Interesting prologue segment from The CRPG Book on Ultima IV and young players...

Hey folks!

I'm reading this great book at the moment called The CRPG Book. It basically sets out to map the history of CRPGs. There's a very interesting prologue piece by Michael Abbott entitled Unplayable. Ultima IV comes up and I raised my eyebrow.

I'm a huge Ultima fan and to me, some of the things mentioned here possibly reflect some of SotA's struggles with new players, NUE and retention. Fascinating as Ultima IV is held in very high regard. So without much further ado:

One of my most satisfying moments as a teacher came two years ago when 15 students overcame their resistance and disorientation and embraced the original Fallout. I wrote about that experience, and since then I’ve continued to challenge my students with games that fall well outside their comfort zones: arcade classics (e.g. Defender); interactive fiction (e.g. Planetfall); and early dungeon- crawlers (e.g. Rogue).

But I’ve noticed a general downward trajectory forming over the last six years or so. Gradually my students have grown less and less capable of handling one particular assignment: Ultima IV.

To be sure, they struggle with a game like Planetfall, but when they finally learn the game’s syntax (and heed my advice to map their progress), it’s mostly a question of puzzle-solving. Defender knocks them down initially, but they soon apply the quick reflexes they’ve developed playing modern games, and they’re fine.

Ultima IV is another story. Here’s a sampling of posts from the forum I set up to facilitate out-of-class discussion of the game:

“I’ve been very confused throughout the entire experience. I’ve honestly sat here for hours trying to figure out what to do and it just isn’t making much sense to me right now.”

“When I start a game I like to do it all on my own, but it’s been impossible to do so with Ultima. I’ve asked friends for help, looked up FAQs/ walkthroughs, and even searched for Let’s Play Ultima 4 on Youtube and I am still uncertain as to how to get further in this game.”

“Yeah, I still have no idea what the main goal is. I suppose it’s to basically find out what the purpose of the Ankh is. But I see no way of furthering that goal.”

“I tried for awhile without any walkthroughs to get the full gamer experience sort thing and within the hour I gave up because of a combination of bad controls and a hard to get into story for me at least. It reminded me of a bad RuneScape.”

“I don’t quite understand the concept of the game. I believe my main confusion is the controls and how it displays what you have done and how you moved. I’m not used to RPG’s and I don’t like them too much. I hope to find out how to move forward, but so far no luck.”

“How the hell do I get out of here after I die?”

They had five days to play U4, and I asked them to make as much progress as they could in that time. When we gathered to debrief in class, a few students explained how they’d overcome some of their difficulties, but the vast majority was utterly flummoxed by the game. As one of them put it, “I’d say for gamers of our generation, an RPG like Ultima IV is boring and pretty much unplayable.” After removing the arrow from my chest, I asked them to explain why.

It mostly came down to issues of user-interface, navigation, combat, and a general lack of clarity about what to do and how to do it. I had supplied them with the Book of Mystic Wisdom and the History of Britannia, both in PDF form, but not a single student bothered to read them. “I thought that was just stuff they put in the box with the game,” said one student. ​

"After removing the arrow from my chest" indeed!
Now I realise the games are light-years apart but I wonder if there's anything useful here that can be used for SotA's benefit?

I do feel somewhat better about banging on about UI so much though, and it does seem like a concerted effort is being made in enhancing clarity about what to do.

 

Here's the remainder of the article:

“Yes,” I replied, “They put it in there because they expected you to read it.” “Wow,” he responded. ​

Some of their difficulties must be chalked up to poor teaching. I should have done a better job of preparing them for the assignment. I resisted holding their hands because in the past I’ve found it useful to plop them down in Britannia and let them struggle. Figure out the systems, grok the mechanics, and go forth. Ultima IV may be a high mountain to climb for a 19-year-old Call of Duty player, but it’s well worth the effort.

At least that’s what I used to think. Now it seems to me we’re facing basic literacy issues. These eager players are willing to try something new, but in the case of a game like Ultima IV, the required skill-set and the basic assumptions the game makes are so foreign to them that the game has indeed become virtually unplayable.

And as much as I hate to say it - even after they learn to craft potions, speak to every villager, and take notes on what they say – it isn’t much fun for them. They want a radar in the corner of the screen. They want mission logs. They want fun combat. They want an in-game tutorial. They want a game that doesn’t feel like so much work.

I’m pretty sure I’ll continue to teach Ultima IV. The series is simply too foundational to overlook, and I can develop new teaching strategies. But I believe we’ve finally reached the point where the gap separating today’s generation of gamers from those of us who once drew maps on grid paper is nearly unbridgeable.

These wonderful old games are still valuable, of course, and I don’t mean to suggest we should toss them in the dustbin.

But if we’re interested in preserving our history and teaching students about why these games matter, a “play this game and sink-or-swim” approach won’t work anymore. The question for me at this point is how to balance the process of learning and discovery I want them to have inside the game with their need for basic remedial help.

I love great old games like Ultima IV, but I can no longer assume the game will make its case for greatness all by itself. ​

Tricky stuff, bridging this gap of ours without betraying the roots!

 

It's a different time. I played Ultima IV, Bard's Tale and Wizardry way back when. Ultima IV is a game that really hooked me. I've posted that elsewhere in these forums.

I took notes for those games. Somewhere I still have the legal pads of notes and, yes, graph paper with maps, I made while playing the games. I don't do that these days. I head to the internet when I run into a snag. Working on the fire gate puzzle in the Brittany Sewers is the closest I've come to my old ways with SotA-- I made notes on the positions of the statues. I had to make myself do that.

 

Yeah the next prologue piece by Scorpia is on exactly that, old school cartography!

I must say, it's a great read so far!

 

I think back then, one of the things that made Ultima (and a few other games) sticky for me was the incremental achievements of figuring stuff out. In most cases, all we had to go on was what was in the box. No FAQ. No search engines. In most cases, no easy access to a wide range of other players. We dug into the readable out of lack of options. Of course, at the time, it felt like the correct thing to do.

I think we also got used playing games this way because there were also so few other games. When I got U4, there were probably less than 50 games in the store. Probably a 3rd of those would even run on my system. So, we didn't buy games lightly because we didn't have millions of games for under $1. If there were "I don't understand" or "how do it see" issues with the UI, we'd spend more time tinkering until we figured it out simply because it the game wasn't so throwaway. If you think about it, we had to have this mind set just to be kid using a computer. I spent a similar amount of time with my nose stuck in IBM computer and DOS manuals. When was the last time you saw a shelf worthy manual for a computer or OS?

I distinctly remember playing and replaying U4 over at least 2 years. Not something I have done since y2k. At least not until I found SotA. That's one of the reasons I'm torn about all the "make it more like <easy game>" changes that people keep suggesting to get a modern crowd into the game. I want the population to explode like it did in UO. But, I'd also like kids these days to discover the same driven determination we had to. I guess like all old farts, I think kids these days already have it too easy.

All that said, We do have lots of community content to help with understanding how the systems work. Wikis, Youtube, Twitch, etc. Just look at the growth in the number of Twitch streamers over the last couple of months. With @Chris getting in daily streams and his support of the other streams, we've gone from 1-2 streams with 5-10 total viewers most days a year ago, to 10+ streams with 50+ total viewer. So, the game is growing. However, I do think we need to get more exposer outside the SotA bubble. New streamers a great. But, getting streamers with already established audiences hooked would go along way. Showing 200+ people (that never heard of SotA) that they can figure it out and the rewards they get for doing so, could go a long way.

 

It's been theorized that the cultural shift from societies without writing to those where many people are literate and rely on writing for essential social functions caused a long-term change in the way humans think and how their brains operate. That our capacity for memory actually decreased because as a species we no longer rely on it when we can reach for a papyrus or a scroll or a book instead. Use it or lose it.

I wouldn't be surprised if the advent of the Internet heralds a new tipping point where we might be shifting the way our species operates long-term, since you no longer have to write or think at all, but can instead look up an answer (whether it's right or not) in just a few seconds online. But even on a shorter scale, ever since the introduction of Sesame Street and the Electric Company, every generation of Americans (can't speak to those elsewhere) has grown more and more accustomed to short attention spans, immediate gratification, a need for excitement, and an expectation that their entertainment will do things for them -- instead of their imagination doing things to the entertainment. People are forgetting how to use their imagination, forgetting how to THINK, while they expect the game (or whatever other entertainment) to handhold them the entire way without any creative effort on their part. They're focused on the endorphins from a button-click rather than the more satisfying (but less immediate) endorphins from creative problem-solving.

I do think we need to keep that in mind when designing games today, but that doesn't mean we need to just give in to it. We need to find a way to meet enough of their expectations to hook them, but then also guide them into pathways where they re-learn how to use their brains and not just their clicking fingers. No easy answers, there, but I'm sure it can be done. But we might be the last generation who can do it, the last who bridge both mindsets.

 

Wow, I don't feel so bad now.

Because of SotA, I tried playing U4. I installed a copy from the Ultima Collection CD into DosBox on an Android mini-tablet with a keyboard, partly because I liked the idea of it being portable. And it was kind of fun being able to show it off to Richard. I later found a cool little folding case with a USB keyboard that plugs into the tablet, making everything nice and tidy.

