Shroud of the Avatar News Round-Up #2
Another week, another look at press coverage of Richard Garriott’s Shroud of the Avatar. He’s been getting a lot of coverage in the gaming press, of course, and in some traditional press outlets as well. The highlight of the past week, however, has been this interview he gave to Rock, Paper, Shotgun!.
RPS: First off, why Kickstarter? I mean, you’ve kinda been to space. You also owned a castle. Have all your years of extravagant Texan hedonism finally taken their toll?
Richard Garriott: I have and continue to invest millions into Portalarium. But to properly fund Shroud of the Avatar, we either needed to consider a publishing partnership with a large distribution partner, or go directly to the players.
As I reflect on my own work of the past, my favorites are Ultima IV, Ultima VII and Ultima Online. All three of those were different enough that my publisher – often my own company – did not support or understand what I was doing until it was finished. But since I finished it “my way” I’m pleased with the results, and they were landmark successes.
But there were some games I made where our publisher forced us to ship before the product was finished and those results were never good, even though they had plenty of potential. By going direct to the players, we can not only avoid becoming beholden to outside influences, but instead build a relationship directly with players, for whom we are building this game.
It’s an overall excellent interview, a highly-recommended read. Lots of little questions people have had about the game will find an answer in its depths.
Ultima Return: Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtue announced!
Yesterday, Richard Garriott finally unveilled his long awaited spiritual sequel to Ultima!
Called “Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtue” as an obvious throw back to the Ultima, Lord British presents it a “single player story driven RPG” (albeit with multiplayer elements) in the veins of Ultima… so what could be more exciting to us fans ?
Pix’s Origin Adventures: Shroud Of The Avatar Kickstarter Launched
I’m late to the party with this bit of news but as everyone who stumbles across this blog will no doubt already know Lord Cantabrigian British (aka Richard Garriott) has announced something of a return to his roots in the form of Shroud Of The Avatar. The game is an Ultima-esque fantasy RPG that is being partially funded on Kickstarter. I won’t repeat it here but all the information you could wish for should be one of those two sites. If you want to see another RPG from Lord British, head over there and throw in a few quid.
As for my own opinion, what I’ve seen of SOTA isn’t even close to what I was expecting from the long awaited Ultimate RPG and for the most part this is for the better. It looks to be less of an MMO than anticipated and is trying to walk the line between single player/multiplayer RPG’s. It most definitely isn’t a Facebook game and is targeting PC’s and not tablets. There must have been a serious change of direction at some point since I got to visit Portalarium back in October as it just doesn’t fit with anything we were told at the time. The Portalarium meeting room was plastered with Ultimate RPG concept art none of which bears the vaguest relation to Shroud Of The Avatar. Instead SOTA is blatantly inspired by Ultima to what must be copyright pushing extents. I’m not about to complain about getting such a clear spiritual successor and hope it will live up to heights of the series.
Massively: What’s your feeling on Garriott’s Shroud of the Avatar?
Richard Garriott’s recent Shroud of the Avatar announcement was greeted with both huzzahs and catcalls (though the former seem to outnumber the latter if the project’s current Kickstarter numbers are any indication).
Now that Lord British has spent the weekend answering questions via livestream and elaborating on game mechanics in the press, what do you think about the new project? Are you backing Shroud’s Kickstarter, or are you taking a wait-and-see approach? Or do you not care one whit? Let us know via the voting booth after the cut.
Massively: Garriott’s Shroud of the Avatar to feature ‘personalized multiplayer’
Richard Garriott’s new Shroud of the Avatar project is proving pretty popular on Kickstarter. As of press time it’s already raised over $600,000 of its $1 million goal with 28 days to go.
Why all the excitement? It would be easy to single out Lord British’s Ultima pedigree, but it’s also worth noting that the project itself seems to be aiming for those old-school gamers who are feeling a little left out due to the homogenization of current-gen MMOs. Garriott recently spoke to GamesIndustry.biz and elaborated on Shroud of the Avatar’s mechanics, which he described as “personalized multiplayer” rather than massively multiplayer.
The game is “the antithesis of what people have been doing with MMOs these last few years,” Garriott explained. “They not only build every stitch of technology from scratch, they build a giant world, and they build them all in the exact same horrifically difficult but no longer impressive model. At one time it was brilliant, but now they’re all the same.”
GamesIndustry: Richard Garriott’s New RPG is the Antithesis of MMOs
Garriott has chosen to create what he calls ‘personalized multiplayer.’ “Even though it’s a story-driven, solo player experience – you can even play it offline if you wish – if you ever connect online there are persistent things about the world that will be uploaded to you,” Garriott explained. “There are no shards of reality; there is one copy of the metagame of the story. Everyone’s in the same world. If you log on just once a month, you’ll have downloaded the current state of affairs of ownership and the current blueprint of people’s houses. Everyone that has a shop that sells things, whatever it is that has been built up in the world you’ll get to see. Your world will advance because of the contributions of other players.”
