Shroud of the Avatar Comes in Just Over Two Million Dollars April 7, 2013
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment.Tags: Camelot Unchained, Kickstarter, Lord British, Mark Jacobs, Shroud of the Avatar
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Lord British is no doubt celebrating this morning, having finished up his 30 day run on Kickstarter with a last minute surge of donations, bringing the grand total of donations to $2,030,676, averaging about $88 per backer. That is double is initial $1 million goal.
NOT the official drink of Kickstarter
That number includes the totals from the Kickstarter page and money raised on the official game site from those who wanted to use PayPal.
From the official site
I am not sure why somebody would find Amazon payments objectionable, but then be fine with PayPal, but I guess at least 775 people could answer that question, and they have 111,401 reasons on their side.
Anyway, this means that the $2 million stretch goal has been met.
That is a long list
And, as these things now go, just because it is over doesn’t mean it is actually over. Obsidian Entertainment’s Project Eternity Kickstarter funded, but then let people put in some money late with their “slack backer” program on their official site. so you can get in on some aspect of the action on a Kickstarter than funded back in October.
I have also seen several Kickstarter campaigns that let you upgrade your tier after the fact, raking in a few extra dollars. And, even as I am writing this, people have added more money to the Shroud of the Avatar project via PayPal. But I have updated the dollar amount above three times already. I am just going to leave it where it is for now.
And speaking of now, now is when the wait begins. The money is being collected. The goals are set.
When will something come of all of this?
One of the more common complaints about Kickstarter is about projects not meeting their timeline. The estimated date for the launch of the first of five episodes of the game is October 2014. I guess we will see in about 18 months how accurate that estimate was along with how much communication continues from Lord British and company post-campaign. Communication can alleviate some of the frustration people will feel when the project inevitably slips.
And, most important of all, with the unwieldy name of Lord British’s Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues, can we just shorten that to “SotA” and pronounce is as “soda?”
Meanwhile, the Camelot Unchained Kickstarted campaign is five days in and just shy of the $900K mark on the path to the $2 million goal as I write this. It is bringing in an average of $157 per back at this point, but appears to have hit that first plateau after a very quick initial run up. We will have to see what Mark Jacobs and team has up their sleeve to keep that dollar amount climbing.
Camelot Unchained Kickstarter Unleashed! April 2, 2013
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in Camelot Unchained, entertainment.Tags: Camelot Unchained, Kickstarter, Lord British, Mark Jacobs, Shroud of the Avatar
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Mark Jacobs and his team were wise enough to pass on an April 1st start date for his Camelot Unchained Kickstarter.
(Though I think the whole thing started before the timer on the Camelot Unchained home page finished counting down. Probably a good idea to make sure it was going strong before sending people over.)
But the day of fools has passed, and now it is back to marketing as usual.
As Lord British and his Shroud of the Avatar Kickstarter winds down its last few days, having crossed the $1.3 million mark, getting it to the interactive musical instruments stretch goal (did anybody believe that those stretch goals wouldn’t make it into the game?), Mark Jacobs and Camelot Unchained begin their campaign.
And Mark wants two million dollars.
He’ll see Lord British’s million and raise him a million.
That seems like an aggressive goal. As I said before, I think Lord British has better general name recognition and is a bigger draw because of that. So the City State Entertainment team is going to have to work hard to make that goal.
All of the now standard Kickstarter bits and pieces are in place. There are tiers from $5 to $10,000 with splashy graphics to illustrate what you get with each tier and charts to compare tier. It is a lot of graphics. The page seems to go on forever. But you pretty much need the picture to see what you are getting because the text about the tiers in the side bar is cramped and goes on forever as well. And I have already spotted a couple of discrepancies between charts and pictures. There is a game in that alone I think.
There are mission statements and what makes the game unique and, of course, the requisite “why Kickstarter” apologia.
