Richard Garfield Articles

August 19, 2024 - It was when playing squash that I truly began to appreciate the power of allowing my opponent to play on hard mode. I was clearly not as good as John, which was something I was comfortable with. I don’t mind winning only 25% of my games. I was very much a fan of playing on hard mode in games versus other players — but I saw little appeal in making things easier for myself. After all, if I began with an edge, even if I won I hadn’t REALLY won, right?

Three decades later, can Garfield repeat this success? With Popularium, a new gaming studio founded by Garfield and three other industry veterans (Jon Bankard, Skaff Elias, and Arka Ray) he is about to find out as he launches the game Chaos Agents. Instead of being set in a fantasy world, this one exists in a space-opera-esque science fiction world, a kind of mish-mash of some of the more celestial Marvel comics but also at home with the texture of Larry Niven’s “Known Space” shared stories and novels.

“You own a copy of the game to the extent that you used to own a disc that you could go and buy,” Ray says. “The goal from day one was to build Chaos Agents in a way where we could essentially promise our players that regardless of whether we are around, we are supporting the official servers or not, you will be able to play the game.”

“We have been overwhelmed by the response to the Alpha announcement,” said Arka Ray, president and CTO at Popularium, in a statement. “The number of players who want to join the alpha and experience Richard’s vision has been over 20 times more than we anticipated.