The original "Outcast" was a fine game for its time. It utilized
cutting-edge voxel technology that gave the game it's own unique look
and allowed it more subtle slopes than traditional polygonal maps
allowed. Its weird blend of sci-fi and fantasy helped it stand apart
from the usual space-marines-save-world storylines. It's mix of
shooting and open-world RPG weren't quite up to the standards that
"Deus Ex" set a year later, but were a developmental step for that
genre. It was a unique game that reflected all that was great about
its era.

And all that was terrible too. Limited save-points. Awful controls.
Dull worlds. Horrible writing. Visuals that weren't quite up to the
task of presenting a realistic world. Bad balancing and an uneven
difficulty curve. A lot of the quality-of-life features we take for
standard now were still be worked out back then, and it seemed like
"Outcast" made all the wrong choices.

"Outcast" received mixed reviews on release. The game, it was largely
agreed, was interesting in concept, but just not that enjoyable to
actually play. It floundered in the market, and - except for a few
die-hard fans, didn't make much of a mark. It became a historical
footnote.

Twenty years later, those fans pushed for a remake, and got one
("Outcast: Second Contact"). The visuals and controls were updated...
perhaps not to the standards of modern games, but far better than the
original. But what felt unique in 1999 was far less novel two decades
down the line, and - again - it failed to find an audience.

Yet, for some reason, it's getting a sequel and I have to wonder why.
Even after a kickstarter failed to amass enough interest, there's a
publisher still willing to pour resources into this money pit. Why? If
it's true to its origin, it's not going to sell, and if it goes in a
completely different direction, why bother paying for the IP in the
first place? There's not enough of a fanbase to make it worth the
price. If you're depending on nostalgia to bring you customers, you
need a property people are nostalgic for.

"Outcast 2" may be an excellent game (there's very little information
about it yet). But it just seems a really odd franchise to revive.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Am 15.08.22 um 04:38 schrieb Spalls Hurgenson:

"Outcast 2" may be an excellent game (there's very little information
about it yet). But it just seems a really odd franchise to revive.

I guess it is mostly about brand recognition, i could never get into
this game. But there might be potential.
I would rather love to see Ultima decently revived without Gariott at
the helm (he has lost it completely)
The series had so much potential left but EA first and then Gariott
second f*** it up entirely and it is slowly fading into obscurity.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Mon, 15 Aug 2022 08:23:36 +0200, "Werner P." <werpu@gmx.at> wrote:

Am 15.08.22 um 04:38 schrieb Spalls Hurgenson:

"Outcast 2" may be an excellent game (there's very little information
about it yet). But it just seems a really odd franchise to revive.

I guess it is mostly about brand recognition, i could never get into
this game. But there might be potential.

You'd think so... except I don't think - outside of some die-hard fans
- that the Outcast franchise has much brand recognition. It wasn't
that popular a game when it was new, and twenty years on? Almost
nobody remembers it.

It's like making a sequel to "Druid: Daemons of the Mind" (an
action-RPG developed by Sir-Quest in the mid-90s). There are better
things to put resources into than a license for ancient IPs that
nobody cares about except a tiny minority of gamers.

I would rather love to see Ultima decently revived without Gariott at
the helm (he has lost it completely)
The series had so much potential left but EA first and then Gariott
second f*** it up entirely and it is slowly fading into obscurity.

I've mentioned before that I used to be fanatic about the franchise.
(To some degree, I suppose, I still am). I've played all the games
save one (Runes of Virtue 2 on Gameboy), I've all the cheat-guides...
I've even read the novels (which were surprisingly good considering
they're based on a computer game). I cheerfully played Ultima 5 for
nine months straight, and consider Ultima 7 one of the best CRPGs ever
written. And there's a part of me that would like nothing more than to
see a revival of the franchise.

And yet...

For all its many (many, many, many*) problems, "Ultima 9" did bring
the franchise to a satisfying (if horrendously** flawed in
implementation) conclusion. Picking up after that is sort of like
trying to write a sequel to "Lord of the Rings" or "Dune"; it's
unnecessary and does nothing but weaken the previous narrative.

And games have changed since Ultima's heyday. I'm not sure that
wrapping the Ultima trappings around a modern CRPG would work all that
well. It would likely feel like some other game wearing the mouldering
skin of an old friend. Alternately, the game might be true to its
origins... but even as much as I love the classics, I don't think I
could endure a lot of the old-school nonsense that was part and parcel
of those original games.

Throw into that the aforementioned hamfisted handling of the license
by both Electronic Arts and Richard Garriot, and even /if/ there were
a revival, odds are high that the quality would be nowhere near what
fans expect. Do I really want to see Britannia poisoned with
microtransactions?

Plus - you may have heard me whine about this before - I've a
preference for the development of new IPs over the continuous milking
of the old. I'd rather developers be brave with original ideas rather
than hide behind the nostalgic shield of games-gone-by. Valor is a
virtue, after all ;-)

I will always love the Ultima games (I can even manage a few good
things to say about Ultima 9, and that game was just awful.***). But I
don't think digging up its corpse for another go is something I want
to see. I have my memories, and the old games are available should I
(or any curious youngsters) wish to experience them again. That should
be enough.


Well... except...

Maybe a remastering of Ultima 6? U6 is a great game, but it's
interface is a shambles. It's 90% inventory management with the
clunkiest controls ever. Keep everything else the same but let me do
proper drag-n-drop and I'll be happy. ;-)









------------------------------
* many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many,
many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many,
many, many, many problems
** horrendously, horrendously, horrendously, horrendously,
horrendously, horrendously, horrendously, horrendously, horrendously, horrendously, horrendously flawed
*** awful, awful ... look, you know what, you get the joke.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Am 15.08.22 um 17:17 schrieb Spalls Hurgenson:

Do I really want to see Britannia poisoned with
microtransactions?

