Apple II Bits

Kickstarter has been a boon not only for indie developers, but for established game designers looking to return to the virtual worlds upon which their careers were founded. Shadowgate, Space Quest, Wasteland, and Leisure Suit Larry are just a few of the franchises that got their start on the Apple II and are now slated for a well-funded modern resurrection.

But none of these games carry the impact, the longevity, or the fame as the Ultima series. Lord British has heeded the call of the fans and is turning to Kickstarter to return to Britannia.

On Friday, March 6, at 10 AM CST, Richard Garriott joined fellow Austin gaming company Rooster Teeth to host a live announcement:

The punchline was Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues, a new computer role-playing game that lacks the Ultima brand that Garriott can no longer claim, but which only his team owns the legacy to.

The announcement didn’t need the full hour that the above video runs, but the extra time gave Garriott and hosts Burnie Burns and Gus Sorola time to reflect on how Garriott built this empire. Working in a computer store at the age of 19, Garriott began selling Akalabeth, making twice as much money in one year as his astronaut father. Garriott brought along several artifacts from those early days, including the Apple II Plus on which he developed Akalabeth. Highlights from that interview are in this gallery of screen captures from the above video.

As much fun as the reminiscing was, it wasn’t hard to forget that it was a thinly veiled sales pitch. Garriott wants one million of our dollars via Kickstarter:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/portalarium/shroud-of-the-avatar-forsaken-virtues-0

Donation levels include the $10 “Guilt Pledge” (“If you ever pirated an Ultima game or used an exploit to grief other players in Ultima Online, here’s your chance to repent! For your $10 donation, you will receive a clear conscience and Lord British’s undying gratitude”) to the $10,000 “Lord of the Manor”, which comes with one of 12 known copies of Akalabeth. For those of us with humbler wallets, $40 gets you early access (December 2013) to the final game (October 2014), while $125 will also get you a cloth map feelie — just like the old Ultimas!

It’s been a long time since I’ve been a role-playing gamer, and even longer since I’ve done so on a computer instead of a video game console. Yet I didn’t hesitate to fork over my money to Lord British. Some folks may not be sold on this heir to the Ultima empire:

https://twitter.com/mattpeckham/status/310063782342840320

But there’s no denying that Garriott has earned a chance to return to his world. As Benj Edwards tweeted:

I'm supporting Richard Garriott's new game even if I never play it, because the man made magic in the 80s-90s http://t.co/cNMp0Altlo

— Benj Edwards (@benjedwards) March 8, 2013

I love Kickstarter. There’s something about playing a role in helping artists realize their dreams that’s empowering for all parties involved. And as Jason Scott pointed out in Juiced.GS, the small amounts that backers pay can make the difference between something existing and something not.

For retrocomputing enthusiasts, Kickstarter further represents the potential to resurrect many of the elements of our youth. We grew up playing electronic games on personal computers, many of them in franchises that have seen a resurgence in popularity thanks to crowdfunding. Now we can revive yet another one with this latest pitch:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zojoi/shadowgate

Dave Marsh and Karl Roelofs, formerly of ICOM and now of Zojoi, look to reimagine their classic point and click adventure, Shadowgate. Rather than a direct sequel, this version of Shadowgate will update the old puzzles as well as implement many ideas Marsh and Roelofs have had while designing and porting Shadowgate over the years. The new game will also include both an original soundtrack as well as Hiroyuki Masuno’s NES composition.

They’ve set a modest goal of only $120,000 — heck, that’s half as much as some cancelled old-school games get on Kickstarter. They met half their goal within the first week of their one-month fundraising term — and since 90% of Kickstarter projects that achieve at least 30% funding prove successful, this progress bodes well!

The most popular reward is the typical $15 for the Mac or PC version, though if you want a tablet edition, that’ll cost you $60. Unless you want your name included in the game’s end credits, a better deal is to wait for the game’s release before buying it for iOS or Android.

