Richard Garriott's Portalarium project gets more funding

Well, 3.6 million is either small potatoes or a large amount of cabbage, depending where/how the money is used.

It looks like Garriott is planning a social hub to link all this future stuff/games, which is good, but it has been done before (Playstation Home and some other places/games on the PC), but to smaller effect.

I think if he made this 10 years ago, it would be more impactful. Now, he's facing competition so it's up to how he markets and presents the game to future users and incorporates any ad/revenue/tidings, assuming there will be such in the portal/hub world.

There is a market for a "virtual game enviroment" version of facebook, but it's an uphill battle to win current hearts and minds. And he needs alot more interesting things than just casino-type games and a more unified world of achievements/credits that could be used in other in-world games/systems.

Richard Garriot proved that although no one can hear you scream in space , you can still hear someone laughing all the way to the bank.

Garriott is a hack. His ego is bigger than his brain. He over-talks every project, the bulk of which have failed to live up to expectations. The rhetoric seems a little lower on this one than for Tabula Rasa (RIP), but he still thinks he is some kind of MMO/social media messiah. The world appreciates him for what he did for online gaming, but I think that same world has moved past him.

Richard Garriott is awesome. He basically invented RPG's and MMORPG's.... (yeah yeah I know not the very 1st whatever)

He went to space and he lives in an awesome mansion with secret passages in Austin, TX (greatest city in the world)