To Press Attending Dragon Con 2017:
Starr Long and Richard “Lord British” Garriott will once again be guests at this year’s Dragon Con and are currently accepting appointments for press interviews. They will be appearing on over 10 different panels on the Gaming and Space tracks including talks about Crowdfunding, Richard’s biography Explore/Create, and a panel about their latest game: Shroud of the Avatar. If you are interested in scheduling an interview please contact Starr Long at his email address: slong@portalarium.com .
Shroud of the Avatar is a fantasy RPG that combines a single player narrative with a sandbox MMO. It is being created by a team that includes: Richard “Lord British” Garriott the creator of the Ultima series, Starr Long the original Director of Ultima Online, and Tracy Hickman the author of the beloved Dragonlance Novels and Dungeons & Dragons modules. It is currently the second highest crowdfunded videogame ever.
Richard Garriott de Cayeux is a founding father of the videogame industry and the commercial spaceflight industry, a flown astronaut, and an accomplished explorer. He has been inducted into the computer gaming hall of fame and has received the industry lifetime achievement award. He is credited with creating the now ubiquitous term “avatar” for one’s virtual self and the category of massively multiplayer games (MMORPGs). He authored the acclaimed Ultima Series and has built 3 leading gaming companies: Origin Systems (sold to Electronic Arts), Destination Games (sold to NCsoft) and Portalarium where he is building Shroud of the Avatar, the successor to his previous works. As a principal shaper of the commercial spaceflight industry, he cofounded Space Adventures, the only company to arrange space flights for private citizens and is the sixth private astronaut to live aboard the International Space Station. The son of a NASA astronaut, he became the first second-generation astronaut and has been a key leader in civilian and commercial space as an investor and Board member of institutions such as the X-Prize Foundation, Space Adventures, and Planetary Resources. Richard is an avid explorer, having traveled around the globe from the jungles of the Amazon to the South Pole, the deep seas of the Titanic and hydrothermal vents to orbiting the earth aboard the International Space Station. His non-profit and philanthropic works include serving on the boards of The Explorers Club and The Challenger Center for Science Education. Richard Garriott has been a regular guest at Dragon Con ever since the very first one!
Starr Long has been making video games for twenty-five years, partnering with visionaries like Richard Garriott and Lane Merrifield. Starr started his career at the legendary studio Origin Systems, where he was the director of Ultima Online, the longest running MMO in history. In 2010, UO was inducted into the Online Game Developers Conference Hall of Fame, the first MMO to be so honored. In 2000 Starr co-founded Destination Games with Richard and Robert Garriott, and later that year it was acquired by NCsoft. Starr was named one of the Top 20 Most Influential People in the Massively Multiplayer Online Industry in 2008 by Beckett Massive Online Gamer Magazine. Starr joined The Walt Disney Company as an executive producer in 2009, where he produced the Disney Parent App for Facebook, 8 mini-games in Club Penguin, Club Penguin mobile 1.0, 5 Educational Game apps for iOS and the Disney Connected Learning Platform. In early 2013, Starr joined Portalarium to work on Shroud of the Avatar, currently the second highest crowd funded videogame ever.
