Steve Jurvetson makes rockets. He has heavily invested in SpaceX, and also in PlanetLabs (a satellite company), and is a major proponent of space exploration as a business venture. And he credits Richard Garriott for igniting this passion:

Q. How did your whole space fascination begin?

A. When I was 11, I went to space camp at the Space Center in Texas, near where I grew up. There, I met video-game-industry pioneer Richard Garriott, better known to gamers everywhere as Ultima creator Lord British.

Meanwhile, over at GamerHub, they have a preview interview with Richard Garriott concerning some other game he’s making, called Shadow of the Avatar:

Or maybe it’s just a typo.

I don’t think that the actual article is live yet, but it would appear that Matt Barton has done yet another interview with Richard Garriott, this time for Retro Magazine.

MMORPG.com, meanwhile, has an article up examining how the community is helping to shape Shroud of the Avatar.

Richard and his team then turned to the folks at Unity to use their engine in creating SotA. The resources that Unity affords the team have been invaluable during the building of Shroud. It also offers a way for fans to get involved in the project beyond just donating money. Richard explained just how much the community has been important in the game’s development.

To put music in the game Richard and his team were looking at a huge budget, until a group of fans got involved and created the Poet’s Circle. These bards had approached the team and asked about ways they could submit music for the game. Richard always had specific types of music in mind for his world. The old medieval themed music in the Ultima games is his favorite and he wanted something to capture that old bardic style. When you go into a tavern in a local village you should not hear an epic movie soundtrack playing. Richard wanted to capture older instruments and smaller classical songs that sound like they would be played in the corner of a tavern next to the fire. The fans of the game came back with some amazing music which immediately was added to the game. The Poet’s Circle continues to score songs for the world and now has become part of the ongoing community development process.

Another great example of how a group of fans got involved is with the heraldry on cloaks and shields. Richard has done his fair share of medieval reenactment and got in touch with some of the people who worked on heraldry for those sort of organizations. One of the Kickstarter goals for backers was to be able to design their own personal heraldry. This group of fans is helping to create a Blazon Builder in the game. This way, players will be able to create any heraldry they want for their cloaks or shields. There will be plenty of choices from classic era charges as well as some game-related symbols. This system was built by fans for the community. We sat and made several heralds with the system and Richard explained they will be adding a lot more for players to use.

Okay, that’s all I’ve got for now. Feel free to discuss amongst yourselves.