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More videos like this please! Learning more about individual designers not only pushes back on an industry that actively tries to hide them, but also helps explain why some games are designed a certain way. Sometimes it's just a quirk of the designer.
I’m an archivist, and processed the papers of a gamer that worked at the yearly haunted houses that Lord British used to throw at his castle/mansion. The scripts were incredibly detailed and the entire event was massive-multiple crews for set design, construction, acting, etc. As a longtime larper myself, it was seriously impressive for a short-term event.
Pretty surprising that they wouldn't mention the most accomplished game designer of all time, Tommy Tallarico. But maybe they'll do a Designers You Should Know episode on him and correct the oversight.
@@SharurFoFI have my doubts. Tommy is a musician, not a designer. On top of that, his accomplishments are debatable at best and plagiarized at worst. And then there's the Amico... A better video idea would be on Ken and Roberta Williams, now there's a power couple in gaming history.
@@Toonrick12 I can't believe you would slander the good name of Tommy Tallarico like that. Surely an examination of his many Guinness World Records should put any doubts you might have about his accomplishments to rest.
Speaking of changing the space, basically every MMORPG after Ultima Online and before WOW called their servers "shards", either officially or unofficially (that is, some didn't use the term, but it was so much ingrained in gaming culture at the time that players, magazines and fansites used it anyway). That too came from UO: Origin wanted to tie it to the overarching lore of the Ultima series, and give an in-universe explanation of the existence of different servers with different populations of players and occasionally different vibes as well (some were more role-play oriented, some others were more action/dungeon crawl-y). So they retconned the end of Ultima 1 and say that Mordain, U1's big bad, had enclosed Britannia's/Sosaria's universe in a crystal to rule over it, and his defeat caused the crystal to shatter in uncountable shards each containing a different version of the same world. (Edited for the ungodly amount of typos. Never write a post after midnight during festivities where booze flows abundant, kids)
And many of the already wild individual stories get even wilder if you look into them further. He shot a science-fiction short film while he was on the ISS. It's titled Apogee of Fear and was written by Tracy Hickman.
I was playing MMOs almost exclusively in the 00s, Lord British was a name you just knew. I remember the hype around Tabula Rasa and the whole roll out. It's a shame because it's sensibilities appealed to my tastes and I wasn't a huge fan of the WoW mold. But it being a shooter pushed me away and then everything else. Maybe it was just my interests but he seemed like a larger than life Rockstar just in general it was weird to me that my non gamer friends didn't know 😅
Great timing. Yesterday I started practicing an easy harp arrangement i made (and that needs a bunch of changes as i found out) of Stones. The song features in quests of multiple Ultima games and is one of Lord British's favorites. But what makes it really nostalgic for me is that it's the title melody of Ultima Online.
I met Richard twice online. I had gotten into MUDs in 1988 and by the mid-1990s, I was running part of a significant MU* community. My team developed code based off Richard Bartle's work and Lord British, as one of the many programmers representing a game company, attended our events. In fact, I am still friends with some of those people despite no longer being in the industry.
I absolutely missed any Shorts you make. I do not like youtube's presentation of them and will not watch them. So making a longer form video of any you're especially proud of will definitely reach people like me.
I worked for Richard for a few years on Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues at Portalarium. Seeing this video got me really excited. It is extremely cool to get a deep dive on his career and all the interesting history. Thank you for doing this! I dig this video format a lot.
I watched as he died, in game, on Ultima online... it was a massive deal and how the dev's reacted.. changing the story of the game... was genius. I still play UO on a private server, its a OG original game.
I can't think og a better person for the inaugural episode of this series. Ultima is such an important keystone in gaming history. I always wondered where the name Lord British came from though. That's delightful!
I honestly had to do a double take...I was literally just listening to the Ultima Underworld ost, saw this video, and thought I was imagining things. First game I beat start to finish, still have a complete boxed version on my shelf. Thanks for this!
