Lord British launches “Shroud of the Avatar” on Kickstarter
kickstarter.com
kickstarter.com
Kickstarter has been really great so far for people, like myself, who were and are very fond of the "old school" type of RPGs.
I remember when UO came out...I never played it but I wondered if it would be the end of good single-player RPGs. Luckily, it wasn't, but it was basically the end of Ultima as a series, though arguably it wasn't a causation. In any case, it's hard to imagine an RPG world that could be designed successfully to be a MMO and a good single player experience.
Good single player experiences are bespoke storytelling affairs...and to abstract it out to accomodate MMO interaction would seem to necessarily dilute it.
Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I'm not at all against games that just end, rather than try to shoot to be a world in which you can fully "live a life" and in which the world is infinitely evolving. It's not that such a prospect isn't interesting, it's just that it inevitably leads to the kind of feature creep that leads to bugs and outright brokenness (insert reference to SimCity). I'm OK with games ending after 50-100 hours (or even 10, in the case of the Portal series), if those hours were fantastic.
I'd contribute if Lord British were going to make a modernized version of Ultima VII. Even though the limits of its world are obvious in retrospect, it really was way ahead of its time in creating a believable digital world for the single-player, and the constructs it used to maintain that facade (and have a story arc) would not have worked if it were a MMO.
Massive online environments, by definition, prohibit a single character from being important. The natural solution is the instanced single player game, allowing large party sizes which scale difficulty based on the encounter. A corollary of this is that any true, persistent MMO must be sandbox type, allowing individual players extreme freedom to write the stories. The best example of this is EVE, and a lesser known korean RPG Lineage: The Blood Pledge, which allowed players to control castles of each kingdom, creating incredible game histories due to player competition alone.
It is clear that the single player co-op and the MMO are now distinct genres, catering to different play styles. Attempts to bridge this gap have generally failed from a storytelling perspective, even in great games such as Guild Wars 2 and The Old Republic.
I am excited to see if anyone takes up the idea of making something akin to the elder scrolls franchise and adding small scale multiplayer into it. Not specifically co-op but just where multiple people are dropped into the world together and then left to their own devices. In a game where up to say 10 people were allowed to wander free it would be fun to have rivalries and alliances arise as people try to further their own goals.
What saddens me is that this sort of idea seems to be forgotten completely in lieu of the industry direction that seems to suggest the only multiplayer fantasy rpg games we'll ever get are shameless wow clones.
I would love to be wrong by the way, if anyone does know of any of these sorts of games feel free to correct me.
An implementation like that would be really cool. It would definitely me a nice argument against the EA / Activision(Blizzard) always online approach.
About simulations: after playing MUDs I wished for evolving worlds, player clans with the ability to claim territory and build structures, NPC factions that battled among themselves, ecologies, simulated NPCs that responded to invasions and events, the works. These have been achieved to some extent in recent games, but maybe the magic lies in the storytelling in the end.
Maybe what we need is professional scripters running MMO cities: imagine Lord British essentially playing himself as a full-time job, with the ability to spin quests and stories that permanently change the fabric of the world, fight off invading lords, launch expeditions, rezone areas, fund guilds, run his realm. That way we can have complex world simulations, player-driven clans, and the human storytelling element, all richly combined.
(I wish I'd played UO, it sounds fantastic. Realistically, I won't have the time or energy to play SotA intensively, but I'd certainly like to try it. Too bad it isn't 2.5D isometric...)
Of course, whether or not I will ever get even close to finishing it is another question. :)
Then again, you might succeed like Eskil Steenberg did, after 4 years of effort: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/27871/Interview_Eskil_Ste...
I hope you succeed despite your extensive goals (building a deduction engine in AI?). Really, I'd be happy just to play multiplayer in a fairly self-running world that's perhaps more user-friendly than LOVE. I definitely think multiplayer will attract more interest to your game.
