Polygon: Richard Garriott: the man, the myth, the mischief

Polygon just posted an article talking to Richard about his new book and SotA:
http://www.polygon.com/features/2017/1/30/14406074/richard-garriott-book-interview

Some teasers:
- Garriott is happy to talk about his shortcomings such as the blinkers of his privilege, the professional relationships that went south and his own propensity to dodge boring chores. The only thing he gets defensive about is his new game, Shroud of the Avatar. But we'll come to that later.
- When pressed for a launch date, or a point at which the game can be called complete, he predicts sometime in the middle of this year. "There will be games systems completed before then, including all the spells, combat, economics, crafting and all of the MMO-like systems. But to me the game is not done until I can start a new character and play all the way through to the end of Episode One [of five]. That's when we will 'launch' it but of course you can argue it's been launched for 38 months now."
- When I ask why backers are also showing discontent — the Kickstarter comments are blistering — he says: "We do a pretty good assessment of all the backers across all the different media and we do believe that the vast majority are still with us and content."

There's even a comment from Starr regarding the negative reviews and goals of the game!

Congrats Richard on the release of the book and to the whole team for 38 consecutive monthly releases! If you haven't purchased the book, it's a great read and worth picking up.

Check out the article for even more info and discuss below!

 

Great read.

This is probably the first article I've read where the developers delivered a cohesive response to the often noisy false narratives cooked up by the naysayers. I know at the heart of all this players just want a good game, and not everyone agrees on what makes a good game. But the amount of abuse this development team takes on a daily basis simply because they're so open about what they're doing is ridiculous.

I'm happy that the dev team remains committed to doing it the right way. I think that choice will pay off in the end.

I think Shroud of the Avatar is already a good game. We're just trying to make it a great game.

 

I'm looking forward to read this book

 

Thank you for sharing Smack. I enjoyed it a lot and the video of Richard Garriott showing his house and collections was fantastic. Only thing I'm hoping for year end release date . I feel we are showing such great progress and getting important fun tech in the game now so yay, but the things to do such as a multitude of tasks, quests, achievements that lead us all over the world and give reasons to explore and do things would still be missing. People will come into the game and explore everything and do the amount a content and leave. We need to cover all bases give those reasons to continue to play, well imo.

 

I agree with this very much. You can even see some of that in R38.

 

THIS, should be read and understood by so many here. It couldn't be more accurate.

We also received a statement from SOTA’s executive producer Star Long who argued that there are “actually only a few Kickstarter comments” that are negative. He added: “The nature of Kickstarter and Early Access means we must provide backers a rather detailed description and feature list of the game before we start working on it. This means those backers then create their own vision of what they imagine the game will be.

“THEY ARE LEARNING THAT GAME-MAKING IS MESSY.”
“This vision is often very different from the creator’s vision. Then when their own internal vision fails to match the actual product they accuse the creators of failing to deliver on the promise. Additionally when people love a franchise as much as they love Ultima they have some very passionate feelings about what they want a ‘spiritual successor’ to be. They build up in their minds all sorts of visions about what that game will be like.

“In our case we have been very clear that the game would be a combination of an MMO and a single player game and that is exactly what it is today. We have an offline single player mode as well as multiple online modes just as we described. In fact we have added features to both offline and the online modes so not only are we creating the original vision we have added to it. Again while it may not match some of our backer’s internal visions it very much matches exactly what we described bullet point by bullet point and it matches what our own vision for the product was to be from day one.”

 

I think they are far to unselfcritical in this interview.

 

I found that on MMORPG.com


43:00 – Richard mentions they took their art almost exclusively from the Unity Asset Store and wrote a bare minimum of code.
44:40 – Richard admits the $1M fundraising target in their Kickstarter was an amount they decided would allow them to “get out of this pickle” and not necessarily finish the product (which of course would entail fulfilling the promises made in the Kickstarter).

 

I agree, I just read the kickstater comments.
They are BAD, like really bad.

