By Harold Goldberg

Here’s one of the greatest reasons to attend the New York Game Awards on 1/19! The New York Videogame Critics Circle is proud to announce that the Andrew Yoon Legend Award will go to Ultima creator and astronaut Richard Garriott.

Richard Garriott will appear onstage at the New York Game Awards to receive his award from many of our nearly 40 writers. In addition, he’ll take time to speak to one of the teens we mentor from the Bronx’s DreamYard Prep School. The New York Videogame Critics Circle will also debut a short documentary about the winner’s historic accomplishments.

Richard Garriott is one of the early pioneers of games, a creator who began during a more innocent time when games were distributed in plastic bags. (Actually, he was one of the first to use boxes for games.) Also known as Lord British, Garriott’s landmark Ultima series changed the videogame industry forever. It was he who created the word ‘avatar’ and he who originated the massively multiplayer online role playing game. Arguably, without  Lord British, we’d never have seen the likes of EverQuest and World of Warcraft.

Later, inspired by his astronaut father, Garriott docked with the International Space Station in 2008 and spent over a week on this historic flight. “Explore/Create (My Life in Pursuit of New Frontiers, Hidden Worlds and the Creative Spark” is Richard Garriott’s new book. It will be released days before his New York Game Awards appearance.

The Andrew Yoon Legend Award is dedicated to the memory of Andrew Yoon, one of the co-founders of the New York Videogame Critics Circle. Andrew was a keen writer/journalist and later became an inspired game maker. He left us too soon.

Harold Goldberg is the Circle’s founder and editor in chief. One of his books is a narrative history of games, All Your Base Are Belong to Us (How 50 Years of Videogames Conquered Pop Culture).