As a “niche” and RvR-focused MMORPG, CU is a very risky venture for most traditional game publishers. Even if we did find one willing to take the risk, it would come with so many strings attached we couldn’t make the game we want to, or would face constant battling to ensure our vision remains intact. That’s why we’re attempting to fund some, but not all, of this project’s costs through Kickstarter.
While we at CSE believe in Camelot Unchained, we could be wrong about it having even enough appeal for backers to fund this Kickstarter. We will create this game only if there is a demand for it, so if we can’t get the partial funding we seek, we will not go ahead. OTOH, if we do successfully fund, Mark Jacobs will add $2M dollars to the development budget himself. This is covered in more detail below.
I suppose it is refreshing to see the founder, who in this case doesn’t live in a castle and hasn’t paid his way into space, publicly matching the funds raised. I am not sure how meaningful that is, but it is there.
And there is a succinct statement about where the money is going.
Every dollar we raise from this Kickstarter campaign will go towards development. Our staffing plan includes hiring three additional engineers, two artists, one designer and one part-time writer immediately. The MMO engine will be developed in-house with one purpose, to make a great RvR MMORPG; the engineers will work with Andrew on it, and our existing programmers on the server tech. While this game won’t require the amount of content as Dark Age of Camelot, we still need to hire a few more artists in-house and a writer so, dragons be praised, Mark can go back to his day job and stop writing all these documents.
I think that is a pretty reasonable statement.
There is a chart that lists out what you can buy with those Founder Points you get for this and that. That seems to be a mildly new twist. I am still not sure how many points I would get for any given tier, or how I actually spend them, but at least I can see that there is a use for them.
There are, however, no explicit stretch goals yet, though there are several statement about other platforms depending on making such goals. But I get the feeling it will be a stretch to get to the main goal. And it is easier to communicate a specific goal rather than a series of hurdles past what people thought was the finish line.
And there is a nice new graphic of the team.
City State Entertainment
I like that a lot. And now I am even more likely to think of The City State of the Invincible Overlord every time I see that company name.
I also like that the name of the product is just two words, Camelot Unchained, and didn’t end up as Mark Jacob’s Camelot Unchained: Conflict of Three Lands Who Have Been At It Before or some such.
And the estimated delivery date for the final product? December 2015.
Now, the big question is, will Mark Jacobs and the City State Entertainment team make it to $2,000,000 by Thursday May 2, 11:56am EDT? We’re at the fast out of the gate stage where the true believers kick in, so the numbers are rising fast. The $300K mark is close as of this time. But when will that first plateau arrive?
And will we get an interview from Mark Jacobs where he insults people in order to draw attention to the whole thing when pledges do slow down?
The Kickstarter page is here for your viewing pleasure.
This Kickstarter and That Kickstarter March 29, 2013
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment.Tags: Camelot Unchained, Kickstarter, Lord British, Mark Jacobs, Shroud of the Avatar
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Lord British carries on, but his Shroud of the Avatar Kickstarter project is coming to its close. There are just nine days left to go at this point. He is past his goal and sitting around the $1.2 million mark.
I have said in previous posts that this Kickstarter project is more of a marketing exercise than a financing necessity. That it is being run to a plan. And that even Lord British giving a controversial interview was part of that plan, though that seemed to go off course a bit.
And while I am sure I sound cynical at times… during waking hours is generally when this is so, though I am told I sometimes snore in derisive tones… I do not see this who process as not necessarily a bad thing.
Not a bad thing at all, really.
Lord British… and since he is putting his name at the top and playing the role as primary spokesperson, I’ll keep referring just to him… has availed himself of a useful publicity tool that brings with it many benefits, not the least of these is that it can turn a profit while getting the word out and getting his real fans to self-identify and invest themselves… emotionally and economically… in his proposed game.
And the plan continues. They hit the checkpoint the other day where they announced additional benefits for each of the different pledge tiers. This was not spontaneous at all. This was a method to get people already on the hook to up their pledge. Who doesn’t want an immortality fruit for just a few dollars more?
