Gadgetory

everyone this is steve from gamers exes donna at CES 2015 i enjoyed by richard garriott also known as Lord British and Richard worked on the Ultima series now we're talking about shroud of the avatar which is a spiritual successor right to ultima all this content brought to you by CyberPower cyber vapor gaming pc right now we're talking about user created content so can you give us a top-level sort of philosophy for your user created approach yeah well you know one of things we realized fairly early on his right of the avatar was you know just like Ultima Online we wanted to have a highly interdependent crafting capability for players with it makes the economy very healthy but once we started down that path we realized that we could actually get completely out of the way of players if we basically got out of creating content and what I mean by that is that every sword every chair every piece of clothing is not only are the resources gathered by the player community and those things created by the player community but they all have makers marks they all have history and so even the epic loot that you know in other games you might see that the the team has created an attaches to a particular drop in our case as the players create items nassos items gain history and and are imbued with the magical powers if they are either lost or sold to stores in the game instead of destroying them we bank them and then later we when a when a skeleton and a dungeon needs a sword it goes to that bank and withdraws a player created sword with an actual history and and so we're taking that really as far as we can we're we're we're trying to get out of the content creation game entirely making all of the best things in the game player created what are you doing in terms of worrying about balancing with the economy or flooding the economy is that sort of what your reallocation is handling exactly and so you know all the same goes resources are going into the game and the drains to take them out of the game as you might find in the way to traditionally balance the economy of the game we just instead of keeping that outside value in gold we actually keep it the stock of everything that's been made previously and so you know there may be an occasion you know if the game really needs a bunch of axes and the players have never made acts as before that the game will invent a few generic axes to populate the world with but we're already finding that players are creating you know it tools and equipment much faster than the game needs to spawn them and so we don't we don't have a resource problem that sense we will actually end up ultimately destroying something to run needed versus ever probably having to create content again and we were speaking out music pre-interview so my understanding is that the players got together and worked on some of your music for the game can you give us a bit of history on that yeah in fact it's way more than some at this point it's actually all of the music you know it's funny that when we were going down the you know since or a crowd-funded game you know we're trying to be very frugal with every dollar and so when it came around to music I was lamenting the fact that you know that I either had allocate this very large amount of money for music or take music on that I was really not happy with you know either stuff that you could dig it with an inexpensive license that was already pre written for example and and the community stepped up and said and tried to offer some suggestions or some creations and originally frankly it was a lot of techno stuff instead of just be inappropriate and and so as I was turning them down and not finding this answer the community actually self-organized created the group called the poet's circle and they got together and said Richard you know give us a really detailed description of what it is you're looking for and I said well you know good luck but here you know I but I spent a couple of days riding up in detail what I was actually looking for and analyzed all the music and all the ultimate have done in the past which ones I liked which ones I didn't did why and they went okay we get it and they went off by themselves for about two months and after about two months they had developed a whole process they had run their own Kickstarter to get new equipment and new software and new sound samples and and they began to critique each other's work and it needed that period and they produced me to be five originally in all five I was incredibly excited about put them all five in the game and now every piece they've made sense has made into the game with few if any comments and how about other aspects of the game for play created content art or sound effects or things like that yeah and so we do arts probably five or ten percent the art right now is crowd or community created and and we're helping the community get better at that so i'll probably be doing more of that sound effects is something we're just now moving on to that will be ultimately ninety ninety-five percent all player created and we even have an example of code we have this thing called the avatars radio which started as a website just broadcasting news and music and information about the game through a webcast but then the community got together and made a literally a physical radio object and then wrote the code then we could just drop into the game that simulcast that radio station into the game and as a 3d position object and so now that is used for you know people go up and give plays people give sermons on the virtues people simulcast all the PvP tournament tournaments into the game by voice it's actually turned out to be a very exciting feature that was conceived created and written all by the community do you do you have an in fiction explanation for this object we do and fortunately we had already started we already introduced a little bit of technology in the game so sort of Tesla coil like energy fences and things already existed and the bigger cities already have wind power water power geothermal power to power some of these a little bit of technology that was in the game so so since we already had that little bit of electrical tech it was a good enough excuse for us to say that a radio could work in those cities as well a lot of companies that do user to create content but valve is an easy example will compensate their users are you are you doing that actually we are you know in fact you know we believe fundamentally anybody helping us make the game is saving us time and money and so we offer cash bounties on all everything that we can think of that that we think community might be able to do we put a bounty assigned to that and then people are allowed to take that bounty is cash which some do although it more often people take it we also offer twice that cash bounty as in game pledge Valley you and the majority of people take the pledge value in a way to kind of sponsor their own habits of playing the game yeah fun we have it as it were so I closes out here where can people go to learn more about shroud of the avatar out of the Avatar calm so come come join us if you were ever a fan of the Ultima series or if you're too young to have played it you know but I've heard good things about it so this is the spiritual successor in our mind so come join us the lands of new Britannia come see me Lord British I play the game every day come play with me as well shroud of the avatar calm very cool more coverage on the website gamers accessed on that or links in the description below we think Richard for your time of course thank you and I will see you all next time you