In the third and final part of Matt Barton's interview with Richard Garriott, Richard shares more anecdotes about the development of the early Ultima titles. He finally sets the record straight about Akalabeth's release date (1980, not 1979), describes how his games differed from their competitors and how that led to their greater commercial success, and explains his motivations for implementing Ultima IV's revolutionary virtue system.



Apparently, it was Richard's distaste for amoral "min-maxing" that was the primary motive for creating the virtues, and not just the moral panic over roleplaying games that was common at the time, as has been popularly assumed. Richard also has a bit to say about industry trends, going back to the shift from the Apple II to the PC that nearly sank his company back in the late 80s, all the way up to today's crowdfunding revolution.