Well, I've gotten nowhere with it. Whenever I try to play, I keep getting killed and losing all my money, and I think my max HP too. And then it takes five minutes of running around to start exploring again. Of course by trying to play it in a mobile form, I don't have access to the books, paper and pencils for mapping, and barely even the quick reference card so I can know which keys to use. It's so far to any other town, and once you get out in the world, everything sort of looks the same, so you get lost quickly if you don't make a map. I haven't even gotten far enough to start using the magic system, where I think you have to cast spells by specifying the reagents.

And I'm early Gen-X, so it's not like I'm some low-attention-spam Zoomer who's been playing phone games since the crib. But I didn't grow up on this sort of game either (I went straight from TRS-80 to Macintosh! Gaming for me has mostly been consoles), so I guess I've just been too casual for it. It's not a game where you can just sit down and get a little XP, then put it down until later. It looks like I'll just have to get more serious if I want to get anywhere in it.

 

For the love of UO, I tried to play U4. It was my first and only foray into Ultima single player games. I remember I made it to a town and tried to pick things up from there. I knew what the game is and I knew what to expect - I found the concept extremely appealing. I also understood that the games of yore (I'm barely out of diapers at 33 years old) had technical limitations....

Couldn't play it. I gave it a few hours. I couldn't find a thread to follow.

I grew up with "classic" RPGs like Fallout, Baldur's Gate, and Planescape Torment - not to mention Ultima Online.

I will say that SotA was a bit rough getting going this time last year when I dropped out of the Rift, but I gave it a go and was rewarded. I don't think the experience is comparable to U4. Even if some in the Overwatch generation can't get their heard around the game, I don't necessarily think that's an issue. If you can't make it off the isle of storms, then there's not much waiting for you in Novia.

Unlike in U4, we have a very clear and straight forward world to work with. Never used graph paper, don't need to now. If folks aren't into the game, this isn't our culprit.

 

Some fine examples!

To be honest I never got far with the pre-VII games either though (and I'm 38). I do think I'll give VI a serious crack one day.

What really surprised me about that guy's link in his article was how much resistance he saw with his students playing the first Fallout! Now that made me feel old haha!

 

Heathens!

Not only does fallout give a very specific mission including map markers, but it also includes a time limit to keep the player pushing forward. In terms of getting the player pulling the proverbial thread from the sweater, it's brilliant.

Maybe someday I'll try to play U7. I tried U4 first because I read a lot about it and really thought it was cool; U7 seems more "traditional," so it might get my imagination going. I needs me some narrative

Narrative hand holding might sound dirty, but no person can speak put against the efficacy and appeal of compelling characters interacting within the framework of an intriguing plot.

Planescape Torment is a very fine example of this - it immediately attaches the player to a compelling character. The new Tides of Numenera was also masterful at surrounding the player in a compelling world first and then sprinkling interesting characters around the world to allow the player to choose their own path. Pillars of Eternity was good but too slow burning. I actually couldn't finish it despite liking the mechanics, world, characters, and plot.

 

Has anyone played the ultima underworld 1 and 2 as well?

Got my first PC in late 1994 and it happened to have a few games with it(Eye of the Beholder 1 and 2, Dark Sun 1 and 2, Ultima Underworld 1 and 2 and Sensible World of Soccer)

Its how I got into Ultimas trying both newer and older ones but got to say UW 1 and 2 had easier to get into controls and easier to orientate. Runeword spell system was easy to understand too. I loved that could encounter for example an encampment of a race and either do quests etc etc or...even be the baddie and try kill them all. Extreme freedom - you could even kill the npcs. I dont it on accident too for sure a few times

 

Interesting opening post.

Question: Did an preliminary survey of student game-type preferences accompany that gaming study before they were immersed in these older games?

If the teacher did not know which student preferred arcade vs shooters vs RPGs, wouldn't it be hard to draw a correlation between player experience to quality/attractiveness of a game? Not everyone likes RPGs and some will not be attracted to them no matter how high their quality. I suspect this has something to do with the preferences of the old Bartle Test and the Progress Principle. Some want to spend hours exploring immersed in a story and measure their progress over long intervals. Others want to shoot stuff now and see their score in a few minutes. Not everyone likes to do both. Different gaming preferences, different gaming interests, so also a different proclivity to games someone will be receptive to. I see this in my own family. Not everyone has the patience or interest in RFPs, but do enjoy other games. That has much more to do with their gaming 'personality' moreso than anything about the quality and long term viability of a game. I think the study above is interesting, but somehow needs to be correlated with player gaming personality / preferences for scientific judgements about U4 (or other games) to be made. My two cents reading the story.

 

This is something I noticed along the way as games developed from the Atari (and other consoles like it) and TRS-80/C-64 era through the 90's in the ALU and pentium era and then the 2000's with the advent of multicore platforms: the manuals disappeared.

