
Ultima IV, The Computer Game That Led to Enlightenment - homarp
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-computer-game-that-led-to-enlightenment
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nickthemagicman
Ultima 7 was probably my favorite game of all time. I don't think I ever beat
it, just explored endlessly the amazing world, finding pirate islands,
companions, magic carpets, and dragons deep in dungeons.

Modern games have better graphics but they don't have the same richness that
Ultima had.

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tdrp
Plus these games were pre-internet so when you got stuck or lost somewhere you
got really stuck. I remember spending over a month looking for something
called "the hall of the mountain king" in ultima 8, to the point that I had
hand drawn a bunch of maps and carefully planned out exploration paths.

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aidenn0
I always thought that was one reason for the death of the adventure-game
genre. Ultima at least had parts to it besides the exploration and puzzles,
but adventure games that might take 100s of hours without a guide can often be
completed in a few hours with a guide.

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distances
Yep, I remember Might&Magic to have distinctively different feeling than, say,
Skyrim. You'd get a task but no map markers about where to go, and pre-
Internet me would cross the world three times to find some hideout.

I'm not sure though if I'd have the time and patience any more for this, even
if it felt a lot more rewarding.

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tcbawo
It would be interesting to take a tile-based game with adventure story
elements and add a procedurally generated map and locations to recreate the
sense of discovering a new world.

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aidenn0
It's brutally hard to make a good procedurally generated adventure game. Even
if your bar of design quality is some of the poorer Sierra games.

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tcbawo
Definitely, although my idea is to keep the plot point and characters somewhat
fixed, but having geography and in-game item placement be procedurally
generated. You could probably inject some additional randomness my having
certain plot lines be optionally incorporated. That would reduce the spoiler
effect and maybe add some replayability.

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aidenn0
IIRC mixed up mother goose randomized item locations, but nothing else.

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tcbawo
The concept of a game as a transformative/developmental journey is as relevant
and necessary as ever. If interactive games are the future of education, this
approach could make philosophy/religion/ethos accessible to a wider audience.
It would be impressive if someone could figure out how to apply these concepts
to a modern, multiplayer game. It would be fascinating if machine learning and
technology could be harnessed to track progress with the virtues in a dynamic
multiplayer world.

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doonesbury
Loved loved this series. As it happened broderbund hired me out of arcade to
test video games. Had fun testing spelunker, load runner, whistler brothers
among other home computer games. Loved it.

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IvyMike
> One player wrote to say that Garriott taught him “almost everything I know
> about morality and ethics.”

I was in fifth grade when I played--I still remember painfully mapping out
nearly the entire world on graph paper. The first time I ever really _deeply_
thought about morality and ethics was because of Ultima IV. It honestly
probably changed my life, at least a little.

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keeganpoppen
great article, but it's criminal that they don't mention Mass Effect at all,
which to me is the all-time exemplar of this idea (in the modern era) (we all
pretend like Mass Effect 3 didn't happen lol). it's the only game I've ever
played that felt like it could be a Neal Stephenson novel.

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aliswe
The article repeatedly references Skyrim. Are the games related?