If you haven't come across it, another HN user shared his UO-inspired project, First Earth. It has more of a focus on allowing a natural player economy to emerge, and the client is built in Unity. As someone who never experienced the glory of UO, I'm waiting to give it a spin.
That said, I'm just kind of taking everything one step at a time. When Minecraft was first released, it was just a simple block-based world editor; I intend to release the simplest thing I can first and work from there. As for the AI, it is easier than it might seem to implement and I am not doing anything that novel (primarily the deduction is based off of languages like Prolog); I have implemented basic (test-based) prototypes in the past and I am pretty happy with the results so far.
I'll have to check out First Earth; as for multiplayer, I am prioritizing it last - not because I do not love a good multiplayer game, but because it is the one thing I can safely remove and still have a fun (enough) game while greatly reducing complexity.
Thanks for your thoughtful insights. :)
Ultima VI is was really got me into coding world simulations, but Ultima VII really showed the potential of the genre. I think that's why Ultima VIII and IX were such a disappointment.
The interactions, exploration and focus on virtues that hooked me into these games. I could care less about the graphics if these elements are well done in the new game.
Ultima VII was a wonder to me when it came out.
I was stuck in the Apple world so I stopped playing after U5. I bought the Ultima-giftpack on GOG.com before Christmas, but still have only had the time to work through the first 3. I'm savoring them, still.
I had it as the NES cartridge, mostly oblivious to the franchise's history on the computer platforms. I also had the Game Genie cheating device, whose codebook had a fairly rich set of codes for the game, changing your characters' health and stats and such. There were enough closely related codes (30 strength, 60 strength, 90 strength) that I started seeing the patterns, working out how the Game Genie code letters mapped to bits and represented the data values. So then I started synthesizing more codes that weren't in the book: hey, adding one to this letter changes the next stat instead, that must be a memory location. What happens if I add 16 to it, nice it changes the next character.
Ultimately I never really played the game with hacked characters, since the challenge of the game wasn't the stats but in exploring and mapping the dungeons and hidden areas. (I had nightmares for years about getting lost in Ambrosia.) Other NES games were much more interesting with hacked stats, notably Final Fantasy I.
Ultima III on the NES also contained the first major loophole exploit I discovered in a game. When in a dungeon, your magic power would slowly recharge with every step, but also risk running into a monster encounter. But I happened to realize that _rotating in place_ did the former and not the latter. So just by pressing the right arrow 300 times between encounters to recover 75 MP, you could cast the top-end magic nuke spell on every single monster group, virtually achieving god mode.
In dungeons, if you were standing on a location already holding something (chests and strange-winds, basically), a monster couldn't show up, because it would have no place to drop its treasure chest.
But I guess the more power to semi-independent studios we can give through Kickstarter the better.
I like the $10 "guilt pledge": "If you ever pirated an Ultima game or used an exploit to grief other players in Ultima Online, here’s your chance to repent! For your $10 donation you will receive a clear conscience and Lord British's undying gratitude.".
Don't spend a penny of your money toward it if you don't want to / if you disagree with it.
And $1 million? It's going to cost radically more than that to launch the product. You do realize how much even a mid size title costs to make these days, right? All $1 million does is get the ball rolling (barely).
Try $15 to $30 million dollars just to build it out.
If the company can't exist without him paying his own money into it, then the company probably shouldn't exist.
I find it laudable if an owner would help float a company through a short bad period using their own money, but I wouldn't expect them to beggar themselves (or not get paid back) just to keep a failing company running.
http://citystateentertainment.com/camelotunchained/
Here is a long interview describing the goals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&...
View on what is wrong with MMOs @ 4:16
No more hand holding @ 7:00
Class System - Rock Paper Scissors @ 11:46
Race/Sex Considerations - Choices Matter @ 13:40
Crafting - First class crafting @ 18:18
Random Critical Hits - You will laugh and cry @ 25:17
Randomness for Crafting - Sometimes stuff will go horribly wrong/perfectly right @ 31:11
Leveling - No PvE, unclear on soft vs hard caps at this stage @ 34:07
Kickstarter - Pick your rewards! @ 40:19
Looking elsewhere. Is this game not called 'Ultima Online' because Garriot doesn't own the rights? A sequel in all but name?
