Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello everyone,
Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast. My name is Chris Polette. I'm
Speaker 1: an editor here at how Stuff Works, and as usual
Speaker 1: I have sitting with me senior writer Jonathan Strickland Hale
Speaker 1: and well Met Pillette. Oh you see where this is
Speaker 1: gonna go pretty quickly? Huh. Yeah, welcome to the third
Speaker 1: in our series on focusing on folks who are important
Speaker 1: in the tech and computer industry. And we need to
Speaker 1: come up with a better title than that, I think Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think so. Yeah. Anyway, we're gonna talk about the
Speaker 1: another leader in tech and uh specifically within the video
Speaker 1: game field, Richard Lord British or General British Gariot. Yes, uh,
Speaker 1: you may not be familiar with his name, but if
Speaker 1: you've ever played the Ultimate series of Games, you have
Speaker 1: something you owe him your thanks. Yes, yes, he's the
Speaker 1: one who made those yeah. Um yeah, Richard Garriott. He's
Speaker 1: a He's a remarkable person. I've I've actually had the
Speaker 1: great pleasure of meeting and chatting with Richard Garriott on
Speaker 1: many occasions. But it was back when I was a teenager,
Speaker 1: a young pup. Yes, yes, before I had become a
Speaker 1: professional journalist. Um so. But the the he's a genuinely
Speaker 1: very nice person. But it's it's interesting to kind of
Speaker 1: look at his journey, uh, where he's gone from, uh,
Speaker 1: from being a when he was a teenager to being
Speaker 1: a multi millionaire who now is possibly pursuing space related interests.
Speaker 1: I think possibly pursuing it. Well that further pursuing, I
Speaker 1: should say, um, well, first of all, it's not any
Speaker 1: super prize that he would be following his father's footsteps, right,
Speaker 1: that's true. We should talk about him for a second.
Speaker 1: Richard is the son of Owen K. Garriott, who, among
Speaker 1: other things, was an astronaut. Yep, he actually was on
Speaker 1: the sky lad mission in nineteen seventy three and in
Speaker 1: eighty three he was on Space Lab one. Wow, that's
Speaker 1: pretty cool. It's very cool. So I have a dad
Speaker 1: who's an astronaut. Right, So here here's Richard Garriot and
Speaker 1: his dad's an astronaut. He Uh, he's interested in things
Speaker 1: like role playing games, becomes a big fan of the
Speaker 1: game Dungeons and Dragons. Um. He sent to a computer
Speaker 1: camp when he's a teenager and becomes extremely interested in
Speaker 1: computers as well and begins to see ways to marry
Speaker 1: these two interests together, his love of role playing games
Speaker 1: and the love of computers. I actually want to throw
Speaker 1: something in as I was reading the Wired article about
Speaker 1: Richard Garriott. Actually it was sort of about Richard. It's
Speaker 1: sort of about Star City, which is a um Russian
Speaker 1: space camp that that he went to. But apparently, according
Speaker 1: this article, uh, he convinced his teachers that learning basic
Speaker 1: the computer language Basic satisfied his foreign language requirement in
Speaker 1: high school. That doesn't surprise me at all. Richard. Richard's
Speaker 1: a very very charismatic and uh and convincing fellow. When
Speaker 1: you meet him in person, he's um uh, he's fascinating
Speaker 1: to talk to he Uh. I know that he created
Speaker 1: a computer game back when he was at the computer
Speaker 1: camp that printed on tape just before monitors. So the
Speaker 1: way it would work is that you would, uh, you
Speaker 1: would inter say a room and like a role playing game,
Speaker 1: and it would print out a room and as key
Speaker 1: art showing you you know where your look where you
Speaker 1: were in relation to the rest of the room, and
Speaker 1: you would move your character. Let's say, like I move
Speaker 1: one space north, it would have to print out the
Speaker 1: whole thing all over again, showing you where you were
Speaker 1: now in relation to everything else, plus making other stuff
Speaker 1: appear as it came into view of your character. Not
Speaker 1: the most efficient kind of game, but it did show
Speaker 1: that he was very interested in this from the very beginning,
Speaker 1: and it was a very clever solution to the problem
Speaker 1: of not having a visual means by which you could
Speaker 1: communicate that information. But now, oh, go ahead, I was
Speaker 1: going to say. You know, you may be saying, okay,
Speaker 1: so if he wants to be an astronaut, why didn't
Speaker 1: you just do that? I mean, why is he doing
Speaker 1: the whole computer camp thing. Well, there was one problem,
Speaker 1: actually two problems. That would be his eyes. Yea, his
Speaker 1: eyes were not good enough for for NASA. So he's
Speaker 1: been he sort of from what I read, he sort
Speaker 1: of fell back on computers and gaming because he liked
Speaker 1: those two things, and he because he couldn't go forward
Speaker 1: in in the space program. So you kind of got it,
Speaker 1: you know, a fork in the road. And he said, well,
Speaker 1: you know, I love these things too. This is what
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do, right, And he embraced it, and I
Speaker 1: teen eight he wrote a game called a Calabeth, which
Speaker 1: is sort of the precursor to be precursor to the
Speaker 1: Ultimate series. UM. And this was back in the days
Speaker 1: when you would find computer games at your local little
Speaker 1: computer store and they would be pinned up on a
Speaker 1: bulletin board and they'd all be in zip. Luck bags
Speaker 1: would be a floppy disk, maybe a sheet of printed
Speaker 1: instructions and uh, if you were really lucky, some art
Speaker 1: that actually said what the title of the game was.
