richard-garriott posts

Famed game designer Richard Garriott is about to bring back his "Lord British" gaming alter-ego in an upcoming social networking game from his new company Portalarium. Gamasutra is reporting that the game has the working title Lord British's New Britannia. Garriott's nickname turned into a game character when he appeared as "Lord British" inside Ultima Online, the MMO he created in 1997 for Origins Systems. He retained the trademark rights to the name even after he left Origin.

There isn't a release date yet nor much in terms of details about what Lord British's New Britannia will be like. Garriott and Portalarium are currently seeking about $3.8 million in funding at the SXSW Accelerator event in Austin, Texas. Portalarium is also working on another game, Ultimate Collector, which Gamasutra says will tie into a TV series that will be hosted by Garriott. It will be released sometime in the second quarter of 2011.

Last May, the organizers of behind the Game Developers Conference announced that the GDC Online event in Austin, Texas would be host to the first annual Game Developers Choice Online Awards on October 7. Today two of the awards were announced, including the first game named to its Hall of Fame.

That game is Ultima Online, the fantasy MMO developed by Origin Systems and lead by Richard "Lord British" Garriott. While not the first MMO, Ultima Online made the new game genre popular to the masses when it launched back in 1997 and is still running even today.

Also, Dr. Richard A. Bartle was named as the Games Developers Choice Online Awards' first winner of its Online Game Legend Award. Dr. Bartle is the co-creator of the first MUD (Multi User Dungeon) back in 1978. The text-based game was the first step toward the modern MMO games.

QuakeCon 2010's events are starting to shape up nicely. The upcoming free LAN event/consumer game show will not only have pro and amateur Quake Live tournaments during the Dallas-based event on August 12-15 but a number of panels and special presentations.

On Thursday, August 12, id Software's John Carmack will conduct his annual QuakeCon keynote address where he will talk about pretty much anything on his mind and also take questions from the assembled crowd. Later Carmack will join Richard Garriott to discuss their mutual experiences with rockets (Carmack is the founder of private rocket company Armadillo Aerospace and Garriott has, well, been in space).

Other panels at the show will feature quite a number of big game developers speaking on various topics. Those will include members of Respawn Entertainment in perhaps their first public speaking appearance since the former Infinity Ward team members formed their new studio earlier this year. There are also some special live gameplay presentations for the upcoming games Brink and Rage planned and we are betting there will be some unannounced surprises. You can check out the full panel schedule after the jump:

Richard "Lord British" Garriott is all thumbs up this week but not because he's going into space again. According to the Austin American-Statesmen web site the legendary game developer got awarded $28 million from a jury in Austin, Texas on Thursday in a lawsuit that Garriott filed last year against his former employer, MMO game publisher NCsoft.

Garriott claimed in his lawsuit that he was fired from NCsoft, where he made the failed sci-fi MMO Tabula Rasa, in late 2008. However he then claimed that NCsoft told him that his firing was turned into a into a "voluntary" dismissal. In his lawsuit Garriott claimed that changing his firing into a resignation forced him to cash in his stock options in NCsoft quickly rather than wait for up to 10 years to do so. In so doing he claims he lost millions of dollars.

The jury agreed with Garriott's view and awarded him $28 million which, ironically enough, should be enough for Garriott to spend on another space flight if he wanted. A lawyer for NCsoft said the publisher "will be considering all options for next steps in the legal process".

February was the shortest month of the year, as usual, but for some reason it was packed with news items of interest to PC gamers We saw the return of a legendary designer to PC gaming and the revival of a once thought dead MMO . We also saw the light at the end of the tunnel for a long awaited PC game but also heard about the consequences of a publisher's new way to fight PC game piracy

Today we look back at the past 28 days to pick the top 10 biggest PC game news stories and also pick a couple of honorable mentions.Let's start with the honorable mentions after the jump:

It's been over a year since legendary game designer Richard Garriott has been officially involved with the game industry. Today the creator of the Ultima RPG series and the first successful MMO Ultima Online has announced his involvement with a new company called Portalarium.

