Early days Garriott began writing computer games in 1974. His first games were created on teletype terminals. The code was stored on paper tape spools, and 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 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 he earned was three times his father's astronaut salary.
Akalabeth 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 a visit to
Steve Jackson Games.
Origin Systems 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 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 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 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 the company and formed
Destination Games in April 2000 with his brother and
Starr Long (the producer of
Ultima Online).
NCSoft 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 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 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.
Portalarium 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, 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, a company owned by Portalarium CEO Chris Spears. Garriott is no longer associated with either company.
Current 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 lain dormant since September 2022, leading to many speculations regarding the status of the game. == Private astronaut ==