Available only to backers, you will receive one Immortality Fruit seed. With the Farming Craft you can plant the Immortality Fruit seed, which will bear a single fruit. When eaten, this fruit will fully heal you, and leave you with a single seed which can be planted and harvested, over and over, for all eternity. The Immortality Fruit seed can be transferred between players.
As far as I can tell, this did manage to shake a few more dollars out of people’s pockets, as I am sure his opening up pledges to PayPal users.
The plan though seemed to be based on a specific tempo. The philosophy behind it appeared to be to make this as much of a spectacle during the 30 days of the project, with minimal information available before the kick off.
Every concrete detail we know about Shroud of the Avatar… including the name… has come since their Kickstarter has launched. It has been a concentration of focus. No warning. Shock and awe, if you will.
And this interests me because not only is another industry veteran, Mark Jacobs, planning a Kickstarter campaign, but he is doing it in a very different way so far. He and his company, City State Entertainment, have been talking about what they are planning for a while now. They started their pre-Kickstarter awareness campaign back at the beginning of February.
We know the name already. Or at least we think we do. It is Camelot Unchained, with a faint “working title” scribbled in along side.
Mark Jacobs has laid out a series of design principles around the game cover things such as balance, crafting, socializing, and taking chances, even bringing in another team member to cover graphics and the looks versus performance aspect of design.
They are already previewing and getting feedback on the backer’s tiers they plan to offer and some of the incentive concepts they plan to run with as part of the planned Kickstarter campaign, including something called Founder’s Points. Those were mentioned in the Camelot Unchained newsletter if you subscribed to the mailing list.
I also said that that would be prizes and pie for all. Well, maybe I did not mention pie but I know I mentioned prizes so here is the first one. Everybody who has subscribed to our mailing before the Kickstarter launches will receive additional Founders Points. What are Founder’s Points you might ask? Well, stay tuned for the developer diaries to find out.
We haven’t gotten that developer diary entry yet. These points will be redeemable for something, and you’ll get a few extra if you bought their March on Oz game, though they will be tracked based on the email address you use… and crap, I used a different email address for iOS purchases, Amazon payments, and signing up for email lists. So I’m probably going to miss out on some points on that front.
But we still do not know when this Kickstarter campaign is going to kick off.
All of which, as I said above, is very different from how the Lord British campaign went.
Part of it is, I am sure, due to the asymmetry of the situations. At one level it is two industry veterans playing to their fans and trying to revive what they felt was great about some of their past. And, oddly, both sold past companies to Electronic Arts and are now building on IPs similar to what they did in the past.
But Lord British has better name recognition and probably a bigger fan base built up over time. This was no doubt helped by his Lord British character being part of the games and by the fact that his Ultima series of games spanned two decades. We tend to remember that and not Tabula Rasa.
Meanwhile, Mark Jacobs, whose last great work was Dark Age of Camelot, has to live in the shadow Warhammer Online and a fashion designer. So he has to build up some momentum in advance that Lord British could probably achieve on name recognition alone. And then there are the teams behind the games. Lord British shows all the games that his Shroud of the Avatar team have touched on the Kickstarter page, while Mark’s lineup is… a little more whimsical.
Still, even with the different relative positions and project goals, it is hard for me not to compare these two projects, at least when it comes to their Kickstarter ambitions.
Lord British has made his million dollar goal, though he hasn’t exactly sped through the stretch goals. Still, he can claim victory. And he still has more than a week left to go, so there could still be a big surprise reveal on the plan.
Meanwhile, we do not even know how much money Mark Jacobs will be asking for. Or when he will start asking for it. And given how front-loaded all of the work has been so far, I will be interested to see how the Camelot Unchained 30 day funding campaign will unfold. What is he holding back? What reveals does he have in his pocket, waiting for just the right time? Who is he going to insult in a controversial mid-campaign interview?
I can hardly wait to see how it plays out.