Shadowgate, set in a fantasy world of dragons and magic, was one of my first encounters with the genre when it was ported from MacVenture’s 1987 Mac version to the 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). I revisited it on the Game Boy Color a decade later and am hard-pressed to justify the low score I gave it. In 2006, I played the GBC game again, this time on the big screen, courtesy the GameCube’s Game Boy Player adapter. I and a friend who was new to computer and video games had a great time spending several hours discovering the solutions to the mystical puzzles we encountered. Remembering that happy experience, I’ve gladly become a Kickstarter backer of the new Shadowgate.

Looking to explore the Shadowgate world around this game? I have fond memories of the young adult novel, Before Shadowgate — but can we pretend the game’s TurboGrafx sequel, Beyond Shadowgate, never happened? Instead, check out Maelstrom’s Mansion, a free online adventure that’s as unforgiving in its deaths as Shadowgate ever was.

You’ve played the game — now wear the shirt!

UPDATE: In the creators’ AMA on Reddit (they answered my question), they acknowledge that there are free, Java-based versions of Shadowgate. Want to play the original? Check it out online!

On Saturday, July 21, I gave a presentation at KansasFest 2012 about Kickstarter. I reviewed what the crowdfunding site is and how it works before presenting and analyzing examples of various campaigns. After reviewing successful projects (Double Fine, Leisure Suit Larry, Diaspora, TikTok, Pebble) and some unsuccessful or poorly designed ones (Rolling High, What’s Where in the Apple, MULE), I identified three qualities that lend themselves to meeting one’s crowdfunding goal: the fame, reputation, or track record of the artist (Jason Scott, Penny Arcade, Andrew Plotkin); a convincing pitch video (Huck Finn, Nataly Dawn) that doesn’t necessarily need to be expensive to produce; and attractive rewards (Pebble; Joulies).

Due to both the previous session and my own running long, after we watched Kickstarter pitch videos and dissected their strengths and weaknesses, I didn’t have as much time as I’d like for my presentation’s interactive component: brainstorming Apple II projects to launch on Kickstarter. I started by asking the audience what products we’d like to see that would require a financial investment, then who in the community has the reputation to attract a funding audience, followed by what the reward levels for such a Kickstarter campaign would be. As with all brainstorming sessions, I wrote down every idea regardless of feasibility. We then conducted an informal poll to narrow the choices to those bolded in the below table.

Note that the first two columns do not line up with each other or the other two columns, but the third and fourth columns line up with each other. Also, some reward levels (access to contributor-only blog) include the previous rewards, whereas others (two USB keyboard adapters) do not.

Of all the bolded projects, we deemed the USB adapter the most affordable and thus the most likely to be funded. The proposed adapter would not only work with keyboards, joysticks, and mice, but it would adapt them to multiple platforms: Apple II, Commodore 64, and more. As the Battle Chess Kickstarter campaign demonstrated, limiting your product to only one audience (in that case, Windows) diminishes your chances of getting funded: more potential customers equals more money, as evidenced by the success of many old franchises that are being revived for Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, and Android.

A wide audience requires a creator with exposure and recognition beyond the Apple II community, for which reason I nominate Vince Briel. The inventory of Briel Computers, from the Replica 1 to the Micro-KIM to the ALTAIR 8800micro, appeal to retrocomputing hobbyists of many ages and interests, and Briel’s track record as a businessman, from shipping products to offering customer support, is unparalleled. Briel has the reputation that could get a Kickstarter project funded.

Briel was in the audience for this brainstorming session but did not actually drive this proposal. But if he were to accept it, I would be first in line to give him my money.

For more advice on how to run a successful Kickstarter campaign, check out Nelson De Witt’s A Kickstarter’s Guide free e-book and Tyler York’s "How to succeed on Kickstarter" blog post.

UPDATE (Oct 21, 2015):: Courtesy Kay Savetz, here is a video of my KansasFest session.

In the last six months, Apple II users have enjoyed the fruits of Kickstarter, the crowdfunding site that’s been used to revive many classic game franchises. Soon, for the first time in decades, we’ll be able to enjoy new Space Quest and Leisure Suit Larry games.

But what if Kickstarter was used to reboot not just a particular franchise, but the entire gaming industry?

