Illustrious Ultima creator, Richard “Lord British” Garriott’s celebrated return to the fantasy role playing genre has suffered greatly from setbacks and miserly money grabs. Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues raised an immense $1,919,275 with Kickstarter back in 2013.
The game touted itself as the first title in the new five-part, Shroud of Avatar series, with a new full-length stand alone title being released each year. Backers were promised a detailed, interactive world with a fully immersive single player off-line experience, to be supplemented with additional online capabilities. The star power of “Lord British” drew in a staggering 22,322 fans willing to support the development of Shroud of the Avatar. People were excited for this game, but over time that excitement has soured for many.
Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues is currently available as an “Early Pre-Access” Alpha build on Steam. For a title that promised to be the first of five I think it’s a little disappointing that they haven’t managed to advance to a complete version of the first game yet. How many years will it be before the story finds a conclusion at this rate? Despite the lack of polish, the game retails for $44.99 and is updated frequently, though many promised features are still noticeably lacking.
This seems to own in large part to Portalarium Inc.’s focus on the MMO aspects of the game over the solo experience that role playing fans were so passionate about when they backed Shroud of the Avatar.
Portalarium has stated that they needed to fully build the infrastructure for the multiplayer mode first, then go back and layer the single-player narrative on top of that. This may very well be true, I’m no game developer, but some of the things they’ve allotted time and resources to working on don’t seem necessary, except as a means of squeezing more funds out of their player-base.
The in-game item shop is especially troubling. While the Kickstarter made it clear that there would not be a monthly subscription fee to enjoy the online aspects of the game, there is a heavy emphasis on purchasing add-ons for the incomplete game. Most of the add-ons seem to be merely aesthetic in nature, but I find it difficult to justify selling a $700 digital airship for a game that isn’t even in Beta yet. Let’s be clear, these are digital assets, they cost the developers nothing to implement, yet they are perfectly willing to charge their players real money for the privilege of digitally owning them. Want to own a house? You have to spend real money on a deed for a plot of digital land, which you will in turn have to pay in-game tax money on. The worst part? Some people are willing to pay, and in many cases keep paying for Shroud of the Avatar, despite its glacial progress.
More troubling perhaps is the developers hosting telethons for themselves, using whatever goodwill the old Ultima community might still have to drag in more money for a game that seems to never be any closer to completion. I get that in the development process, money can run out and sometimes you have to ask for more, but this just seems like a shady way to keep the Kickstarter going indefinitely. The seeds of backer discontent are evident, not only in the comments bemoaning the lack of solo gameplay updates, but also on Shroud of the Avatar’s own forums where players are selling pledge tier rewards and accounts as they lose interest in the game.
These aren’t modest pledges either, backer reward tiers went all the way up to $10,000, which at least 2 people paid. I’m a bit amazed by how much Portalarium is able to convince people to keep shelling out just to participate in their increasingly MMO driven world. It’s a testament to Garriott’s notoriety that people keep supporting Shroud of the Avatar. Any other developer would be accused of running a scam at this point.
I’m so glad I dodged a bullet here. I had almost backed this one, not because I’m an Ultima or “Lord British” fan (I’m honestly neither) but because it looked interesting. I passed mostly because something didn’t sit right with me during the campaign and it looks like my “crowdfunding senses” were correct to walk away on this one. I’ve also heard some real horror stories from friends who did put money into this one. As far as disasters go I doubt this is the worst but it’s certainly one of the highest profile ones.
It has that Peter Molyneux kind of vibe..as in lot of promises and probably lot of disappointment.
I am a fan of Ultima too, but i simply don’t back MMO on KS. I find it impossible with so few ressources to actually create and handle a MMO. Except if you’re Star Citizen..which is the solely MMO i backed and god i regret i tried to get back my money to no avail..you’d except 100$ over multi-millions..is a drop in the sea..but i was puked out several laws and bylaws..that entitled them to keep my money. Well they can keep it but they certainly lost my faith in them (yeah still angry about it :P)
It’s a shame because I think a lot of people were sold on this thinking they could just play the single player offline mode, but that doesn’t even exist yet because all resources are going towards the MMO structure.
I think this is how it should be built, though. First create an MMO gather money by sold items and subscription then move on the offline mode. it’s a safe management. Still, i am really worried about those promises made to backers on the various tier. I don’t see it happening or if it does i see the things being unpractical and unpolished.
Yeah, that was I think the main reason I pulled out of that one. It sounded like they were pimping the online mode harder than the offline single-player experience. Which was a turn-off for me. I’ve only backed one MMO since I started getting into crowdfunding and even then I quickly moved on from playing it.
Garriott always develops the tech first and the story last. The game itself might take another year and a half to emerge. I will check on it then and make my judgement.
Fair enough, I still think the add-ons are shady though. They should focus on finishing the game first, then worry about extra revenue.
