Ultima creator and Origin Systems co-founder Richard Garriott (pictured left) expects his next project to take off--literally. The 46-year old game developer, who most recently helmed the development of Destination Games' Tabula Rasa (PC) and often goes by the alias of Lord British, hopes to follow in the footsteps of his astronaut father and embark on a journey to outer space.

By teaming with Space Adventures, the self-described "leading space experiences company," Garriott blasts off in October 2008. The interstellar adventure of his "'commercially active' mission" will take him to the International Space Station, where he will work with his father's company, ExtremoZyme, on protein crystallization experiments. Space Adventures and Garriott are currently looking for other research and commercial partners.

Garriott made headlines earlier this year in a completely unrelated incident, which saw his property in Austin infiltrated by group of nine or more trespassers and robbed of more than $5,000 in alcohol. The robbers, presumably accidentally, left behind a digital camera detailing their exploits.

"I am dedicating my spaceflight to science," pledged Garriott. "I ... Read more

GameSpot has posted an interview with Richard Garriot, asking Lord British about Tabula Rasa's combat system, going with a sci-fi theme and having a place for user-generated content in MMOs.

Ultima creator Richard "Lord British" Garriott recently suffered the second break-in in two years to his Austin-area property maintained for special events. Last month, some nine or more trespassers entered Garriott's property, consumed or stole $5,000 worth of alcohol, took pictures of their misdoings--and forgot to take their camera when they left.

Speaking to Shacknews, experts on idiotic crime have projected that, had the camera not been left on the scene of the crime, the photographs in question would have been posted to a blog, a MySpace account or, depending on the age of the perpetrators, a Facebook profile.

Travis County police have released the photographs found on the camera in the hopes that the public can help identify the miscreants.

"We were debating whether we would even report this to police until we discovered the digital camera sitting on the porch of one of the cabins broken into," said Garriott. "We were joking to ourselves about tomorrow morning, when they wake up with a hangover, they're going to wonder where that camera is. This is one of those Darwin-style kind of awards, where people leave the self-incriminating evidence behind at the scene."

Garriott appeared to be less troubled by the February event than he was by his untimely 1997 assassination in the fantasy realm of Britannia.

Individuals with information on the identity of any of those pictured in the released photographs are encouraged to call (512) 472-TIPS. Police are offering rewards of up to $1,000.

The Hollywood Reporter has a new interview with Richard "Lord British" Garriot, asking the designer about leaving Electronic Arts, the popularity of MMO games, and Tabula Rasa among other things.

Voodoo Extreme's An Audience with Lord British article continues, asking Richard Garriot about the MMO market, Tabula Rasa features that will stand the test of time, and the D.I.C.E. summit.

An Audience with Lord British on Voodoo Extreme offers an interview with Richard "Lord British" Garriot about his long in development MMORPG Tabula Rasa. Part two of this interview will be posted on Monday.

GameBanshee is the latest site with a Richard Garriot Q&A, asking Lord British about his start in game development, the Ultima games and his sci-fi MMORPG Tabula Rasa.

And one more from FiringSquad as they also have a new Q&A with game designer Richard Garriot. Lord British is asked about the Lifetime Achievement Award he's receiving at GDC, the Ultima series, the success of World of Warcraft, the upcoming Tabula Rasa and thoughts on console development.

An audience with Lord British is a new GameSpot Q&A, asking Richard Garriott about his induction into the AIAS Hall of Fame, his proudest achievements, and if he's worried his biggest contributions to the industry are already behind him.

Richard Garriott, of course renowned for his pioneering Ultima series, will be the next inductee into the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences' Hall of Fame (a markedly different affair than Sony's somewhat less serious Walk of Game). The designer, who is best known by his pseudonym Lord British, will be the ninth addition to the roster. He joins fellow industry luminaries such as Shigeru Miyamoto, Will Wright, Yu Suzuki, John Carmack, Sid Meier, Hironobu Sakaguchi, Trip Hawkins and Peter Molyneux.

"Richard Garriott has inspired countless game designers over the past 20 years and his influence can be seen in many of today's most popular games," said Ted Price, president of Insomniac Games. "He has become an icon inside and out of the games industry; because of his accomplishments and leadership within the field of interactive entertainment, Garriott deserves to be a member of the AIAS Hall of Fame."

After leaving his former studio Origin Systems, Garriott co-founded Destination Games in 2000 as a partnership with NCsoft. In 2001, the studio was renamed NCsoft Austin.

The chaps at Computer & Video Games have posted a brief Q&A with Richard Garriott, asking Lord British a few questions about the MMORPG market and the upcoming Tabula Rasa.

GameZone has posted the first part of their interview with Richard "Lord British" Garriot interview, offering it as an article format Q&A type dealie. While the first part is about Garriot's work in general, the second part will be about the upcoming Tabula Rasa.

GameSpy has posted an interview with Richard Garriott, designer of the Ultima franchise. He talks about his departure from Origin, his employment at NC Soft, the failure of Lineage in the U.S., and projects he's working on.

