WES LOCHER RECENTLY published the ebook Braving Britannia about the seminal MMO Ultima Online, which he played obsessively for five years. Unlike most videogame books, which focus on recreation design or gameplay strategies, Braving Britannia is an oral record, accumulating fond recollections from dozens of gamers.
“I became constantly curious about the people you will meet, the random humans you’ll run into during the game,” Locher says in Episode 353 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. “I usually thought, what do these humans do after they leave this journey we’ve shared? Who are they in the back of the screen, and what do they prefer about this sport that has affected me a lot?”
As more of our lives occur in virtual areas, it becomes increasingly critical to catalog and contextualize those studies. Locher recommends aspiring videogame folklorists discover the players’ lives outside and inside the sport.
“Don’t just get in, ask them 20 questions, and get out,” he says. “Understand where they got here from, how they grew up, what their life became like outside of the sport, and their struggles. All of that emotion informs their existence tale, after which goes into the game.”
While e-book-length journalism about video games continues to be exceedingly rare, Locher points to Galaxies by James Crosby and Empires of Eve by Andrew Groen as proof of a growing trend. Another determined principal is David L. Craddock, who has written books such as Diablo, Quake, and Shovel Knight. “He does remarkable interviews,” Locher says. “He writes compellingly and thrillingly. I possibly absolutely ripped him off after I wrote my ebook. He turned into the form of my guiding light.”
Locher is simply getting started when it comes to chronicling Ultima Online’s arena. He is trying to find new stories to encompass in a coming near sequel to Braving Britannia.
“The sport has been around for twenty years,” he says. There are so many stories to be told. Although there were loads of thousands of players throughout its records, we are nonetheless throughout.”
Listen to the complete interview with Wes Locher in Episode 353 of Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy (above). Test out some highlights from the dialogue below.
Wes Locher on publishing:
“I talked to multiple book publishers—I became looking to move the conventional path, to peer if any individual should post it, maybe get it into stores, that sort of thing. In some areas of expertise, publishers work, especially with video games, and it wasn’t that no one wanted it. Some humans desired it to be modified into something that wouldn’t be the fine way to provide it. And there had been other people who had their ideas. For instance, I submitted it to 1 writer who wrote lower back and stated, ‘Have you idea approximately writing a book using Minecraft as a substitute?’ And I said, ‘No, I haven’t,’ in which case they were no longer fascinated. … So I stated I’d launch the ebook myself, after which I’ll get to preserve all the money from it.”
Wes Locher on players behaving badly:
“Many early reports with the sport were crowd manipulates, extra or much less. There’s a humorous anecdote from Raph Koster in the ebook wherein he says it has become chaos within 10 minutes of beginning the game. Everybody started killing each other straight away. Nobody turned into doing the quests; no person changed into having the adventures; it was just natural pandemonium. Then Starr Long tells a thrilling anecdote about how the first gamers he watched who entered the sport right away began a prostitution ring. So you may plan all you want, and you can try to supply gamers this particular experience, but at the cease of the day, they will do it regardless of the heck they want to do.”
Wes Locher on cultural differences:
“All around the sector, simultaneously, the town of Trinsic went underneath attack, and gamers had been supposed to reveal up and combat the coolest fight and keep the day; however, regardless of what passed off, their fiction turned into that they would lose. … The Americans blazed their guns; everybody’s fighting for anyone’s glory. Unfortunately, no one works collectively, so the metropolis quickly overruns, and the event changes after just a couple of hours. Meanwhile, they were very organized and disciplined when the precise identical wave of monsters hit Japan. They had the crafters there to fix weapons and offer new ones, and they honestly held off the invasion because they knew what they were doing. And then the UK model of the same occasion, the players shrugged their shoulders and said, ‘Eh,’ and just let the city locating.”
Wes Locher on the network:
“We all need to be part of a network; we need to be popular and discover folks like us, and Ultima Online changed into the form at the beginning of that. It turned into an area where you didn’t need to go out and combat in a dungeon or exit and rescue the innkeeper’s daughter. You ought to spend all your time simply putting out with your pals, whether or not that became in your private home or a financial institution in one of the most important cities, or you may sit around and knit clothes in case you want to. So, it truly was the first new release of a sport that can help you do what you wanted to do, and in doing so, you could locate folks who shared commonplace hobbies. There’s a cause that we form guilds and shape clans and form groups in those games because we want to have those relationships and share those experiences with other humans.”
