Richard Garriott Podcast Interview

Wired has posted a podcast interview with Ultima series mastermind Richard Garriott, who’s currently working with his developer Portalarium on the Kickstarter-ed quasi-MMO Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues. The interview covers both his upcoming title and his full career, including the fact he was apparently disowned by his sister-in-law for developing RPGs, and luckily for us, that last tidbit has been transcribed:

(When I was in high school, within one year, my sister-in-law gave me Lord of the Rings, the game Dungeons & Dragons was published, and the personal computer was invented, the Apple II computer. And those three things obviously melded in my mind deeply, and I immediately began to manifest these fantasy games. So my sister-in-law was thrilled that I loved the book she gave me, and then she was horrified that I began to make games based on the book she gave me, so horrified that literally she believes that I am doing the devil’s work and converting children to devil-worship. She disowned me, and then slowly she disowned the rest of the family, so she actually doesn’t speak with any of the rest of the family the rest of the family has all worked with me or had some other association down through time. And so my oldest brother and his wife, my sister-in-law, are now almost completely estranged from the rest of the family by their choice largely over the fact that they think that fantasy role-playing games are doing the devil’s work.)