Jeff Skalski Says Hello!

Deckard, who runs UO Journal, alerted me to the fact that Jeff Skalski, the franchise producer for Ultima at BioWare Mythic, has posted his first “Producer’s Letter” to the Ultima Online community. And while it mostly addresses UO, it’s worth mentioning here simply for the fact that the man is the Ultima franchise producer; if anything else happens with the Ultima IP in the future, you can bet he’ll be right in the middle of it:

I wanted to take this opportunity to introduce myself properly. My name is Jeff Skalski and I’m the Ultima Franchise Producer here at BioWare. As many of you know Calvin left us two months ago to move onto his next adventure in life. I’ve stepped in to help Mesanna and the team to stay on course. It’s been a wild and challenging ride since I joined the team and I still have plenty to catch up on in terms of the latest UO content. In fact, I have exactly 12 years to catch up on which is a lot in the MMO space. Before I go any farther let’s get some of the big questions I’m sure on your minds out of the way…

1) Franchise Producer for Ultima? What does that mean?

It means I have the best job in the world. Never in my wildest dreams did I think this was ever going to happen. Who would have thought some UO RP’ing high school kid from the 90’s who got into the beta would get this opportunity 15 years later. I’ve been a huge fan of this franchise for quite some time. It started the day I first played Ultima 1 on my friends Macintosh and continued with each new adventure into Britannia. We love Ultima here at BioWare and have a huge respect for what it has accomplished. Ultima made a huge impression on so many of us who work on RPG’s and MMO’s.

We have lots of exciting things to share, however that day is not today. I will say we are just getting started. The rereleases of the classics on GOG.com were just the beginning. Launching UltimaForever.com and giving players an official place to download for free one of my favorite games in the series, Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar is just a baby step to where we are going. Expect to see more content celebrating all things Ultima on that site over the coming months. Meanwhile, UO will continue to move forward with your help. The team and I really want to hear what you want to see next, so please let us know. I can’t promise everything, but I can promise we’ll consider everyone’s feedback as we layout the plan for the next 14 years. 😉

I know some of you are UO players; if you’d like to share your thoughts and feedback with Jeff, hit him up on Twitter; he’s rather a fan of that particular social networking service as a means of rapid correspondence.

If you’re not a UO player…well…keep an eye on the man’s Twitter timeline anyway. Just…trust me on this one.