Motherboard has a lengthy interview with Ultima creator and private astronaut Richard Garriott, which bears the amusing title “Life’s a Game and Then You Die on Mars”. As has been the case with most interviews Garriott has given over the last little while, this one focuses both on Lord British’s journey into space and his career as a game developer. What’s different is that much of the space-related portion of this interview focuses on Garriott’s passion to see humans reach the surface of Mars one day.

He’d even volunteer to go himself and help settle the place! And failing that, he has a couple of backup plans:

It may or may not be able to occur within my adventuring lifetime, but if it were, I’d be one of the first people headed over to Mars. I’d take a one-way trip to Mars to help settle a new planet.

That being said, there’s still plenty of opportunities left on Earth. I’m going back to the Titanic this summer for the one hundredth anniversary of the sinking. I hope to — I’ve been trying to get it for a few years now and haven’t made much progress — but another big terrestrial adventure I’ve been trying to put together is visiting disappearing indigenous populations of the Earth.

There’s really very few truly remote and isolated civilizations, but there are some. Before they’re all completely absorbed, I have a strong interest in seeing some truly non-Westernized cultures and really understanding some of the differences of cultural identity and belief and organization has evolved in the earliest forms of humanity.

The article gets into great detail about a variety of science & technology issues that Garriott is passionate about, such as the X Prize, and also touches on Lord British’s concerns with how scientific research is funded and encouraged in America. I’ll leave it to all of you to read the section for yourselves — it’s quite interesting, and I wouldn’t do it justice with an excerpt — but I will say that the point he raises that I find most intersting is that there needs to be a quicker, more direct path between scientific discoveries and a market/private usage application thereof.

Random factoid I was unaware of:

Some cosmonauts lost their lives during those landings.

But that was 35 years ago, very, very early on in the program. The Soyuz is actually now considered a hundred to a thousand times safer then the Shuttle.

Naturally, the interview shifts gears toward the end, and puts some focus on Garriott’s history as a game developer and what he has planned next in that space. Interestingly — though I suppose not surprisingly — Lord British has not played the most recent game that has been favourably compared to the Ultima series: Bethesda Softworks’ Skyrim.

What have you been doing on the gaming front since your departure from NCSoft in 2008?

We’re working on a variety of names already. Either Akalabeth or Lord British’s Ultimate Role Playing Game, just to do a tie back to the past. I have a game in production now that will set the stage for a ten-times-larger audience, aiming to do what we did before with MMORPGs, bringing ten times more people into role playing games.

Have you played some of the hot new RPGs, like Minecraft or Skyrim?

Love Minecraft. Haven’t played Skyrim, but from what I know it?s also phenomal. What I love about Minecraft is that it’s an open ended sand box that I enjoy making and playing personally. Skyrim has absolutely first class production valeus, but the company seems devoted to a depth of storytelling that I am, so I’m a big fan of both of those.

Anyhow, Dragons and Dragonettes, do read the whole thing; it’s a brilliant interview, easily the best one Garriott has given in recent months (and he has given many in that time!).