Avalon: the Once and Future Keep
by NorseGamer, HSM Editor-in-Chief
Sometimes I wonder if, a thousand years from now, Sitchin’s pseudohistory ramblings will be given the same academic weight as Geoffrey of Monmouth’s are today.
Geoffrey’s Historia Regum Britanniae, written in the twelfth century, is astonishing in its cultural impact. It is quite possibly one of the few works of literature that has had a greater influence on western culture and mythos than anything written by Shakespeare. It is from Geoffrey’s Historia — itself a compilation of even older works, embellished to create a continuous narrative — that we receive what we would recognize as the genesis of Arthurian legend, along with so many of the images and characters associated with it. Indeed, it is from Geoffrey’s work that Chrétien de Troyes expanded upon this collection of myths and stories to invent the beginnings of what we would recognize today as the modern novel.
Was there, in fact, a King Arthur? Well, there is sufficient evidence to suggest that a historical figure may have existed around the sixth century — except that if he did, he was a Roman war general, not a king, and thus he was fighting against the Britons.
No matter, though; as humanity has proven time and again, actual history matters less than myth. And it is myth that gives us the recurrent theme of the promised land: the place of refuge and healing, the paradise glimpsed only indirectly. If you’ve read Joseph Campbell, then you know that this archetype shows up repeatedly, across all cultural barriers; whether it be Elysium or Avalon or a thousand other names, it is more or less the same concept. And a powerful one it is — for who doesn’t want to be greeted with paradise upon laying down the burdens of this life for the last time?
As you’ve probably gathered, I’m something of an amateur Arthurian enthusiast. Which is one of the reasons why I’m so fascinated by the new estate from Heavy Water, Avalon Keep.
Cubehouse and I have been aware of Avalon Keep for a while now, having been fortunate enough to hang out with Stephen from Heavy Water during E3. And Avalon Keep has quite a challenge in front of it: after the game-changing success of nDreams’ Blueprint:Home, the next personal estate released into Home was going to have a massive uphill battle. In case you haven’t been following the sales charts from SCEA, personal estates — which used to crack the top ten on a regular basis — have been performing lower and lower with each passing month, and it’s easy to see why: the market’s supersaturated. It really isn’t enough, any longer, to just throw together a pretty setting and assume that it’ll sell itself — particularly now that clubhouse skins are available. Developers really have to ask a critical question: when someone chooses to buy a personal estate, what are they really trying to buy?
Personal estates, as a market segment, have been studied fairly exhaustively in HSM. And we’ve written several times over about the need for innovation in personal estate design: to in fact redefine personal estates as private games, with multiple interactive elements, rather than static settings to stare at and decorate.
It is thus that we say, right off the bat, that Avalon Keep gets a lot right — and, if handled correctly, could turn into the most compelling personal estate ever released into Home.
Let’s begin with the element that’s giving Avalon Keep a head start: pent-up demand.
Seriously, how long have people been asking for a castle in Home? It should be blatantly obvious that Home is populated by a hefty number of RPG gamers — as the server crashes during the Mercia demo at the virtual E3 can attest to — and thus anything with medieval European trappings is likely to be met with credit cards. Further, Avalon Keep’s release date couldn’t be better timed: Game of Thrones is huge right now, Harry Potter is still relevant, and Brave just tore up the box office.
What makes Avalon Keep particularly interesting is that it’s a floating castle in the sky, placing it firmly in the realm of high fantasy. If you recall the Black Fortress from Krull, the Time Castle from Galaxy Express 999 or even Balamb Garden from Final Fantasy VIII, then you know what a powerful image this is. And the narrative trick Heavy Water’s woven into it is that the castle’s flotation is powered by mysterious crystals, which as any good gamer knows are the shorthand catch-all for “enigmatic object of power.” And Heavy Water has woven them into their space quite admirably, as their recent blog post exemplifies.
(I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that since the castle floats in the air, and the waterfalls cascade down beneath it, that makes the water heavier than the land. Heavy water, indeed…)
The other really interesting aspect to Avalon Keep is that it’s big. No, I mean big.
Good god almighty, that’s freaking huge. This feels more like a public space that somehow got sold as a private estate instead. Seriously.
One thing that history has shown, though, is that simply throwing together a huge space isn’t sufficient — indeed, a space that’s too large becomes impossible to thoroughly decorate, which means that it really needs to offer more than just a canvas for interior design. The root motive, when a consumer asks for a really large space, is that they’re really asking for a sense of exploration and discovery. And who doesn’t love the thrill of exploring a mysterious castle? So the big question is what Avalon Keep brings to the table to fill that sense of exploration, and give the user attractions to return long-term.
