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50-574: Brothers Richard and Robert Garriott , their astronaut-engineer father Owen , and programmer Chuck Bueche founded Origin Systems in 1983 because of the trouble they had collecting money owed to Richard for his games released by other companies. Origin was initially based in the Garriotts' garage in Houston, Texas . The company's first game was Ultima III: Exodus ; because of Ultima's established reputation and

100-497: A Sotheby's auction in New York. (The catalog incorrectly lists lot 68A as Luna 17/Lunokhod 1. ) Garriott notes that while UN treaties ban governmental ownership of property on other celestial bodies, corporations and private citizens retain such rights. Lunokhod 2 is still in use, with mirrors aligned to reflect lasers such that precise Earth-Moon distances can be measured. With his vehicle still in use, Garriott claims property rights to

150-524: A hemangioma was discovered on his liver, which could cause potentially fatal internal bleeding in the event of a rapid spacecraft depressurization. Given the choice of forfeiting his deposit or undergoing surgical removal of the angioma, he decided to have the surgery. On September 28, 2007, Space Adventures announced that Garriott would fly to the International Space Station in October 2008 as

200-654: A company Garriott co-founded, Zero Gravity Corporation . Garriott wrote a memoir (with David Fisher) covering his accomplishments in games publishing and spaceflight, entitled Explore/Create: My Life in Pursuit of New Frontiers, Hidden Worlds, and the Creative Spark . It was published on January 10, 2017. Garriott was the inspiration for the character James Halliday in Ernest Cline's Ready Player One . Lord British Lord British , or Lord Cantabrigian British ,

250-531: A company owned by Portalarium CEO Chris Spears. Garriott is no longer associated with either company. In April 2022 he announced he had begun working on a new fantasy MMO that uses NFT technology with long-time contributor Todd Porter. In August 2022, the game was announced as Iron and Magic . However, in May 2023, it was reported that the game's official website has vanished and its Facebook page has lied dormant since September 2022, leading to many speculations regarding

300-517: A magnet, fell on Garriott's head, warranting a visit to the hospital. One of the characters says "Yancey-Hausman will pay!", which is a reference to the owner and landlord of the building. In a 2021 list published by PC Gamer staff, Lord British is ranked among the most iconic characters in PC gaming. GamesRadar+ staff called it an iconic moment in MMOs, and Wired magazine writer Anne-Marie Ostler felt it

350-525: A portion of the ashes of Star Trek actor James Doohan on a laminated card, which he placed under the floor cladding of the ISS's Columbus module. This action was kept secret until Christmas Day 2020 when Doohan's son made the fact public on his Twitter account. At the time of the reveal, Doohan's ashes had orbited the Earth more than 70,000 times and traveled more than 1.7 billion miles. Garriott's film Apogee of Fear

400-407: A printed cloth map. By the time he developed Ultima III , Garriott, together with his brother Robert , their father Owen and Chuck Bueche established their own video game publisher , Origin Systems , to handle publishing and distribution, in part due to controversy with Sierra over royalties for the PC port of Ultima II . The use of the term avatar for the on-screen representation of

450-644: A self-funded Private Astronaut at a reported cost of $ 30 million. On October 12, 2008, after a year of training in Russia, Garriott became the second second-generation space traveler (after Sergei Volkov ), the first offspring of an American astronaut to go into space, and the second person to wear the British Union flag in space. His father, Owen Garriott, was at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan for

500-452: A sizable team to construct, yet were free to the public. Garriott promotes private space flight and served as vice-chairman of the board of directors for Space Adventures . He is also a trustee of the X PRIZE Foundation . Garriott participated in the first zero gravity wedding on June 20, 2009, with his wife Laetitia Garriott de Cayeux . The wedding took place in a specially modified Boeing 727-200 aircraft, G-Force One, operated by

550-434: A spell called "fire field" on Lord British that killed him. According to Starr Long , it was just a human error: Lord British's character, like others, had been made invulnerable, but by design the invulnerability did not persist over several game sessions. Shortly before the incident, the server crashed, and Richard Garriott forgot to turn his invulnerability flag on when logging on again. Shortly afterwards, Rainz's account

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600-560: A visit to Steve Jackson Games . Garriott continued to develop the Ultima series of video games in the early 1980s, eventually leaving UT to work on them full time. Originally programmed for the Apple II , the Ultima series later became available on several platforms. Ultima II was published by Sierra On-Line , as they were the only company that would agree to publish it in a box together with

650-446: Is "British", a name he still uses for various gaming characters, including Ultima character Lord British and Tabula Rasa character General British. The name was given to him by his first Dungeons and Dragons friends because he was born in the UK. Garriott began writing computer games in 1974. His first games were created on teletype terminals. The code was stored on paper tape spools, and