The decision to keep away from a classic MMO structure with multiple servers was made both for technical and for game design reasons. “There is no server where everyone that is connected that happens to walk onto the same map will all see each other,” Garriott said. “If you do that it’s terribly complicated and it’s largely a waste of time for you. If you’re walking on the streets of New York you don’t really care about most of the people going by the other way. The only people you care about are the people you’ve met before or you are likely meet again in the future. We can determine that by whatever information you’re willing to give us, and if you’re not willing to give us information we’ll use a heuristic to pull people into your current play space. It’s much cheaper, for you and for us, and much more likely to be relevant to you.”
Polygon: Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues Kickstarter passes halfway mark in two days
Designer Richard Garriott and Portalarium, Inc. have raised more than half of the $1 million Kickstarter goal for Ultima’s spiritual successor, Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues, in two days.
After passing the halfway mark in funding, Portalarium posted a video featuring David “Iolo” Watson and Garriott. The video, which you can watch below, is a 23-minute discussion about the Ultima series and Shroud of the Avatar. Portalarium also recently hosted an hour-long livestream to answer fan questions.
The Kickstarter launched on March 8 and has about $616,000 as of Sunday morning. Shroud of the Avatar is a reinvention of classic, online fantasy role-playing with a greater focus on player choice instead of level grinding. Players will have the option to adventure, explore or remain as a homesteader. If funded, Shroud of the Avatar will feature a classless player system, player housing, online and offline gameplay, PvP that “minimizes griefing” and more.
Games.On.Net: Kickstarter Theory and the Return of the RPG Superstar
Richard Garriott is a legend when it comes to game design, but that legend stems from his ability to innovate within his chosen genre, and to do interesting, if not always successful things with the structure and content. He’s a rockstar in his field and an icon to other developers. Perhaps this is why some of the first pledges to be snapped up on Shroud of the Avatar have been the $10,000, $5000, $3500 and $3000 tiers.
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Richard Garriott, the man who gave computer RPGs their shape and who can be argued has done more for the genre than pretty much anyone else, is all but venerated by other developers and has been absent from the development scene for a long while. This could account for why so many of the high end pledges were the first to be snapped up (these are often taken by other developers, studios or industry professionals looking for alternate avenues of investment) and why there are relatively few lower tiered pledges.
Polygon: Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues’ offline mode is microtransaction and DRM free
Ultima’s spiritual successor, Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues, will feature a microtransaction and DRM free offline mode, according to an update on the game’s Kickstarter page.
The update went on to say that offline characters can’t be imported into online games because of exploitation and hacking risks. However, the team is exploring the feasibility of importing online characters into offline games.
While the offline single player mode purchased via the Kickstarter campaign will not include DRM, the update stated that it is highly likely that offline versions purchased elsewhere will feature DRM.
The Register: Multimillionaire Brit games dev wants your cash for Shroud of the Avatar
Multimillionaire games developer, moon rover owner and space tourist Richard Garriott has taken to Kickstarter to try to get funding for his new video game.
Garriott, aka Lord British, is looking for $1m to make Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues, which gamers have been describing as the “spiritual successor” to his classic fantasy RPG series Ultima – now owned by Electronic Arts. Garriott describes it as a back-to-basics immersive experience incorporating “deep original fiction”. Castle Greyskull, anyone?
The space tourist is most famous for his Ultima series, which kicked off in 1980 and went on to become one of the first popular massively multiplayer games in the form of Ultima One.
The PC game Shroud of the Avatar is slated for release in October 2014 if Garriott gets enough backers, which is looking quite likely. As of writing, the Kickstarter campaign had raised $712,829 of its goal with 27 days still to go.
Edge Online: Kickstarter fatigue a myth, says Richard Garriott
While some have warned of “Kickstarter fatigue” and the reticence of players to pledge more money while waiting for the earlier waves of successfully funded games to be released, Garriott is confident that the crowdfunding site is the right way to go – if your project meets certain criteria.
Such warnings are supported by a number of recent high-profile failures (perhaps most notably the Oliver Twins’ Dizzy Returns, and Brenda Braithwaite and Tom Hall’s Shaker). But from the look of Garriott’s newly launched campaign for Ultima spiritual successor Shroud Of The Avatar – which began on Friday and has already raised $714,000 of its $1 million goal – there’s weight to his claims.
“Anytime you’re going out and asking for money, you’re always going to have concerns, by all means,” he says. “And we debated, over the past six months while building the prototype, whether we wanted to pursue [the Kickstarter] route. Each year, I think there’s about an equal number of both surprise or very high levels of success, and a similar number of notable failures.”
“I’m just happy that I get to make the kind of game that I love to create,” said Fargo. “The records and competition don’t play much of a role in the regard, and I think the pond is big enough for all of us.”
Backers already contributed more than $300,000 to Garriott’s newest game in under six hours. That’s impressive, but it clearly won’t reach a $1 million faster than Torment did.
“Brian’s team, I believe, is doing its second Kickstarter into the same audience,” Garriott told GamesBeat. “So out of the chute, you’d expect them to do quite well.”
Stratics has a three-part video interview with Richard Garriott about Shroud of the Avatar:
GamerHub also has a multi-part video interview with Garriott:
And fantasy author Tracy Hickman is definitely supporting Shroud of the Avatar on Kickstarter:
