Earlier in March, Ultima creator Richard "Lord British" Garriott announced his return to the fantasy RPG space with Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues. He also launched a Kickstarter campaign to help fund his efforts, and this week, it reached its $1 million goal with 19 days to go.
However, Garriott is apparently feeling that he needs to get some things off his chest now that he knows that his newest game will start development. In a new interview with PC Gamer, he stated that there are a lot of better gaming artists and programmers out there than himself. But as far as game designers ..., well, let's have his works speak for themselves:
But other than a few exceptions, like Chris Roberts, I’ve met virtually no one in our industry who I think is close to as good a game designer as I am. I’m not saying that because I think I’m so brilliant. What I’m saying is, I think most game designers really just suck, and I think there’s a reason why.
What is his reason? Basically, Garriott claims that its hard to learn to design a game as a set of skills, rather than an artist or a programmer who can take classes to improve their works. He said that he considered Will Wright and Peter Molyenux to also be great game designers, adding, "They clearly exist, but on the whole, I think that the design talent in our industry is dramatically lower than we need, as an industry. It’s a very hard skill to learn.”
There's no doubt that game design is hard to learn, but are there really only a few great game designers in the industry, as Garriott claims? That's certainly up for a great debate.
Source: PC Gamer | Image via Portalarium
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