Quickie: How the Mighty Have Fallen

Remember Richard Garriott? Lord and General British, master of everything Ultima, space tourist, and lately producer of various so-so MMOs like City of Heroes and Tabula Rasa? I thought you would. Well, he has descended into the hell that is social networking and facebook apps. Yesterday he announced his new company Portalarium that has developed a new browser plugin for social media games – similar to flash in principle, but designed for social networks and quite proprietary. To showcase the plugin, the company has developed a poker game of all things. Seriously, can you fall any lower?

Alright, I’m biased. I have my issues with facebook and its ilk and I really don’t think that gaming belongs there. That said, the market is definitely up and coming and there’s probably quite some money to be made with little investment. That must be what this is about – money. I absolutely can’t imagine a visionary like Garriott developing facebook games because he enjoys it. I would bet that most developers of facebook games do that to catch a break into making real games at some point – going the other way round is quite peculiar. Maybe his lawsuit against NCSoft didn’t go all that well  and the money for the next trip to space needs to come from somewhere?

If you want more information, check this article on VentureBeat.