While the vision sounds promising I worry about broader appeal. Who is this game for? Tabula Rasa failed pretty badly. I don't quite see the appeal of this game. Most MMO's have a clear goal. Even if that is the same. "Level up, do quests, reach new areas, get gear." Perhaps I misunderstand but the goal of this game seems to be 'explore for yourself.' I don't think that is enough to pull people in. I have played the Ultima series. I still give Ultima Online a spin every couple of months and this new game doesn't pull me in..
The video left me feeling like the game is a time sink without getting the reward of getting little achievements like gaining levels and discovering new gear. The very things that make such games addictive.
When I saw the title my first thought was "TAKE ALL MY MONEY NOW." After seeing the video I think perhaps there is a reason why EA didn't take the franchise further.
And apparently "explore for yourself" worked for Minecraft. Any style of game can be successful, it just takes a good gameplay element on top of it to make it.
I haven't heard of programmer art. Why would a programmer work on models? Perhaps the game demo is using stock models or something but it seems strange that you would have prototypes and a demo like this with no artistic direction implemented.
I am not sure what exactly you think this has in common with Minecraft.
I'm not even really sure how to reply to you, because there seems to be a complete lack of common ground here. Let me try again.
Garriot programmer. Garriot not artist. Garriot no choose art direction. Garriot just want to make program. Garriot just use whatever model laying around on hard drive.
No, it's not strange to create prototypes without choosing an art direction. Games are typically products of real substance. They aren't your random Rails+Illustrator startup making something flashy and pretty, banking on everyone being distracted by their "elegance" long enough to make a few bucks before the users realize they offer nothing of real substance. Art in a game is content. You can substitute any content into the game and the gameplay will be unaffected. If the game can stand on its own with unattractive content, then it will be even better with pretty content. If a game needs pretty content to catch your attention, then it's probably not a good game.
And that is where game projects fail, when they don't offer anything of substance. My point about Minecraft was that your point about "exploring on your own" not being a good concept for a game didn't hold water. A game concept can be anything, if you make it substantial.
I think the graphical engine they're using, the shading, the models, are trite, including the UX design - and it sucks, because if it doesn't improve the game won't be worth most peoples time. Runescape, graphically, in 2013 doesn't seem too appealing!
Jesus Christ, remind me to never post a work in progress on HN. If someone as big as Richard Garriott can't get some basic respect, what chance do the rest of us have?
Those are the things that made DIKU MUDs addictive. And graphical MMOs have definitely been successful largely to the degree that they effectively incorporated such designs. [1] The largest MMO audience clearly prefers that experience. (And the popularity of F2P suggests the preference for that kind of design holds for more than just MMO games.)
But that was never the attraction of UO [1]. Nor was it even a minor part of what attracted people to the Ultima series overall. And despite almost certainly being a minority, there remains a non-trivial segment of the potential MMO audience that at least claims to want an exploration-based world, rather than a DIKU-style amusement park.
I can see where someone who prefers an 'amusement park' design wouldn't be interested in this. But I can't really see why anyone would expect that sort of thing from Garriott. The game described is pretty much exactly what I imagined when I read the headline. [2]
[1] At least UO wasn't anywhere close to that when Garriott was even remotely involved. Though I'll admit I have no idea where the game went after the first couple years.
[2] That said, I'm quite skeptical and bearish on its chances overall. The stated design reads like the same wish-list that a dozen games have started with. Each whittling down said list to a far more narrow scope, giving up on many hopes of 'another way' for tried-and-true DIKU-style elements, and ultimately still collapsing under the primary challenge of trying to balance the PvP experience to actually be meaningful without it being overwhelmingly defined by the griefing.
