The Origins of Origin

Who would have thought that such a successful company as Origin,
producers of the Ultima series and a whole range of other games,
could have started off as a school project?

Back in 1977, young Richard Garriott was taking a programming
course at high school and, as part of it, had to come up with a
programming project. As he had a keen interest in Dungeons and
Dragons, he decided to try to do a version of a role playing game
on computer. He got so engrossed in this feat that it ended up
taking up his last three years in school and got up to version 28,
though it was only in text, the only possible illustrations on the
sort of teletype terminal/modem link that he was using being
alphanumeric characters, as still seen in games like Hack and
Larn.

While waiting to go to college he discovered the Apple computer
and was intrigued by the idea of putting graphics into a computer
RPG. During the summer he wrote a game called Akalabeth, packaged
it himself using zip-loc bags and sold less than 12 copies through
a local computer shop. One found its way to the software
publishers California Pacific who offered him a contract and
Akalabeth ended up selling 30,000 copies! Since the game had been
written primarily for fun, not profit, Garriott realised that if
he wrote a game that was actually intended for publication, he
could earn money doing something he enjoyed. The seeds of the
Ultima series were sown.

The first Ultima game was programmed in Garriott's closet in his
bedroom, emptied of his clothes and furnished with a desk and his
precious Apple. It took just over a year to write and was again
published by California Pacific in 1980. Almost at once, work
commenced on Ultima II but California Pacific went bust in 1981 so
by the time the game was finished, Garriott was looking for
another publisher.

There were many firms who were keen to do business with him but
Garriott had some stipulations. He wanted the game packaged in a
box with extensive documentation - this at a time when most games
were still being sold in zip-loc bags. But one thing was more
important ... the idea of the time doors which are such an
integral part of Ultima II had come from Garriott's avid viewing
of the film Time Bandits and especially the map with which Randall
and the other dwarves found their way from time zone to time zone,
so he wanted a cloth map included in the packaging. The only
publisher willing to do this was Sierra On-Line, so Ultima II was
published by them. 50,000 copies were sold in the early days and
that figure has doubled by now.

However, there was a "falling-out" with Sierra over the production
of a PC version. Wary of further problems with a publisher over
future games, Garriott and his brother, Robert, decided to form
their own company, Origin Systems, in 1983. The first offices were
in their parents' garage in Houston, Texas and Robert became the
business manager and president while their mother Helen, a
professional artist, drew the cloth map and other illustrations.
Though it was a bad time, businesswise, to start up a new company
(the software industry went into a slump in 1983), Ultima III sold
over 120,000 copies worldwide.

By the time Ultima IV was being programmed in 1985, Origin had
moved from Texas to offices in Londonderry, New Hampshire and
there was no longer any need to work in a closet. But though
Garriott found the atmosphere of New England (especially the
weather) less enjoyable than his previous life in Texas, Ultima IV
was an even bigger success than the previous games, selling over
200,000 copies.

The time had come to expand, because until this stage Garriott had
done most of the work himself. Programmers were hired and Origin
started to grow. Garriott returned to Texas where a game
development office was opened in Austin while publishing and
marketing were handled from New Hampshire. Ultima V was released
in 1989, distributed by Broderbund.

Almost ten years had passed since a young lad had sat down in high
school to work on his computing project. By the time work started
on Ultima VI, 40 staff were based in Austin, there were over 15
titles in Origin's catalogue, including games such as Windwalker
and Knights of Legend, and the offices took up 12,000 feet of
space in an office block.

Origin was the tenth fastest growing independent software company
in 1990, ranked at 55th overall, an improvement on their ranking
of 75th in 1989 and Richard Garriott was named Young Entrepreneur
of the Year by the Austin Chamber of Commerce.  So the company
looks set to continue for many years, building on a decade of
experience, especially with regard to the Ultima series.  Ultima
VII is out now, as is the add-on data disk, the Forge of Virtue.
These programs use a new design system called Terramorph Draw and
the design of the system has cost the company a quarter of a
million dollars and despite the recent buy-out by Electronic Arts,
Origin's plans seem to be continuing much as before.

The latest blockbusters in the Ultima series, and the ones that
have interested many people who normally wouldn't touch an RPG,
are the two Ultima Underworld games. The first has been out for a
year, but Underworld II was only released a few weeks ago. The
display used is quite different from the normal forward-facing
RPGs as your character's movement scrolls through the environment
rather than moving him step by step, increasing the player's
feeling of 'being there'.

Spin-off games such as Savage Empire and Martian Dreams are only
the first of many; other planned scenarios include piracy in the
Caribbean and the myths and legends of ancient Greece. As for the
Ultima series itself, Garriott hopes it will continue for ever,
and there seems no reason why it shouldn't since every Ultima from
Ultima III onwards has sold over 100,000 copies, each gaining a
Gold plaque from the Software Publishers Association for its
exceptional sales.  On the non-computer side, a pen-and-pencil
Ultima is on the cards, as are a series of fantasy novels about
the magical land of Britannia. It's interesting to speculate on
what the NEXT ten years will bring!
                                                  Sue

Bibliography - The Official Book of Ultima : Shay Addams/Compute!
Books