That’s what OUYA, a new video game console, looks to do.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ouya/ouya-a-new-kind-of-video-game-console

The Android-based OUYA aims to move gamers away from mobile devices and place them in front of stationary consoles — but its OUYA’s development platform that is the focus of the Kickstarter pitch. The company’s founder, Julie Uhrman, harkens back to the days of the unwalled garden that early Apple products represented: "In the early days of gaming, you could take your Apple IIe, write your own programming, and take your game to market." Further endorsement from inXile’s Brian Fargo, creator of Wasteland, supports that throwback. Those were the golden days of gaming that launched epic series that continue to this day (again, courtesy Kickstarter). There was little competition in this new world, and artists and programmers were able to quickly stake their claim not only financially, but imaginatively, creating worlds for the sake of exploring this new digital realm. OUYA wants games to again be something that anyone can make and share.

But that was a different day and age. Although computers were accessible to program, the overall audience was small, making for a proportionally small number of programmers. Yes, there were games of questionable software — but there were so few games that the poor ones didn’t last long.

Bu contrast, today, anyone can be a programmer — and anyone often is. Although I’m all for the freedom and democratization if information, the fact that OUYA seems to be specifically not setting themselves up as curators of content on their console is concerning. If anyone can produce as much content, then anyone will, resulting in a glut of poor-quality software, or shovelware. I agree that Apple shouldn’t be their model — as gatekeepers of quality content, they do a pretty poor job (since "quality" to Apple doesn’t mean fun). But perhaps OUYA should look to the Nintendo Seal of Quality, which ostensibly meant that only that the publisher had paid a licensing fee, but realistically meant that gamers would experience a certain minimum amount of fun. The Seal was introduced to motivate publishers to put their best foot forward, limiting them to only three games per year. Programmers literally could not afford to produce bad games.

And from a technological perspective, it’s not challenging to stream video from an iOS or Android device to an HDTV. Is a separate console truly needed? Or is the attraction of OUYA not that it does something original, but that it does it simply, without the need for complicated or expensive peripherals?

Regardless of these questions and concerns, OUYA is already a success: at the time of this writing and with three more weeks to go, it has raised nearly $5 million USD, a funding level of 508% more than its required minimum. When over 32,000 backers get their consoles this September, we’ll find out if it has enough critical mass and sufficiently powerful mission statement to attract gamers — and developers.

UPDATE: For more on this subject, see my PCWorld blog post featuring video footage of KansasFest 2012, "John Romero Speculates On The Future of Ouya".

Tim Schafer, what hath you wrought? The extravagant funding his unidentified adventure game received via crowdfunding site Kickstarter has opened the floodgates to a resurgence of vintage franchises: Wasteland, Leisure Suit Larry, Shadowrun, and more.

The latest Apple II licenses to seek resurrection via Kickstarter are Space Quest and Battle Chess. The former, dubbed "SpaceVenture" (they apparently couldn’t get the rights to the original name), will be produced by Scott Murphy and Mark Crowe, aka "The Two Guys from Andromeda", the two designers who created the series for Sierra On-Line in the first place. The development seems to be pretty well outlined, with several notable voice actors having signed on, though I’ve seen no assets from the game as of yet. The final game will be installable on PC, Mac, Linux, iOS, and Android, or playable in Google’s Chrome Web browser. A preorder will cost you $15 and get them that much closer to the usual half-a-million goal before the June 12, 2012, deadline.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/spaceventure/two-guys-spaceventure-by-the-creators-of-space-que

By contrast, the Battle Chess project couldn’t be more different. Subdued Software, developers of no games I’ve ever heard of, have licensed the Battle Chess name and have essentially completed production of an update to the classic strategy game. All that remains before its October 2012 release is to add Internet support, for which they are asking for a paltry $100,000:

… implementing a full featured online experience, like the one we have planned, will take several months. A list of features include; Skilled Based Matchmaking, Statistics, Leaderboards, Achievements and in-game chat. We also needed to factor in the cost of fulfilling rewards and running this campaign. We have carefully planned out the costs of staffing the programmers, artists and testers necessary to complete online multiplayer feature and arrived at this amount.