PvP alone is the key feature such devs refuse to push off the launch feature list but almost universally kills these games before they deliver an acceptable design.
People want graphics, not great gameplay...
No, they want great gameplay first, and great graphics second. That has always been true and will always be true.
The issue I have is that this game appears to have no graphical style or artistic direction. It looks like an incredibly generic low poly-count 3d game.
Sure these are only prototypes but surely you wouldn't get this far into development with models completely unrelated to the finished product?
I still backed it, hopefully they shake the terrain up a little and add some more shrubs.
Incredible titles, way ahead of their time.
Ultima 7 has probably more sophisticated interaction mechanics than 99% of the games today.
In parts of the world (Felucca[1]), UO was a rare RPG where anyone could kill anyone, for any reason, but with the repercussion that they would be branded a "Bad person" (visible with a gray or red name instead of blue). Stealing from good people corpses also did this. Anyone can attack and kill bad persons, and if you killed even more people you were a murderer and it took a very long time to return to normal.
You want to use super awesome powerful gear? None of this sissy MMO stuff. Die and you lose it, and your enemy (or his enemy!) gets the spoils.[1]
Those are the two criteria by which I think "meaningful PvP" should be judged:
1. Can I kill anyone? (ie, in WoW you can't kill 90% of the people you see, they have to be in an arena/faction/alliance).
2. When you kill someone do you actually win something? (preferably something of theirs), and when you die do you actually lose something (preferably the equipment you risked to try and have a more favorable fight).
Ultima and UO were very big into morality and moral dilemmas, which is a thing I love in both single and multi-player games. Some of the Ultima games featured very interesting choices, like whether or not you should kill "evil" (possessed) children or leave them alone.
In UO, if you did have a "bad person" title and wanted to know how much time you had left before you would be considered blue again, you had to type:
"I must consider my sins"
The other problem I have with a lot of MMOs is that the power of your character is simply how much time you sink into the game. Essentially, MMOs are games that reward wasting time.
UO had so much more than that. The class-less system definitely helped, and UO was a game where treachery and sneakiness really paid off, if you wanted them to. Lots of ways to nearly instantly kill or entrap people lead to a lot of very exciting plots where guilds might be laden with spies. Absolutely nothing like the limited PvP found in many modern MMOs.
In a lot of ways UO was the Diplomacy (diplomatic back-stabbing board game) of MMOs. And it was great.
See also outworlder's wonderful comment explaining UO 90 days ago[2]. Also considerably interesting was the economy of UO[3], which was wrought with a good deal of experimentation.
~~~
Also, if you played UO, you'd know that property taxes are a wonderful idea. So many people land-rushing to get the largest properties possible, who then sat on them and never built anything! (Or never played, while newcoming regulars had zero chance of ever finding a home at a reasonable price)
~~~
[1] In the beginning there was only Felucca. And an insurance system was added later (2005ish?) where you could pay a certain amount per item to not lose it on death. Both were attempts to make the game less harsh. Like a lot of later patches, this was unpopular with older players and popular with newer players. Over its lifetime, UO did a lot of things to make the game world less cut-throat, which will always be controversial. Some realms rules stayed more "hardcore" than others as a compromise.
Richard Bartle: "[without permanent death] Newbies (and not-so-newbies) feel they can never catch up. The people in front will always be in front, and there's no way to overtake them. The horizon advances at the speed you approach it." [2]
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_death [2] Designing Virtual Worlds, 2003
There are other ways to allow newbies to catch up and to incentivize or disincentivize players that don't rely on 'ruining your month of gameplay'.
Games like Realm of the Mad God, DayZ, and Minecraft (its survival based multiplayer) make this perma-death a part of the game (though Minecraft, you keep the character). You feel defeated, but not dissuaded towards playing.
The way to keep newbies is to make the gear they can earn secondary to the gameplay.
In Monopoly, I can go bankrupt. In Nethack, I can (and often do) die. In Super Mario Bros 1, I can lose all of my lives. In football, I can get knocked out of the Champions League (by a red card).
