism. He didn't go by the name "Lord British" for a long time because he really thought he was and wanted others to believe he was a Lord and Lord of Britain. It's bluster, it's all part of the fun. If there's any shortcomings with Garriott, it's not with how he describes himself. | |
Changes nothing. He is not brilliant. everyone else is still above them. therefore everyone sucks and he is still better than everyone else. | |
That's not how he feels at all: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-12-12-garriott-what-went-wrong-with-tabula-rasa His admitted to mistakes, but states that there were factors beyond his control. | |
If only there were someone with, say, $30 million to blow, knowledge of game design, and the belief that the state of education for game designing who could step up and create classes in game design... To bad there's no one out there like that... Richard Garriott. Just saying, rather than throwing stones around your glass house, you might instead put your money where your mouth is and try to improve the state of game design education. | |
Ultima was a pretty mind blowing, inspiring and strong IP. It sold so well he got to build himself a castle and do lots of rather odd things. Then, things changed. I don't think I played a game of his since... 1995. Yeah, I missed out on gems such as Tabula Rasa. Doesn't mean he's completely lost it, though. I'm absolutely interested in seeing what he comes up with now. If we're all lucky, it might be brilliant. | |
I was talking about the plot of Ultima I. And Ultima IV's virtues are at the least a bit weird considering the virtues are pitched by the same guy that kept a princess locked up in a dungeon to keep the location of his time machine a secret. And who gladly let you stab an unarmed jester to get his keys... Seems a bit hypocritical. (Guess it's an accurate representation of Lord British then!) | |
Well, plot of Ultima I isn't exactly ground breaking no. And the whole progression in the first trilogy is just weird. Though disappointingly this new project sounds like an online multiplayer game unless i'm much mistaken, which is what he detailed in his treatise so . . . can't say I'll be supporting. Maybe should get behind Tides of Numeria though | |
A lot does seem to rest on the decisions of the guy who says "So *this* is how it's gonna be." | |
In response to Mr. Garriot's response; It's hard to blame a headline of being "Sensationalist" when the headline in question is basically A DIRECT QUOTE OF WHAT YOU SAID. | |
EXACTLY. Yes, he communicated his point poorly and comes across as a tad arrogant, but this still holds true. It's a field that doesn't get enough attention, and it would be a good idea for the industry/academia to correct this. | |
That's because they were obviously too good to be remembered by any mere mortal. As others have said in various ways - Tell us how you really feel, Lord British. | |
I agree with him, although I don't think Ultima was that fantastic. I used to play it a lot but never finished any of the games, nor really got anywhere in them. I don't know if that's design or me being terrible at them. Probably the latter. | |
I don't see the problem. On the other hand, A LOT of games lately have been incredibly unimaginative and, yes, lazy. | |
Richard had beautiful laurels thirty years ago, and having played nearly the whole series, I feel he certainly earned them. They're still quite nice because he's been sitting on them for the last twenty. Okay, I read the update and it certainly isn't as inflammatory as the headline. On the other hand, I'm still sticking to my comment. | |
Thank-you, some interesting info there. I knew about the tortured production of U9 but not how he has the gall to be proud of it! Garriot made some spectacularly bad decisions after EA acquired Origin, taking on too many staff, starting too many projects at once. He practically forced EA to reign him in. I'll give him that he apologized for Pagan, but he didn't learn from it. He kept U9 in limbo too long with multiple redesigns just like he did for TR. If he wasn't such an auter and so obsessed with his own percieved genius perhaps he would make better games... | |
I definatly got a whole "John Romero is going to make you his bitch" vibe from this as well, right before Daikatana wound up blewing chunks. http://www.somethingawful.com/d/game-reviews/daikatana-demo.php That pretty much covers it. That said, understand a big differance here is that Lord British is one of the all time great game designers who had a lot more under his belt comparitively speaking than someone like John did. Without him we probably wouldn't have seen video games return the way they did, or see RPGs develop. Innovations Garriot largely pioneered are still pretty much boilerplate for industry game design right now... and the guy made enough money where he not only built himself a couple of crazy mansions where he threw apparently wild theme costume parties, but also was able to afford having himself shot into space.... that DOES put Lord British into a league all his own, and give him some right to talk crap. That said, whether he succeeds or fails, I think he's right. A lot of what he's said is very similar to what I've said in some of my other posts which have generally gotten negative reception for picking on the game developers rather than just the publishers. Truthfully I don't think he should have backpedaled, and honestly when the guy who pretty much invented the modern MMO as we know it says something, you should pay attention (and the key term here is "modern", "Ultima Online" was not the first MMO out there, before that we had things like "Meridian 59", "Kesmai", "Club Cairbe", "Dark Sun Online: Crimson Sands" and others, including some very elaborate text-based MUDs, but Richard was the guy who had the vision and skill to put it into the current persistant world scale that we see now, without UO it's doubtful other, now vastly superior MMOs ever would have existed). Ideally I'd love to have seen Richard's statements create some massive shake ups and firings within the game design community, with a lot of people going "you know, these designers we've got do kind of suck and don't do much new" and handing out pink slips while more talented people are sought or trained to replace them, but I doubt it will happen. Mostly all we're likely to see is an industry-wide circling of the wagons (if people even remember this) and people getting ready to counter-attack Lord British, rather than accepting that he does kind of have a valid point, and as gamers we've noticed EXACTLY what he's talking about, with the same games being constantly re-released with a few tweaks here and there. That said, I do wonder what Richard would say about the designers involved in some of these kickstarter projects like say the "InXile" team who I have my eyes on to pretty much spearhead the return of quality RPGs with "Wasteland 2" and "Tides Of Numinera". I'd also sort of suggest to Richard that he might want to see about hiring Cleve Blakemore for his design team. They guy managed to stick with a vision of creating an epic single player RPG for 17 years, which he's finally just now producing himself. Seems like attitude-wise he'd probably be a good fit. The lack of success on the "Indiegogo" campaign for the finishing touches (even if the game will come out anyway in May apparently) kind of makes me sad, as does the fact that the guy who did this claims to be employed as a Short Order cook. :P | |
I will keep this in mind for the future! | |
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