14 DAY TRIAL // The gaming industry has quite a lot of emblematic figures, with plenty of them having gained worldwide fame due to their hard work and to the innovations they brought to the whole entertainment industry. One of these figures is reputed game designer and producer Richard Garriott, more fondly known as Lord British, the name of one his most memorable characters from the Ultima franchise.
Although he was part of several teams that created extremely popular games like the Ultima series, Lineage or the Tabula Rasa MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game), Garriott recently came into the spotlight due to the fact that he became a space tourist and spent 12 whole days on the International Space Station. This was of course thanks to the Russian space program, which allows anyone with a spare 30 million dollars to become an astronaut.
Now, after the hype has cooled down, Garriott has talked with BBC about his future plans in terms of game development. After his recent Tabula Rasa project has been marked for shutdown, due to the fact that few players took part in the futuristic online game, he now reveals that he plans to create another, medieval-themed title.
“After 25 years at Origin, the last thing I wanted to make was yet another medieval fantasy game,” says Garriott, referring to his early years with Origin Systems game studio, developing the medieval-themed Ultima series. “Now, after a very interesting break, I'm keen to get back into the fray and work on a new game. Probably medieval fantasy and probably online; there's something very powerful about getting people together.”
While Garriott didn't really achieve the success he hoped for with Tabula Rasa, it seems that this future project might attract quite a lot of fans. Let's hope that it won't suffer the same fate as the futuristic online game, which was very good, but didn't really become popular with the players.