Richard Garriott to Recieve Lifetime Achievement Award

GameDev.net has word that Ultima series creator Richard Garriott is set to recieve the Lifetime Achievement award at this year's GDC. From the article: "Son of Skylab and Spacelab astronaut Owen K. Garriott, Richard took an interest in computers at a young age. He began programming games in high school and produced his first published game, Akalabeth, at the age of 19. While attending the University of Texas at Austin, Garriott began developing one of the most successful, longest-running game series of all time: Ultima. Garriott and his brother formed Origin Systems, Inc. to begin publishing their own games, and the company was acquired by Electronic Arts (EA) in 1992."

Comments

The oddest thing about him

[Strell]

Is that he is a huge boxing fanatic, to the point where he appears at local boxing gyms quite a bit, and apparently does some freelance interaction/training sort of things.

I only know this because my sister, who goes to UT, did a story on a female boxer (who is some sort of champion now, like featherweight or something) for photography class, and talked to Garriot every day, and even still maintains contact. And then one day she off handedly mentions his name, and my eyes popped. I attempted to explain to her the gravity of the situation, and just who she was dealing with, and then asked her to ask him if he had any job openings. :P You would too if you were in the same position. I had to resort to hyperbole, that he's probably within the top 25 people important to gaming for all time. She somewhat got the point at that time.

He's also really into photography as well. My sister tells me he sports the Rolls Royce of cameras. I'll have to take her word for it.

Long time coming

[WidescreenFreak]

This is so deserving. Richard Garriot almost single-handedly brought fantasy out of the closet spaces of D&D fans into the mainstream gaming realm. Back when most computer games were text adventures or side-scrollers, he brought fantasy gameplay that could last thousands of hours in incredibly detailed and story-rich worlds.

I remember when Ultima V came out for the Commodore 64. If you booted the same discs on a Commodore 128, you got to listen to music throughout the game. Even small things like that helped to impress me more.

I still have the boxed editions for several versions of the Ultima series, not only because I just can't seem to part with them (in some vain idea that I might play them again) but because he also included those extras that helped to bring the game to the real world. The cloth map that came with the later Ultima games was unheard of 15 or 20 years ago, and the trinket that was somehow tied to the story always added to the "coolness" factor.

Even now, two of the ringtones on my phone are the theme from Ultima V/ VI and Stones, which is probably the most memorable of all of the Ultima songs.

Now, if only EA would give Garriott the honor of letting him go back and redo Ultima: Ascension so that it could live up to its Ultima legacy, instead of being the rushed-to-market, bug-ridden, obviously-taken-over-by-corporate-a**holes piece of crap at it was.

Congrats, Richard! We miss the stories of the Avatar!

A fully deserved reward...

[cswiger2005]

Lord British and Origin produced some of the finest computer games made, and in particular Ultima III through V, Wing Commander & Privateer, and Moebius. Games which actually had a plot, and significant interaction between player actions and consequences.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtues_of_Ultima ...let's just say it's been a while since I've played a game which made me think as much about such things.