After reportedly spending $30 million for a private space flight to the International Space Station and several years of taking time out from designing games, the creator of Ultima, Richard Garriott announced his return as one of the founders of the Facebook game company, Portalarium.
Garriott started developing video games about 30 years ago at Origin Systems which was later bought by Electronic Arts. In 1997, he launched the game, Ultima Online, which started the massively multiplayer online game trend in the gaming industry. He then developed Destination Games in 2001 but sold it to Korea’s NCSoft and worked for six years in developing the short-lived sci-fi game, Tabula Rasa. That game was launched in 2007 but did not kick off. Following that, Garriott took off to space. He said that though he was physically away from earth, he was never been away from games.
After all his legendary experiences and now that he has come back to earth, Garriott is leading Portalarium in its kick off with its first ever Facebook game: Sweet @$! Poker. (I know. It sounds mundane.) The game is said to be very easy and will eventually get Facebook fans hooked. As of this time, the game is into its beta testing. Still to follow are its tournament play features that is set to rival the games from leading makers of social games, Zynga and Playfish.
Garriott said that though those two gaming giants are difficult to compete with, he believes that at the end of the day, players would still want to play the game with the best quality. And people who have been in this industry for years have the advantage of experience. Well, let’s wait and see.
