Richard Garriott is a cult figure for all fans of the gaming industry, because it was he who founded the MMORPG genre, which is still actively developing. The biography of this person and interesting facts from life are present in the article.
The beginning of the path to the game industry
Richard Garriott was born in 1962 in Cambridge, UK, but grew up in the USA. His father was an astronaut scientist, and therefore, since childhood, the guy dreamed that one day he himself would fly into space. He graduated from the school in the city of League, and after it he entered the University of Texas in Austin. While still in high school, he wrote various programs for the Apple II computer, which he distributed to his friends.
He worked part-time at ComputerLand, where he started selling his first game in 1979. Its name is Akalabeth: World of Doom, and it is based on a role-playing story with simple 3D dungeons. At that time it was an unprecedented breakthrough, which gave a powerful impetus to further development. A year later, publishers from California enter into a contract with Richard Garriott. Thus began the production of the legendary Ultima series for all MMO fans.
Real work
After graduating from university, Richard Garriott stepped into the role of a professional developer. He developed the concept of the second part of his offspring, which in 1982 undertook to distribute major publishers from Sierra On-Line. The sales revenue was colossal as the fan base grew every year. In the process of working on the next sequel, Richard realized that it is much more profitable to publish his projects on his own.
He enlists his father and brother Robert in this, and that is how the Origin Systems Corporation was founded. The first five installments used the Apple II as their primary gaming platform, but later switched to the IBM PC. For ten years, many games have come out from under the wing of the company, which were one more popular than the other.
For his decision to self-publish games, he was awarded the "Entrepreneur of the Year" award. It is worth noting that for all the years of work, Garriott was awarded many times. He became the eleventh person to be inducted into the "Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame" in 2005, and before that he managed to light up several times in the industry.
Continue activities
Richard Garriott began working under the auspices of Electronic Arts in 1992 for the next five years. He sold his company to this powerful publisher and, with their support, created a project that all the old generation of interactive entertainment fans remembers.
Ultima Online was far from flawless, but it was a graphical breakthrough. Hundreds of thousands of players disappeared for hours in this fantasy world. This isbecame the starting point for the popularization of the MMORPG genre. With the beginning of the new century, the publisher decides to cancel the active development of many online projects, which was the reason for Richard's departure.
Together with brother Robert, they found a new studio Destination, and later began to cooperate with the South Korean publisher NCsoft. Under the strict supervision of Garriott, new successful projects came out into the world. He worked with them until 2008, until there was a conflict. In court proceedings, Garriott received $32 million in payments from the Koreans. In 2017, Richard Garriott decided to visit the world-famous Igromir exhibition as a special guest.
Passion for space
Since childhood, a man wanted to follow in his father's footsteps, but myopia put an end to these dreams. When he became a rich man, the founder of the RPG genre in the gaming industry, he managed to buy himself a ticket to space. He paid $30 million to fly with a Russian crew to the Soyuz station. These events were depicted in the film "Richard Garriott: Mission Possible".
Father flew as a scientist astronaut to the American station "Skylab" back in the 70s. For a long time, the son was preparing for the flight, he had to learn instructions in Russian, which created additional inconvenience. All training took place in Star City - the cosmonaut training center, the existence of which was not so long ago told to everyone. The documentary was shot with the participation of Garriott himself, where he shares all his impressions. Step by step computer geniuswill talk about the difficulties on the way to the realization of a dream and the flight into space itself.
Hobbies
A man has always loved not only to create computer network games, but also to immerse himself in them. In them, he was known as Richard Lord British Garriott, which is how almost all of his accounts and characters signed. It has its own website, but in addition to programming, it has developed comprehensively.
The man participated in expeditions to search for meteorites in Antarctica, dived to the Titanic submarine, sailed to the area of the Bermuda Triangle, where more than eighteen thousand ships disappeared. He also collects a variety of spacecraft. Among his best acquisitions are the first artificial Earth satellite of the USSR, Lunokhod-2 and Luna-21. Among his hobbies is also illusionism with collecting various tricks. In 2008, it was published in the pages of the popular Society of American Wizards magazine, where Garriott's similar predilection was mentioned.
