Explore/Create by Richard Garriott

Author:Richard Garriott
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2016-11-15T05:00:00+00:00

12

The End of the Beginning of the World

I have been credited, somewhat inaccurately, with inventing the term and category of games known as MMORPGs, massively multiplayer online role-playing games, because Ultima Online was the first to become a major success. Before Ultima Online, every online game was played by a solo player. It was the player against the game, so everyone could be the hero who defeated the bad guy and won the game. And it didn’t make any difference that their best friend also believed they were the hero who’d won the same game. People would talk to each other about where they were on the quest and trade tips about how to get past a certain point. No one felt less special because a friend was ahead of them, because they couldn’t see the friend unlocking a door in front of them or beating them across the finish line.

But in fact, long before the existence of the Internet, people were linking computers to communicate with each other. They got together through dial-up services like the original America Online, and they paid for access by the hour or even by the minute. A decade before we produced Ultima Online, we were already dreaming of producing a game that allowed many people to play in the world of Britannia at the same time and interact with each other.

We were not the only people with that dream. Since the availability of computers, some people were producing text MUDs, or multi-user dungeons. These were text-based games, although a few of them had very simple graphics. These multiplayer role-playing games were quite simple, and the level of player interaction was about as basic as it could be. Players could chat; one could write, “Hi, Richard,” while another could write a command like, “Go north.” And on the screen, sure enough, a figure would move to the north. But these games had user bases in the few hundreds or low thousands, and were not competitive with “mainstream” games. These games never really appealed to me nor did they inspire me beyond seeing the potential they offered for something much more exciting.

We watched this segment of the gaming industry very carefully for at least a decade. We’d meet regularly with the companies making the best dial-up games to discuss producing a multiplayer Ultima. But with the fee structure that existed at the time, we couldn’t figure out how to make a business out of it. These games were expensive to play; they required a subscription to a dial-up service and the game itself generally would charge as much as a few dollars an hour to play. It quickly would cost considerably more than a boxed game purchased in a store.

The availability of the Internet, which allowed people to be online for extended periods of time without being charged by the minute or hour, completely changed the economic structure. Suddenly, a million people could be online at the same time! Two million! A hundred million! The potential was almost incalculable.

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