The legendary creator behind Ultima discussed his nearly four-decade connection to Dragon Con, the possibility of returning to the Ultima universe, artificial intelligence in game development, the problems facing modern gaming and how traveling to space fundamentally changed his perspective on Earth.

Garriott’s history with Dragon Con stretches back to the convention’s beginning. He recalled being the computer guest of honor at the first Dragon Con and becoming a fan of the convention through that experience.

Those early conventions also put him in the same rooms as creators who had influenced his career. Garriott recalled meeting Dungeons & Dragons co-creator Gary Gygax, whose work he described as fundamental to his own career. He later met Tracy Hickman at Dragon Con 2, beginning a relationship that eventually grew into collaborations that continue today.

For Garriott, conventions offered something else that was difficult for a game designer to find: direct contact with players. Publishing a game wasn’t like performing live onstage, so meeting players became an important feedback loop. At the same time, Dragon Con gave Garriott the opportunity to simply be a fan alongside everyone else.

A Return to the World of Ultima

One of the biggest subjects of the conversation was the future of Ultima.

Garriott directly addressed reports surrounding his efforts to reclaim copyrights associated with his original work. He said he notified the U.S. Copyright Office and Electronic Arts of his intention to reclaim those copyrights, explaining that the 35-year timeline following the 1992 sale reaches 2027.

“Next year I will own all my original copyrights,” Garriott said.

The situation, however, isn’t as simple as saying Garriott will control everything associated with Ultima. He stressed that copyrights and trademarks are separate, with trademark issues still complicating the situation.

Garriott said negotiations are underway concerning what happens next.

But when asked whether that could eventually mean returning to the series, he didn’t hide his intentions.

“We may return to the world of Ultima. That’s the plan.”

What would a modern Lord British game actually look like?

Garriott’s answer suggests it wouldn’t simply be an old Ultima with better graphics.

Ethics and virtues would again play a role in the story, while the world itself would be built around interaction. Garriott described a philosophy in which objects aren’t simply scenery. If players can see something, they should reasonably expect it to work.

Cups and plates could be picked up, placed somewhere else, filled and used. Even mundane objects should behave as though they belong in a functioning world.

“Everything will be interactive,” Garriott said.

That philosophy extends to the world itself.

Garriott isn’t interested in creating enormous environments simply for the sake of scale. Towns should contain enough buildings to make players believe they’re in a town, but those buildings should have a reason to exist.

He similarly favors carefully handcrafted environments rather than depending entirely on procedural generation. A world that looks natural isn’t necessarily a world that produces a good story.

Exploration is another element Garriott believes modern RPGs sometimes sacrifice in the name of convenience.

Many contemporary games give players a destination marker and sometimes a route leading directly toward it. Garriott sees value in making the player discover that route.

He described the example of traveling between two towns separated by mountains and forest. Instead of following a marker directly to a mountain pass, the player might need to enter the forest, reach the mountain range and search along it until discovering the passage.

That discovery is part of the adventure.

When the game shows the player exactly where to walk, Garriott said, “You’re not really exploring to get there.”

That doesn’t mean he wants to preserve every inconvenience from early computer RPGs. Garriott acknowledged that returning to some older keyboard-driven Ultima games can be extremely difficult today and said modernized versions would need modern interfaces.

The goal would be to remove unnecessary friction without removing discovery.

That experimental approach has been part of Ultima from the beginning.

Garriott recalled how the team behind Ultima Online once attempted to build an actual virtual ecology. Grass provided resources for herbivores, while carnivores hunted the herbivores. If players killed too many deer or sheep, predators could move toward populated areas, potentially attacking villagers and creating quests.

In controlled conditions, Garriott said the system worked beautifully.

Then players arrived.

They killed everything.

Wolves, sheep, deer — virtually anything players could attack disappeared faster than the simulation could compensate. Eventually, the development team removed the entire system.

“We spent, you know, human years on it and it was useless,” Garriott recalled.

Other experiments were far more successful.

Dialogue systems and NPC schedules helped create characters who appeared to live independently of the player. Characters could wake up, go to work, eat and eventually return to bed. Others might secretly leave at night and engage in activities players would only discover by abandoning their normal routine and following them.

Those experiments helped create the kind of living virtual world Garriott still wants to pursue.

AI, AAA Development and the Changing Game Industry

Artificial intelligence could play a role in building that next generation of virtual worlds.

