Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues (Lord British returns...again :P)

[Venkman]

And seriously, this is yet another example of why I don't get Kickstarter. People really are paying $3k for a house they don't know the value of

No. I mean, this looks like a terrible project, but you just can't boil it down to a give/get transaction. That's not what people are buying, they're buying the chance to recapture their bullshit pre-Trammel glory days, the feeling of being thanked on some credit screen by ~LORD BRITISH~, or whatever. All these Kickstarter computer game projects live in a weird intersection of nostalgia, business, and charity, and if you just look at it like a robot beep boop pay money get thing transaction, you will never understand it.

There are lots of projects where you can and do get lots of actual value back for your money; ironically those are the ones probably outside the 'spirit' of Kickstarter the most, just based on some of the other product categories where KS essentially shut down the ability to use a KS as a way of just doing preorders.

Yea i coulda been clearer. Kickstarter makes sense for a number of things, it cuts out the VC/Angel/Series Round shared-ownership middlefolks and all that. I don't decry its existence.

But investing in vaporware doesn't make sense to me, particularly for the pre-Trammel crowd. Unless they've been playing pre-Renaissance private shards and nothing else for the last 12 years, they should long since have become accustomed to announced games not always launching, or taking a completely different form by the time it launches, or sucking when it launches, or changing direction after launch (why I also don't get lifetime MMO subscriptions), or any of a hundred other things that happen between "hey wouldn't it be cool if" and the store shelf/steam sale once a publisher puts its stamp on it.

I get what these people think they're getting. It's the same area of ego that used to get stroked by getting a beta invite (before it became a marketing term), or by starfucking, or discovering something before others (ala the Eternal Septemberists), or anything else that makes one feel unique for a moment.

I'm just saying it's dumb.

But to be completely honest, I'm also a bit jealous. I wish I could get into something as much as some people do. At some point I became burned out on the idea of a promise in video games.

[Sky]

Go read those comments. If you were a sane UO player, they're HI-larious. The boner for open pvp is so huge and sad. I particularly like the heroic statements by the angelic anti-pks, who in my experience were just noto-pks. If it's red, it's dead and never mind the griefing blue alts used to turn people red so you could log into your heroic Lord Douchebag and save the day.

I also like the bizarre pleading to let people live the life of a farmer. Ffs, plant a garden. It's cheaper and you'll get food out of it.

Also, there's vaporware and there's vaporware. There's little whiff of anything good in Garriot's project. For Torment, there's a lot that sounds good. While there's always the chance things will go badly and the game will be awful or mediocre; there are some projects (the Romeros) that you can see the stank a mile away.

[Furiously]

For me it boils down to: is this a labor of love project (wasteland 2 and shadowrun) or is this just paying for shovelware.

[Outlawedprod]

Why is there no bonus to basically assassinate Lord British in-game?  Surely some Ultima griefer made it big and is willing to shell out 6-7k for that.
 

[patience]

I'm really surprised how accurate this year old PA rip on kickstarters looks like Lord British's pitch.

[Soulflame]

Pre-Trammel, eh?  Should be good for some viewed-from-the-outside hilarity, assuming a playable version ever materializes.

[Sky]

Why is there no bonus to basically assassinate Lord British in-game?  Surely some Ultima griefer made it big and is willing to shell out 6-7k for that.
 

Nononono, pvp is essential for the little people. Of course Lord British shouldn't partake in it. Who knows, an npc might fool him.

[rk47]

needs a new trollsite, shit-starter is starting to fit in.
A lot of KS projects I felt are just blatant money grabs, stuff you'd think the majority of people would not support.
But I was so, so wrong.
There's just way too many shit being funded.
Too damn many.

[Trippy]

Why is there no bonus to basically assassinate Lord British in-game?  Surely some Ultima griefer made it big and is willing to shell out 6-7k for that.

Why pay when there will be a bug that'll let you do it for free?

[Sky]

This one just made my head hurt.

[rk47]

These situations won’t be too common but there are just some things that an avatar must do alone!

inb4toiletjokes

[Phred]

there are some projects (the Romeros) that you can see the stank a mile away.

