Red Thomas

The folks at Portalarium are getting ready to roll out their 14th release for Shroud of the Avatar, and of course they timed it just as PAX South was kicking off. I’m sure it was a diabolical plot to force me into cramming this article in before I get sucked into the pending media storm that follows any PAX. That’s why I drove up to Austin this week.

Five years ago in the summer of 2009 a single independent developer released a small alpha build for a game that he was working on in his spare time. Two years later, the full release version of Minecraft rolled out amid a tidal wave of excited gamers. It could be said that Markus Persson single-handedly pulled indie video game development into the lime light.

I found it rather amusing that this is the 13th major release for Shroud of the Avatar, and that it comes after their hugely successful debut on Steam. Last month saw the game added to Steam’s list of available Early Access titles, and the results were a sweeping victory for the team at Portalarium. With a whopping 87% positive reviews, and really strong sales that put the game in the top 10 on Steam’s list of top sellers, it’s been a fantastic month for Shroud of the Avatar.

It’s no secret that studios tend to use writers as a sort of advertising. It’s nothing malicious, just a subtle focus on the new stuff they would like to get promoted. The relationship is certainly symbiotic because where they get to manage the publicity of their games to some degree, we get to see things a little earlier than most, which allows us to produce articles while the information is relevant.

There are actually a couple reasons for my selecting the above title this month, as Shroud of the Avatar stretches in new directions. The big news being that you’ll be able to purchase Shroud from your Steam account starting on 24th of November, but there’s a lot more to this release than just how you can get involved with it. New scenes and lots of additional content will provide even existing backers some new feel to the game.

My feelings on the subject of Star Citizen are shrouded in more shades of grey than the murkiest Seattle skyline. I’m a Golden Ticket holder, Imperator, High Admiral, and very nearly the first writer to report on the game as being a major movement in the gaming community. If I wasn’t the first to point out how it’d shape the future of the industry, I was dang close.

Since the idea was introduced as a stretch goal, the inclusion of a first person shooter component in Star Citizen has been a somewhat debated topic. There have been legitimate questions about how feasible it would be to add that sort of thing in an already ambitious project, and many have concerns that the attempt might come off feeling cheap or slapped in. We’ve all seen those games where something was just forced in for the extra bullet on the box.

I am quite literally just back from Austin as I sit down to write this latest update on Shroud of the Avatar. I wasn’t able to make it up for my typical week-before-release hangout with the guys, so today was pretty much a drive by. It’s well worth staying up past my bedtime to hack this article out, though. Despite the brevity of my visit, I got a load of cool information to share with you folks, and I’m excited to do it.

Nothing and no one is perfect though, so I thought it might be a good idea to set my fandom aside for bit and take a critical look at Richard’s new work. If nothing is perfect, then there must be some flaws or challenges worthy of conversing about. Besides, it’s through examining the imperfections that we sometimes come to truly appreciate art and all its true complexity. As their 10th release approaches, it might be a good time to take that sort of look at Shroud.

A year ago, or just about, I sat in a large banquet hall in Las Vegas as Dave Georgeson outlined the next big project for Sony Online Entertainment. The speech centered on a list of “Holy Grails” in MMO development, and how their EverQuest Next team would be reaching to achieve those lofty benchmarks.

The neophyte to Shroud of the Avatar might expect things to slow down over the last month or two. After all, two key members of the team have newborns and all the sleepless nights that come with them, but like a freight train of awesome, these guys just keep on trucking towards Epic City. They’ve got a schedule to keep, and everyone knows you can’t stop a train.

I sat down with Todd Carson, Executive Producer of Dragon’s Prophet, to talk about some of their progress over the last year and some things we should watch for in the coming year. Dragon’s Prophet may also see a push over the next year to expose more new players to some of the systems in the game that they may not know about yet.

When some of PlanetSide 2’s best and brightest developers stepped away from the game several months ago to work on a new secret project, you sort of knew something special had to be in the pipe. It wasn’t long before we found out that it was SOE’s new survival horror MMO, H1Z1. No, it’s not a game about rampaging STDs, but rather a game about shambling zombies.

We had a chance to listen to Matt Higby and Tramell Isaac expound on some of what they’ve been working on over the last couple months with PlanetSide 2, and what we should expect to see in the next several months with the game. When they led with new loading screen art, I started to get worried. Needlessly, as it turns out.

Star Citizen has had its share of detractors from the start, though you wouldn’t know it from the way their continuing crowdfunding campaign has been progressing. While there have been questions about their open development model and potential feature-creep, fans have continued to be staunchly in Chris Roberts’ corner from the start. There is one issue debated even among the fans, however. That would be their use of Crytek’s CryENGINE 3 for the backbone of the developing game.