Richard Garriott

Back in February, Richard Garriott discussed plans for a spiritual successor to Ultima and we now have more details, including the working title you see.

He is actually planning on two games with a focus on social networking. One is called Ultimate Collector, and the other, the one that’s of interest to us, is called Lord British’s New Britannia. The two games were unveiled at this week’s South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, which happens to be Garriott’s home, and where he is seeking funding for both games. Ultima Collector is a social networking game with a TV show tie-in. The other is obviously based on Lord British.

Garriott does own the right to use certain aspects of his past work with Origin, which was sold to EA, namely the Lord British character, and Lord British has appeared in other games outside of the Ultima and Ultima Online series.

Lord British’s New Britannia is not simply an MMO tossed onto a social gaming platform. In Garriott’s words:

the virtual world game is not just an ultra-light MMO shopped on social media. I think that would be a failure.”

Unfortunately, very few details were released.

Full story: Gamasutra

Update: Lord British’s New Britannia Announced.

Kotaku has a lenghty article up discussing Richard Garriott’s future plans, as well as a look back at the start of Ultima Online and how it went from an adventure game into a “social experiment” that saw the influx of players who were interested in non-combat pursuits:

“Most of the games at the time were about combat,” said Richard Garriott, creator of the Ultima series. “But Ultima Online was a place where people made careers that had nothing to do with combat.

“It was a bit like some Ville-style games, there was shop keeping, farming, managing pets and displaying things in your house.”

Garriott talks a bit about some of the “Ville” games, such as FarmVille, FrontierVille, CityVille, and what he thinks of them and where he plans on positioning his next game from his company Portalarium. He was a bit cagey about what it would be about, saying that it was as “smallish game”, but that it would have a niche within social gaming and would be original. Once that game is finished, he has plans for something that interests a lot UO players:

“Once we get that game built, then we’re going to move on to the next grand Lord British game,” he added, referring to the name of his in-game persona for the classic role-playing games he’s made in the past. “It will be the spiritual successor to the Ultima legacy.”

Read: Kotaku
Image: Wikimedia Commons