Exactly that happened in the recent past. EA brought another Ultima 4
for mobile devices filled with loot boxes.
Gariott did storywise a sequel to U9 (parts of the planet where
Britannia was hosted was thrown into the galaxy and landed on another
planet)
But that one quickly deteriorated to the usual multiplayer whale fishing
mumbo jumbo Gariott has been hunting for years now.

Neither EA nor Gariott are willing to work on a decent single player
Ultima, both are just after the lootbox and online store money from players.
So by now I would say the franchise is dead in the water because both
parties having enough IP to revive it are not interested to bring out
any games, they just want to make quick bucks.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Mon, 15 Aug 2022 23:45:27 +0200, "Werner P." <werpu@gmx.at> wrote:

Am 15.08.22 um 17:17 schrieb Spalls Hurgenson:

But that one quickly deteriorated to the usual multiplayer whale fishing >mumbo jumbo Gariott has been hunting for years now.

Garriot, incidentally, is at it again, trying to push "Iron and
Magic", a blockchain based MMORPG.

Thou hast lost an eighth, Richard.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 16/08/2022 21:38, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

On Mon, 15 Aug 2022 23:45:27 +0200, "Werner P." <werpu@gmx.at> wrote:

Am 15.08.22 um 17:17 schrieb Spalls Hurgenson:

But that one quickly deteriorated to the usual multiplayer whale fishing
mumbo jumbo Gariott has been hunting for years now.

Garriot, incidentally, is at it again, trying to push "Iron and
Magic", a blockchain based MMORPG.

Thou hast lost an eighth, Richard.

Strange really as because of Ultima I'd assumed that he was one of the
good guys but now he just seems intent of fleecing his own customers.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 8/17/2022 12:57 AM, JAB wrote:

On 16/08/2022 21:38, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

On Mon, 15 Aug 2022 23:45:27 +0200, "Werner P." <werpu@gmx.at> wrote:

Am 15.08.22 um 17:17 schrieb Spalls Hurgenson:

But that one quickly deteriorated to the usual multiplayer whale fishing >>> mumbo jumbo Gariott has been hunting for years now.

Garriot, incidentally, is at it again, trying to push "Iron and
Magic", a blockchain based MMORPG.

Thou hast lost an eighth, Richard.

Strange really as because of Ultima I'd assumed that he was one of the
good guys but now he just seems intent of fleecing his own customers.

A lot of the "Big Names" in early game development that got all the
credit for classic games are not and never were "good guys". They all
had a second or a team that did the actual development of the game(s)
and made them such classics. And were promptly dumped by the Big Name
as soon as possible or left because there wasn't enough room left in the building for them because of the swollen head.

--
I've done good in this world. Now I'm tired and just want to be a cranky
dirty old man.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Wed, 17 Aug 2022 08:57:15 +0100, JAB <noway@nochance.com> wrote:

On 16/08/2022 21:38, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

On Mon, 15 Aug 2022 23:45:27 +0200, "Werner P." <werpu@gmx.at> wrote:

Am 15.08.22 um 17:17 schrieb Spalls Hurgenson:

But that one quickly deteriorated to the usual multiplayer whale fishing >>> mumbo jumbo Gariott has been hunting for years now.

Garriot, incidentally, is at it again, trying to push "Iron and
Magic", a blockchain based MMORPG.
Thou hast lost an eighth, Richard.

Strange really as because of Ultima I'd assumed that he was one of the
good guys but now he just seems intent of fleecing his own customers.

I don't think it's outright greed that's motivating him (although all
those trips to space and the Titanic and building and rebuilding
castle-like mansions probably has drained his bank account a bit, so
who knows; maybe he's desperate for cash?).

Rather, I think that Garriot is not really as big a genius as his
initial successes would have made him appear.

I don't want to diminish his achievements. He essentially self-taught
himself BASIC and used that skill to create several very popular (for
the time) video games. He then leveraged the profits from those games
to found a company - and attract the talent - that helped create a
number of classic titles that are still remembered very fondly to this
day.

But in the end I think he's still that self-taught college drop-out,
and a lot of his success is owed to the people he had around him
(people like Chris Roberts, Ken Demarest, Tom Chilton, Denis Loubet,
Dallas Snell, Warren Spector, and even his own brother, Robert
Garriot) more than to his own abilities. The last is probably the most important, since Richard himself seems to have all the business sense
of a toad, and is probably why he's so enamored with things like
block-chain.

Again, I don't want to dismiss Garriot's talents. He's a smart man,
but his areas of expertise are more technical than anything else, and
those talents were honed in the 8-bit era. He's imaginative too, but a
lot of the stuff he developed on his own - even as much as I love them
- are rather simplistic in tone.

Unfortunately, his early success had resulted in many putting him on a
pedestal and he's renowned as one of the greats old ones of computer
gaming. I think both he and many of his fans (some of who are in
positions of influence in the video gaming industry) greatly
exaggerate the man's abilities. His successes were made in a simpler
time, when development teams were counted in mere dozens of people and
sales of a few million dollars USD were considered blockbusters.

Would he be someone I want on my team? Maybe, but not in a leadership
role. The industry has changed in the twenty (thirty) years since he
was Hot Stuff; it's become more competitive, with games becoming much
more involved and the teams creating them much larger and complex.
Richard Garriot is not up to that task of leading them... if he ever
truly was.

But reputation will carry you far; thus, Garriot attracts people to
him to spearhead projects he thinks will be successful, and people
believe him. To the technically inclined, blockchain looks cool, so
why not incorporate it into a game?

TL;DR: Richard Garriot is a prime example of the Peter Principle.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)