On this front, Heavy Water has done an admirable job of loading up Avalon Keep with quite a bit of material.
Most unique is the Dragonfly feature. Home is littered with the stories of people who glitch personal estates to get “outside the box” and admire the artistry from angles the average user will never see. So Heavy Water capitalized on this consumer behavior by essentially building the closest thing to a developer’s “God camera” that we’ve ever seen in Home. And this is quite remarkable: how many times have you ever stared at an estate and wished you could be somewhere over there and be able to look back at the beauty of the place you’ve bought?
(Also, for the fellow Arthurians in the crowd, recall how the Wart, with Merlyn’s help, transformed himself into various creatures from the animal kingdom in The Once and Future King. So the Dragonfly actually fits really well with Avalon Keep.)
There’s even more to discuss, though, beyond the inclusion of diurnal controls into the space: with Avalon Keep, Heavy Water is wading into the waters of gifting.
Gifting’s an interesting mine field. Lockwood’s Gift Machine is a bona fide smash hit, and it was only a matter of time until their formula was emulated or modified by others. The catch is that Lockwood has a truly massive art team for a Home development house, which gives them a significant advantage in terms of content output. SCEA itself has experimented with gifting for some of their personal estates, albeit on a very limited scale. Juggernaut recently jumped into the gifting scene with the MiniBots estate. And now Heavy Water’s having a go at it. What I like about Heavy Water’s approach, though, is that it’s being treated correctly for a personal estate: rather than as a primary selling point, as Sony has pushed it in their estates, it’s a nice secondary enticement for owners who want to reward their friends, and it also provides some exclusive owner-only goodies which add value to the price tag.
I’ll say this, though: how cool would it be if collecting a certain number of crystals for a paticular house opened up new gifts (either for free or purchase) which couldn’t be obtained any other way? If there’s one truth about Home users, it’s that they’ll crawl over broken glass to the center of the Earth to earn a reward, simply because the reward is an excuse to keep enjoying the activity. And with four houses vying for your fealty, combined with the medieval narrative tradition of questing for items, this could be a slam-dunk method of utilizing a gift machine in a way we haven’t seen before.
There’s even more to go over, though. For one thing, this estate has interactive NPCs. While most of them at present are limited to one-liners, there’s one NPC which is a questgiver.
Yup, you read that correctly. A questgiver. Hot damn.
This is where Avalon Keep starts to make the transition from just an estate into something much, much more interesting.
Right now, the first batch of quests revolve around scavenger hunting — which is a great way to get people familiarized with the space. Scavenger hunting, if you recall the Loco Roco estate, it a fantastic way to bring people back to an estate long-term. In the case of Loco Roco, collecting pickories unlocked new items and parts of the estate; we can only assume that collecting crystals will follow a similar function at Avalon Keep. And this is a smart move; one of the best ways to turn an estate into a game — particularly an estate of this size — is to start the user off with areas that cannot be accessed unless certain achievements are fulfilled. Anyone who played The 7th Guest will recall the thrill of solving puzzles to unlock new parts of the Stauf Mansion, and Avalon Keep can follow a very similar process if it chooses to. This also plays in perfectly with the thrill of exploring a mysterious castle, which as we discussed earlier is a near-universal source of excitement.
An NPC questgiver dramatically reshapes how Heavy Water can go about selling additional content for this space. Rather than simply sell a furniture pack, for instance, they could sell a quest pack which unlocks new tasks to complete, resulting in being awarded the furniture. In this way, every single virtual commodity tied to Avalon Keep becomes part of the unfolding game experience, as opposed to a stand-alone purchase.
Here’s where things get even more interesting: there are different “houses” which you can swear the keep’s fealty to, changing the color scheme of the estate. My god, if this doesn’t open up the possibilities for NPC storytelling and long-term entertainment with Avalon Keep…seriously, Heavy Water could really exploit this. The catch is that it has to be treated as a long-term investment, rather than a fire-and-forget content drop. Fortunately, in my conversations with Stephen over the months, it appears that Heavy Water has quite a vision mapped out for Avalon Keep, including some very exciting content. I obviously don’t want to speak for a developer, but I will say that I’m very enthusiastic about the future.
(One thing I’ll suggest, though: Avalon Keep has a pond. This means it must have a Lady of the Lake, as an interactive NPC, which dispenses lore on the various houses. This needs to happen. Sell it at a premium as a gateway for all sorts of additional quest content or to unlock new parts of the keep. Seriously.)
