Richard Garriott wants to do a Ultima-4-like-mobile game

What about a nice mobile scifi RPG that dosen't include one or more Avatars ^^?

Edit:
Something more dystopian. Somewhere down the line for bladerunner for example?

 

I'd rather the dev(s) would focus on a single project at a time than spreading themselves too thin.

I would personally hate to see another kickstarter project before SotA's episode 5 was ever completed.

 

Honestly, I might have more seriously considered investing myself if something along these lines had been part of the publicized plan in moving forward.

 

Mobile games are rather cheap.
I doubt they would have to do a KS for it.

 

Relatively speaking, sure, but I wouldn't put it past them to do a KS. They'd still need to pay for a dev a team or are you suggesting that they should pull someone from the SotA team to do it?

It's not uncommon for developers (or even film makers) to start thinking of other projects while working on their current project and I think that this is what RG is doing. That's not to say that they should start working/investing on it.

 

The more important issue would likely be the diversion of human resources away from the current project. I would say they would need a kickstarter (or venture capital) simply to secure a separately funded team to work on the project.

 

That's why there is an Seedinvest.
To become a publisher. I guess that would go hand in hand, wouldn't it?

 

If that were the case, they wouldn't be doing a KS for SotA's following episodes. For them to fund following episodes (and this new idea that RG had) by themselves, Episode 1 would need to do amazingly well among the people who haven't bought a copy of the game yet. The way I understand their transition to publisher is that they need further funding to be able to protect their IP; that requires money and diligent eyes.

 

What ever. Let's agree to disagree because there is no point in discussing it. It won't happen anyway.

So let's focus on something everybody really wants and that was already mentioned in one of the streams! Where is my SotA merchant app!?

 

Publishing also offers another advantage in allowing more product diversification. Not just addtional games, but also things like merchandising, books, and mefia programming.

Historically, it's tended to be a huge liability for companies to focus on only one product at a time, since that ties their production schedule to a one-to-one correlation with their financial schedule and gives stakeholders a huge amount of leverage against them to make unreasonable, possibly unsustainable, demands that can work against making a great game rather than supporting it.

Product diversification gives more "cushion" against outside pressures, which ends up resulting in better focus to each project rather than less.

 

You know what might work as well? An Pen and Paper RPG or an tabletop skirmisher.

 

I could just be weird, but personally I'd be more inclined to buy something like that than a golden house.

 

The pen and paper could be distributed as PDF, it's pretty common theses days. Saves a ton of printing/publishing and shipping costs.
A tabletop, even if it's "only" a skirmisher is a different kind of beast of course. Even with the tech out there at the moment i guess the minimum investment to get it started and keep it going would be roughly 1Mil USD. So thats probbaly off the table ^^
But one can dream.
Sight...i miss Mordheim hehe.

 

It is called a tablet bud. Join 2017 with the rest of us.

 

Several Ultima games have you play with a party, not all are just the avatar alone.

You could try any of them on a DOS Box just out of curiosity. Personally I find 4 to 8 to be the best era (although 8 is single-character only).

Also, just because you only have one main protagonist it (in some of the games) it doesn't mean you don't interact with NPCs that are also part of the story. Several good stories (in books, movies, etc) are told through the eyes of one main protagonist.

And finally, what do you mean by "at the time?" Was that in the 80's?
When the Ultima games came out there was no such thing as "story" in games basically. Richard brought us full-blown RPGs (although of course they may seem rudimentary for today's standards) in a time when what people knew as video-games was Pong or maybe at best those extremely simplistic early-Atari games.

If you go play the old Ultima games today comparing them to modern RPGs of course they'll feel old and their game systems dated. But I'd try them for the fun of experiencing video-game history.

It's like watching an old movie. You won't get that "wow" feeling of innovation the film induced when it came out, but knowing you're watching film-history and the context of its time might make for a good experience.

 

Yeah, I'd love to see them get into some smaller scale projects like apps and ebooks to get start getting additional revenue in with faster turnaround time and lower production costs that can in turn support the larger projects with increased funding and generated market interest.

Not everything has to be as epic as a new, unique MMO or a book deal with Tracy Hickman to be useful.

 

I could imagine it using some stylized, colorful graphics (more like Divinity: Original Sin) and ISO-view. A great, epic story, interesting NPCs, a party of heroes, tactical combat, deep quests with choices and real consequences on the world and its inhabitants.
A lush 3D world that motivates to explore it. Deep, challenging dungeons and interesting cities.

@Lord British, start development now!

 

I bet they could use the SotA assets to make a solid single player RPG.

 

@Lord British should also consider something like the Nintendo Switch approach. I don't mean development for Nintendo Switch but a game that can be played on PC and mobile devices. So when I have to leave the PC I just continue playing on my mobile phone with my save games up to date etc. Back home I continue playing on PC.

 

Especially books and short stories are missed opportunitys in my opinion.
We got a couple of damned good writers here. No need to hire Tracy for every line of text.