700-592: Is considered the first published computer role playing game . Later that year, Garriott entered the University of Texas at Austin (UT). He joined the school's fencing team, and later, the Society for Creative Anachronism . He lived at home with his parents while attending university, and from there created Ultima I with his friend Ken Arnold. Its cover, and those of several subsequently Garriott games, were painted by Denis Loubet , whose art Garriott discovered during

750-507: Is the fictional ruler of Britannia , a kingdom in the fictional world of Sosaria, created by Richard Garriott for his video game series Ultima . Ultima series creator Richard Garriott acquired the nickname "British" as a teenager from friends at computer camp who claimed his greeting to them, "Hello", was distinct from the usual American "Hi". The Lord title was later added when he played as dungeon master in his Dungeons & Dragons games. When his first published game Akalabeth

800-458: Is the son of NASA astronaut Owen Garriott , was originally a game designer and programmer , and is now involved in a number of aspects of computer-game development. On October 12, 2008, Garriott flew aboard the Soyuz TMA-13 mission to the International Space Station as a private astronaut, returning 12 days later aboard Soyuz TMA-12 . He became the second space traveler, and first from

850-465: The Ultima franchise such as Ultima X: Odyssey , originally to be released in 2004 but later canceled. In February 2004, the studio was disbanded by Electronic Arts. The Longbow series of simulation games was developed at Origin and published under the Jane's Combat Simulations brand of Electronic Arts. A follow-on project, Jane's A-10 , was under development when the project was canceled in late 1998 and

900-672: The United States and the United Kingdom by birth. Garriott was raised in Nassau Bay, Texas from the age of about two months. Since his childhood, he had dreamed of becoming a NASA astronaut like his father. Eyesight problems discovered at the age of 13 blocked his ambition, however, so he instead came to focus on computer game development. Garriott's "first real exposure to computers" occurred in 1975, during his freshman year at Clear Creek High School . In search of more experience than

950-717: The Avatar assets to Catnip Games in 2019. Richard Allen Garriott was born in Cambridge , England on 4 July 1961, to Helen Mary ( née  Walker ) Garriott (1930–2017 ) and Owen Garriott , one of NASA 's first scientist-astronauts (selected in NASA Astronaut Group 4 ), who flew on Skylab 3 and Space Shuttle mission STS-9 . His parents had been high school sweethearts growing up in Enid, Oklahoma . Although both his parents were Americans, Garriott claims dual citizenship for both

1000-650: The Hindu word associated with a deity's manifestation on earth in physical form, and applied it to a player in the game world. Garriott sold Origin Systems to Electronic Arts (EA) in September 1992 for $ 30 million. In 1997, he coined the term massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), giving a new identity to the nascent genre previously known as graphical MUDs . In 1999 and 2000, EA canceled all of Origin's new development projects, including Privateer Online , and Harry Potter Online . Garriott resigned from

1050-493: The ISS. Garriott used Windows on Earth software to assist in the selection of locations on Earth to photograph, and the public were able to use the same online tool to track the ISS and see the view Garriott was experiencing. Garriott's photographs, along with images taken by his astronaut father Owen Garriott in 1973, will be available to the public through Windows on Earth, adding a personal element to studies of Earth and how Earth has changed over time. Garriott covertly smuggled

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1100-625: The ISS. The Metro has claimed, as a result, that it was the first newspaper in space. He communicated with students and other Amateur Radio operators and transmitted photographs using the Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) slow-scan television system, and placed a geocache while aboard the ISS. Garriott worked with the Windows on Earth project, which provides an interactive, virtual view of Earth as seen from

1150-459: The United States, to have a parent who was also a space traveler. During his ISS flight, he filmed a science fiction movie Apogee of Fear . The creator of the Ultima game series, Garriott was involved in all games in the series, and directly supervised all eleven main installments, starting with 1979's Akalabeth: World of Doom and concluding with 1999's Ultima IX: Ascension . Within

1200-497: The assassin. He has since been included in other Ultima games, where he is often assassinated despite the developers' best efforts, though some deaths are included as Easter eggs. According to interviewer Shay Addams, "Garriott was less than pleased" that some players had found a way to kill Lord British in Ultima III: Exodus , having taken steps to avoid it. In Ultima VII , an Easter egg allows British to be killed. If

1250-601: The bottom of the Mariana Trench , the deepest oceanic trench on the planet. While there, as well as performing scientific duties, he placed a geocache and recorded another short sci-fi film. This made him the holder of both altitude and depth records for these activities. In 1986, Garriott helped start the Challenger Center for Space Science Education with his high school science teacher, June Scobee Rodgers, widow of Challenger Shuttle Commander Dick Scobee , who piloted

