Ultima and Worldbuilding in the Computer Role-Playing Game

by Carly A. Kocurek, Matthew Payne

Ultima and World-Building in the Computer Role-Playing Game is the first scholarly book to focus exclusively on the long-running Ultima series of computer role-playing games (RPG) and to assess its lasting impact on the RPG genre and video game industry. Through archival and popular media sources, examinations of fan communities, and the game itself, this book historicizes the games and their authors. By attending to the salient moments and sites of game creation throughout the series’ storied past, authors Carly A. Kocurek and Matthew Thomas Payne detail the creative choices and structural forces that brought Ultima’s celebrated brand of role-playing to fruition.



This book first considers the contributions of series founder and lead designer, Richard Garriott, examining how his fame and notoriety as a pioneering computer game auteur shaped Ultima’s reception and paved the way for the evolution of the series. Next, the authors retrace the steps that Garriott took in fusing analog, tabletop role-playing with his self-taught lessons in computer programming. Close textual analyses of Ultima I outline how its gameplay elements offered a foundational framework for subsequent innovations in design and storytelling. Moving beyond the game itself, the authors assess how marketing materials and physical collectibles amplified its immersive hold and how the series’ legions of fans have preserved the series. Game designers, long-time gamers, and fans will enjoy digging into the games’ production history and mechanics while media studies and game scholars will find Ultima and World-Building in the Computer Role-Playing Game a useful extension of inquiry into authorship, media history, and the role of fantasy in computer game design.

196 pages, Paperback

Published April 9, 2024

Reviews

[David Dinaburg · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you enjoy the following sample, please read the essay at my website and support independent internet.

For the generation that grew up along side, rather than inside, the internet, watching it collapse in on itself feels both tragic and inevitable. There is clear microcosmic relationship between the created gameworlds inside RPGs and our modern shift-alt travels through hyperspace: once a gameworld has run its course and you start bumping against the fraying edge of the design, the planned flow cannot really keep up. Currency is devalued, EXP gains are stagnant, and if there were hundreds of collectables that one might stumble across in a large open play-space, once you’re down to only one or two left the chance at finding them without systematically (read: boringly) criss-crossing a now-empty world is virtually nil. At this point, even with a journal full of sidequests, one might seek out the often one-way slide into end-game (that in modern design comes with a metatextual warning that you’re about to pass a point-of-no-return so you could go back and finish those pesky sidequests).

We are deep into the end-game trash-shoot of the internet. Near the end of my time with ULTIMA & World-Building in the Computer Role-Playing Game, I wanted to know which Ultima game, beside Ultima Online, I had played. ...

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If you enjoy the following sample, please read the essay at my website and support independent internet.

[Finn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this for my thesis -- this is how you write a games studies book!! Interesting, straightforward, detailed, well-researched: traces the history of one of the most important games series every made. Reads extremely well, I blazed through it in a few hours. Only limitation was that it was a bit too short for me: I really would've liked some discussion on the later Ultimas, especially Underworld and Online (which admittedly probably warrant books of their own). Additionally, some conversation about the latter-day turning against Garriot in the community would be neat also. The book is a little optimistic at points, and can afford to be a little more critical. Still a great read for those interested in the topic!!