Lord British thinks "most game designers really just suck"
UPDATE: "I was not trying to toot my own horn." Richard Garriott clarifies his point.
Update #2: Richard Garriott has written a lengthy defence on his Portalarium website about his comment. "Wow did I strike a nerve!" it begins.
Update: Richard Garriott clarified his point in a comments thread on Gamasutra.
"My point was that game design is the hardest but also the most valuable skill to build in the industry," he wrote. "That every company lives and dies based on the talent of its game design team, and that as an industry we are not doing so well creating the talent we need in this industry because educational systems have not caught up in this area as well as programming and art.
"I was not trying to toot my own horn," he concluded, "rather state that game design is hard."
Original story: Ultima creator Richard "Lord British" Garriott has denounced most game designers, stating that by and large they "really just suck."
In an interview with PC Gamer Garriott explained that he thinks most game designers are unqualified, while he knows his s***.
"Other than a few exceptions, like Chris Roberts, I've met virtually no one in our industry who I think is close to as good a game designer as I am. I'm not saying that because I think I'm so brilliant. What I'm saying is, I think most game designers really just suck, and I think there's a reason why."
His rationale is that most designers get into their role because they're not particularly talented at anything else. "We're leaning on a lot of designers who get that job because they're not qualified for the other jobs, rather than that they are really strongly qualified as a designer," he explained. "It's really hard to go to school to be a good designer."
"Every designer that I work with - all throughout life - I think, frankly, is lazy," he added.
Garriott explained this has to do with a severe lack of ambition. "They go to make one or two changes to a game they otherwise love versus really sit down and rethink, 'How can I really move the needle here?'"
He noted that not all designers are hacks and some like Will Wright's and Peter Molyneux were visionaries worthy of his respect.
Garriott's quotes are strong words indeed, but we'll see if he walks the walk as well as he talks to the talk when his successfully Kickstarted RPG Shroud of the Avatar: Forbidden Virtues hits PCs and Macs in October 2014.