In all of these cases, the fact that I can "lose" creates meaning - I care more about the outcome and I appreciate my achievements more. And one never loses everything - the skills stay with you. "Next time I can do better."
Counterbalancing, for a different mood: works like Ocarina of Time are still great, but they sit separately - they're about the journey, not about the achievements.
The stakes are a little different in a long-term, persistent world MMO. The Mario you died with is, for the most part, the same Mario you started with. This is not the case in an MMO. Punishing you, irrevocably, for dying in that situation is a dreadful, fun-destroying design choice.
Even in platformers, it's probably telling that one of the most successful recent ones is Jon Blow's Braid where you not only don't die but you get to reverse time.
PvP corpse looting works exceptionally well in Eve Online. You don't really have permanent death, there, though.
And if a month of your gameplay gets ruined by getting instacane blapped in Eve, you're doing it wrong. Never undock with what you can't afford to replace.
If the entry point is too high (say several weeks of grinding to get even a mid-level player) people will be less likely to venture out and play the game. The reward is very low for the risk. If the entry point is too low then it'll just be a FPS. Striking that balance is really tough.
In my opinion, a permanent death MMO it should take about 20 hours of grinding to reach the top 2%, 60 hours of grind to reach the top 1%, and 400 hours to reach the top %0.01 (and so on).
You can self replicate perma death for yourself in any game you play but I know most people would not, they would rather be water cooler hard cores.
Having recently played XCOM which has a perma death for your troopers I lost my taste real quick because of bugs. Players certainly won't pay for a perma death MMO where they died because of bugs or cheating; there will be cheating. A free to play perma death MMO might survive but even then its a fine line before the bugs push them over the edge.
I really don't want to be in another MMO like Eve, where areas of the game are off limits or worse, certain groups go on nerd rages and just grief people who are no threat/not even interesting but convenient.
Dude, if no one likes you, that isn't their fault.
There's nothing like invading a big alliance space, get chased by multiple pilots, and by some skilled (and lucky!) piloting managing to escape alive. All the while knowing that one screwup would cost the whole ship.
Never add in features willy nilly because it sounds good. Figure out why they work well with your design.
UO had a skill cap, which you could reach rather quickly (less than a month if you had no life, a few months playing casually). After that, there was no difference.
And you could even close the gap faster, by focusing on skills which made the most difference. You alchemy could wait.
Also, there was a stat cap. There wasn't that much difference between a new player and a veteran. The veteran would have like 2x the amount of health compared to the newbie. This is in constrast to WOW, where it is not uncommon to have a 140x difference, or more. You actually had a decent shot against veterans, if you knew what you were doing.
Playing through Diablo III on all but the hardest difficulties, I must have died about 100 times due to extended lag spikes and only a few times due to my own mistakes.
That's all my way of saying Permanent death may sound great in theory, but it takes a hell of a lot of balancing against to make it work well in the long term. Maybe making it easier to get up to speed with any single character? Or maybe making it worth your while to be altruistic to other players (I'm not sure what that mechanic would be, but it would be interesting to see something that make people more social as opposed to the antisocial element that PvP tends to foster).
I still think the split was a bad idea. I think of Eve now the way I thought of UO back then: if you can't afford to lose it, don't leave town with it.
He needs to take a step back and look at the successful games that have taken off recently that have roots in UO. My best example is DayZ. You run around with items that if you die fall on your body. Weapons have low relative value like UO. You can trust no one. People love the hell out of this game and it embodies what UO was to a lot of people. Unforgiving and harsh, but so much fun.
I'm disappointed where he's going with this but with what he's made post-UO I'm not surprised. I never expected him to create the next UO.
Hope crushed…
Don't get me wrong, I love MMOs, but they're not only games, they're designer drugs. I keep away from them because I fear losing my social life. So I'm glad this game is not an MMO.