That's weird. I remember the word avatar from the original Deities and Demigods, published in 1980. Page 75 "Probably the most difficult concept this mythos presents, at least in AD&D terms, is that of the “avatar’’. An avatar is a physical manifestation of a deity upon the Prime Material Plane. An avatar usually has lesser powers and a different appearance than the deity it has sprung from. Avatars often represent one particular aspect or side of a deity, and may have been created to perform a specific function. A deity may have several avatars simultaneously co-existent, each one different and uninvolved with the others. Vishnu, in particular, has many avatars."
I didn't know he was fired while he was up there sprinkling Scotty's ashes. That's kind of hilarious. - "I'm up her promoting our new game (among other things...)" - "You're fired!" - "For the other things?" - "No"
It's sad to hear sad news with Garriot's last kickstarter but we have to realize that it's part of Game designer's journey like him that he took. He had made some flops but he also had made some great successes.
Should probably do Robert Woodhead and Andrew Greenberg next. Otherwise known as the mad overlord Trebor and the evil wizard Werdna, they made the first Wizardry game.
"Look guys, we put the face of our game in space. Like and buy our game, also he's fired. See you never Lord British, wait did we say we would bring him back down too? Darn we did, uh, that's going to be a problem."
I'm gonna be honest, Tabula Rasa was awesome and I loved it. The problem was that NC Soft is a BAD COMPANY and they had one of THE WORST game designers try to step up to the plate after they got upset with how exacting Garriott was with making his video games. The developer in question? Statesman, AKA Jack Emmert. This was the jerk who allegedly had a shouting match with one of the other developers on City of Heroes over the infamous update which lost them half their player base. He essentially said that the players were idiots who will play whatever they put out and that it was HIS game to decide what to do with, and anyone who doesn't like it can leave. Guess what? They did. I still mourn Tabula Rasa because they did something VERY innovative in allowing you to CLONE your character whenever you reach a new class split, so you can explore every class in the game by making a clone for each one and instead of losing all progress, you just continue from the "save state" of that class decision. It was really good.
The Early Ultimas were designed purely by using the Rule of Cool and were a weird mess of fantasy and sci-fi. Ultima 4 was where he finally figured out how to actually design a game with a consistent theme.
I am a little amused that you didn't bother mentioning the Lord British Postulate: "If it exists as a living creature in an MMORPG, someone, somewhere, will try to kill it." According to TV Tropes: The name references the fact that there is a way to murder Lord British in nearly every Ultima game.
Lord British's assassination in Ultimate Online is a legendary event in video game history. He forgot to turn on his invulnerability while testing something in UO and somebody figured out his protection was down and whacked him.
RIP Tabula Rasa, one of many sacrificed by NC Soft on the alter of "it's not as big as our Korean MMO therefore it's a failure". Yes I'm still bitter about City of Heroes, why do you ask?
Design is such an important part of making games, but we need to be honest, it is vastly overrepresented when talking about game devs. There are so many roles that are equally important, including all the design that is left to be filled in by the person actually building the thing. I don't want any less spotlight for designers, but damn it'd be nice if artists and engineers that are working so hard would get some spotlight too.
Ah, Lord British: the only character in Ultima VII (besides yourself) that *doesn't* die when you cast the Armageddon "Vas Kal Corp" spell (but he'll quickly hunt you down to punish your ass for Thanos-snapping Britannia)
Since you touched on NCSoft they had another game that came out around the time of WoW, City of Heroes, a superhero MMO that I fell in love with. You could do the episode on dead IP properties, since they closed down City of Heroes unexpectedly and had difficulties when dealing with fan servers.
Garriott is basically a has been out of touch hack who was at the right place at the right time. Watching his career is a bit like seeing Metallica. From potential to greatness to disappointment to embarrassment.
Look no further! You can go Ad Free on Nebula go.nebula.tv/extracredits AND you can watch episodes 24 hours early too! Or head on over to Extra Credits Live go.nebula.tv/extracreditslive Where you can see episodes of our weekly live content now!
Thanks for watching!
Keep up the good work ❤❤❤
More videos like this please! Learning more about individual designers not only pushes back on an industry that actively tries to hide them, but also helps explain why some games are designed a certain way. Sometimes it's just a quirk of the designer.
Anyone ever makes fun of LARPing, remind them one can LARP themselves right into orbit.
lightening bolt!!!!
