Ultima creator Richard Garriott plans poker game for Facebook

The eccentric video game maker Richard Garriott, the creator of Ultima and the short-lived Tabula Rasa, announced that he's still got game -- and this time, it will be in the form of a new social gaming venture called Portalarium. According to the Austin American Statesman, the company's first new Facebook game will be ... a poker game?

Considering there are several great poker games on Facebook -- including Zynga's Texas Hold 'Em and Playfish's Poker Rivals -- this seems like an unusual choice for the company's premier title. The article says that other games will follow (maybe a space walking game? *rimshot*) and will be available cross-platform -- on Facebook, MySpace and iPhone.

"If you look at the state-of-the-art in social media gaming right now, it lags behind a lot of the more experienced developers by a fairly significant margin," Garriott says.

Portalarium is also working on a new Facebook plug-in that will support applications other than Adobe's Flash, which is the driving force behind the biggest social games, such as FarmVille and Cafe World. This is one of the most interesting aspect of Garriott's announcement, especially considering how Flash does not work on iPhone and the upcoming iPad. If that means we can play FarmVille on iPhone that much sooner, then we say Godspeed, Lord British.

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