Games.com has an interesting interview with Richard Garriott, in which the Ultima creator explains the rationale for Portalarium’s publishing arrangement with Zynga through the Zynga Partners programme.

“We were at a trade show a few months ago– four or five months ago–and that’s when we saw the announcement for Zynga Partners,” Garriott recalls. “Then we sat down right there and said, ‘OK, well [Zynga is] either the enemy or an ally. So, which will they be in this upcoming era?’ We just thought that the advantages of not having to go raise many more millions of dollars into our tiny company, and getting a chance to look under their hood to learn some of the best practices they’ve learned.”

…If Portalarium has such a great game on its hands, then why turn to Zynga to (hopefully) make it a success? The answer is simple: It’s easier and less costly for a developer to side with the likes of Zynga than to spend millions upon millions of dollars trying to compete in terms of player numbers. That said, don’t go thinking Garriott has gone and drank the Kool-Aid, so to speak.

“Not just Zynga’s, but lots of social games use monetization strategies that, as a hardcore gamer, I find offensive, frankly,” Garriott admits. “I really don’t like games that constantly pester me to pay. I find it radically interferes with my suspension of disbelief. So, I’m devoted in the Ultimate RPG game to finding novel monetization strategies that don’t offend me like some of these do. Yet, it’s still really important to learn those lessons, and there’s no better place to learn them then by having Zynga as a partner.”

Plus, it saves Portalarium the hassle of having to deal with Zynga doing what Zynga always does — that is: publishing Epic Collectibles: Thrift Store six months after the release of Ultimate Collector.

The Ultimate RPG also gets a bit of a mention in the review:

…the next game that we’re working on, the role-playing game [with] ‘Lord British’s Ultimate RPG’ as the working title: That is a game that will be targeted at gamers,”Garriott says. “But [it is] trying to show them that there is this kind of viral distribution asynchronous gameplay supporting a Lord British-style deep game that can be played in relatively short episodic sessions in a way that doesn’t run off the lighter players, but fulfills a deeper play experience.”

No, it’s nothing we haven’t already heard, but I do like how Garriott always finds a way to put the focus back on New Britannia or whatever it will end up being called, even if only for a short while, in every interview. It’s obviously something he very much wants to make happen.