With them, all of the introductory storytelling went from manuals and other in-the-box inserts to the much-despised hand-holding of intro levels and progressive storytelling, such as my most-loved examples of the ___Craft series' by Blizzard (where you played levels that made units and abilities available in a controlled fashion, in levels where their usefulness can be highlighted, and then you can explore combining units' abilities through the various levels that follow) and games like Assassin's Creed on the consoles (where items and abilities are "earned" through gameplay, and once earned you are "taught" how to use them in quick little tutorial sessions, and left to explore their uses through playing the game).

Another important factor that separates the games of yesteryear from today: Hacking.

As a kid who had a father who could afford the Atari console when it came out, and then a C-64, but not a whole lot else (these were Christmas presents for myself (the C-64) and all three of us (the Atari), so each in their own way were our gifts for the entire year wrapped into one piece of electronics, thus the "not a whole lot else"), we had some games and software for them when they were purchased, but not a lot followed. Imagine being back in the day when Atari's Adventure cost $30... So, with computer games then having a similar $30-ish pricetag for the bigger releases, I didn't have a way to get a hold of them. As a result, some friends and I turned to hacking and pirating networks to help us "preview" the games we wanted to play. The problem with getting a hold of pirated games... there were no such things as PDF's then. So when you got the game, you were left to your own devices when it came to figuring out HOW to play the game! Do not fear, for despite my initial descent into wickedness, I did eventually get a job, and soon supported my favorite artists with purchases of the games I had already spent so long enjoying.

Enter Ultima IV... pirated... a game that not only had all that media in the box to help you figure out HOW to play it, but was specifically DESIGNED for you HAVE to explore every nook and cranny to find the thread of the story and complete the game. The very first thing I did was spend time mapping out the keyboard to find out what keys performed which command: Peer-???? what am I peering at? X-it? what did I enter and why am I leaving? As you can see, even then, there were some keys for which the use wasn't immediately apparent, but through the course of the game, you found what they were there to accomplish.

I think this is where the disconnect between my generation and the current gamer lies: I come from an era where the games all came with media you were EXPECTED to read in order to even START playing the game, and if you didn't buy it, you didn't have those manuals, so you spent EXTRA time exploring every nook and cranny of the game to make sure you weren't missing anything! To the contrary, the modern player EXPECTS the comforts of the current game style, and a game that doesn't have them is quickly discarded for a game that will deliver in that area.

As an added caveat, I miss the time when hint books were hint books, and written in a way that told its own story... Serpent's Isle comes to for forefront of my thoughts on this...

 

There is a steep learning curve with old games like U4 - the keyword conversations with NPCs and UI mechanics.

At least there are people who record them for others to see -

 

Heathens indeed!

I have to admit I haven't finished Planescape! I know, I know. I lost my saves years ago but it's on The List. I missed Baldur's Gate the first time around, finished it in 2016. I've got Baldur's Gate II and Planescape to finish before I get to Numanuma. I've also got Pillars of Eternity I & II and Tyrant sitting on my shelf, these Kickstarter years were very kind to us!

Managed to get through Divinity: Original Sin 1 and 2. Ended up streaming it to the TV in the sitting room and finished it with the wife. She became a bigger fan of them than me and she's no hardcore gamer!

Did you ever play Arcanum? That one's a gem. I don't think it did great but it was a decent follow-up from the Fallout gang.

 

I played through #1 a few years ago on my laptop! I found the controls a bit fiddly at first but I persisted and got used to them (after all I did finish System Shock 1 back in the day!)... I've also got #2 on The List.

Ironically, I don't tend to remember blogs/articles online but I remember this one!
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/03/16/mnemotechnics-and-ultima-underworld-ii/

It's a cracking read, I heartily recommend it.

Pity Underworld Ascendant is having a rough time. Has anyone here also played/backed that one? I'm waiting for more polish but they seem to be delivering pretty hefty updates at a reasonable pace so I'm pretty hopeful.

 

Excellent point! I'm not sure to be honest, I don't know too much about the guy.

You've made me want to take the Bartle test though and I googled the Progress Principle so that's my Saturday afternoon sorted!

 

i consider my pledge unfulfilled until such time as there is a: a linux version that is b: not delivered through steam.

 

You should definitely finish Planescape. It's a fantastic game. I also loved Arcanum. There is so much potential in that world.

I also played BG much later. I think it was 2013 or 14 when I got both of them and stitched them together with a mod. I never had much of a computer until 2016 when I got my current machine - my first computer with a graphics card and more than 2 cores. Life is great!

I'm currently playing Skyrim. Action RPGs are new to me but also fun.

 

You give me hope for my own future. I was soooo jealous years ago when my baby niece, who wasn't even alive when I started MUDding, was all over Skyrim while I was stuck with a computer that couldn't play anything. But one day...