The Conquest of Origin

[protecyon]

If you would like to take a look at the original page visit this link:
https://www.celestialheavens.com/1129169917

[Angelspit]

Have you played any Ultima game? Or the Wing Commander games maybe?

[SirGalrim]

Don't say that name! T.H. It's evil to the bones!

[Psychobabble]

Yeah, played wing commander 1 & 2, great games back in the day.

[LindaG]

I always enjoyed the Ultima games (1-6, I think I played) even though I never finished one of them I always had fun. I especially liked the maps that came with them.

I don't care for T.H. and I don't like anything Electronic Arts has pulished since Earth Orbit Station or whatever it was called.

[Corribus]

That was a fascinating article - thanks for bringing it to our attention, Angelspit. As you know, the Ultima games were some of my favorite all-time, and it's such a shame that Origin ended up the way it did. Don't worry - those responsible will burn in hell.

[Caradoc]

I got hooked on gaming with Ultima III, backed up to (the surprisingly good) Ultima II and stayed on through VII. At that point I got sick of jumping around and killing things for lunch money, so I abandoned the series. Living in Austin, I was obligated to play WC1, and watch that crappy movie. On the bright side, I was able to wangle an invitation to Garriot's open house.



Back in 2001-2003, I worked in the building next door to Origin and a lot of us ate lunch at the same little restaurant. It was really pitiful to see these bright, idealistic, creative people demoralized by what was happening to their company. Many's the time I had dreamed about going next door to work, but by then the downsizing had begun and you knew the job you got would be one that someone better had been fired from. Austin lost a little of its soul when Origin died.
Edited on Thu, Oct 13 2005, 09:41 by charleswatkins

[Argonaut]

You can call me ancient... cos I played Ultima I, Wizardry I and later Might & Magic I and Kings Bounty. I used to live in Austin too, and had dropped by Origin on a couple of ocassions to talk to Chris Roberts and some of the other game developers. In those days Richard Garriot used to invite people to his house for Christmas Scavenger Hunt ... and he had a real dungeon in his home. Well those were the good old days.



Ultima, Wizardry and M&M started off as the best RPG that I've ever played. Strangely, the stories of their "rise and fall" are surprisingly similar. Consider this



1. All 3 games started small. Each game was designed and coded by single a single, brilliant developer who have lots of passion for the game. The developer also founded the company. Richard Garriot for Ultima, D.W. Bradley for Wizardry and Jon Van Canegham for M&M.



2. With an incredibly small staff, operating in some in some "home-based" setting, these games have extremely low operating cost and overhead. Because of the passion and zeal of these developer/founded who eat, sleep and breathe the game, they were exceptionally good. "Low Cost" and "High Quality" leads to "High Sales Volume", "High Profit Margin" and "Incredible Success".



3. All 3 games produces sequels... many sequels. The founder/developer tried to keep the staff small, but at some later point in time in time they found that a small staff cannot produce a game that is on par with the gaming trends.



4. To be competitive, RPG were heading to breath-taking graphics, great music scores and complicated story lines. These 3 companies started on massive recruitment and expansion, hiring an army of graphic designers, sound engineers, musicians, authors and more developers and testers. I am sorry to say, but the original founders of these 3 games, who were themselves excellent coders and testers were unfortunately not great project managers.



5. Because of their incredible success, all 3 companies attracted an aggressive sales and marketing force. They started pushing for fast game releases to generate enough profit to pay for the huge staff and high operating cost. Poor project management, increased complexity of the game, insufficient testing and the pressure to meet marketing datelines ... all these factors started to affect the quality of the games. Subsequently, these 3 companies started to release buggy games to meet advertised schedules, and produces many patches to fix the games.



6. These game started off with a strong, almost cult-like customer base who adore the game very very much (speaking from experience ) However, many sequels later, the quality of these games started dipping, and the number of bugs started increasing. I know that many of the hard-core rpg games (myself included) still continue to buy and play every single version of Ultima, Wizardy and M&M that were released. So the customer based of these games did not really decrease.



7. Then there is also the avent of FPS games (Doom, Duke Nukem and Half-life) and RTS games (Warcraft, Starcraft, AoE, AoM) with excellect graphics that compete with Ultima/Wizardy/M&M. Lots of new players are now drawn to FPS/RTS genre.



7. Ultimately, the sales of Ultima/Wizardy/M&N did not increase significant enough to support the large operating costs. All 3 companies started to incur losses and debts and these lead to their ultimate downfall and demise.



8. An interesting note here... of the 3 games, Wizardry creator D.W. Bradley did try to make a "come-back" via downsizing and started small again. However his latest creation, Dungeon Lords is a dismal failure and great disappointment. I bought the game this year amidst great expectation, and return it to the store the next day. Dungeon Lord is the first D.W. Bradley game that I return to the store after 30+ years of game playing.

[Mad Dog McKill]

And nobody mentioned a cool game like Crusader? Come on.. who can forget that armored soldier and those cutscenes.. thats something which is missing in the recent games.. real actors..

[mathfool]

The most important element of the downfall of these 3 game series was selling out in order to finance further growth. 3DO bought the M&M series from New World Computing, and it began a slow decline with MM6 (which was excellent) to MM9 (awful.) Richard Garriott sold out Origin to Electronic Arts after what I consider the pinnacle of the series, Ultima VII. Ultima VIII was ok, and then it was 5 years until the disaster Ultima IX. Wizardry continued to be made by Sir-Tech, but struggled to find publishers.

[CloudRiderX]

EA usually makes good games, but I guess not in this case. The made an ok LordoftheRings series in games. Fellowship stunk, Two Towers was okay, Return of the King is fun. The Battle for Middle Earth is a great game, its even getting a sequel. I've played a few sports games too.