Richard Garriott was one of several developers on a recent panel hosted by the Georgia Game Developers Association. As PC Gamer reports, Lord British, who called himself the “great-grandpa” of the group, had a fair bit to say about where the video games industry finds itself. He opened with the problems:

It’s not just one thing. I think if it was one thing it would be a lot easier to diagnose and come back from, but it’s a lot of folks who don’t understand videogames trying to make money off of videogames, it’s a political climate, it’s a billion things. All the threads have woven together into this horrible knot that we’re seeing now.

From there, he described a cycle he’s watched play out more than once (and which he has discussed more than once, for that matter): each big technical leap (the CD-ROM, 3D rendering, the internet) sets off a rush of simple games built to show off the new thing, and the demand for something deeper only surfaces in the gaps between the leaps. This time, Garriott said, the cycle has stalled:

But we’re at a new one, and this new one is machines are now fast enough to where the bells and whistles are no longer what’s important.

Without another leap to chase, he thinks the industry has hit “this kind of creative cliff,” made worse by the loss of “a lot of the original creators that were associated with those IPs and the bigger companies.” His verdict was: “I think we’re floundering.”

The part Ultima fans will find most interesting, though, is what he said about cancelled games, and about Origin in particular:

Origin pre-EA, we never cancelled a project. Our theory was that if that team is capable of getting across the finish line, even if it doesn’t sell well, they’ll now know what it feels like to finish. And they will get feedback from the sales and the public as to what they did and didn’t do right and so that team will be more strong, the individuals will be stronger, and we’ll be able to circle back and do a more competent game next time.

Cancelling a project, he argued, just convinces the team that “you the evil publisher” killed their brilliant idea, and half of them leave or get fired anyway. After EA bought Origin in 1992, that changed: “We canceled more projects than we completed by a long shot.”

Anyone who’s followed the long list of Origin titles that never shipped (Ultima Online 2, Ultima X: Odyssey, and various others) might be inclined to take him at his word here, and to be fair there is probably a kernel of truth to it. That said, we do have some evidence from just prior to the EA acquisition that Origin did have projects planned — some of which may or may not have been in-flight at the time — that ultimately never saw the light of say. This isn’t to say that Garriott is speaking in falsehoods here, and it is certainly true that the count of cancelled projects was no doubt much higher after Origin became a part of EA. This was a quarter century ago (and longer); things get forgotten about.

Still, it’s notable to hear it from Garriott this plainly, in the same week EA brought every Ultima to Steam and with his planned reclaiming of the Ultima copyrights only months away. The full panel is on YouTube as “State of the Video Game Industry w/Lord British,” and it’s worth a watch in full if you have a half-hour to spare.