Richard Garriott was on site at the recent New York Comic-Con to deliver a lengthy talk, wherein he offered his suggestions as to how to promote a healthy game development industry. Because — as any keen observer will doubtless have noted by now — the industry has some problems at present:

“Everyone in Austin is on the binge-and-purge cycle of the industry,” said Garriott, noting that when companies have to make personnel cuts, they tend to lay people off at the satellite offices first.

New York has its own set of problems, as Garriott sees it. The vast majority of developers in New York are on work-for-hire contracts, performing grunt work such as coding but not sharing in a game’s profits. Because of that, they rarely, if ever, get to create and own intellectual property.

Fortunately, MMORPG.com was there to record the whole thing:

And, of course, Garriott also discussed Shroud of the Avatar and its development, as well as the history of the Ultima series. He also gave a curious shout-out to Megan Fox, for some reason: