Deorc Dragon points us, via Twitter, to a video interview with Ernest Cline, the author of the novel Ready Player One, which Stephen Spielberg has just made into a feature film:

I’m pretty sure it has been discussed on the site here before, but even so: the takeaway here is that Richard Garriott was the inspiration for James Halliday, the reclusive (and vastly wealthy) developer of the OASIS game framework that is central to the story of Ready Player One. And OASIS itself was inspired by the Ultima series, and especially Ultima Online.

If you want to read still yet more about the connections between Lord British and the fictional Halliday, this thread at EN World is worth a read. Fair warning: it’s a lengthy piece!