All three of those were different enough that my publisher - often my own company - did not support or understand what I was doing until it was finished. But to properly fund Shroud of the Avatar, we either needed to consider a publishing partnership with a large distribution partner, or go directly to the players.Īs I reflect on my own work of the past, my favorites are Ultima IV, Ultima VII and Ultima Online. Richard Garriott: I have and continue to invest millions into Portalarium. Have all your years of extravagant Texan hedonism finally taken their toll? RPS: First off, why Kickstarter? I mean, you've kinda been to space. The fates, in other words, haven't been unkind to his rather formidable fortune, and it stands to reason that he's not in what mere mortals like ourselves would refer to as 'dire straits.' So then, why all this Kickstarter hoopla for Shroud of the Avatar? Moreover, how will its episodic structure work? And Garriott's gone on about how the pseudo-MMO is actually single-player at heart, but how will the teeth of one puzzle piece interlock with the sawblade edges of another? Click past the break for Garriott's best attempts at explaining some of his Ultima successor's stickier issues. He also owned an actual, factual castle at one point.

However, unlike literally all of those same pioneers, Garriott's kinda, you know, been to space.

Like so many role-playing pioneers before him, Richard Garriott has joined the boom-or-bust gold rush that is Kickstarter.

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