Today I had the opportunity to meet and talk to Richard Garriott (Lord British). And I just want to say that if you ever get the opportunity to hear him talk you really should, even if you disagree with his views on the "three eras of gaming" he has a unique view point on the early video game industry as well as civilian space travel.

The icing on the cake was hearing about the infamous assassination of his "avatar" during ultima online from his point of view.

I must say I was a little bit star struck ;)

Did you ask him about his conquest of space? Is it just like Shattered Horizon up there, or are there more laser guns?

What did he talk about specifically?

Did you get the chance to talk about Tabula Rasa?

Wish I could've been there. Man's an astronaut!

There were 2 talks so I'll do my best to summarise:
He started off by explaining how he got into the industry (programming Akalabeth in 2 weeks)

Going onto how that got him into ultma (the history of which he wrote for English home work)at this point in the 1st talk he went onto how to make games, which basically was how the game designer has to realise the vision of the game while managing the demands of the programs, artists and sound engineers. (As you can imagine the audience had lots of questions about this part)

From that he highlighted the 3 eras of gaming, (solo, mmo, social mobile) and how they had changed by orders of magnitude in revenue. From this he linked into he three main gaming companies and how they fitted into this (as well as mentioning the idea of a WC mmo which EA shot down). He also high lighted the importance of learning from your mistakes (U8 and shipping too early, Tabula Rasa and having to reset the game three times as the company kept changing their minds and he went with them)

On the future he mentioned his new company (Portalarium) and the collector game they are making which I guess some people here will hate BUT talking to him afterwards it in fact seems a very clever idea, they have already released some gambling games which use friend networks. This new game has a-sequential play with item collection and item trading and manipulation. All of which are things needed for the new Britannia game ( just add fighting and magic and bake for 20 mins). So instead of making the whole game then play testing it, they are releasing increasingly complicated games and learning from each of them how to make the final product, which hopefully will be a worthy addition to the ultima series.

There was also some cool stuff of his work on the x-prize and other space projects as well as how seeing the earth from space changes your view point in life.

Thanks. :) I kind of lost track of Garriott after his falling out with NCSoft. It's interesting to hear what he's up to, although he has become one of my "fallen heroes", like almost every other game designer from the early days of the industry. I suppose it's a bit like aged rockstars ... they say they have "developed a new style", but when you see that they are now scrambling through small towns and compare that to the visions they once had, you can't help but wonder ,,,

as much as I understand his ambitions of evolving the "social" gaming thing, the man really needs to have his people grab an engine in a box (like UE3 or CryEngine) and plop some shit out.

everyone talks about TR and UO, but the best work RG was ever involved in happened years before that. when the only two titles people talk about anymore are an abortive mess and the swan song for a legendary company (that few even remember why it was legendary), even if it's not the best that you want: ya kinda need to get some shit out there that makes enough of a splash to off set the image people have.