Oh… and if a good game or two comes from all of this, so much the better!
Anyway, expect that I will follow Camelot Unchained as vigorously as I have Shroud of the Avatar.
Addendum:
This just came in email, indicating at least that the Camelot Unchained Kickstarter is closer than I thought. Also, they updated the CU web site since I wrote this. Things look different and all links may not work. Also, “working title” appears to have gone missing, so it looks like it will be Camelot Unchained.
Pardon the Delay!
Folks,
The bad news is that Kickstarter campaign for Camelot Unchained is not going to start today. The good news is that our project is currently in review. As soon as Kickstarter approves our project, we will announce the official Kickstarter launch date. We have no reason to expect that it won’t be approved next week but our project is rather “complicated” as there are a ton of moving parts, including 30 very detailed reward tiers, all the individual rewards, Founder’s Exchange (the store), etc. Due to that complexity, the holiday and the typical studio issues of weather/illness/CPU going boom/etc., it took us just a little bit longer than we thought it would to put it all together so please accept our apologies for this brief delay.
We are going to take advantage of this “downtime” to post material from the campaign, starting with our pledge tiers. Our plan is to break up the tiers into multiple blog posts with the first part going up, on our brand new website, later today.
We will let you know the Kickstarter campaign’s starting date after our project is approved. Again, sorry for the brief delay but when you see our Kickstarter presentation next week, I hope you will agree that it was worth waiting for, even if the wait is just a wee bit longer than expected.
Mark
Lord British – Kickstarter by the Numbers March 19, 2013
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment.Tags: Camelot Unchained, Kickstarter, Lord British, Mark Jacobs, Shroud of the Avatar
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Richard Garriott de Cayeux, aka Lord British, has made his million.
The count at ~03:00 UTC
The Kickstarter for Lord British’s Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues, to give it its awkward full name, passed the one million dollar mark this evening, with 19 days left to go on the 30 day run. This means Lord British and his company will get some money.
What they do with it remains to be seen.
As a funding necessity, I remain skeptical of the need for Lord British to resort to this sort of thing. The idea that a million dollars will make a huge difference relative to what he is promising or that he could not get that sum of money without retaining his independence seems patently silly to me.
But as a marketing exercise… well, on that front his effort seems to be quite the success.
I was actually kind of surprised that his team jumped straight from a count down… which felt somewhat stale… how many such count downs have we endured in the past… right into the Kickstarter without any sort of introductory preamble or warm up.
I compare this, of course, to Mark Jacobs and his Camelot Unchained posts, which is just that sort of build up to a Kickstarter campaign. Mr. Jacobs has been building up to a Kickstarter, laying out founding principals and such in attempt to create enthusiasm in advance of the kick off.
Meanwhile, Lord British has been running his Kickstarter… or somebody has been running it for him… like a pro.
He has had new updates, new rewards, or new reveals every day since the the fund run started. It was all planned well in advance, but it gets put out there like it was a spontaneous new surprise. This past afternoon, in obvious anticipation of passing the million dollar mark, the first stretch goals showed up.
Room for more goals…
If Lord British hits the 1.1 million dollar mark, players will get social and combat pets as part of the game.
At the 1.2 million dollar mark, there will be changeable weather.
Actually, looking at those, I am not sure he is keeping up standards. Can you picture him holding back these features if somehow these goals are not met. Meanwhile, the 1.3 million dollar stretch goal has yet to be revealed. People will have to donate to find out what is up.
