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.

A Slate of Highly-Anticipated Sequels and New Adventures

The showcase featured trailers for upcoming titles, catering to a wide range of genres and fan bases.

The comedic, talking-gun shooter from some of the minds behind Rick & Morty is back. High On Life 2 made a splash with a new trailer, confirming a Winter 2025 release window.

In a move that sent waves of excitement through the action game community, Koei Tecmo and Team Ninja, in collaboration with Platinum Games, officially announced Ninja Gaiden 4, set to slice its way onto consoles on October 21, 2025.

Bethesda and MachineGames gave fans a new look at the legendary archaeologist’s next adventure with a new DLC for Indiana Jones and the Great Circle titled The Order of the Giants, scheduled for a September 4, 2025 release.

From the imaginative minds at InXile Entertainment comes Clockwork Revolution, a new IP that blends steampunk aesthetics with time-bending gameplay mechanics. A new gameplay trailer was debuted at the showcase.

Game Freak, the celebrated developer of the Pokémon series, unveiled a new action RPG, Beast of Reincarnation, slated for a 2026 release.

Obsidian Entertainment announced Grounded 2, a full sequel to their hit survival game. The game will enter Game Preview in July. The studio’s highly anticipated The Outer Worlds 2 also made an appearance, with a confirmed release date of October 29, 2025.

The showcase also included announcements for:

• Age of Mythology Retold: Heavenly Spear, a new expansion for the remastered strategy game, arriving in Fall 2025.
• Mudang: Two Hearts, an action thriller set for a 2026 release.
• Planet of Lana II: Children of the Leaf, a sequel to the stunning indie adventure, coming in 2026.
• At Fate’s End, a new side-scrolling action-adventure from the developers of Spiritfarer, releasing in 2026.
• Keeper, a new title from Double Fine, launching on October 17, 2025.

Major Franchises Make a Grand Return

The Gears of War franchise is getting a visual and performance overhaul with Gears of War: Reloaded. This remaster will launch on August 26, 2025, and will feature cross-play and cross-progression in stunning 4K HDR at 120 FPS.

In a huge surprise for RPG fans, a full remake of a beloved classic is on the way with Persona 4 Revival.

The world of superheroes and villains will collide in the newly announced 3v3 tag fighter Invincible VS, coming in 2026.

To close out the showcase with a bang, the next installment in the colossal Call of Duty franchise was teased: Call of Duty: Black Ops 7.

Final Fantasy, Fishing, and More

The showcase was a massive event for Final Fantasy fans. It was announced that the critically acclaimed Final Fantasy XVI is available on Xbox starting today. Furthermore, Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade will be coming to Xbox consoles this winter.

The wasteland is also set to get a little more relaxing with the Fallout 76: Gone Fission update, which adds fishing to the game and was released on June 3, 2025. A new free-to-play, pen-and-paper-style action RPG called Animo was also revealed, with a planned 2026 release.

The Future of Xbox: More Choice, More Freedom

Sarah Bond, President of Xbox, took to the virtual stage to outline the company’s forward-looking vision. The core message was one of freedom and expanded choice for players, emphasizing a future where the Xbox experience is not tethered to a single device or storefront.

This philosophy was exemplified by the official reveal of a new handheld device from ASUS, the ROG Xbox Ally, which features deep integration with the Xbox ecosystem, including an Xbox button and inspired controls. This device will allow users to natively download and play their games or stream them from the cloud. The “Xbox Ally” initiative also brings Battle.net to the handheld, allowing players to take their Xbox experience on the go.

Now, if you’re like most folks, you might be scratching your head, wondering, “What on earth is PlayStation Stars?” Don’t worry, you’re not alone. Many PlayStation players are in the same boat. To jog your memory, PlayStation Stars is a revamped version of PlayStation Rewards that Sony rolled out in 2022. It offered players the chance to earn coins by buying games or completing “campaigns” that dared them to play certain types of games. In return, they’d receive unique collectibles to display on a virtual bookshelf, featuring everything from nostalgic nods to PlayStation’s past to cool branded tie-ins like Spider-Man Adidas.

Despite its quirks, PlayStation Stars was a neat way to get a bit of cash back that could eventually add up. But things started going south around June 6. When players tried to access PlayStation Stars through a tiny icon on the PlayStation mobile app’s home screen, they hit a wall. Instead of their beloved program, they were met with an error message: “PlayStation Stars is currently experiencing issues. Our engineers are aware of the issue and working on a solution.”

The timing couldn’t have been worse. Sony was in the middle of running a slew of PlayStation Stars promotions alongside its mid-year Play Days sale event. This meant there were exclusive collectibles and awards up for grabs, but only if you bought and played certain games during the event. PlayStation Support assured users they’d still rack up points and collectibles while the program was down, but they wouldn’t be able to see any of it, let alone keep track of what was still up for grabs.

Fast forward 25 days, and PlayStation Stars is still on the blink. As users on the PlayStation Stars subreddit have pointed out, this outage has now outlasted the infamous 23-day PSN outage in 2011, which was caused by an unprecedented hack. Back then, PS3 players were left in the lurch, unable to play games online, buy them digitally, or use any of the console’s social features. When service finally resumed, Sony made amends by gifting players free games and a month of PS Plus.

Now, PlayStation Stars isn’t on the same level as PSN. It wasn’t hacked, it doesn’t cost a dime, and it’s used by far fewer people. So, its outage isn’t exactly a scandal. But it’s definitely odd, and Sony has yet to shed light on what’s causing the problem or when the rewards program will be back in action. So, for now, PlayStation Stars remains a mystery wrapped in an enigma.