Not a fan of add-ons either. Mind you cosmetic add-ons seem to be accepted by a lot of fans in other games. I find it understandable if not desirable.
True, but that was when he was building his own engines from scratch. This is Unity, is it not?
Unity is a sort of general purpose engine. While it gives you a leg up in terms of assets and common functionality like level geometry you still have to develop a lot of technology yourself if your after specific functionality. I know this because a lot of projects I’ve backed have used Unity and they have to develop a lot themselves that more focused engines would have better tools around ie. Unreal Engine is tooled for fps’ (of course you can use it for other things) whereas Unity spreads itself thin and suffers from optimisation problems.
Yeah, I basically grew up with the Ultima series. Only Star Wars had a bigger influence on me as a child. I was so tempted to support this game, then I remembered that the last time Lord British oversaw a good game was Ultima 7 almost a quarter of a century ago. Since then he basically destroyed his own series with Ultima 8 and 9 and created some failed MMORPG’s. I also find it odd that he doesn’t just finance the game himself given that he is filthy stinking rich. At this point there is no way to call this anything other than a hustle. Even if the game gets made, it looks horribly outdated, the world has no character and will be even uglier with all the MMORPG custom crap cluttering everything up. I still get the updates via e-mail and over time they have shown little to no game progress, but have always increased efforts to sell me expensive virtual garbage. How far has Garriot fallen that we are now whispering his name alongside that of Molyneux? It’s sad, the guy used to be a hero of mine.
Rich people stay rich by keeping their money far from MMO development.
LOL! True enough.
Ultima Online was a failed MMO? Interesting, it’s still running to this day. I’m not trying to defend Garriot but then I’m also not going throw my lot in with the subset of gamers who love soap opera-tizing Developer personalities and the weird sort of game developer schadenfreude they indulge in. Guys with the imagination and the drive to make games are just human beings, they fail some and hopefully they succeed some.
The Fan self identifying ownership of old IP’s like Ultima that happens RIGHT before the fan calls Garriot an idiot and goes out of their way to point out failures or perceived wrongs as though they are personal attacks on the fan, is a weird sort of psychosis.
[…] Shroud of the Avatar Gives Backers a World for Digital Goods, And Not Much Else […]
Yes, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning was developed that way. But I wouldn’t go near Lord B*S stuff… I had that feeling from the start when I saw his slick presentation and said “Smells and feels like a con man”
I don’t have a dog in this fight but this blog seems to encompass the worst aspects of Blogging opinion pieces masquerading as journalism.
* First we start with an unsupported assertion of “setbacks”
* Then there’s the subjective “money grab” assertion showing the author has a established agenda bias.
* Then the assertion of SP focus “to be supplemented with additional online capabilities” which is nowhere in evidence on the kickstarter page, clearly the writer desires SP to be emphasized so more agenda bias
* Then we have an ad populum assertion “but over time that excitement has soured for many” that appears to be a completely baseless assumption. I’m sure there’s some people who would “sour” no matter what happens with the game, there are always unrealistic types who have pie in the sky notions (like such an ambitious project being completed in a couple years).
That is all just in the first two paragraphs, after reading more baseless assumptions and expectations of how long things should take despite admitted lack of any expertise I had to stop reading.
This blog post should be titled: why I am unhappy that this game isn’t exactly like I wanted it to be as soon as I wanted it.
From what I can see they are trying a completely new way of funding a game, crowd source plus patronage, plus telethons, it can cost TENS OF MILLIONS (as evidenced by the failed Amular MMO’s financial details for example) to fund an MMO and Shroud of the Avatar appears to be greatly more ambitious. Does it alarm me that they are doing shtick in a telethon, well sort of but maybe they are just trying to be innovative? We are talking about LARP’ers and RP enthusiasts here.
“This blog post should be titled: why I am unhappy that this game isn’t exactly like I wanted it to be as soon as I wanted it.”
Unfortunately that title is too long to make sense from an SEO standpoint. Maybe if the name of the game was added? Not sure how long the max title length is though.
I am a Ultima fan and earlier backer of SotA, so you might think I am biased. Yet the “And Not Much Else” from the title need to be clarified. Quests on SotA aren’t not pushed to the player, but instead the player have to search for them. Joanna Mueller, the writer of this review, seems to have been waiting for something to pop and it didn’t, but that the way to be, by design. Also, many quests are still broken, and unavailable, for they span over many places. But some areas are still not ready, so the quest must to wait.
[…] keep this in perspective, all this fuss is over a game in “early access pre-alpha” selling for $39.99 where you get to continue spending cash for […]
[…] As such this has become one of the most challenging genres to fund through crowdfunding. For every Shroud of the Avatar that strikes it big, there are a hundred other projects that never see the light of day. So when […]