8th Annual Syndicate World Conference takes place in Texas
This past weekend marked the 8th Annual Syndicate World Conference. Taking place in Austin, Texas, the event brought in a host of guests and Syndicate members totaling more than 170 people. Guests this year included John Smedley and Nathan Pearce (SOE), Curt Schilling (38 Studios), the team at Kings Isle Entertainment, Prima Games, Playxpert, Bioware, G4TV's MMO Report, Pure West Media (the Second Skin movie guys), the Beef and Pie film documentary team, Ten Ton Hammer, Microsoft, Alienware (sponsoring a LAN party), Dell, and the legendary Richard Garriott (aka: Lord British).
The event lasted 5 days and included tours of development studios, round table discussions with developers, play testing some new products coupled with feedback sessions, interviews, panel discussions and a massive annual meeting with guest speakers. One of the featured speakers at the meeting was Lord British himself. Richard spoke for about an hour and has a simply amazing story to tell.
From a UO standpoint he went back to the very earliest days and discussed how it all began. He shared one anecdote that went something like this: 25 years ago when his father was an active astronaut earning $60K per year while flying in space, Richard was just getting into programming. He worked for 7 weeks in his after school hours and came up with his very first marketable game Akalabeth. Akalabeth is the father of the Ultima series. The game sold about 50,000 units and he earned $3 per unit. So when all was said and done, he had earned $150,000 for 7 weeks of afternoon work and clearly learned you can make a killing designing good video games.
It was indeed an honor to meet and talk to the legendary Lord British without whom The Syndicate probably wouldn't have come into existence nor would this website or Ultima Online. Richard was a very genuine person taking the time to pose for pictures, sign various Ultima artifacts and tell anecdotes going back many years. And while he did not reveal any news about a future game he also was clear not to rule it out saying instead that for the next year or so he is focused on his space related work but that there is plenty of interest out there to work with him again on something new.
Submitted by Dragons, GM of LLTS