The Ultima Codex Interviews Richard Garriott
Earlier this week, Richard Garriott graciously took half an hour out of his busy schedule — in the middle of a press tour to promote Shroud of the Avatar, which was announced earlier today, no less — to chat with us about his new game. He answered a number of questions about the game, its development, and what his aims and goals with Shroud of the Avatar are.
You can find the interview in its entirety at our newly-launched Shroud of the Avatar subdomain!
And if you haven’t already, back the game on Kickstarter!
Awesome interview. Thanks, WtF.
Great job on the interview! Seriously. I don’t think I could have talked to the man without going all fanboy. XD
Thanks, guys! It was fun talking to Richard in person…bucket list kinda thing. And he gave a lot of great information about the game, especially the single player/multiplayer distinctions.
I was wary of the multiplayer aspects, and still am some I suppose. Playing with friends is awesome, but limited worldwide housing is not so much. I’ve always dreamed of having a cozy little carpenters shop in some rural village, but I doubt I’d be lucky enough to get to the land first. =\
From his recent posts here to this interview I get the impression that a lot of things are still in flux with SotA. The backing away from “social” and trying to rebrand it according to its positive essence. Creating it for PC first instead of mobile devices (he loves his iPhone). I’m used to laser-focused clarity when Garriott speaks, but there’s been a hint of uncertainty, of flying by the seat of his pants a bit with his more recent language. I think for at least the duration of the Kickstarter campaign a final design document will be made.
The idea of limited housing brings up the issue of how far the reach of persistence extends. If there is a single housing pool for everyone who has an active account, that creates an issue as very few people will have their own houses. If the housing pool is limited to a group of friends, what happens when a new friend joins who already had a house in the same location as one of the players in their new friend group? Hopefully that sort of thing will be ironed out during the player input (Kickstarter) phase.
“for twenty years, we had only solo-player games, and the reach of that audience, the reach of those games was ones of millions of people. Then with MMOs, we reached tens of millions of people, even though the games are more expensive and more complicated.”
Why do you lie, Richard? Single player games reached and still reach far more people than MMOs.
Okay, we’re talking about this on Facebook now. Reply there.