Ya, if Brenda wanted to kickstart a real sequel to Jagged Alliance I'd be there in a second but with John in the mix I'm staying far, far away.

[Falconeer]

Seriously though, I see it as being a bit like playing the lottery. It makes no economic sense to buy a lottery ticket (unless you want to contribute to the causes the lottery supports, but then it makes more sense to just give that cause some money). The odds are that however much you spend on tickets, you will never win that amount back, let alone become filthy rich (otherwise the lottery would make a loss, right?) Yet people buy tickets because they want to imagine that it might come true.

Lottery-wise, there are some chances this game will actually get released, and be quite good. Not many, and that's why it is a lottery, but it's far from impossible. Lottery-wise.

[Lucas]

While I'm looking forward to this project, I laugh at the great job they're doing in alienating the MMO and single player crowd at the same time: in the kickstarter comments section, you see a lot of people that can't wait to see the next UO and don't realize it's not aimed at them; on the other side, you see a lot of nostalgic ultima players hopeful for a "back to the roots approach" who don't understand what the multiplayer part has to do with this.

The clusterfuck is epic, although it's no different compared to other RG's projects: interesting visions and ideas, thrown together in a confusing matter (and often opposed to the latest "common sense" game design approaches), and it's up to the rest of the Dev Team to come out with a somewhat coherent picture.

[Sky]

Well, whoever the mouthpiece is on KS has already talked about disagreeing with RG on a lot of things.

And it's beyond commenters wanting the next UO, they want all the things that got removed from UO because  like open pvp.

Since I've started playing U7 again, I could see a co-op component to the game with friends sitting in for Shamino and Iolo etc. But I think that sacrifices some of the personality of the game and I don't see it working as an instanced game around a social hub. Especially when I can't ever interact with anyone if I choose an offline game, that statement just smacks of 'well, fuck you if you want to play it purely offline'. As someone who /enjoys/ playing games solo, it's so tired hearing the old tropes about 'but you'll really want to play with your friends'!

Anyway, yeah. I agree they've managed to alienate the mmo and classic fans. But at the same times it seems those fans have deluded themselves into thinking they're going to get what they are dreaming of.

[Azaroth]

But that's the beauty of Kickstarter for games. At this stage, everyone just sort of imagines their ideal game in place of what the obvious facts are pointing to.

I see people asking why RG would kickstart if he's spent 140 million attempting to recreate the dinosaurs using ancient mosquito blood after seeing Jurassic Park on TV. The real question is... why wouldn't he?

[UnSub]

$50k and 20 days before this is funded.

So, what are Garriott's chances of delivering something on time and on budget?

[schild]

I feel like anyone from f13 that gives money to this Kickstarter should get a swift banning. Should we start a line to the left?

[Tebonas]

Some might just fund this to see the trainwreck happening. Personally I think you shouldn't encourage Garriot, but at least that would be a sane reason.

[Goreschach]

Some might just fund this to see the trainwreck happening. Personally I think you shouldn't encourage Garriot, but at least that would be a sane reason.

I'm quite fine watching the train wreck from the sidelines, thanks.

[UnSub]

Some might just fund this to see the trainwreck happening. Personally I think you shouldn't encourage Garriot, but at least that would be a sane reason.

Provided they share the backer-only elements of the trainwreck here, I'm fine with someone else backing this project. It's going to be funded; we may as well wring as much joy from that as possible. 

[Baldrake]

This is the first time I've ever watched a kickstarter's progression carefully. It's quite fascinating.

I wish there were a graph to see pledges over time. He got about a half mill on day 1, and then things started to slow right down. Over the last week, the funds have painfully trickled in. It seems likely that he'll make $1 mill, but that if he'd gone for $1.1 mill, he'd have been out of luck.

The base pledge is $10, a "guild pledge" to expiate the sin of having pirated one of his games over time. Total raised: a whopping $460. Strangely enough, looks like people expect a real reward for their money.

250 people have pledged $40, even though the $33 tier has exactly the same rewards. Poor reading comprehension?