Larping will always be special to me
zug zug
I’m an archivist, and processed the papers of a gamer that worked at the yearly haunted houses that Lord British used to throw at his castle/mansion. The scripts were incredibly detailed and the entire event was massive-multiple crews for set design, construction, acting, etc. As a longtime larper myself, it was seriously impressive for a short-term event.
5:45
Ah, Tabula Rasa, home to one of gaming's greatest characters: Gareth Gobulcoque
Typo in the thumbnail ;)
Alas, to be deigned
Wait, the immortality drive was part of a game promotion????? That's, forgive the word, BONKERS.
BONK!
5:32 - another was tommy tallarico. he was on cribs. multiple times! his mothers very proud.
Pretty surprising that they wouldn't mention the most accomplished game designer of all time, Tommy Tallarico. But maybe they'll do a Designers You Should Know episode on him and correct the oversight.
@@SharurFoFI have my doubts. Tommy is a musician, not a designer. On top of that, his accomplishments are debatable at best and plagiarized at worst. And then there's the Amico...
A better video idea would be on Ken and Roberta Williams, now there's a power couple in gaming history.
@@Toonrick12 I can't believe you would slander the good name of Tommy Tallarico like that. Surely an examination of his many Guinness World Records should put any doubts you might have about his accomplishments to rest.
5:32 Nah, I’m pretty sure Tommy Talarico was on MTV cribs because he was the first American.
His Mother is very Proup
You should do an episode on John Romero. Make sure to mention that time he married a Romanian teenager.
Speaking of changing the space, basically every MMORPG after Ultima Online and before WOW called their servers "shards", either officially or unofficially (that is, some didn't use the term, but it was so much ingrained in gaming culture at the time that players, magazines and fansites used it anyway).
That too came from UO: Origin wanted to tie it to the overarching lore of the Ultima series, and give an in-universe explanation of the existence of different servers with different populations of players and occasionally different vibes as well (some were more role-play oriented, some others were more action/dungeon crawl-y).
So they retconned the end of Ultima 1 and say that Mordain, U1's big bad, had enclosed Britannia's/Sosaria's universe in a crystal to rule over it, and his defeat caused the crystal to shatter in uncountable shards each containing a different version of the same world.
(Edited for the ungodly amount of typos. Never write a post after midnight during festivities where booze flows abundant, kids)
I will forever love UO but this man is real sketch
Do Ken&Roberta Williams next!
We have to get this man to become an actual lord of England
And many of the already wild individual stories get even wilder if you look into them further. He shot a science-fiction short film while he was on the ISS. It's titled Apogee of Fear and was written by Tracy Hickman.
Two of my favorite designers with Tracy as a writer? Checking it out next.
As a child of the 80s, I played a lot of Ultima on my Commodore 64. And Ultima 4 was one of my favorites.
I was playing MMOs almost exclusively in the 00s, Lord British was a name you just knew. I remember the hype around Tabula Rasa and the whole roll out. It's a shame because it's sensibilities appealed to my tastes and I wasn't a huge fan of the WoW mold. But it being a shooter pushed me away and then everything else. Maybe it was just my interests but he seemed like a larger than life Rockstar just in general it was weird to me that my non gamer friends didn't know 😅
Wing Commander is long overdue for a remaster and/or remake.
Last I heard Howie Day was still working on an indie remake of the first Wing Commander - it's called Wing Leader.
Great timing. Yesterday I started practicing an easy harp arrangement i made (and that needs a bunch of changes as i found out) of Stones. The song features in quests of multiple Ultima games and is one of Lord British's favorites. But what makes it really nostalgic for me is that it's the title melody of Ultima Online.
I met Richard twice online. I had gotten into MUDs in 1988 and by the mid-1990s, I was running part of a significant MU* community. My team developed code based off Richard Bartle's work and Lord British, as one of the many programmers representing a game company, attended our events. In fact, I am still friends with some of those people despite no longer being in the industry.
Deigners you should know
I doubt the maker of the thumbnail would deign to respond.
I absolutely missed any Shorts you make. I do not like youtube's presentation of them and will not watch them. So making a longer form video of any you're especially proud of will definitely reach people like me.
