Richard Garriott Would Like to Collaborate on More Ultima with EAUltima is considered a seminal francise for the RPG genre, much in the way that Doom was for the shooter genre, and Ultima Online was one of the true pioneers in the MMO market. Today, there are still many RPG gamers who hold the Ultima franchise near and dear and would love nothing more than to see its creator Richard "Lord British" Garriott involved once again. Garriott told IndustryGamers that he'd like that too.
Ironically, we weren't even talking about Ultima initially, but Garriott decided to bring it up when we asked him how he felt about EA now using the Origin name (Origin Systems was the company he founded with his brother in 1983) for its digital distribution service. He said that EA using Origin is "pretty funny" and "more power to them." Then he brought up the Ultima series, which seemed like a sore point.
"We’ve had some discussions at what I’ll call very high levels, but the individuals who are currently shepherding the property don’t seem to be particularly interested."
"I find the use of the word Ultima to be more interesting as they’ve tried to give that legs again. I hope that Ultima does survive forever, yet I also, of course, have my own very particular ideas for what Ultima can and should become over time and so we’ll see if they do things quite the way I would do them... since I’m not there at the moment," he commented.
IndustryGamers asked Garriott if he could still collaborate with EA. "We would be open to that. In fact, we’ve had some discussions at what I’ll call very high levels, but the individuals who are currently shepherding the property don’t seem to be particularly interested in that, so we’ll see," he replied. "Who knows? You never know what’s going to happen in the future... the doors always open if they were ever interested."
Garriott would not divulge his exact ideas for what Ultima could become, but considering he's the founder of social developer Portalarium and he's a big believer in the space (as is EA), we could certainly envision an interesting Ultima RPG for Facebook that EA could help publish and market. The Sims Social has been taking off, and core players seem interested, so perhaps EA would consider working with Portalarium on a new, social Ultima?