Gamespy sat down with Lord British. Lord British, the man responsible for **** like Ultima IX, and pure gems like Ultima VII, talks about his upcoming projects - Lineage, City of Heroes, and Tabula Rasa. About that last one:

We're only one year into development of a three year project. We're definitely in full production, the tools and technology are in place and we've finished the three major components: the editor, which we'll continue to expand. We now have the full ability to build worlds and maps. We've finished the client, the render pipeline and the communications, and the server back end.

Wow, 2001. Talk about a crazy rollercoaster year. Things you would expect, and things that nobody could have possibly imagined happened in the course of 2001. I'm gonna list it out in a timeline like thingie because I cant think of any other cool and creative way to present this. Stories of note in chronological order with a few smartass remarks along the way! Poke around the archives if you wish.

- Jan 8th. XBox shows for the first time in Vegas. Bitching about the controllers began.
- Jan 10th Segway rumors for the first time. The wacko at Amazon talks it up like it will change the world.
- Jan 12th Maarten breaks wind. Ever heard of a dutch oven?
- Feb 5th Soldier of Fortune 2 announced. Even more blood and guts!
- Feb 13th Shacknews announced But if you ask nicely I'll still let you borrow some Shuga.
- Feb 17th Metroid Prime annoucned as a FPS game for GameCube. Jack feels the pressure.
- Feb 22nd GeForce3 announced. It's 1 better than the GeForce2
- Feb 22nd DOOM images unveiled from Macworld. Zowie!
- Mar 6th I take up pan handling to support my habit. Hey thanks helping Shack recover.
- Mar 12th Razer bankrupt announcement, high DPI mouse go bye bye? They return later.
- Mar 12th Shackmail v0.5 launches and hasnt been heard from since!
- Mar 23rd UO2 gets canned and Lord British moves on.
- April 3rd Shack filters launch.
- LOTS OF NOTHING HAPPENS, A TON OF IT
- July 19 Ion Storm Dallas folds, a bit later than was originally expected.
- August 10th Raven announced QUAKE4!
- August 20th @Home troubles begin to surface. Bunches of suck all around.
- August 26th Counter-Strike2 mentioned and not much else since then.
- August 31st Blizzard announced World of Warcraft. Diablo fans pout a little bit.

- September 11th.

- October 9th, Radeon 8500 shipping
- October 25th ATI is caught basically fixing benchmarks. Naughty boys!
- November 15th XBox launches, It's by the evil empire and Halo doesnt suck!
- November 18th GameCube launches. It's tiny and cute!
- November 29th ShackReviews launches, does better than Shackmail did.
- November 30th ShackDSL.net launches, and I dont qualify for SDSL at home.
- December 31st TF2, Duke4, Glaze3D, Q3 Seals, and DOOM... they arent out yet.

I'm sure there are tons more things that were worth mentioning, if you wanna point them out in the comments feel free. Also through that timeline there was one more depressing underlying theme. Websites closing, TONS of them. I was going to try and list them all but lets just say that 2/3rds of my website bookmarks that worked in the start of 2001 didnt work anymore by the end of the year. Here are a few for the heck of it. Gamecenter, DailyRadar, GA-Source, Stomped, etc. We've been widdled down to just GameSpot, IGN network, and the few remaining independents. Whatever doesnt kill you only makes you stronger though, right?

Gamespy is the latest to quiz Lord British, who's currently working on the US version of the RPG Lineage. They ask him various questions about MMORPGs and the specific features of Lineage: The Blood Pledge

Ok, so nothing can follow that glorious Pay it again Sam headline, oh well. Salon has a lengthy article on Richard Garriot, aka Lord British. You may remember a while back Destination Games was announced as his new dev house, well not any longer. Richard joined up with NCSoft instead, the developers of Lineage: The Blood Pledes. A MMORPG game that is huge in Korea and boasts 3 million subscribers. Yeah, if they charge about $10 a month that means $30million per month revenue. Here is Richard on EA, his former publisher:

"They thought Ultima Online was just kind of a niche or a fad," Garriott says. Instead, he says EA was trying to steer its content toward casual, nonsubscribing gamers. "Instead of making more epic games like Ultima, they were asking me and our team to participate in the creation of Java applet Web games ... which didn't fit with my vision of either what I liked to do creatively, personally, nor my vision from a business standpoint of what would really be the place to target for revenue generation in this segment."

If you really concentrate, you can almost ignore the author of the article!

PC.IGN has posted the second part of their Q&A with Richard Garriot, aka "Lord British". In this interview, Garriot reveals that besides Myst, American McGee's Alice is the only non-Ultima game he's ever finished, and why that is the case, if there are any consoles he's in to, buying a CD upgrade for the RPG Lineage instead of downloading patches, profitability of MMORPGs, and things related to the cost of running a MMORPG game.

PC.IGN has posted part one of their Richard Garriot interview, talking to the infamous "Lord British" about his work on the MMORPG Lineage.

After the Lord British Interview, you can head over to LucasArts for a live IRC chat with the Raven Software guys working on Jedi Knight II. The show starts at 9pm EST and Rick Johnson will be chatting naked even though he's working on Quake4. Thanks GG