In general, Home commodities today have a very short window of time in which to really capitalize on being at the forefront of the consumer’s consciousness. I imagine that the first fortnight produces what could best be described as an “Eiffel Tower effect” in terms of sales, with the more successful ventures realizing a more gradual declination curve. I think there’s no question Heavy Water’s going to move a lot of units in the first two weeks; there’s even a chance, despite it being a mid-month launch, that it might show up on the August top-ten sales list from SCEA. And this is good, because it’s blatantly obvious that a hell of a lot of money went into Avalon Keep, and it always comes down to making that ROIC. The better the grosses, the more likely any developer is to commit additional capital to a project.
What excites me, though, is that Heavy Water has a roadmap for Avalon Keep laid out. I’ve seen some of what’s to come, and it’s really compelling stuff that adds considerably to the already excellent experience. How many times has the community clamored for a developer to go back and periodically update an estate or public space? How often have you bought an estate and, after five minutes, wished you hadn’t? Avalon Keep, on the other hand — if handled correctly — could demonstrate a remarkable level of staying power, far in excess of most personal estates.
nDreams, with Blueprint:Home, threw down the gauntlet and turned an entire market segment in Home — the personal estate — inside-out. Anything which came after that faced the risk of being a let-down. Heavy Water, however, has managed a remarkable feat of timing; by offering a lavishly-rendered personal estate, packed with interactive features, they’ve managed to offer the perfect one-two compliment to Blueprint, heralding the beginning of a new development trend in Home: treating the personal estate, and possibly the clubhouse, as games themselves.
The Olympics may have ended, but the games have only just begun. It’s time to discover Avalon Keep.
August 15th, 2012 by NorseGamer | 9 comments
NorseGamer is the product manager for LOOT Entertainment at Sony Pictures, as well as the founder and publisher of HomeStation Magazine. Born and raised in Silicon Valley, he holds a B.A. in English/Creative Writing from San Francisco State University and presently lives in Los Angeles. All opinions expressed in HSM are solely his and do not necessarily reflect the views of Sony DADC.
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Omg
Hmm, I’m swaying more towards this the more I read and see. When Granzella said they had an intention to keep adding to their beach personal space, I started considering it more seriously. Although, I’ve still not taken the dive for it.
This is looking better than I first thought though, and your news of them keeping it going with new content is a nice tune to my ears. For each new personal space to succeed from now though, I think the developers will have to go full-time-committed like they have with this space and some others. Like DL’s Casino room, without those fun little updates I’d image no one would ever bother visiting it very often at all. But once a dev shows commitment to a space, so will the users.
Nice read Norse, you’ve got me interested now… damnit!
Omg especially after reading this article, I can’t wait!! Only a few more hours!
Bought it and I love it! And you can see where they have left lots of room for changes and add on materials. Nice write up Norse.
Thanks for the fantastic article!
Mayybe, just maybe we will listen to you about the Lady of the Lake ;D
So far I have 17 freebies. The controls for the dragonfly are clumsy BUT it is so much more than is available anywhere else: go up and down, fly over roofs, through tower windows, beneath the floating islands. Can only return to starting point but even so, it’s great. I’m avoiding choosing sides until I learn more about it. The furniture and the NPCs are cartoony but that’s ok. A pond I can go into (where are the fish?)Flying fairies, an eagle, wind blows the flags, a changing day/night cycle from an hour to 24 hrs. So far, great fun.
Well.. has anyone noticed the Earth orbiting around the kingdom?
Heh, yeah I saw that Godz. It’s looking good so far and the idea of expansion is pretty obvious in it too, bridge posts but no bridge or guarded rooms. Someone said to me they had a plague in their cellar, sounds like that might be the first place the castle expands.
I’ve still not bought it but have a few items from it which is kinda weird lol. It has a graphic, kinda chunky feel to it that isn’t too far away from Home’s cleaner lines, which is fine, but I do find myself thinking of stuff like Ratchet n’ Clank, Jak n’ Daxter or Spyro the Dragon when I walk around it. I wasn’t around to be able to buy the Chamber apartment but damn, if that went back on sale I’d have to go for it.
What Heavy Water are doing is great, and it’s what I expect from devs regarding space design. I just wish someone would do one with the function of Avalon, but the looks of the now retracted Chamber space.
hey now… I feel like a heel for sort of ripping this the first time. (I ended up buying it after being in a friend’s personal space). The Graphics are not as bad as I first imagined. I like that the space is a game, and that you can give gifts and swear fealty.
I do agree with the “long winded” Norse though, (Dang Norse! How many words is this?) I can’t wait to see Norse’s Machinema regarding this space (Once and Future King)… I can see TerraCide rising out of the pool of water with the mighty sword Excalibur in her hand! Besides Norse, a bloody picture is worth a thousand words!
*cheesy grin.