Probably the most interesting update so far was update #10 about the various play modes that will be available in the game. They will be:
Single player offline:
This is the DRM free, completely off-line version of the game. Your character is stored on your computer and can not be used in any of the online modes.Single Player Online (SPO)
In the SPO mode you connect to the server, receive content updates, and can see the long term changes others are having on the world. However, you are not visible on anyone else’s screen, nor for grouping, and you don’t see anyone else in the world. You can switch from SPO to FPO or OPO modes whenever you like while in a city or overland map. Some parts of the main storyline quests may temporarily force the player into SPO mode for some parts of the quest.Friends Play Online (FPO)
In friends play online, you only see people you have flagged as friends in the game and only they can see you. Like single player, this is just a server side filter. For those who prefer the quieter game with friends or maybe for those who prefer a more focused role playing experience, this lets you enjoy a more limited online experience. You can switch to SPO or OPO modes whenever you like while in a city or in the overland map.Open Play Online (OPO)
In OPO players will see everyone that the server thinks they should see. This will not necessarily be all people in the area but should be people you care the most about based on what we believe is their relevance to you.
I find the last bit the most interesting, in that you will see “everyone that the server thinks” you should see. Also, it is odd that they make a point of saying that single player offline will be completely DRM free. I wonder what that implies.
Anyway, Lord British’s Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues has met its minimum goal. We shall see how far along it progresses from there.
And we will see, eventually, how the Mark Jacobs strategy works in comparison.
Shroud of the Avatar – Lord British Discovers Kickstarter March 8, 2013
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment.Tags: Camelot Unchained, Kickstarter, Lord British, Mark Jacobs, Shroud of the Avatar
13 comments
Wasn’t I just talking about remakes? Here comes another.
The Lord British countdown has completed, and his announcement has been made.
Technically not a remake I suppose, as Lord British sold all the rights to his Ultima work to Electronic Arts for a dump truck full of money. So now, his fondness for EA aside, he has to do a remake under a new name, Shroud of the Avatar.
Of course, he will be up against another avatar.
EA’s remake of the Ultima games… or Ultima IV specifically I guess… is Ultima Forever: Quest for the Avatar.
EA has their budget battling with their inherent corporate limitations, while Lord British has his reputation which comes up hard against the “what have you done lately?” question that plagues so many early bloomers.
Still, I have no doubt that Lord British will meet his Kickstarter goal based on reputation alone. He is asking for… say it all together now… ONE MILLION DOLLARS… in order to make his new game. He doesn’t have any stretch goals yet, but for a $10,000 donation you can get a rare copy of Akalabeth and a visit to his home.
How this both multiplayer online AND offline single player game develops will be interesting to watch, which I plan to do from the sidelines.
It will also be interesting to compare how this plays out with what Mark Jacobs is up to with Camelot Unchained.
Lord British is going with the announcement and Kickstarter launch on the same day, while the wily Mr. Jacobs is building up slowly to a Kickstarter campaign by building a lot of ground work around his plans. Lord British probably has more name recognition, so perhaps felt he didn’t need to get people ready in advance. We shall see.
Will you be donating to either, or both, of these games?
Addendum:
A more detailed description, interview, and vanity post about the game and its history, where the word “innovation” is thrown around, is available on VentureBeat.
Maybe the best reaction I saw on Twitter… from Jeff Green of course.
Lord British has a Kickstarter? The dude lives in a castle and has been to outer space.—
Jeff Green (@Greenspeak) March 08, 2013
After I support Garriott's Kickstarter, I'm looking forward to supporting others in need of funding, like Trump, Gates, and Zuckerberg.—
Jeff Green (@Greenspeak) March 08, 2013
EverQuest: More Popular at Launch than WoW is Today… February 15, 2013
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in EverQuest, World of Warcraft, Humor, entertainment.Tags: Air Warrior, Camelot Unchained, Friday Blog Wars, sarcasm, Trolling Tobold
17 comments
But only if you use the Bizarro metrics.
For example, on Planet Tobold, it ISN’T how many who play your game that matters, but how many people DIDN’T play you game.
Taken to logical extremes, there are more than 7 billion people today who do NOT play World of Warcraft today.
However, back in 1999, when the first player logged into EverQuest, there were only 6 billion people not playing it!
A clear victory for SOE, putting it a whole billion “non-players” ahead of Blizzard!
But wait. Back in 1987 when Air Warrior was finally rolling, it only had 5 billion people not playing it!
