Inside Richard Garriott's Quest to Reinvent Virtual Worlds at Portalarium

Richard Garriott spent decades shaping computer role-playing games before establishing Portalarium in 2009. Having introduced foundational concepts to virtual worlds across earlier eras of gaming, his venture in Austin, Texas, was designed to navigate a shifting landscape of digital entertainment, ranging from social networking platforms to crowdsourced online worlds.

Establishing a New Digital Studio

Portalarium was formed in September 2009 by Garriott alongside his long-standing industry collaborators Dallas Snell and Fred Schmidt. The venture marked Garriott’s return to game production following his time directing online titles at NCSoft and the sunsetting of the science-fiction game Tabula Rasa. The studio chose the name Portalarium and the motto We take you there to deliberately mirror the names and taglines of Garriott’s earlier enterprises, Origin Systems and Destination Games. Based in Austin, the team initially set out to explore emerging web and casual gaming markets. Among its initial projects were Port Casino and an online game titled Ultimate Collector: Garage Sale, which was launched through a publishing partnership with Zynga. When the market for social network games altered rapidly and declined, Portalarium closed these early offerings and refocused its engineering talent on the expansive role-playing mechanics that had originally established Garriott’s reputation.

The Journey to Shroud of the Avatar

To build an ambitious new online title, Portalarium shifted toward community funding. In March 2013, the studio started a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter for Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues. Conceived as a spiritual successor to the Ultima series, the project sought to revive the player-driven ethics and interactive depth of classic virtual worlds. Garriott noted that had licensing discussions with Electronic Arts allowed for the intellectual property rights to be secured, the project could have officially served as a sequel to Ultima Online. To strengthen the production, Portalarium brought in Starr Long, who had previously served as project director for Ultima Online, to act as executive producer. The development model leaned heavily on player feedback, debuting through an early access distribution on Steam in 2014 before reaching full commercial launch in March 2018. Upon release, the title earned mixed or average reactions from critics.

Departures and Studio Transitions

Garriott served as chief executive officer of Portalarium and guided the creative direction of Shroud of the Avatar until 2018, when he stepped down from his executive title. Over the subsequent year, the operational structure of the project changed. In October 2019, the underlying rights and assets of Shroud of the Avatar were transferred to Catnip Games, a separate firm headed by Portalarium chief executive Chris Spears. Following this transfer, Garriott parted ways with both entities. With its primary title reassigned, Portalarium ceased active game development, leaving the company without ongoing projects. The studio subsequently lost its corporate standing to transact business through the state comptroller, bringing an end to its active decade in the game industry.

A Legacy of Worldbuilding and Exploration

The efforts at Portalarium reflected a design career that started during the earliest days of personal computing. Garriott had entered programming during the 1970s, producing Akalabeth: World of Doom before directing the multi-decade Ultima franchise and introducing enduring terminology, including the adoption of the word avatar for in-game personas and coining the term MMORPG. Beyond the game studio, Garriott engaged in high-profile exploration, journeying to the International Space Station as a private astronaut aboard a Soyuz mission in 2008 and later descending to the bottom of the Mariana Trench in 2021. Throughout these varied endeavors, including serving as president of The Explorers Club and co-founding the educational Challenger Center for Space Science Education, his career remained defined by building complex environments and pursuing technical boundaries.