The folks at The Critical Bit sat down with Richard Garriott for a chat about his history in the game development field and his plans for the future, for Portalarium and the Ultimate RPG.

Even if you’ve never played one of the Ultima games, they’ve influenced your favorite titles. Dungeon crawlers, narrative heavy epics, and massively multiplayer games all have a lineage which can be traced to the Ultima series. Richard Garriott created the first four Ultima games entirely on his own. They were massive successes, and allowed him to establish Origin Systems, a developer and producer which grew the medium of games with unique titles. While at Origin, Mr. Garriott designed and successfully released the first graphical MMO – Ultima Online – and created an entirely new genre. Today Mr. Garriott is still pushing the boundaries of interactive entertainment. He’s currently creating a spiritual successor to Ultima Online for mobile and social platforms. It promises to be a multiplayer experience of unprecedented depth and scope. I was lucky enough to sit down with Mr. Garriott and discuss his latest project, his design philosophy, and where he thinks games as a whole are going.

You can listen to the interview at their site, or download the uncut recording of it directly. It’s about an hour long, so make sure you have time to settle in and give it a listen!