Who is the most successful online game now, bitches?
Meanwhile, SpaceWar, running way back in 1961 had a mere 3 billion people not playing it!
A clear victory in the unpopularity race!
And yes, I am stretching Tobold-logic to humorous extremes on purpose. But even trying to work the negative player numbers in a serious manner… potential player populations, target populations, subscription rates, and what not… seems like building a castle in a swamp.
Of course, so does trying to measure how many people remember a game. I suspect there are games out there that more people remember than actually played them. But how do you even begin to measure that and, more importantly, how does that equated to success?
Being remembered certainly doesn’t pay the bills.
Nor does historical significance which, by definition, is an assessment of something that happened far enough in the past that it has ceased to be contemporary and actual becomes history. Real history, in the serious academic studies sense, only starts when those who were there to witness it… and thus have invested opinions about it… pass on and things that had to be held secret to protect governments and individuals alike are released to the public.
Which is to say that neither I nor Tobold can really make anything besides guesses now about how the future may view this era when it comes to MMOs and the like.
But when you’ve soured on a genre to the point that your agenda seems to be deny that any MMO with numbers south of 250K can possibly be a success merely because WoW exists and heap scorn on anybody who wants something different, I guess you have to take whatever crazy ammunition you can find.
I am certainly not saying WoW isn’t a success. It is certainly what keeps Activision-Blizzard funded for the three quarters each year when they don’t ship a new Call of Duty game. But success is not an absolute bar, now set so high by WoW that nobody can ever succeed again. Mark Jacobs’ Camelot Unchained plans are not an automatic failure merely because he is targeting a small audience. It is an experiment. It has risks. It has to live in the current MMO ecosystem.
But that alone doesn’t mean it won’t work.
Of course, even Mr. Jacobs isn’t above pulling out a silly metric himself now and again.
An Indictment of Something… February 5, 2013
Posted by Wilhelm Arcturus in entertainment, Warhammer Online.Tags: Camelot Unchained, City State Entertainment, Dark Age of Camelot, Metacritic, Reviews
2 comments
…and remains one of the top 10 highest Metacritic-rated MMOs.
Mark Jacobs, in reference to Warhammer Online
Mark Jacobs is talking to the press again because he and his new(-ish) company, City State Entertainment, have a new MMO under way; one with some familiar sounding features.
The Emerald City Logo
Of course, this means he needs to answer the ever present questions around how this new MMO will relate to his two previous ventures, Dark Age of Camelot and Warhammer Online.
He is candid, as usual, about how these two past games are influencing his current venture. And he is up front about the problems with Warhammer Online. From the interview:
Nobody was more disappointed in WAR than I was. At launch, it had lots of wonderful things in it, but it also had way too many bugs, balance, and leveling issues, and of course, crashes in Tier 4. It was my worst nightmare come true, and as I’ve stated before…
And yet there is that quote at the top. That really caught my eye.
There is that list of reviews on Metacritic. Look at them. There are 18 reviews that gave the game a score of 90 or more, including two that gave it 100. And since the game has stagnated since, never shipping an expansion, that is what you see when you look at Metacritic for reviews.
It rates higher than any MMO I have played for more than a couple of months, save World of Warcraft… which really brings up the question of how MMOs should be reviewed. Clearly the ” spent a few hours in beta and read the press release” method leads to erratic results, though sometimes that seems to get it right if the issues are obvious enough… or if the publisher doesn’t have enough advertising clout.
As for the new MMO title and its Kickstarter financing plans, I am currently in the “tell me when it actually ships” column.
Turning the City State Entertainment team from March on Oz, a pretty but pedestrian iOS Plants vs. Zombies knock-off, to a full fledged MMO seems like a pretty big leap to me. Doubly so when Mark himself describes the group as:
…a small, independent team of very dedicated and hard-working guys and gals, many of whom had never worked in the games industry before.
We shall see.
