shroud of the avatar funding

Let me start with I love Ultima.

Richard Garriott has been something of a legend to me and I have followed his career for some time.

Shroud of the avatar has been a long time coming. We havent seen an ultima game for 15 years and I eagerly await Shroud.

Kickstarter is an amazing medium to drum up serious support and financial backing however.......

what I am wondering is why RG has not put 20 million of his own funds to support a project he is committed to and believes in. Or has he?

he has looked to his long time long term fans for financial backing and he got it.

clearly RG has had issues with direction and people in the past and titles like UO, ultima8, ultima9 and tabula rasa prove that.

All I want to say is I hope RG puts a small portion of his own substantial wealth into this product too without depending too much on microtransactions like housing.

despite this concern I will continue to support shroud and look forward to its final release.

 

How do we know for sure that this is not already the case? A game of Shroud of the Avatar's stature will cost way, way more than $2.4 million to make; it's not getting ALL its funds from us backers.

 

This is an article from march that will help you a little in regards to the question:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...iotts-shroud-of-the-avatar-whats-the-big-idea

 

http://www.insidesocialgames.com/20...larium-closes-7m-series-a-round-of-financing/

Scrap the "mobile platforms" part, of course . Plus, if I recall well, he invested quite a substantial amount of money on the company, if not SotA itself.

EDIT: Ah, right, thanks for that article too, Myrcella

 

Sounds like he's got some serious skin in the game.

 

I think this idea is entirely inappropriate.

 

I'm sure it's very possible to develop a credible game for $5-10 million. But development is a tiny piece of running a company. So his numbers about what it cost to build those other games aren’t really counting the costs by EA / NCSoft, which are a large multiple of the dev costs.

Really their options are 1) to get a publisher, 2) get a large funding round, or 3) drastically limit initial scope, use lean / agile development to produce something “good enough” and continuously plow all the revenue that they get back in, knowing that their first set of customers were really buying based on future expectations.

It sounds like they're shooting for #3 and simply not trying to get that initial million sub pop and glowing reviews everyone else goes for. Just be content to build something under the radar and hope for a viral hit. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think League of Legends started with a massive game / team. They built something that worked and reinvested their success.

 

I agree and I vote no on principle.

 

LB founded Portalarium. He has assembled and hired a very experienced creative/dev team for this project on Portalarium's dime. That dime has also bought equipment and software for the team do do their stuff. He has also attracted this many backers based on his vision, reputation and word. This couldn't have happened if he just had a pile of pledge money sitting on his bed and showed it to people.

I could go on but I think I've made my point already. LB is more than pulling his weight as it is.

 

I also find this distasteful, and under the wrong assumption if you think that Richard has not invested substantially in his company already.

 

Highly inappropriate. I'm reporting the thread as such.

 

Thankyou Myrcella. I thought I had seen that article before. So yes, it was already known fact LB had already matched the kickstarter. In another article I can't find, maybe was a meeting video he already said he was going to match it and then some. As well as the guy making the company and hiring the crew, yes hes already matched the bill and then some. So I am not concerned in the least about if he should or shouldn't match what was invested. Its already done and then some. Now telling a man he should invest his own money into it just isn't appropriate.

I understand that no harm was meant in your post Sakuraba, but this is giving the wrong feeling of rude, tasteless, and straight up inappropriate. Looking at poll results, seems several people agree tis not a concern.

 

I don't believe this is a bad thread and I'm concerned that overreaction could lead to deletion. The OP has some very profane concerns, but he conveys them reasonably enough. The poll is a testament to the community's support, and the most questionable things said aren't all that bad (see below). All of the OP's concerns are somewhat flawed due to ignorance (as a few people already pointed out), but the topic in itself is not inappropriate. Threads like this communicate to new people how much RG has invested in SotA.

This is an honest (albeit cynical) question.

Fixed.

Pledge Rewards don't fit into the category of micro-transactions, but it isn't inaccurate to say that dependence on micro-transaction is a bad thing, or that RG should back his own game (and ofc, he has, but this was unknown to the OP).

The point of these quotes is to show that this thread is not worthy of deletion or moderator action.

 

I agree its not a moderated needed post.

If you read everything on the net about SotA, this comment is one i see all over. Why isn't he paying for it? Is one i see more then anything else. Its not a new question or one that violates the forum rules.

To me its in bad taste because its like saying.. Why doesn't he pay for my car? We want a commodity, we need to buy it. He makes his living making games, we are the consumer.

The other thing i don't like about it, is its based on a lot of misconceptions an uneducated opinions. Pet peve of mine.. When im not knowledgable about a topic i dont make bold statements about it.. All these people are making inaccurate assumptions.. Unfortunately they are doing it in public all over the internet which hurts all of us!

I try to post responses that he has paid for a lot of it and in my news feeds j ask readers to go do the same.

Ultimately though nothing wrong is being done, when people make such a statement.. We just need to inform them of their misconception.... Whips and chains would be good for the ones not mature enough to, as they say in psychology, "consider the opposite" but then you have to worry about the legal concerns...

 

I agree it doesn't need moderation. I just strongly dislike "how much has RG funneled out of his private funds for this game?" being used as a measure of SotA's worth or a measure of how dedicated RG is to the project. Reputation and time are worth more than finances and it is clear that he is putting both on the line for this, so his dedication is not in question. The fact that he has, indeed, invested financially should be moot at this point. Not a single person here knows the status of his personal life and finances (so the assumption that he has millions of $ laying around gathering dust is ridiculous) and it is no one's business.

He will contribute an amount that makes business/financial sense, or that makes personal sense for the satisfaction of seeing a vision come to life. That is not for anyone else to decide and is not related to the worth of the project.

 

Who cares....he said he'd be happy if they hit the 2 million + mark in kickstarter. If he is happy with that, then be assured he has everything he needs to make a good game. I think that this is his "baby" and he's not going to let it be malnourished and let it wither away and die. He's on it. On a side note, below is one of the secret rooms in RG new home in NY.