1,609 people pledged $60, no doubt more than the cost of buying the game retail, in order to get a floaty "Founder" title, and early access to the developers' blog. I can almost, kind of get the appeal of a Founder title in an MMO. But this isn't an MMO.

The comments are incredible. There are people who are rabid fans of this game already, even though we no virtually nothing about it.

[jth]

I wish there were a graph to see pledges over time.

Something like this?

Interestingly it has stayed at constant $25k-$30k for several days now, maybe Garriott is funding it himself to keep it going...

[Sky]

The base pledge is $10, a "guild pledge" to expiate the sin of having pirated one of his games over time. Total raised: a whopping $460. Strangely enough, looks like people expect a real reward for their money.

With most KS, the base pledge just tends to be people pledging a token amount so they can make comments and see updates for backers only. Expect a bunch of cancellations at the 11th hour.

One of many reasons people favor KS over IGG, especially the horrible flexible funding setup.

[Venkman]

By comparison Veronica Mars movie hit $2mm in its first day. Just sayin'.

Ok, not a fair comparison. But still, Shroud seems to have limped to its goal. Which again doesn't fund shit beyond a datapoint they can bring to the real money people.

[rk47]

Oh yea?
Fuck you guys

I’ve met virtually no one…who I think is close to as good a game designer as I am.
I think most game designers really just suck
And every designer that I work with…I think, frankly, is lazy. - R.Garriot

http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/03/19/richard-garriott-game-designers-suck/

[UnSub]

It didn't limp to its goal - it's got more than two weeks left.

It wasn't an extreme day 1 success, but it is going to make a lot more than its target.

Most Kickstarter projects only just get over the line, but we've become so used to "GAME FULLY FUNDED IN 24 HOURS" that it distorts our view of how Kicstarter functions.

[Sky]

Because most of the overnight funding projects are pretty good projects. Torment sounds good, has been talking a bit about the world and teasing things. (Trying to keep it in video games, because board/war/rpg are similar but different).

I just popped in today for my morning 'wat' and today's was delivered by Tracy 'the Hutt' Hickman. Who pioneered story in games (titles not mentioned, Dragonlance? Because I don't remember him at Black Isle) and trots out the old 'gameplay hasn't changed in 30 years'. Now, I was gaming 30 years ago, so that's pretty fucking funny. But the kicker was the pod people delivery, full of odd pauses.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AteG_NXZF2o

[UnSub]

Stretch goal: Buy Tracy Hickman a neck.

[HaemishM]

Richard Garriot can suck my balls with that "most designers suck" line. Why?

Ultima IX. Tabula Rasa. Now fuck off to your castle, ye twat.

[Furiously]

Richard Garriot can suck my balls with that "most designers suck" line. Why?

Ultima IX. Tabula Rasa. Now fuck off to your castle, ye twat.

He's calling out Raph!

[Sky]

The awesome thing about Tabula Rasa is that his design was so bad they scrapped the entire thing and rebuilt it entirely differently.

I guess they just couldn't comprehend the genius and his fourth dimensional spreadsheets.

[HaemishM]

The awesome thing about Tabula Rasa is that his design was so bad they scrapped the entire thing and rebuilt it entirely differently.

And the redesign sucked as well though maybe not as hard?

[Sky]

I enjoyed the early beta (f&f), though I think toward the middle and end they moved in the wrong direction.

[Ingmar]

Because most of the overnight funding projects are pretty good projects. Torment sounds good, has been talking a bit about the world and teasing things. (Trying to keep it in video games, because board/war/rpg are similar but different).

I just popped in today for my morning 'wat' and today's was delivered by Tracy 'the Hutt' Hickman. Who pioneered story in games (titles not mentioned, Dragonlance? Because I don't remember him at Black Isle) and trots out the old 'gameplay hasn't changed in 30 years'. Now, I was gaming 30 years ago, so that's pretty fucking funny. But the kicker was the pod people delivery, full of odd pauses.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AteG_NXZF2o

You can definitely make a case that he had the most important part in the first fully narrative RPG story (at least the first commercial one), which would be the Dragonlance modules. The problem is, of course, that the story is actually terrible; but it WAS new.