I understand, they wont admit any failures..but come on man.
An apple is an apple, not a watermelon.

 

Yep, it's a good video.

Not sure exactly why you're linking it here though.

 

Im not a dev and I've been pretty loud here blaming the customer too. Its just a fact that most people cannot conceptualize the fact that they are playing a game that is in heavy construction.

 

Pausing everyone here to suggest we not argue about the design from the KS to present again... this is not the place for it. We've had tons and tons of those threads already and this is not the topic for it, even though the article presents some of it.

 

One thing I was curious about in the article is this quote

It seems like a difficult chore to assess the majority opinion on backer satisfaction. In what ways is backer satisfaction measured? What ways have the overall number of backers been giving feedback?

I'm not suggesting they're wrong or that Richard was being disingenuous. I just haven't ever received a developer survey on my opinion of status of the project. It just makes me curious where they gather their data outside of the forums.

 

I agree. A lot of their comments felt either surprisingly out of touch, or intentionally spin-ny.

I understand why, of course. But that doesn't make it go down any smoother.

 

The development of SotA is also an exploration into development practices. Although not a perfect analogy, it is much like evolution in that every step on the way to a design goal must also be functional. This is demanded by Early[earlyearly] Access and the 24/7 uptime. Unlike development behind closed doors with in-house testers, they do not have the luxury of removing functionality on the way to the goal.

Undoubtedly, this has led to the unexpected, both good and ill. Once Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues is complete and the folks at Portalarium have a chance to relax I'll be eager to hear them speak about the challenges they encountered and the unanticipated benefits/hazards of open development.

 

Well said.

And perhaps most importantly, would they dare to use an open development framework again? Do the risks outweigh the benefits? For me personally, I find this to be much better than playing the game after it's beyond change. But obviously for others, change is too adverse to stomach.

 

We'll just have to wait and see what they pitch during the Kickstarter for Episode 2.

 

I would be very disappointed if they closed the doors to their open development framework.

Ya know that's really an interesting thought, Duke Avery. I would certainly pay to be a part of the open development team (as I think players in the first Kickstarter did by joining DEV+) but knowing what we know now with hindsight being our guide, I wonder how many people would go into it? I think for some they might be more like me and it would be hard to give it up. Certainly no one involved in funding the game for EP2 could say they didn't know what to expect. That alone might be the most comforting thought of all. Having a chance to make a great game without the constant droning on of people that have given up hope, but not given up the chant of telling everyone they've given up hope. EP2 might be really amazing to be a part of.

 

I know of 2 Early Access Games that had the same review situation as SotA. Both did create 2 awesome updates/patches that resolved long lasting issues.

Thankfully the dissapointet did stick around all the time. Because it is them who are now writting and honoring the developers with reviews like: They did it , hurray. - All come back! It is fun again.
Ignore all reviews before this date about bad combat. They did not test new patch.
Reviews did get updatet on mass to positive.

And they pull in new players also.

Nothing more powerful then a customer feeling hope and fun again and sharing it


1 Game had major problems with the combat over more then a year and finally got in January a patch getting the "Fun" back in that System.

It pulled right away out of red in Steam. And all those posts: All come back!
All those updated Reviews. Truly fun to read.
Good that all did stick around. Good they did leave honest feedback. Because se just as they did negative they mow show honest positive feedback also.


Had to think of SotA right away and wish them this also.


Posting this for those Community members who think it is annoying that some still not happy with the current game hang around. We can become suddenly a far stronger promoter for the game you all love and are important for a powerful bounce back.
We are the ones who will spread the message noticing improvements in core issues.


2 core that have this feedback re bounce power are : solo and combat.

And 1 i think personally having the power to also give feedback rebounce to positive is smoothening the discrepancy between ingame free craftabel decorative and add on store items. I see them already adjusting to it. What is good.

 

Of course you do.
And of course they aren't.
The fact that they....adressed different topics the way they did proofs that the self reflection isn't very strong in parts of this community either.