I wish I could say that the demise of Ultima X: Odyssey comes as a surprise to me, but it really doesn’t. The reasons I think this are, or should be, pretty obvious:
– they hadn’t updated their site in a goodly long while
– support from the Ultima community had been…er…sparse
– the team building it lost many of its critical members after Origin was shut down
In fact, in a thread on the development forum for Dino’s new Ultima Page (which is in testing stages right now) just yesterday, I was postulating on whether or not UXO might just die, and whether or not it would
…be tragic/funny is this thing died at the “almost” stage that it’s at…
A tragic speculation. Personally, I was looking forward to UXO, not because I’m an EA hack or because I’m a rabid fan of every MMORPG that comes along, but because back when and were working on it, it was being touted as an honest attempt by a devoted core of developers to…well, if not correct, then at least address many of the inconsistencies and errors in Ultima IX. It was, in many ways, an acknowledgement of a mistake and an attempt at reconciliation. Or so it seemed.
All that aside, though, this sudden demise has got me thinking: how does this affect the Ultima community, especially the modders attempting to remake older Ultima games, or tell new Ultima stories? The quick answer that many would give is: it doesn’t affect them at all. But I disagree. Consider:
– Adventures of Blackthorn died because they were shooting for something extremely ambitious, and they changed engines in mid-stream
– Eriadain is supposedly alive, according to people who’ve apparently spoken to Moa Dragon, but the last news posting there is almost a year old
– U7R, Mike Morrato’s promising Ultima 7 remake/expansion, seems frozen in its tracks, its website down for several months now
Making a game is hard. Making an Ultima is harder. The community of fans is very exacting in what it demands and expects, and rightly so. With the shining example, especially, of Ultima 7, the bar has been set very high for those of us who would tell an Ultima tale using a modern game engine. The bar has been set so high, in fact, that Ultimas following Ultima 7 (and Serpent Isle) have failed to hit that lofty height of greatness. And we who are developing our own Ultima stories, whether remakes or fan-fictions, are held to the same standard. So was UXO.
What does UXO’s death mean for the development community? It should serve as an example, and also a rallying cry.
It is an example, because it serves to remind us that community support is an integral part of making an Ultima. Hats off to Dino, to Voyager, and to the folks at UltimaDot for keeping tabs on all of us…that community support is crucial.
It is an example because it serves to remind us that these projects, even though we do them in our spare time and as we can afford, are as real a commitment in our lives as developers as anything else we value. We cannot allow them to falter, because they will perish if we do.
And it is an example of why we must aspire to constantly keep in touch with “the world at large”. I’m being slightly hypocritical in saying this, I realize, for my own Lost Sosaria is currently lacking a formal website, and has been for a good few weeks now. But I am striving to remedy this, for I can see something that holds very true…no news is NOT good news. That is why we look at Eriadain and say “it is dead”. That is why we look at U7R and say “it is dead”.
Finally, it is a rallying cry, because I think we, as developers, should hold up the demise of UXO before us and acknowledge it for what it is. It is a failed attempt by a full-fledged studio to spin what is, at whatever level, an Ultima tale. We, private individuals and friends, who are attempting to do the same thing, should certainly take a note of caution from this failure. But we should also feel a swell of pride, a great motivation. Look only to Lazarus if you need proof…they are slogging ever onward, and succeeding where even a professional development studio, it seems, has now failed.
To all the team of UXO, if you ever read this, I’m sorry to hear that the project is gone. I hope that the alluded-to Ultima Online project is worthy of your considerable skill.
To all the modders and remakers, best of luck. My prayers go with you.
for the first time since last December. The team, it seems, has been busy indeed!
