Garriott: "Most games designers really just suck"

Well there’s a great way of ensuring you’re not down with the cool kids.

Ultima creator and general MMO know-it-all Richard Garriott has lashed out at nearly every one of his peers by labelling the majority of games developers as rubbish.

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,” he told PC Gamer.

I think there’s really very few great game designers. I think Chris Roberts is one of them, Will Wright’s another, Peter Molyneux is another. 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.”

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. It’s really hard to go to school to be a good designer.”

Garriott went on to explain that aspiring developers with a flair for art tend to focus on artistic disciplines while those accomplished at programming will gravitate to more technical fields. Those without a notable talent for either end up becoming designers, he argues.

Garriott is currently working on RPG title Shroud of the Avatar, which just recently hit its $1m Kickstarter funding goal.