Ultima Creator Richard Garriott Quits Pokemon GO - Here's Why

The runaway success of Pokemon GO managed to attract players from all backgrounds, even fellow game creator Richard Garriott. Yes, even the creator of Ultima and Lord British himself couldn't resist the lure of Pokemon GO, but he revealed over the weekend that he's since quit the game. Why? He actually gives a number of reasons.

When asked by a fan why he quit Pokemon GO, Garriott listed his reasons in a single tweet. "Time to grind level went past weeks, lack of new/varied content, realization of 'steady state end game' saw no real differentiated strategy," Garriott said. In other words, it would seem that the repetitiveness of the game was too much for Lord British in the end.

Indeed, Niantic has been largely silent on new content. Instead of adding a significant amount of new content to Pokemon GO, Niantic has been adding new features meant to improve what we currently have. There's nothing necessarily wrong with that, but with less than 150 Pokemon to catch at the moment, players will definitely be looking for a significant content patch sooner rather than later.

Though there's no word on this long-awaited content patch, Niantic did just launch its first Pokemon GO event. Pokemon GO's Halloween event offers double candy payouts for a variety of in-game activities, which would help with Garriott's grinding problem. Players will also experience increased encounter rates with a number of ghost and psychic-type Pokemon, including hard to find ones like Gengar and Haunter.

With a Halloween event now in full swing, it seems like we might be heading for a Holiday event next. What that will entail – if it exists at all – is anyone's guess. Also unknown is whether or not the Halloween event will have any significant impact on player numbers. One thing's for sure: if Niantic doesn't let us in on those player statistics after the event, plenty of app analytics firms will, so stay tuned for that.

SOURCE: Richard Garriott