1300-491: The box to assassinate him. This phenomenon is the origin of the Lord British Postulate which states: "If it exists as a living creature in an MMORPG, someone, somewhere, will try to kill it." Lord British was first killed during an in-game appearance on Ultima Online ' s beta test on August 9, 1997. A royal visit was conducted as a part of server population stress test. A player character known as Rainz cast

1350-647: The company and formed Destination Games in April 2000 with his brother and Starr Long (the producer of Ultima Online ). Once Garriott's non-compete agreement with EA expired a year later, Destination partnered with NCSoft where Garriott acted as a producer and designer of MMORPGs. After that, he became the CEO of NCSoft Austin, also known as NC Interactive. Tabula Rasa failed to generate much money during its initial release, despite its seven-year development period. On November 24, 2008, NCSoft announced that it planned to end

1400-620: The company did not appropriately handle his departure in 2008. In October 2011, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed the judgment. Garriott founded the company Portalarium in 2009, which developed Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues , a spiritual successor to the Ultima series. Garriott remarked that had they been able to secure the intellectual property rights to Ultima from EA,

1450-402: The company for $ 35 million in stock, despite a dispute between the two companies over EA's 1987 game Deathlord . Origin, with about $ 13 million in annual revenue, stated that it had considered an IPO before agreeing to the deal. By 1996, Origin had expanded to more than 300 employees, most of whom were divided among small, largely autonomous development teams. In 1997, Origin released one of

1500-444: The context of Ultima , Garriot presented himself as the fictional persona of Lord British . The series is considered influential, notably helping with establishing the computer role-playing game genre. He founded the video game development company Portalarium in 2009. He was CEO of Portalarium and creative director of Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues until 2018 when he shed the title, later relinquishing all Shroud of

1550-625: The earliest graphical MMORPGs , Ultima Online . After this title, Electronic Arts decided that Origin would become an online-only company after the completion of Ultima IX: Ascension in 1999. However, within a year's time, in part due to Ultima IX ' s poor reception, EA canceled all of Origin's new development projects, including Ultima Online 2 , Privateer Online , and Harry Potter Online . Richard Garriott left Origin shortly after and founded Destination Games in 2000. In later years, Origin mainly existed to support and expand Ultima Online and to develop further online games based on

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1600-778: The fact that the company's games were released on computers and not consoles, Origin survived the video-game crash of 1983 which affected console game developers in North America. It published many non- Ultima games, and Richard Garriott claimed that he received the same royalty rate as other developers. By 1988, Origin had 15 developers in Austin, Texas , and another 35 employees in New Hampshire. By 1989 they had 50 employees between their New Hampshire and Texas offices. By 1992, Origin Systems had sold more than 1.5 million software units worldwide. In September 1992, Electronic Arts acquired

1650-479: The game could have become Ultima Online 2 . On March 8, 2013, Portalarium launched a Kickstarter campaign for Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues . An early access version of the game was released on Steam in 2014, and the game was fully released in March 2018. The game received "mixed or average" reviews from critics. In October 2019, the assets and rights to Shroud of the Avatar were sold to Catnip Games,

1700-484: The game in Ziploc bags, a common way to sell software at the time. Although Garriott sold fewer than a dozen copies at the store, one copy made it to California Pacific Computer Company , which signed a deal with him. The game sold over 30,000 copies, and Garriott received five dollars for each copy sold. The US$ 150,000 (equivalent to $ 630,000 in 2023) he earned was three times his father's astronaut salary. Akalabeth

1750-466: The game was displayed as an ongoing print-out. In summer 1979, Garriott worked at a ComputerLand store where he first encountered Apple computers. Inspired by their video monitors with color graphics, he began to add perspective view to his own games. After he created Akalabeth for fun, the owner of the store convinced Garriott it might sell. Garriott spent $ 200 printing copies of a manual and cover sheet that his mother had drawn, then put copies of

1800-512: The games, he has a key role in founding the Museum, Conservatory, and other institutions of the Britannian society. He rarely leaves his castle. One of the most famous attributes of Lord British is that he is almost invincible. In every Ultima game in which he has appeared, he is designed to be almost impervious to a player's character predations. However, there are ways for a player thinking outside

1850-613: The ill-fated STS-51-L mission. Scobee Rodgers drew on Garriott's early leadership in gaming to help design what have become approximately 50 global interactive networked facilities, where students perform simulated space missions. Garriott bought the Luna 21 lander and the Lunokhod 2 rover (both currently on the lunar surface) from the Lavochkin Association for $ 68,500 in December 1993 at

