OT: Questions for Richard Garriott

[Skutarth (not logged in)]

I'll hopefully be able to talk to Richard Garriott in about 2 hours. Post any questions you would like asked and I'll see if I can get some responses!

[Dominus]

1. How was space?
2. Do you think you will ever be able to create something as big as Ultima?
3. Do you regret what has become of Ultima? Or do you think it was inevitable?
4. What's next for you?

[Skutarth (not logged in)]

He'll be speaking in full about being in space (but I might ask him about the geocache he left on the International Space Station). I'll give my thoughts on that. The other questions I'll try to ask in an informal conversation I'll be attending.

I'll be asking if he's ever going to open his house back up for Halloween. I'd love to see it in person!

[Dominus]

He he, yeah, scratch question 1 then

[Skutarth (not logged in)]

Got to talk to him. He's a nice guy and was a very enthusiastic speaker. His presentation opened my eyes to a lot of things I didn't know about concerning space travel. He said that his trip to space was the single brightest highlight of his life.

I asked him about and heard him respond to a lot of questions about game development. He said that game development cycles from being based on a certain set of technological capabilities and with simple gameplay, and games of the era become progressively more complex until a new technological breakthrough, at which point game complexity resets again. He said that he will have his fingers in game development for the forseeable future, but less in the sense that he has been lately. This ties in with what he's doing next. He specifically asked not to divulge information on the internet about what he said, but suffice it to say that he is still very active and I personally find what he's working on very exciting.

I asked him if he, looking back, would not sell Origin when he did. He said that the artist inside of him wanted to continue conveying his vision, but that there was only room for so many distributors to be successful in the marketplace, and Origin was #10 at the time. He basically summed it up that either he was to sell Origin, or it was going to die out. That's a pretty easy decision to make, I would think. He also predicted that EA would lay off or fire the original Origin employees, and he ended up hiring most of them back when he started ncsoft.

As far as the geocache in space, he said that he couldn't bring much more than his travel bug, citing that it costs around $10,000 US dollars for every extra gram they take into space. So that's all it contains, and he predicts it will make its way back to him in the next 10-20 years (he predicts a boom in recreational space travel).

He also emphasizes that he hates to be called a "space tourist"; he explained many scientific experiments that he independently carried out, and that he was as productive in scientific development as (if not more than) any astronaut to date.

It also turns out that the many rumors about why he closed Britannia Manor to the public for Halloween are, in fact, false. Nobody hung themselves there. It wasn't because of the wine incident involving the robbing of the bar in his convention village below his house (twice). If you're wondering, he said that he actually did finally apprehend the idiots with the aid of the camera they left behind with pictures of them doing it on it. He said it was simply because he lost a lot of money on internet stocks in the net stock crash and couldn't afford to host the events anymore. He actually said that he still commonly hosts charity benefits in and around Britannia Manor. He said that the Halloween event will likely not happen again at Britannia Manor, but it will probably continue when his new house is down (which had its construction also halted by his losses).

There's one last interesting fact I learned, in case you are not aware. He wears a necklace with an icon you may recognize from the Ultima series: the serpent. When I asked about it, he explained that he had made it himself when he was only eleven years old, which is amazing since it's made of metal and looks very professional. This means, and he explicitly said, that it was the inspiration for the Ultima imagery and not the other way around. Most interesting, though, is the fact that it's a solid piece and cannot be removed because the loop is smaller than his head. It is, in a sense, permanently attached to his person.

Feel free to post any questions, particularly about his space travel. I am only able to recall some things from the top of my head for this post, and any questions may jog my memory further.

[Dominus]

Thanks for the thorough post. As for the Space travel, I'm hoping for another Wired interview. They had one during the time he was training in the russian austronaut city, which was quite good and revealing and had nothing about games in it

[Skutarth (not logged in)]

What he did before going into space was possibly even more incredible than the trip itself. For example, he had an irregularity in his liver, so he had to have 1/6th of it removed. He has a big scar from it, too.

It was nearly impossible for him to avoid talking about games, since this was about the business aspects of how he got his way into space. This obviously includes around 30 years of game development. He even pointed out the message from Tabula Rasa that he had secretly written on the bottom of his clipboard that he showed to the camera shortly before launch.

Keep an eye out both for another interview (hopefully this will inspire him to give one) and for an announcement of his next big (development) project.

[MeddlingMonk]

About the serpent necklace: that story goes at least back to 'The Official Book of Ultima' published in 1990. Did he mention in his talk that he destroyed one of his mother's belts to make the chain? And the reason the serpent looks so professional is that he made it with the help of his mother (before he destroyed the belt, of course) who is a professional artist who was into silversmithing at the time. I think LB's main contribution was just working out the design, actually.

[Scythifuge]

He also lost the serpent pendant during the winter (they were based out of New Hampshire at the time), and it was later found and hasn't come off of his neck since.