I'm hoping that with complete creative control, he can go back to his roots and create something truly amazing. He probably won't, but I'm willing to wait and see.
I worked in the Intel Game Developers Lab at the time and we had ~6 accounts machines all right next to one another. We had 100 hide and also had Great Lord Phlux characters as well.
It was so much fun logging in as Great Lord Phlux and people just saw "...Lord Phlux" and would attack my good rep character and lose their rep!
So many great memories on UO.
I long for such an experience again, and since I have been playing the ultima series since Ultima II on the Apple IIe - I will always support this series...
We used to have 3 lives, and pixel perfect jumps. Not a "100 life" buffer with health packs or -worse- life regeneration if you hide behind a tree. Or a completely safe MMO world like UO ended up as. Few went to the Dark Side of the UO world.
Most games have become movies, with little chance of anything bad happening to the viewer except getting popcorn hitting the back of your head.
UO was exciting when you thought you might get jumped and killed. It made you think hard about what you took out hunting.
Most MMOs claim that they won't neglect hardcore pvp, but almost all of them end up catering to the lowest common denominator.
Games where people are allowed to kill anyone, at any time, for any reason are generally economic failures.
I have high hopes for this game, but I remain skeptical.
"But is this the Ultima sequel I’ve been waiting for?
This is NOT an “Ultima”, as that is a trademark owned by Electronic Arts. Ultima fans know though, that great RPG’s can be been played anywhere; on earth, in space, in Britannia and in many other lands. I am creating a new land for Shroud of the Avatar, which will adhere to the design principles that all of my FRPG games adhered to." https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?page_id=19
I don't think this team has played any RPGs over the past decade. Non of them are like this other than JRPGs. It lessens his project's credibility.
The first Fallout had terrific role playing already, and then all the Black Isle, Bioware, Bethesda titles, the Gothic, Witcher series...
Both seemingly have similar old school appeal, though the Planescape Torment audience is maybe slightly younger (5-8 years?) compared to fans of Ultima.
I'll admit, while I threw a good chunk of money at Torment, this Kickstarter is less appealing to me just because it is Online.
I also feel that there is some ambiguity over the vision of this game. The FAQ says this isn't an MMO , but you have online property you can buy and it has PvP? I am seriously confused as to the genre of this game. Confused people don't pledge.
> * Fully interactive virtual world - If it looks usable, it should do something > * Deep original fiction - Ethical parables, cultural histories, fully developed alternate language text
This reminds me of the first Deus Ex. Wonder if they'll be able to pull it off.
I don't think the felucca 'carebear' world helped the game. Yes, there were some issues with griefing -- but the playerbase was in control (I admit I'd polymorph into a slime around coveous, flag myself gray, and have people attack me to freely pk them).
When Sir Alf and I used to raid this RP heavy village, and we became a nuisance -- they hired guards...real players -- to keep us at bay. Eventually they befriended us and paid us in regents and offered protection.
We once betrayed a friend in-game and the father called us -- I learned peer mediation from UO :)
I got my first case of the shakes.
I wish LB the best in this venture
http://kotaku.com/5989447/richard-garriott-revolutionized-vi...
Personally, I really hope this succeeds. If KS represents the next generation of game studios/production, then I'm all for it.
SotA is NOT UO or Ultima I-IX. It's a clean slate. Yes, it's good to have discussions about PvP and whatnot, because we are passionate about these things that have been with us through the years. On the other hand, consider why RG chose to go through Kickstarter. It's to free himself, his idea, from meddling managers who only care about the bottom line, the lowest common denominator, and not the creative aspects. And that's what kills art.
I would prefer that we discuss what new and interesting behavior could arise if a certain gameplay mechanic were implemented, instead of "SotA needs PvP/perma-death/what-have-you because every other MMO has it".
And corpse-looting gave PvP adrenaline rushes and was something that UO did really well. Without that huge sense of having something to lose, the fights become meaningless and stale. Like in gambling.
Please give me a meaningful single player experience.
