Garriott To Be Honored At 2006 Choice Awards

Richard Garriott, the creator of Ultima who's sometimes better known as Lord British, will receive the Game Developers Choice Award for Lifetime Achievement at the 2006 Game Developers Conference. [The GDC, like Gamasutra.com, is managed by the CMP Game Group.] Though his current position is as executive producer at NCsoft's North American offices, where he is working on MMO Tabula Rasa, Garriott is best known for developing the seminal RPG series Ultima. The series was a formative influence in virtually every RPG that came afterward, both Western and Eastern, since it caught on with many of the early Japanese RPG developers as well. In addition, Ultima Online helped create the now-booming MMORPG genre. The Origin founder will be honored at the 6th annual Game Developers Choice Awards and hosted by the Game Developers Conference (GDC) and presented by the International Game Developers Association (IGDA), and to take place on Wednesday, March 22 at the San Jose Civic Auditorium. Previous winners of the award include Will Wright, Eugene Jarvis, Mark Cerny, Gunpei Yokoi, and Yuji Naka. "Garriott almost single-handedly brought the role-playing game experience to glowing life," said GDC director Jamil Moledina. "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."