Ultima Creator Honored with Award

Gamers will be pleased to know that the creator of Ultima, Richard Garriott, will be honored with a lifetime achievement award at the Sixth Annual Game Developers Choice Awards, to be held in the San Jose Civic Auditorium, March 22. The Ultima games have had a decided influence on much of the RPG world. It was first released for the Apple II line of computers in September 1980. The very first Ultima game was coded in BASIC with bits of assembly language routines added. The game proved popular and was later ported to PCs and other game machines of the era. The online version of the game, Ultima Online, was seen as one of the games which sparked the current popularity of MMORPGs. GDC director Jamil Moledina said, “Garriott almost single-handedly brought the role-playing game experience to glowing life. Given his ongoing role in evolving the form to its current massively multiplayer online incarnation, we are proud to honor him for his lifetime achievement.” While game industry luminaries receive well-deserved awards for their work, the general acceptance of video games as legitimate entertainment is still a debatable subject for many.