Great news from Kickstarter today: Andrea Contato’s in-depth book about Origin Systems, its founder, and the Ultima series, has been successfully funded. The final amount the book was able to raise was €28,855, or around 130% of its base funding goal.

Contato, for his part, offered up a long list of “thank yous” to mark the end of the campaign:

Ready to go through the moongate?

Success! We did it! It means a lot to me: I decided to start this journey because many of you expressed interest in my book at the beginning of this year and said you would like to help to finance its translation and printing.

You did your part and it’s really hard for me to find the right words to say “Thank you” enough for your support, your trust and your interest in this project. I’m honoured by your faith and now we are going to focus 110% on delivering a good book about a fantastic career, an outstanding company and one of the most known and loved CRPG series of all time.

Besides you, there are others who I’d like to thank. They worked hard for more than a month to help me to prepare and complete this Kickstarter successfully. I wrote the book but without them you would have never got to read it.

They are the Moongaters, a crew assembled by Cran Gallara to help me to do something well beyond my possibilities and skills. It’s a long text but i think you’ll definitely like to know who made this all possible. In alphabetical order:

Andreas Przygienda: A few hours after my post about this yet unpublished book, he reached out to me and offered to do the translation. If you have to publish in English a book written in Italian, and your text is about videogames and computers, you need something more then the skills of a translator: you need a nerdy fan of the games you are talking about, someone who loves them, understands them and has the required skills in Information Techonolgy. Andreas is all of this and a lot more. He trusted me, worked hard long before being paid (he actually hasn’t earned a single $, so far) and he did a LOT more than he will be ever paid for, assisting me in every step of this big project, delivering ideas and saying “no!” when needed. In the book, along with his wife Heloise McGeachy, you’ll find him as the translator and editor. Well, now you know that they did a lot more than this.

Cran Gallara: You all know her. She is the beating heart of the UDIC and an invaulable member of the Moongaters. In fact she did create this team out of nowhere. The first half day after i was invited in this FB chat, I started thinking about quietly leaving it: they were all saying something, telling their thoughts, offering suggestions. It was a mess. But soon the team started to work flawlessly and delivering results. It was fantastic teamwork: we are from all around the world and you could read people going to bed when someone – from a different timezone – was going to take their place and continue working. Cran was somehow the center of this small comminity within a community. Again: it’s hard for me to find the right words to tell her how much she helped.

Dominik Reichardt: A friend of Enrico’s and an outstanding collector, Dominik started helping with translations from Italian to English when Enrico had the idea of Lord British’s certificates. Soon he got more involved, helping my research with the scans of some very old magazines, and supporting with ideas and strategies for our Kickstarter. He was one of the quietest members of the Moongaters but, when needed, he was always ready to get online, read our answers and thoughts and give his suggestions. During the campaign he went out of his way to share the news of our project and a large percentage of the backers went to the Kickstarter directly from his network of friends and contacts.

Enrico Ricciardi: You all know him (or you should!). He a truly dedicated collector and one of the best of Ultima – if not THE best. Soon after reading my first post on UDIC, he contacted me and we started brainstorming to find a way to translate and publish this book. The brainstorming never stopped: we are always thinking something new, something better. He helped me to involve Richard Garriott and Denis Loubet on this publishing project, and that helped a lot. Then he arranged the printing of the book, designed the cover, directed the trailer and the teaser. He did so many things that I’m probably forgetting something. To complete succesfully such a difficult and big undertaing, you need a lot of help, good luck and good connections. If you are very lucky, as I was, you find someone who can provide all of these and a lot more: a superb photographer, an artist and a trustworthy business partner.

Kenneth Kully: Another beating heart of the UDIC community, Kenneth supported us from the beginning, helping us spread the word of this project, giving a lot of space on his network, chatting with Andreas Przygienda on his SPAM SPAM SPAM Humbug podcast. On top of that, he joined immediately the Moongaters and never stopped giving advice and helping us do things in the right way.

Jarrod Kailef: The first time I knew about him, Enrico had already recruited Jarrod as the narrator of the teaser we released in the first half of September. Speaking with him and thanking him for his support, I knew he was a talented musician. He composed many of the songs from the Shroud of the Avatar soundtrack and also the awesome track of the teaser, kindly letting us use it. Very busy with his work, Jarrod always found the time to read our endless chat (we were able to write hundreds of messages in a day!) and help with our confused, but effective decision making system.

Pascal Gnislew: An outstanding collector (even if not much into Ultima), Pascal’s help was invaluable. Most of the time his part was to say “No! You are doing it wrong!”. The funny thing is that he was 99,9% right. Listening to him helped us to avoid a lot of problems.

Richard Pickles: I always loved reading Pix’s Origin Adventures. Richard has an outstanding knowledge not only of Origin and Ultima, but of videogame history. He helped the editing process with some very good advice and worked very hard every day of this long month, improving my English, writing the updates, giving feedback all around. As with all the other Moongaters, he was invaluable.

To all the Moongaters: you did more than help me with the crowdfunding campaign. This Kickstarter succeded only thanks to you all and your skills. It was an honor to work with you.

And now?

While we take a very short break, you should check your credit card: in a week Kickstarter will start collecting money. If something goes wrong, your pledge will be considered dropped and we will have to fix it manually via another payment method such as Paypal. Please verify that all is ok to avoid losing your reward.

We will post regular updates to keep you informed about the development of the translation and printing process so you’ll always know what we are working on.

Congratulations and well done to the good Mr. Contato and all of his Moongaters, whose number I was happy to count myself among. This was a well-run campaign from start to finish, and it’s wonderful to see that this book — the first volume of a planned two, you’ll recall — will be published.