V8 Ninja said:
Fair enough. Just remember, Richard; if the design of Shroud Of The Avatar is bad, the internet will never let you live down what you have just said. That includes myself.
I definatly got a whole "John Romero is going to make you his *****" 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.