I've always been a fan of: 1. Skill based system vs. Level/Class based system. 2. Looting Corpses/Houses 3. Player Housing 4. True/Open PvP
Having said that, I'm not going to come near this game if it's going to offer: 1. Trammel 2. Insurance 3. Closed PvP 4. Class/Level System
I don't mind the dated graphic looks. Look forward to more info.
Hopefully they'll bring some old school principles and mechanics back.
Kickstarter Estimated delivery date: Oct 2014
Amazon authorized payment window: July 2013
This should be interesting...
The series really started its downward slope from there.
Ultima 9 was the really stinking blob of pus.
[1]: http://spoonyexperiment.com/category/game-reviews/ultima-ret...
Also he wanted to follow his father footsteps (his father is a astronaut that actually went to space).
But yes, he could have paid the game himself...
2) He married an investment banker[3] who I'm sure has a lot more financial sense than he does and doesn't want him throwing his personal money at the game.
3) The company make this game (Portalarium) had some layoffs a few months back[4]. I'm guessing they are trying to get funding to keep the company going as they don't seem to be working under any publisher.
4) Richard Garriott has a following in the gaming industry that he may as well use to keep his project going. Just like he did with Ultima Online back in the day (had to pay to be in the beta as EA didn't want to back his project), he is going to people to help keep the game funded.
[1] http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/8207-Two-Co...
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Britannia_Manor
[3] http://blogs.forbes.com/people/laetitiagarriottdecayeux/
[4] http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/12/17/portalarium-hit-with...
>none of which he should have to risk on a venture that fans are willing to pay for.
I am amazed at the amount of anti-entrepreneur sentiment here on HN of all places. How do people seriously suggest that an entrepreneur should not have to invest anything in their own venture?
There's no set definition of funding requirements to be considered an entrepreneur.
Not have to invest anything? Try putting a price on his reputation and time.
No I am not. I am saying it is unfortunate that what was a way for small independent projects who could not get funding through normal channels is being taken over by rich people using it as a platform to avoid having to take any risk.
>Try putting a price on his reputation and time.
The last time he made a game that didn't suck was what, 1992? If the garbage he slapped his name on since then hasn't ruined his reputation what risk does this carry? And he isn't investing his time, he is the name put on the project, he isn't actually sitting down and writing the code.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabula_Rasa_(computer_game)#Lit...
It's worth pointing out that he's only asking for 1 million, which is nowhere near enough for the kind of game he's promising. He also says that money has been sunk into production already.
That's like saying that rich entrepeneurs should fully fund their next company, rather than seeking VC. Sure, it's one way to do it, but it's not the only way...
How about treating the backers like adults who can make their own decisions? Your position comes across as very patronizing.
For game developers, even millionaire game developers, Kickstarter offers some level of freedom from real big bilion dollar game publishing corporations. So even if Richard Gariott has a lot of money, maybe you can at least appreciate he is a little guy in the context of the game publishing business.
Second, why is this project a staff pick by Kickstarter if it somehow violates the spirit of their rules?
http://www.kickstarter.com/discover/categories/games?ref=hom...
And I find it patronizing because your complaint is about the poor backers who get nothing for their money. Why exactly do you feel qualified to judge that on their behalf? It's up to them to know what they get in return, and if that should or not be important in their decision to back the project.
Also this project is good for KS because it will likely bring at least a few new people onboard to join the site and fund this project (seem to recall them saying once people join they tend to start funding more projects), not to mention the obvious that they get their cut to help fund further improvements on the site.
You act like people are being forced to pay up for the kick starter.
What you apparently want to change is free will.
I agree with you, though. To me the spirit of kickstarter is getting the small folk off the ground not as a pre-order channel for established players.
Kickstarter or someone else should spin off a cleverly named 'pre-order/guage public interest' site.
Yes, in exchange for something. They don't ask for funding from people and offer them nothing in return, forcing them to take all the risk while he stands to make all the profit.