1900-454: The launch, and was in attendance when he landed safely, along with Russian cosmonauts Sergei Volkov and Oleg Kononenko , twelve days later. During his spaceflight, Garriott took part in several education outreach efforts. The free Metro newspaper in London provided him with a special edition containing details of British primary school students' space experiment concepts that Garriott took to

1950-521: The live service of Tabula Rasa . The servers shut down on February 28, 2009, after a period of free play from January 10 onward for existing account holders. NCSoft fired Garriot in November 2008, but publicly claimed that he left the company voluntarily, resulting in a lawsuit against them. In July 2010, an Austin District Court awarded Garriott US$ 28 million in his lawsuit against NCSoft, finding that

2000-448: The player double-clicks the gold plaque above the castle gate when British is standing directly underneath (which he invariably does at exactly noon each day), the plaque will fall on his head. The player can arrange several chairs or crates around him in such a way as to trap him underneath the plaque. This was inspired by an incident at the Origin building: a metal bar, attached to the door by

2050-495: The sale of Origin Systems, he invested in Space Adventures and purchased a ticket to become the first private citizen to fly into space. Due to financial setbacks in 2001 after the dot-com bubble burst, however, he was forced to sell his seat to Dennis Tito . Garriott then returned to creating games; once he had accumulated sufficient funds, he put down another non-refundable deposit. During his mandatory medical examination

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2100-480: The single one-semester BASIC class the school offered, and as a fan of The Lord of the Rings and Dungeons & Dragons , Garriott convinced the school to let him create a self-directed course in programming . He used the course to create fantasy computer games on the school's teletype machine. Garriott later estimated that he wrote 28 computer fantasy games during high school. One of Garriott's game pseudonyms

2150-426: The status of the game. In 1983, Softline reported that "Garriott wants to go into space but doesn't see it happening in the predictable future ... He has frequently joked with his father about stowing away on a spaceship, and recently his speculations have been sounding uncomfortably realistic". The income from the success of Garriott's video game career allowed him to pursue his interest in spaceflight . After

2200-492: The team moved to other projects. Origin employed many young game developers over its tenure who have since gone on to leading roles in numerous game development companies, especially in Austin. Among its prominent employees were (alphabetically by surname): Richard Garriott Richard Allen Garriott (born 4 July 1961) is a British-born American video game developer , entrepreneur and private astronaut. Garriott, who

2250-523: The territory surveyed by Lunokhod 2. This may be the first valid claim for private ownership of extraterrestrial territory. Lunokhod 2 held the record for distance traveled on the surface of another planetary body until it was surpassed by NASA's Opportunity Rover in 2014. From 1988 through 1994 Garriott built a haunted house / museum every other year at Britannia Manor , his residence in Austin, Texas . Garriott's haunted houses cost tens of thousands of dollars to create each year and took many months and

2300-489: The trademark rights to the name Lord British with its associated symbols, and the character appears in his game Tabula Rasa as General British. Lord British appears in various entries in the Ultima series. Neither the Avatar nor Lord British are born in Sosaria, but come from Earth via the moongates. Numerous plotlines and side quests in the Ultima games revolve around Lord British's adventures or public works projects. In

2350-492: The user was coined in 1985 by Richard Garriott for the computer game Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar . In this game, Garriott desired the player's character to be their Earth self manifested into the virtual world. Due to the ethical content of his story, Garriott wanted the real player to be responsible for their character; he thought only someone playing "themselves" could be properly judged based on their in-game actions. Because of its ethically nuanced narrative approach, he took

2400-410: Was banned from the beta test, though according to Origin , he was not banned for the assassination but for previous complaints against his account. After Lord British was killed, fellow Ultima Online developer Starr Long (also known in-game as Lord Blackthorn ) summoned some demons, who attacked innocent bystanders. This led to beta testers protesting both the indiscriminate killing and the banning of

2450-454: Was released, the president of the publishing company suggested he use the name in the game, since it was more memorable than his real name. Garriott released Akalabeth: World of Doom and all other Ultima games under the pseudonym, and occasionally appeared in Ultima Online playing as Lord British and meting out justice to his players. He is still known as Lord British. Garriott retained

2500-503: Was the first ever fictional (short) film fully filmed in space (whereas Return from Orbit was only partially filmed in space). Tracy Hickman wrote the screenplay. In 2010 he was featured in a documentary, Man on a Mission: Richard Garriott's Road to the Stars , which covered his spaceflight training and mission into orbit. In January 2021, Garriott was elected president of The Explorers Club . In February 2021, Garriott traveled to

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