Garriott is the VP and creative director at the Austin, Texas based company which has already released its first product in beta form: It's a Facebook-based game app called Sweet @$! Poker. Garriott has been joined in his new venture by several people who have worked with him at his previous company Origin Systems and later at NCsoft.

In his press release Garriott stated, "This really takes me back to my roots in the game business – small development teams, low barriers to entry, affordable budgets for quality projects, and unlimited new interactive frontiers to explore together with our customers". The goal is also not just to make games, either. Portalarium's press release states, "Together with its player community, the company will be raising money and promoting real-world activities in support of enlightened social causes."

You may remember that after helping to create the sci-fi MMO Tabula Rasa, which launched from NCsoft in 2007 after several years in development, Garriott quickly left the day-to-day operations of the game to train for his well publicized space flight to the International Space Station. Soon after returning from his 10 day flight in October 2008 he announced his departure from NCsoft who quickly decided to shut down Tabula Rasa. However in May 2009, Garriott sued NCsoft, claiming he was in fact fired from the company

It looks like there's some bad blood between Tabula Rasa creator Richard Garriott and his now former employer NCsoft. GamePolitics is reporting that Garriott has filed a lawsuit against NCsoft alleging "breach of contract, fraud and negligent misrepresentation." According to their story, Garriott claims that he was fired from NCsoft in late 2008. However he also claims that later he was told that his firing was turned into a into a "voluntary" dismissal internally by NCsoft.

Garriott claims in his lawsuit that changing his firing into a resignation kept him from cashing in millions of dollars in NCsoft, which he says would have been made available to him if he was fired. His lawsuit says having his departure read as voluntary allowed NCsoft to cancel those stock options "within ninety days of his departure." Garriott is seeking "more than $27,000,000 in actual damages".

Garriott joined NCsoft in 2001 after departing Origin Systems, the game development company he founded and where he created the Ultima RPG series and the MMO Ultima Online. He worked on Tabula Rasa for six years before its release in 2007. However the MMO was not a commercial success and NCsoft shut down Tabula Rasa last February. So far NCsoft has not responded to Garriott's lawsuit.

This weekend NCsoft finally shut down the servers for their failed sci-fi MMO Tabula Rasa but the remaining players made the most of the final few hours playing Richard Garriott's latest creation as they batlled an alien invasion. In the end the battle to save humanity was won and then . . . well, NCsoft just pulled the plug.

Launched with much fanfare in October 2007 after several years in development (and apparently at least one major shift in the game design) Tabula Rasa never really got off the ground in terms of signing subscribers. The above YouTube video shows the last few minutes of game time and our sister site Massively has some more videos along with a final Tabula Rasa gallery.

NCsoft has given players of Tabula Rasa ample time to prepare for the shutdown of their sci-fi MMO but Saturday will be the final day that the game, developed by Ultima and Ultima Online creator Richard Garriott, will be made available for its players. After Saturday the servers will be shut down.

Our sister site Massively reports that the game universe is preparing for a massive alien invasion that will mark the last in-game event for Tabula Rasa. It's not too late to download the client from NCsoft and participate in the final stand. Meanwhile Garriott, who has now left, NCsoft, has already made it known that he's interested in getting back into the game business.

Richard "Lord British" Garriott has kept to himself about the shut down of the MMO he worked on for six years, Tabula Rasa, but today our sister site GameDaily has posted up a brief chat with the legendary game designer where he opens up for the first time about NCsoft's decision to close down the game's servers at the end of February (announced just a few days after Garriott left the company).

Garriott states that in his opinion Tabula Rasa "...should have continued -- in the sense of, it was a game that was hitting its stride enough where it could keep what I'll call a critical fan base, and had the opportunity to continue to be grown." He added, "But I'm also not what I'll call terribly surprised, either, that the company would choose this path. I think NCsoft looks at it as an opportunity cost issue -- where they put those resources and people on that, or something new. They chose something new."

Garriott also talked about the strong likelyhood of returing to the game industry and when ask if he would be interested in working with Electronic Arts on a revival of his Ultima series he states, "Conceptually? Sure. The property Ultima is still very near and dear to my heart. I think that if, by hook or by crook, I had access to that property, either in solo-player or multiplayer, I would absolutely love to continue to play in the Ultima universe."