WGE MAG: 23
armour, supplies to leave town and go battle monsters, however, it takes you 30 minutes to an hour just to create your avatar and to go to the woods to fight your first creature and come home and sell off your goods and pick up your second quest. So it’s two to five hours of contribution of your time before you actually know what the game is about. But in social mobile gaming, like a traditional Hollywood blockbuster movie where I know what to expect, I want to know in five minutes if this is going to worth my while.
BH: So now you’re going to try and bring new RPG gameplay to the social mobile space with your new ‘Ultimate RPG’ game under development?
BH: In the social mobile game space, why isn’t there any major RPG virtual world MMO-equivalent like what you built with Ultima years ago?
RG: Well, there is nothing technical holding it back. It is purely a design and delivery issue. In my mind, the problem is one of artistic failure. Plus, there are a ton of free-to-play games out there obviously which have distracted people.
BH: But MMO RPG’s are fully immersive and not casual in nature like Farmville is...
RG: And that is what specifically is stopping casual, mobile and social media-based games from reaching the same level of sophistication as traditional RPG MMOS like World of Warcraft and Dungeon Fighter or the work I have done. In those RPG worlds, you have to do a lot of work to get going. Initially you look at a typical social mobile game out there and it looks to be completely fully featured, the visuals are completely cutting edge, you have an avatar you can create in detail, quest cycles, traditional places to get weapons and
RG: I think people are growing in their sophistication very rapidly and are demanding deeper content, higher and higher quality graphics. But I think it is essential that if creators want to succeed, they will have to figure out how to deliver in five minutes what their game is about and why you should be there. Contrast that with metaverses like Second Life, where you have a giant simulator to simulate all things which, I believe is never going to be as good as a simulator meant for one specific thing.
Today, with my new company, Portalarium, and with the talents and skills of the team who made my previous RPGs, we set forth to forge a ‘New Britannia’, a new world from scratch, internally self-consistent, deep and refined. We have lofty goals as an ‘Ultimate RPG’. Many traditional gamers are concerned about the growth of the new social and mobile gaming and its impact on games with meaning and depth. They are doubtful that this era will provide them the Ultimate RPG experience they crave. But this new era has unearthed some powerful new tools that add to the value of an Ultimate RPG.
BH: So what can we expect from ‘Ultimate RPG’ or are you still in stealth mode on its development?
RG: I continue to debate how much of the new world designs to discuss in public as we work. Some part of me wants the new direction to be as new as possible to you when it arrives
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