And if not: have you been living under a rock, and/or what colour is the sky on your planet, and also…welcome to Earth.

Okay, somewhat more seriously, Portalarium is “an online ecosystem of shared relationships, connecting endless gaming experiences, via seamless portals,” a social-networking gaming platform and development company co-founded by several people whose names should be familiar to Ultima fans, including none other than Richard Garriott.

You can read their founding press release…here.

There’s really not a lot more that can be said about this initiative for the moment, apart from the fact that it certainly represents a very new gaming frontier for Garriott. Social networking games — think FarmVille — are inherently browser-based games, dependent as they are on social networking frameworks like Facebook or Twitter.

At the same time, there’s a fair bit of potential for some truly interesting games to emerge from this. One notes that the company’s first title is using a web-based version of the Torque 2D engine; their information page about the “Portalarium Player” also mentions Unity 3D and a couple of other frameworks. Those are pretty powerful development toolsets; one could craft a web-playable RPG of Garriott’s caliber using Unity, for example.

Is that the direction that the company is going to go? Who knows at this early stage. With that many former Origin guys at the helm, though, there might just be a glimmer of hope.

(hat tip)