I will never stop getting Richard Garriott confused with Richard Garfield.
Which is to say, you should totally do him next just to confuse matters.
I keep getting Steve Jackson the tabletop game developer mixed up with Steve Jackson the other tabletop game developer.
I worked for Richard for a few years on Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues at Portalarium. Seeing this video got me really excited. It is extremely cool to get a deep dive on his career and all the interesting history. Thank you for doing this! I dig this video format a lot.
I watched as he died, in game, on Ultima online... it was a massive deal and how the dev's reacted.. changing the story of the game... was genius. I still play UO on a private server, its a OG original game.
so that's where Lord English gets his name!
I feel like we need to do an entire series of great devs. (Literally had to fight an ad to type this.)
My nostalgia watching The Spoony One talking about Lord British kicked me in the heart
I can't think og a better person for the inaugural episode of this series. Ultima is such an important keystone in gaming history. I always wondered where the name Lord British came from though. That's delightful!
I did not fall Shorts of the Algorithm tyvm, I use my subscription feed as god intended.
I honestly had to do a double take...I was literally just listening to the Ultima Underworld ost, saw this video, and thought I was imagining things. First game I beat start to finish, still have a complete boxed version on my shelf. Thanks for this!
"He might own part of the moon. But that's a story for another time."
WHEN? WHEN could there possibly be a better time?
That's weird. I remember the word avatar from the original Deities and Demigods, published in 1980. Page 75
"Probably the most difficult concept this mythos presents, at least in AD&D terms, is that of the “avatar’’. An avatar is a physical manifestation of a deity upon the Prime Material Plane. An avatar usually has lesser powers and a different appearance than the deity it has sprung from. Avatars often represent one particular aspect or side of a deity, and may have been created to perform a specific function. A deity may have several avatars simultaneously co-existent, each one different and uninvolved with the others. Vishnu, in particular, has many avatars."
Love that y'all are doing "Designers you should know"
I didn't know he was fired while he was up there sprinkling Scotty's ashes. That's kind of hilarious. - "I'm up her promoting our new game (among other things...)" - "You're fired!" - "For the other things?" - "No"
Oh man UO was my first Mmo. Awesome episode.
It's sad to hear sad news with Garriot's last kickstarter but we have to realize that it's part of Game designer's journey like him that he took. He had made some flops but he also had made some great successes.
This man is nuts, but in that way that makes it enjoyable.
I cannot stress this enough... I want this guy's life
Ooo a Extra Credits Christmas gift. ❤😊
More of this format please and thank you. :D
Should probably do Robert Woodhead and Andrew Greenberg next. Otherwise known as the mad overlord Trebor and the evil wizard Werdna, they made the first Wizardry game.
I remember playing Ultima online paying by the minute phone fees. Didn't play that much out of fear for getting reprimanded for the phone bill.
There used to be a great retrospective of the Ultima series by TheSpoonyOne if you remember that fella, even had Richard later in some videos.
Garriot's life story is something most of us only dream about. Getting canned while in space though, that's douchebaggery of the highest order.
I'm playing Ultima Online right now!
Well, a heavily modified version on a private shard called UO Outlands, but...
Now THERE'S a name I haven't heard for a while :)
"Look guys, we put the face of our game in space. Like and buy our game, also he's fired. See you never Lord British, wait did we say we would bring him back down too? Darn we did, uh, that's going to be a problem."
I had cracked version of autoduel for c64 signed by Lord British. Good times.
I'd watch this series! I can't say I'm certain it has staying power but I'm certainly interested
0:01
Some of us still use the sub-feed.
Finding anything useful on youtube now a days is impossible.
From RPGs to real-life quests, Lord British proves that life itself can be the ultimate adventure! 🚀🎮🌕
didn't mention my favorite factoid. He programmed Ultima, in raw binary
Algorithm? Shorts? I was notified of this by Patreon, thank you very much.
I remember seeing his MTV Cribs video, Cool house
3:33 did he just say "while meanwhile"?
I wonder why they didn't mention his new MMO, shroud of the Avatar?