This modest ambition extends to the scale of the release: $100K will secure a PC-only release, with additional funding promising ports to Mac, iOS, Android, and Xbox 360. If you’re counting on support for one of those platforms, one course of action is to pledge your dollars to the project — and, if they don’t collect enough funding for additional systems before the June 1 deadline, withdraw your pledge. (Selfish, no?)

The lack of accessibility to Battle Chess brought to mind a potential alternative. Longtime readers of this blog may remember my discussion of a similar game, Battle vs. Chess, originally scheduled for release on Sep 28, 2010, then pushed back to Spring 2011. To date, Battle vs. Chess has still not been released in the United States, according to Wikipedia, "due to an injunction by Interplay Entertainment for trademark infringement due to its similarity to Interplay title Battle Chess." In February 2012, I received this update from Robin Kunimune, Community Manager of publisher TopWare Interactive:

… Battle Vs. Chess has not been released in the USA, yet. If it were in our power, we would do so in a heartbeat, but sadly the publishing rights remain with a company with which we no longer associate. We are currently waiting for said company to fold and declare bankruptcy (at which point we would regain the publishing rights and release the game) or to go ahead and release the game themselves.

In the meantime, the "true" Battle Chess is looking pretty polished, with plenty of neat death sequences — although the outcome is determined in accordance with the rules of chess, it’s still fun to watch the characters duke it out, with each potential matchup of pieces and winners resulting in a unique encounter. Check out these three gameplay videos:

Whether you support an ambitious game that’s still in the planning stage and not coming out until 2013 but for a variety of platforms, or a game that’s all but finished with a meager fundraising goal and target platform — or both — is between you and your wallet. Happy funding!

Earlier this month, Al Lowe launched a Kickstarter to remake the original Leisure Suit Larry game. The project has since met its goal of $500,000 and still has until Wednesday, May 2, to generate further funding.

Double Fine’s Kickstarter success opened the floodgates to a reemergence of the adventure genre, but in a guest blog post for Wired.com, Lowe talks about why this is important: games have lost their funny bone, and adventure games can bring it back.

Lowe attributes the decline of the genre to improved accessibility to personal computers:

Adventure games were perfect for 1980s’ computer users. Back then, if you weren’t a puzzle solver, you didn’t own a computer. Remember config.sys files, autoexec.bat files, setting interrupts, managing extended memory? No? Consider yourself lucky! It’s a wonder anyone got anything done at all.

I remember discussing with Ken Williams (founder of Sierra, the leading publisher of such games) about how great it would be when 10 percent of homes had a computer powerful enough to play our games. But when the majority finally had computers, they ran Windows. They didn’t have to solve operating system puzzles, or couldn’t. And they didn’t want to solve game puzzles either.

Sadly, this was widely interpreted that new gamers preferred action and 3-D environments instead of contemplation and humor. Within a year, most major adventure-game development was shut down. And with it went humor.

I remember the games Lowe references fondly, though perhaps because the years have removed me from the frustration they inspired. Although King’s Quest and its kin were often infuriatingly inscrutable in their puzzles and riddles, they often had a quirky and consistent internal logic that tickled your imagination, giving you a knowing wink and a sense of accomplishment when you stumbled across the solution. It’s a kind of challenge that’s often missing in today’s games — or am I just playing the wrong ones? The Xbox 360’s DeathSpank, created by Ron Gilbert of Double Fine, had some clever dialogue, though I didn’t play it far enough to find if that sense extended to the gameplay.

And I spent about two hours this week in the practice arena of Scribblenauts Remix for iOS, interested less in completing levels than in testing the limits of the player’s capabilities and seeing what unusual creations and interactions the game’s designers anticipated.

What do you think — is Lowe right? Have the humor and discovery of early computer games disappeared and are now ready for a comeback? Or have they been here all along, just in an unrecognizably evolved form?

UPDATE (11-May-12): I belatedly found Phil Elliott’s interview with Al Lowe in my "to read" pile. In this article from April 2011, Lowe talks about how the humor in games has been replaced by replayability, and that he has no desire or intention to exit retirement. Ah, hindsight!

(Hat tip to Robert Boyd)