Richard Garriott is one of the few names in this industry that raises the profile of a game simply by being attached to it. He invented the Ultima series and was a key member of the team that created Ultima Online. Now with NCSoft, Richard serves as the Executive Producer on Destination Games’ Tabula Rasa.

Originally announced some time ago, the game underwent a marked shift just before E3 2005. Richard explained how it began with a rather trivial observation: everyone on the development team exclusively played female characters.

Why was this? Well, they discovered that as the game’s extremely far-fetched high fantasy style evolved, it became harder for male gamers to connect with their male avatars. Thus began a period where they tried to put a little more grit into the game; a process that would eventually completely redefine its setting.