Who does not know Lord British? :-D
I otherwise knew of Lord British from Zero Punctuation review of Tebula Rasa
What a legend
I'm gonna be honest, Tabula Rasa was awesome and I loved it. The problem was that NC Soft is a BAD COMPANY and they had one of THE WORST game designers try to step up to the plate after they got upset with how exacting Garriott was with making his video games. The developer in question? Statesman, AKA Jack Emmert. This was the jerk who allegedly had a shouting match with one of the other developers on City of Heroes over the infamous update which lost them half their player base. He essentially said that the players were idiots who will play whatever they put out and that it was HIS game to decide what to do with, and anyone who doesn't like it can leave. Guess what? They did. I still mourn Tabula Rasa because they did something VERY innovative in allowing you to CLONE your character whenever you reach a new class split, so you can explore every class in the game by making a clone for each one and instead of losing all progress, you just continue from the "save state" of that class decision. It was really good.
Were back!
The Early Ultimas were designed purely by using the Rule of Cool and were a weird mess of fantasy and sci-fi. Ultima 4 was where he finally figured out how to actually design a game with a consistent theme.
Damn you guys should start a channel talking about important history figures or somethin
LOVE YOUR CONTENT! YOU'RE THE BEST ❤❤❤❤❤
I am a little amused that you didn't bother mentioning the Lord British Postulate: "If it exists as a living creature in an MMORPG, someone, somewhere, will try to kill it."
According to TV Tropes: The name references the fact that there is a way to murder Lord British in nearly every Ultima game.
Lord British's assassination in Ultimate Online is a legendary event in video game history. He forgot to turn on his invulnerability while testing something in UO and somebody figured out his protection was down and whacked him.
RIP Tabula Rasa, one of many sacrificed by NC Soft on the alter of "it's not as big as our Korean MMO therefore it's a failure". Yes I'm still bitter about City of Heroes, why do you ask?
ive been to sca events on his land
*Deigners
Double takes "DEIGNERS YOU SHOULD KNOW."
Ah yes Deigners in the thumbnail
I'll be shocked if they dont get the Specter in one of these.
Uh oh, Misspelling in the thumbnail... Time to change it.
Can we get an episode on Jeff Minter?
Looks like there's a typo in the thumbnail and "designer" is mispelled.
Made me think of the Lord British Space Fighter from ygo, any relation?
All hail the algorithm!
Why does the thumbnail say Deigners and not designers? XD
is that homestuck reference?
Your thumbnail says "Deigners you should know" not "Designers" lmao
you have a typo in your title card!
Your thumbnail has a typo.
Design is such an important part of making games, but we need to be honest, it is vastly overrepresented when talking about game devs. There are so many roles that are equally important, including all the design that is left to be filled in by the person actually building the thing. I don't want any less spotlight for designers, but damn it'd be nice if artists and engineers that are working so hard would get some spotlight too.
Someone fumbled the thumbnail.
Ah, Lord British: the only character in Ultima VII (besides yourself) that *doesn't* die when you cast the Armageddon "Vas Kal Corp" spell (but he'll quickly hunt you down to punish your ass for Thanos-snapping Britannia)
I did not know any of this
Deigners?
i dont see anyone else talking about it, but there is a typo in the thumbnail
Me? It was the short
Lord British was the proto-basement dweller's Jfk
To me, being very honest, in the end, he is just another multi millionaire…
Since you touched on NCSoft they had another game that came out around the time of WoW, City of Heroes, a superhero MMO that I fell in love with. You could do the episode on dead IP properties, since they closed down City of Heroes unexpectedly and had difficulties when dealing with fan servers.
I am the mysterious third option. The subscriber
wait... I can't subscribe unless I pay money????
Too bad he turned into a web 3 crypto scammer
i am rather insulted your 2 examples of how we might find this video are
shorts & 'by chance'
mate 'some of us' are subbed. :(
Made a scam game on SoTA. Such a shame.
You Mean the spacefighter?
Sorry bad yugioh reference, I'll leave now
Garriott is basically a has been out of touch hack who was at the right place at the right time. Watching his career is a bit like seeing Metallica. From potential to greatness to disappointment to embarrassment.