Garriott starting social media project

By Oli Welsh Published 18 February, 2010

Spaceman enters the Portalarium.

Ultima Online and Tabula Rasa designer Richard Garriott has announced his return to the games business with a new social media company, Portalarium, reports GamesIndustry.biz. The new venture will release online games applications, with the intention to expand into content as far reaching as open learning, health, science and environmental services, all contained in a virtual world and online social space.

"The Portalarium mission is exactly what I want to be doing next in games," said Garriott, who presumably can only refer to what he's up to as "missions" since going to space.

"This really takes me back to my roots in the game business - small development teams, low barriers to entry, affordable budgets for quality projects, and unlimited new interactive frontiers to explore together with our customers."

Joining Garriott will be his cohorts Dallas Snell and Fred Schmidt, both of whom worked with him at ORIGIN Systems, Electronic Arts and NCsoft.

The first product from the company is the Portalarium Player, a plug-in that permits games built on a variety of engines, including Flash, to run inside social networks such as Facebook.

The company's first game, Sweet @$! Poker, is already running on the service, with the plug-in being developed to work on MySpace, iPhone and Android devices.

Garriott has had some time off from the games business, after falling out with employer NCsoft after the failure of his MMO Tabula Rasa. He is currently suing the company for $24 million.

Picture of Oli.

About Oli Welsh

Oli is Eurogamer's acting deputy editor and reviews editor and likes to take things one word at a time. He is among the best dressed people in South London.

Read more articles from Oli by visiting the Oli Welsh archive page.

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Comments (5) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • HermitArcader #1 2 years ago

    Post deleted at 09:17:39 22-12-2011

  • space_ace #2 2 years ago

    ORIGIN Systems: we create worlds

  • dingo75 #3 2 years ago

    Let's put him on an island with "Fable" Peter and John "Will make me his bitch" Romero and let them discuss game ideas all day.
    Once in 3 months we interview them and see if anything of the craziness they came up with could actually make it into a decent game. After that we leave them alone again for 3 months etc....
    Edited by dingo75 at 18/02/10 @ 10:49

  • Sulphur #4 2 years ago

    Oh, just make another Ultima, Richard. Go on. You know you want to. We'd buy it, too.

  • SpeedyThing #5 2 years ago

    Remake Ultima IX Richard! And when I say 'remake' I mean completely redo the damn thing!