Garriott confirmed that his team is already experimenting with AI as a development and prototyping tool. Rather than spending months committing resources to an idea, developers could potentially test concepts quickly before deciding which direction deserves full production.

That could include fundamental questions such as whether combat should be real-time, turn-based or somewhere between the two.

Garriott isn’t approaching AI without concerns.

“As a human, I’m actually profoundly worried about what the future of humanity is going to be like,” he said while discussing the possibility of AI eventually becoming more intelligent than humans.

He also raised concerns surrounding energy and water consumption, training data and whether creators are being compensated for material used to train AI systems.

Within game development, however, he sees the technology as potentially giving individual creators more direct control.

Garriott remembered a time when he could personally create much of a game. As projects grew, his job became increasingly managerial. Instead of making the map, he became the person setting the vision. Leads worked beneath him, with additional teams beneath those leads.

Eventually, the people actually creating something could be several layers removed from the person who originally envisioned it.

“That’s frankly not fun,” Garriott said.

He also believes it can affect the finished product because what ultimately gets created may no longer feel like the work of the original creator.

AI-assisted tools could potentially reduce that distance.

A designer might create a detailed prototype before handing it to an artist or specialist for the final production work. The idea wouldn’t have to pass through as many layers of interpretation, and smaller teams could test ideas far more quickly.

Garriott believes that could make development less expensive while returning creators closer to the act of creation itself.

Cost is particularly important because Garriott believes the modern game industry is facing serious economic problems.

He compared the current environment to the video game crash of the early 1980s, arguing that the traditional AAA model has become increasingly difficult to sustain as development budgets and production timelines have grown.

He also criticized the industry’s increasing dependence on recurring monetization.

Garriott argued that free-to-play games and similar models can encourage developers to build mechanics around repeated purchases and unpredictable rewards. He compared some of those systems to the psychology behind gambling.

His concern comes down to incentives.

When a developer’s revenue comes primarily from selling the game, Garriott argued, the financial goal is to create something worth purchasing. When revenue depends on keeping players spending after they begin playing, developers have an incentive to encourage behaviors that produce additional transactions.

Garriott believes that difference can ultimately influence the design of the game itself.

From Lord British to the Edge of the World

Garriott’s fascination with exploration isn’t limited to virtual worlds.

His father was an astronaut, while his mother was a naturalist and artist. Garriott credits both with helping develop his curiosity at a young age. His mother would take him into the woods to investigate nature, follow insects and understand how things worked.

That desire to explore eventually took him far beyond the woods — to the North Pole, South Pole, the depths of the ocean and orbital space.

Space in particular changed him.

Garriott described orbiting Earth at roughly 17,000 miles per hour, circling the planet approximately every 90 minutes and watching a sunrise or sunset roughly every 45 minutes.

“You cannot take your eyes off the window,” he said.

Looking down at Earth, Garriott began noticing things that are difficult to comprehend from the ground.

The atmosphere appeared remarkably thin. Freshwater seemed limited. He could see deforestation, wildfires and pollution stretching across enormous areas.

Then he passed over Texas.

Garriott recognized his hometown, familiar roads and places where he had grown up. But after spending days observing the entire planet, those familiar locations suddenly existed within a scale he could directly comprehend.

The realization gave him goosebumps.

Earth went from feeling almost impossibly large to what Garriott described as “extremely finite and deeply interconnected.”

Only afterward did he learn that this shift in perception has a name: the overview effect.

Despite everything he has already accomplished, Garriott isn’t finished exploring.

Shortly before Dragon Con, he returned from Indonesia, where he had been diving around Komodo Island. He saw Komodo dragons for the first time and explored a coral reef that had been affected by a recent earthquake.

There are still places on Earth he wants to explore and others he hopes to revisit with his children.

Beyond that, Garriott wants to leave Earth orbit again.

The Moon and Mars are on his list.

Whether the next adventure is on Earth, in space or inside a virtual world, Garriott said he still has a “very long bucket list.”

And that list now appears to include Ultima once again.

Near the end of the conversation, Garriott revealed that one of the first projects being considered is essentially a return to Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar.

“The first thing we’ll bring back is basically Ultima 4, Quest of the Avatar,” Garriott said, adding that experiments surrounding the project are already underway.

For someone whose career has repeatedly crossed the boundaries between games, technology and exploration, a return to Ultima would bring Garriott back to the world that made Lord British famous.

But if his comments at Dragon Con are any indication, he isn’t interested in simply recreating the past.

He wants to experiment with what comes next.