Richard Garriott

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Richard Garriott
Richard Garriott
Country: USA / UK
Organization: Space tourist
selected on September 28, 2007
Calls: 1 space flight
Begin: October 12, 2008
Landing: October 24, 2008
Time in space: 11d 20h 35min
retired on October 2008
Space flights
Richard Garriott (2006)

Richard Allen Garriott de Cayeux (* 4. July 1961 in Cambridge , England as Richard Allen Garriott ) is a computer game developer and space tourist .

Garriott is considered a pioneer among computer game designers, best known for his Ultima - computer role-playing game series, in which he used the nicknames Lord British and General British . He has both British and US citizenship.

After his marriage on July 1, 2011, he added the family name of his wife de Cayeux to his own family name.

Life

Richard Garriott was born in England because his father, Owen Garriott, was visiting professor at the University of Cambridge . Owen Garriott had as a scientific astronaut in NASA advertised, and was adopted when he in 1965, the family moved back to the US so that Richard grew up in the environment of astronauts. Like his father, he wanted to be an astronaut, which he was unable to achieve because of an eye defect. Richard began programming computer games as a hobby on a high school computer in the late 1970s.

He got his nickname "British" due to his supposedly British way of speaking while he was still at school.

Professional background

Ultima

When he was 19, his last hobby project was his computer game Akalabeth , which was also the first of his games to be sold by the owner of the computer shop where Garriott worked because it seemed so interesting. Of the eight copies sold, one ended up with California Pacific. Then Garriott was invited to California. The game was re-packaged and released on a 5.25 ″ floppy disk . Akalabeth, which later became known under the nickname "Ultima 0", sold over 30,000 times, which was an extraordinary success for the time. In 1980 Ultima , one of the first computer role-playing games planned for commercial distribution, was released for the Apple II . The second part, Ultima II , was released by Sierra On-Line in 1982 .

Origin foundation

After disputes with Sierra, Garriott founded his own company, Origin Systems , later simply "Origin". From the fourth part of the Ultima series, Ultima differed from the hack & slay role-playing games that were common at the time , in that it required moral decisions from the player and increasingly left the simple black-and-white thinking that was common in the fantasy genre behind. By 1999 Garriott had developed a total of ten Ultima games, various offshoots of the series, and one of the first massively multiplayer online role-playing games , Ultima Online . He was also involved in the development of the other Origin games, such as Bioforge . From Ultima VI of 1990 he switched from his own programming to design. In 2000 he left Origin after disputes with the management of Electronic Arts , which Origin had bought in 1992.

NCsoft Austin founded

He then founded the new company NCsoft Austin , which has been in close cooperation with the South Korean company NCsoft since 2001. Later he was responsible for the development of the game Tabula Rasa as executive producer . His brother Robert Garriott took over the position of CEO of NCsoft North America .

With the discontinuation of Tabula Rasa , there were also disagreements between Garriott and the development studio, which were finally resolved in court. A message allegedly from Richard Garriott announced in November 2008 that he would leave NCsoft. However, Garriott later denied being the author and sued NCsoft for a sum of $ 24 million over the circumstances of his departure from NCsoft. In July 2010, Garriott was awarded $ 28 million by the Austin District Court.

Portalarium foundation

In February 2010, Garriott announced the creation of a new game development company called Portalarium, which will develop games for the social network Facebook .

Shroud of the Avatar

In March 2013 it was announced that Garriott raised money for his fantasy epic "Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues" with the help of the crowdsourcing platform Kickstarter.com . The target amount is stated as one million dollars. The target was clearly exceeded with 1.9 million dollars.

Others

On November 8, 2005, the AIAS decided to induct Richard Garriott into their Hall of Fame .

Richard Garriott maintains his reputation as an eccentric and fanatic of the Middle Ages and now lives in a house riddled with secret passages and traps in Austin , Texas . He calls the house "Britannia Manor". Skeletons, stuffed birds, preserved brains and fetuses can also be found in this house. He is a long-time member of the Society for Creative Anachronism .

