Richard Garriott: "Since everybody else is doing Flash and Java games, I can kick their ass pretty easy."

Ultima creator and private astronaut Richard Garriott, who recently co-founded Portalarium, has got a new game in the works.

Richard Garriott delivered the keynote at Fantastic Fest’s inaugural Fantastic Arcade event in Austin today. After giving the assembled audience his personal history, he offered a hint about where he plans to go with Portalarium (which is evidently both a company and game name).

Displaying a slide about going “back to my roots,” Garriott said his company planned to make “AAA games, meaning the games we find compelling to create and play, but distributed through social media.” Why that medium? “The power is in that you don’t have to make a decision to buy it, you play it by clicking on a link, nothing to pay for up front, no real installation and only if you decide you really want to play it will we decide how to eventually charge you money for it.”

Later, in response to an audience question, he explained his strategy a bit further. “Since everybody else is doing Flash and Java games, I can kick their ass pretty easy.”

It’s generally true that Garriott could, as a game developer, run (code? write?) circles around the likes of Zynga and their flagship product, FarmVille. Any Garriott-produced game, even one based in Flash or AJAX/jQuery, would probably be a superior product to the games available on social networks like Facebook at present.

Of course, this being Garriott, I don’t think he’s just talking about his skill as a game-maker; I think he’s also tipping his hat a bit and indicating that Portalarium — and, in particular, this upcoming Garriott game — will make use of somewhat more advanced engines than just Flash or Java. Unity, perhaps?

The whole “going back to my roots” bit is also interesting, and it’s something we here in the Ultima community should pay close attention to. It won’t be an Ultima game, though unless I am grossly mistaken it could potentially be a Lord British game; EA has the rights to the Ultima name, but they don’t have the rights to the Lord British name (and I’m fairly certain it’s Garriott who does). Garriott’s roots, at any rate, are very much in the fantasy RPG genre…if he’s got something in the works, expect it to be something in that category.

Some of you may be wondering: why social networks? Well, Garriott does explain it pretty well — marketing a game across something like Facebook is quite simple, and getting people into the game requires them to do nothing more than click a couple links. For anyone familar with the whole “pick-up artist” concept and technique, this is what is called “low buy-in,” and it’s an effective (and fairly reliable) pick-up technique. It’s also a fairly reliable and effective marketing technique.

There’s also the issue of cost: developing games for social networks (and, indeed, for web deployment in general) is also quite a bit cheaper, which is to the benefit of a small company like Portalarium.

And, as Garriott remarks this note he posted on Facebook, which reiterates many points covered in the keynote address, “look what is proving to be popular on social media so far: farming games, cooking games, homesteading games, pet management games, etc. Now look at what made the Ultima games, especially Ultima Online, unique in contrast to most other combat centered MMOs from EverQuest to WOW. Ultimas are rich detailed sandbox games, where many players chose to be bakers, farmers, blacksmiths and huge community based villages and thriving towns. It seems to me that many of the new found players who have only discovered games in this recent round of social media are already being well “groomed” to enjoy gaming aspects which were already delivered in Ultima Online.

It’s not quite a home field advantage, but I think any Ultima fan can attest that if there is one thing a Garriott game should to well, that thing is sandboxing: not just playing through a quest, but playing with the world.

10 Responses

  1. Infinitron says:

    Heh, I doubt RG is much of a code monkey anymore. (what’s the last Ultima he actually wrote code for, BTW? Ultima V?)
    It’s not clear to me what he meant when he mentioned programming languages, though. Is there some more powerful alternative for embedding a video game in a social networking website, other than Java or Flash?
    Or does he believe that a game designer weaned on the web-based Java or Flash platforms is inferior to one experienced in “traditional” game development, even in his own area of expertise? (a flamewar-worthy assertion, that)

  2. Sergorn says:

    Actually Garriott wrote some code for the E3 98 demo of Ultima IX. *g*

    He did code on Ultima VI too as I recall, altough it was as that point that the games began to have more developpers.

    As for this news, I find that really itneresting. I’ll admit to being highly skeptical when Garriott started Portalarium (Huh? Lord British doing poker social games?), but if he can craft games the quality of an Ultima games in a social network aspect, I’ll be the first to play it

  3. wtf_dragon says:

    It’s not clear to me what he meant when he mentioned programming languages, though. Is there some more powerful alternative for embedding a video game in a social networking website, other than Java or Flash?

    Check out the Unity link, as this is why I included it.

  4. Dino says:

    Although I certainly cannot foretell what RG is going to do, I seriously doubt that he is going back to fantasy RPGs. From the sound of it I’d say he’s more likely planning a super-cool clone of FarmVille.

    He is currently looking to exploit the market of casual gamers – people who play some silly game just to pass the time. Fantasy RPGs are more of a niche market for gamers nowadays, and it’s been oversaturated for years.

    • wtf_dragon says:

      Perhaps a mixture of the two is in store: a sandbox game set in a fantasy-esque world. FarmVille with blacksmiths, pubs, clothiers, bowyers, and whatnot.

      Oh, and a better-looking engine.

  5. Sergorn says:

    Actually, Richard Garriott has definitly and without ambiguity says that he wants his Portalarium projects to be Ultima kind of games, and not just the casual stuff usually found in social network. He has made it pretty clear that he wants to go back and craft games like he used to do before.

    That is actually his moto with Portalarium – bring “real” gamer games through social networks, and not just doing casual stuff.

  6. Madoc says:

    As far as I know, Portalarium will be a browser plugin of its own, so I’m pretty sure he meant that, and he wanted to point out that Portalarium will be superior to Flash and Java. I don’t think he was referring to them as programming languages, but as browser plugins, and as basis for gaming platforms. It seems RG thinks that a plugin dedicated to only serving as game platform might be superior to the more generic and multi-purpose alternatives Flash and Java.

  7. Saxon1974 says:

    While I dont expect much from this, Garriot’s name alone gets me excited so this news is very exciting! lets hope for something good and sandboxy ultima style!!

    His idea for pushing the games through social media are quite interesting because they are definitely growing to where almost all of society is getting into them so the opportunity to grab alot of players is definitely there.

  8. Handshakes says:

    One of the big hallmark products of the company Garriot has recently been working with is the “Portalarium Player”. It is a browser plugin, like Flash or Unity, but it works with any engine you want. Their trial balloon poker product, for instance, uses the Torque engine.

    So I think that what he meant when he said that his game will by default kick the pants off of any Flash game isn’t that he is such a Flash coding genius. He means that his game will be running on a real game engine (probably Unreal 3 because it is hands down the best bang for your buck in the game dev world right now), and will instantly be a more sophisticated product than anything any Flash developer can possibly put out.

  9. wtf_dragon says:

    Ah, is that how it works? Interesting.

    Unreal would probably be the best overall engine for him to use, but I could still see him opting for Unity (or something like that; I think that Torque produces a 3D engine in addition to their high-powered 2D game builder) because it’s less hardware intensive and therefore open to more players. Which, in a social network marketing scheme, is really the key factor.

    Although given that the Unreal engine has been ported/scaled to run on iOS and iPhone hardware, he might well opt for it, instead.

    We wait and we see, I suppose.