three games because neither California Pacific Computer nor Sierra On-Line forwarded him mail. After his own company released Ultima III, Garriott—who attended an interdenominational Christian Sunday School as a teenager—realized (partly from letters of enraged parents) that in the earlier games, immoral actions like stealing and murder of peaceful citizens had been necessary or at least very useful actions in order to win the game, and that such features might be objectionable. Garriott said he wanted to become a good storyteller and make certain the story had content, and that 90% of the games out there, including his first three Ultima games, were what he called "go kill the evil bad guy" stories. He said, "Ultima IV was the first one that had ethical overtones in it, and it also was just a better-told story." Shay Addams, Garriott's official biographer, wrote, "He decided that if people were going to look for hidden meaning in his work when they didn't even exist, he would introduce ideas and symbols with meaning and significance he deemed worthwhile, to give them something they could really think about." To encourage a sense of responsibility for their character's actions, players were intended to feel they were playing themselves transported into a fantasy realm, not a separate person. Garriott removed gameplay elements he believed would prevent players from identifying personally with their character, such as playing as a non-human. Decades after the game's release, 1UP.com described Ultima IV as "a direct barb at the self-appointed moral crusaders who sought to demonize RPGs" and complained that "the irony in seeing an 'evil' RPG better present the Christian admonition to back faith with works in quiet modesty than the Bible-waving watchdog decrying the medium seems to have been lost". The game's moral dilemmas were designed to give players the opportunity to reap temporary rewards for amoral behavior, only to realize later that they have been penalized. Garriott hoped they would approach later dilemmas with more thoughtfulness. Near the end of the game, he took advantage of this to encourage players to overthink the puzzles and question the morality of their choices. At one point, players are seemingly required to murder children, who are revealed to be monsters in disguise. Though one playtester threatened to quit over this dilemma, Garriott refused to remove it from the game, reasoning that it had served its purpose in provoking an emotional response. The