"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."