Richard Garriott Interview
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Wired.com: Did those interests inspire you to work in games and inspire the setting of the games you made?
Carmack: It is a complete coincidence that we have made games involving Mars and rocket launchers, but it would be sort of interesting if somehow Armadillo Aerospace became the UAC.
Garriott: If you remember, Ultima one and two not only included swords and sorcery, but also spaceflight. So space was a part of the early Ultima series until medieval stuff kind of became the pattern.
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Wired.com: The financial windfall of selling your respective companies seems to have been very helpful in financing these expensive efforts.
Garriott: My spaceflight was a $30 million event. That was the majority of my net worth at the time. I was so devoted to doing this that I was willing to give, basically, all the money I had in the world to it. Because it was that important to me. I'm still a wealthy person, but I'm much less wealthy than I was before doing that. And, no, I couldn't go on another orbital spaceflight without building and selling another company.
Carmack: I was very proud that Armadillo has been able to support itself for a while now with work for NASA and the Rocket Racing League, but being an aerospace contractor is really a dead end, and it would be easy to settle in as another largely irrelevant small engineering company. Pursuing our own designs for cost-effective reusable rockets is where I think the real impact can be made, and now that I have more financial resources at my disposal, I am able to prioritize internal R&D over continuing to chase contract work.
Related Games:
Akalabeth: World of Doom, Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa, Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness, Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress, Ultima III: Exodus, Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar, Ultima IX: Ascension, Ultima Online, Ultima Online: Age of Shadows, Ultima Online: Kingdom Reborn, Ultima Online: Lord Blackthorn's Revenge, Ultima Online: Mondain's Legacy, Ultima Online: Renaissance, Ultima Online: Samurai Empire, Ultima Online: Stygian Abyss, Ultima Online: The Second Age, Ultima Online: Third Dawn, Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds, Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss, Ultima V: Lazarus, Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny, Ultima VI: The False Prophet, Ultima VII Part Two: Serpent Isle, Ultima VII Part Two: The Silver Seed, Ultima VII: Forge of Virtue, Ultima VII: The Black Gate, Ultima VIII: Pagan, Ultima VIII: Pagan - Speech Pack, Ultima Worlds Online: Origin, Ultima X: Odyssey, Ultima: Escape from Mt. Drash, Ultima: Worlds of Adventure 2 - Martian Dreams