He is a radio amateur , his callsign is W5KWQ.

Garriott is a passionate explorer not only in virtual worlds, but also in real life. He has already dived to the bottom of the deep sea, he has crossed Antarctica in search of meteorites and has flown to the limit of space with an MIG .

On October 12, 2008 Garriott started as the sixth space tourist on board the Soyuz TMA-13 spacecraft for the International Space Station . The landing took place 12 days later on board the Soyuz TMA-12 . Originally, he wanted to be the first space tourist, but had to sell his ticket to Dennis Tito after he lost all of his fortune when the dot-com bubble burst in 2001.

Games

Web links

Commons : Richard Garriott  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Jonathan Amos: Honor given to 'UK astronauts'. BBC, July 3, 2009, accessed on November 10, 2014 (English): “He is the son of US astronaut Owen Garriott, and although he has spent much of his life in America, he was actually born in Cambridge and carries a British passport. "
  2. ^ Emily Quigley: Newsmakers: Richard Garriott to marry in France. June 13, 2011, accessed November 10, 2014 .
  3. ^ Richard Garriott de Cayeux: By the way ... Hence forth call me "Dr Richard Garriott de Cayeux"! Got married. August 2, 2011, accessed October 11, 2014 .
  4. ↑ Jonathan Sale: Passed / Failed: An education in the life of Richard Garriott, private astronaut and computer games developer. The Independent, May 29, 2008, accessed November 10, 2014 .
  5. ↑ Richard Garriott in the Encyclopedia Astronautica , accessed October 11, 2014.
  6. ↑ ryan.p: Gaming Gods: Richard Garriott. (No longer available online.) TheGamersHub, May 11, 2012, archived from the original on November 10, 2014 ; accessed on November 10, 2014 (English). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / thegamershub.net
  7. ↑ a b Kyle Ackerman: Interview with Richard Garriott, Executive Producer, NCSoft Austin. frictionlessinsight.com, March 17, 2002, accessed April 10, 2011 .
  8. ↑ An Open Letter From General British. November 21, 2008, archived from the original on February 10, 2009 ; accessed on November 22, 2011 (English).
  9. ↑ Garriot NCsoft complaint. 2009, archived from the original on February 8, 2011 ; accessed on November 23, 2011 (English).
  10. ^ Luke Plunkett: Richard Garriott Suing NCsoft For $ 24,000,000. kotaku.com, accessed November 23, 2011 .
  11. ^ Richard Garriott Sue's NC Soft Over Millions in Stock Options. gamepolitics.com, accessed November 23, 2011 .
  12. ^ AJ Glasser: Lord British wins $ 28 million in NCsoft lawsuit. gamepro.com, accessed November 23, 2011 .
  13. ↑ Kirk Ladendorf: Garriott wins $ 28 million jury award in NCsoft suit. (No longer available online.) Statesman.com, archived from the original September 20, 2011 ; accessed on November 23, 2011 (English). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.statesman.com
  14. ↑ Richard Garriott comes down to earth with Facebook game startup Portalarium ( Memento from February 9, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  15. ^ Wilhelm Zsolt: "Ultima" creator is back with the role-playing game "Shroud of the Avatar". In: derstandard.at . March 11, 2013, accessed March 11, 2013 .
  16. ↑ Richard, W5KWQ, back from the ISS. In: darc.de. October 24, 2008, accessed March 11, 2013 .
  17. ↑ W5KWQ in the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) database
  18. ↑ The Moth and the World Science Festival Present Richard Garriott: The Overview Effect (from 0:07:21) on YouTube , December 15, 2011, accessed on June 26, 2019.
personal data
SURNAME Garriott, Richard
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lord British; General British; Garriott, Richard Allen (maiden name); Garriott de Cayeux, Richard Allen (married name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British-American computer game developer and space tourist
DATE OF BIRTH 4th July 1961
PLACE OF BIRTH Cambridge , England