Richard Garriott, Ultima creator and astronaut, will receive the top honor at the Spanish Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences’ Gamelab event in Barcelona.

The academy, a cultural institution devoted to the improvement of a growing creative sector of over 400 companies and 4,000 professionals, is giving its Honorary Award to Garriott at the event this year in late June.

The new president of the Academy, Xavier Carrillo-Costa, stated that the members of the institution agreed on recognizing “Garriott’s influential contributions to the evolution of the games medium and his important role in the Industry for setting the bases of the massive multiplayer role-playing genre with games and series like Ultima and Ultima Online.”

Ivan Fernandez-Lobo, founder and chairman of Gamelab Barcelona and former president of the Spanish Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, said in a statement, “The British-American designer and entrepreneur is truly a game-changer for the medium and a source of inspiration for anyone with a creative soul, even beyond the Industry limits.”

It’s well-deserved recognition, for reasons that I trust (at least to the audience here) are readily apparent.