Ultima creator Richard Garriott is selling blood to fund his next game

Shawn Knight

Posts: 15,256   +192
Staff member

Developer Richard Garriott, best known for creating the Ultima series, is looking to raise money for his next fantasy RPG, Shroud of the Avatar. Rather than rely on a traditional crowdfunding approach via Kickstarter or Indiegogo, Garriott is turning to eBay to fund the new game.

Garriott, known to his fans as Lord British, is auctioning off six reliquaries filled with his blood. Yes, that’s right – you can buy his blood.

The auctions, which start at $5,000, describe the reliquaries as beautiful and unique pieces of art made of bakelite, copper, nails, glass, and mirrored glass that can be hung on your wall. The current auction has roughly nine days left although I don’t suspect it’ll last that long – not because of demand but due to the fact that selling blood violates eBay’s policy.

If for some reason you are interested and end up with one of the reliquaries, you’ll be happy to know that the blood in them is real. In fact, Garriott livestreamed the bloodletting on YouTube last night with help from a registered nurse. You have to wonder what was going through her mind as the whole thing played out.

The auction also includes a wealth of digital goods from Shroud of the Avatar as well as a visit to Portalarium, the developer’s studio in Austin (travel costs are not included).

Permalink to story.

 
Beautiful and unique?!

Beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder cause those things look like scrap nailed together to me, eww.
 
Poor Richard....that's what I'm gonna start calling him. The guy has produced nothing but vapor and schlock since the good ol' days but still he soldiers on, somehow positive that he can recreate the magic. The truth is that Ultima got worse technically with each incarnation and in the final years difficult to even run on most people's PCs. Before Crysis the mantra was, "but can it run Ultima 8?" Could Garriot produce a good game again with the right dev team and a couple million bucks? Possibly. Probably, even...if not for one small problem, and its name is Richard Garriot. His ego is legendary and his capacity for grand designs rivals that of Moleneux. He'll overreach like he always does, constantly raising minimum specs and pushing back the release date on a game that likely won't revolve entirely around in-game purchases. The publishers know this, and that's why they won't touch him with a 10-foot quarterstaff. I'm sure LB has been thinking longingly about his old pal Chris Roberts' monster pile of funding (for a project that looks more like a scam by the day). Richard has seen Brian Fargo bring Wasteland II to life and enjoy moderate success, and Pillars of Eternity has done quite well by most accounts. Little wonder he wants a piece of that resurgent glory. The thing is, all the personalities behind those games left (or were frozen out of) the industry because it didn't want to make the sort of games they excelled at. Richard has not only that bias to overcome but a long history of poorly engineered games. His ideas were often on par with the best of his generation, but the execution has been very mixed. If you had to back a former gaming rockstar, Garriot probably wouldn't be the horse you'd bet on. That's kind of a shame, actually, because despite his shortcomings as a project leader and designer, I would love to see him get one more turn at bat. Why not? Maybe the years have given him a new degree of wisdom. And then I see that he's literally selling his blood for money - and in a marketplace that doesn't even permit it. In true LB form he didn't even bother to look into the legality of something so specious..because in his fantasy world he's royalty, after all.
 
Is he a vampire? That's the only reason to buy someone's blood.

But I suppose there are fetishists with money to burn.
 
Tbh the Shroud of the Avatar looks lackluster... graphically its lacking & UI its lacking and gameplay doesn't look that good either...
 
Is he a vampire? That's the only reason to buy someone's blood.

But I suppose there are fetishists with money to burn.

Technically if he was a vampire he would be trying to purchase other people's blood and not sell his own, just thought I'd point that out on an otherwise pointless article that no one is likely to give to shits about. Other than of course why would anyone want to buy this old guys blood? And what is Ultima?
 
Rather than rely on a traditional crowdfunding approach via Kickstarter or Indiegogo, Garriott is turning to eBay to fund the new game.

He did rely on Kickstarter. Shroud of the Avatar was kickstarted over 3 years ago. It's also been in Early Access for quite a while.

I guess he's getting really desperate.
 
Back