Richard Garriott to receive Honorary Award at GameLab Barcelona

Iconic British game designer Richard Garriott will be presented with the Spanish Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences’ Honorary Award at Gamelab Barcelona.

Garriott will be recieving the Spanish Academy’s most prestigious award, joining a select group that includes Hideo Kojima, Will Wright and Peter Molyneux, among others.

Garriott is best known for his work with the Ultima series of RPG titles but also for founding Origin Systems, Destination Games and Portlarium. Currently, he’s working on Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues, which he has described as a spiritual successor to his previous work and hopes will be a five-part series.

Ivan Fernandez-Lobo, Gamelab Barcelona’s founder and the Spanish Academy’s former president, referred to Garriott as a "game-changer for the medium" and a "source of inspiration for anyone with a creative soul."

Garriott will get the honorary award on June 29 at the Hesperia Tower Hotel in Barcelona, and the ceremony will be the centrepiece of the GameLab conference in Barcelona, which runs from June 28 to June 30.

Garriott is also a keen investor and board member in many organisations dedicated to furthering the course of commercial space travel. Back in 2008, Garriott lived in the International Space Station as a private astronaut, only the sixth person to do so.