Speaker 1: Otherwise it was just on the sticker on the disc itself.
Speaker 1: He's old five and a quarter inch floppy disks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I do too. I still have some. UM can't run
Speaker 1: them on anything, but I have them. So yeah. It
Speaker 1: actually got very popular. And the way Richard used to
Speaker 1: tell the story was that he said, I was doing
Speaker 1: what I loved and I sent the sent this company
Speaker 1: my my game, and then they started sending me money.
Speaker 1: It was great, fantastic. I was like, well, this is
Speaker 1: what I want to do. So from there he went
Speaker 1: on to program Tima one and uh, this was back
Speaker 1: in the day when a single person could produce a
Speaker 1: game from start to finish on his or her own,
Speaker 1: something that does not happen very much these days. Um,
Speaker 1: it's just because games have gotten so complicated at this
Speaker 1: point that you you almost need an entire department of
Speaker 1: a major company to to put one together. But this
Speaker 1: was back in the day when someone with enough enough
Speaker 1: time and enough effort could produce a game by themselves.
Speaker 1: So but he did started a company, d Yeah, he
Speaker 1: formed it with his brother and a few other people,
Speaker 1: Origin Systems. And Origin Systems produced the Ultimate series as
Speaker 1: well some other games, like with the Wing Commander series
Speaker 1: and a few other series as well, but the Ultimate ones,
Speaker 1: I think we're kind of the flagship for that company. Again.
Speaker 1: According to the Wired article, more than a hundred million copies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I own a few of those. Yeah, yeah, because I
Speaker 1: was a huge Ultimate fan. In fact, before I ever
Speaker 1: met Richard Garriott, I was. I was already playing Ultimate too,
Speaker 1: which was a very simple role playing game in in
Speaker 1: the early ultimates one through three. It was pretty much
Speaker 1: following the standard kind of role playing system in which
Speaker 1: you're you're playing a powerful character and you go around
Speaker 1: killing stuff and selling stuff and trying to beat the
Speaker 1: bad guy to win the game. And here's the interesting part.
Speaker 1: The first thing that I think is really interesting about
Speaker 1: Richards progress as a game developer. He started to become
Speaker 1: dissatisfied with the way these games were kind of laid out.
Speaker 1: The storyline of these games. He thought that they were
Speaker 1: too simple. The whole good versus evil thing was a
Speaker 1: little too um primitive. So he decided he wanted to
Speaker 1: create a game in which your choices as a player
Speaker 1: would determine whether or not you could win the game.
Speaker 1: It wasn't just you know, if you killed enough or X,
Speaker 1: you were suddenly powerful enough to take on a troll,
Speaker 1: and you kill enough trolls you can finally take on
Speaker 1: the big bad guy. It was that you had to
Speaker 1: make moral choice is throughout the game, and based on
Speaker 1: those choices that determined whether or not you could win
Speaker 1: the game. As when he created Ultimate four and really
Speaker 1: introduced the concept of the avatar character and UH, to
Speaker 1: become an avatar, you had to adhere to some very
Speaker 1: strict rules and if you broke those rules, then you
Speaker 1: it was impossible to win the game. And UH, it
Speaker 1: got a lot of attention among gamers, and most of
Speaker 1: it was positive. I mean a lot of the gamers
Speaker 1: who wanted to just breathe through a game were kind
Speaker 1: of frustrated because they couldn't just you know, hack and
Speaker 1: slash their way through. But it was so different from
Speaker 1: why had to come before it that it really kind
Speaker 1: of revolutionized video computer role playing games at the time.
Speaker 1: And um, that's pretty much how you went from that
Speaker 1: point on. It was very important that your character was able,
Speaker 1: you know, that that the choices you made as a
Speaker 1: character actually affected the way the game progressed. And uh
Speaker 1: so it wasn't just random encounters or anything like that.
Speaker 1: If you told off someone in this one town, then
Speaker 1: your reputation could spread in that town and people would
Speaker 1: treat your character differently based on that. Um. And I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, it sounds like I'm going on and on
Speaker 1: about this, but really that was very revolutionary at the time.
Speaker 1: Well you think about it, um, and it's more than
Speaker 1: just a two dimensional game at that point. You know,
Speaker 1: before you had you know, left right up down essentially
Speaker 1: you know, black and white choices, and now you enter
Speaker 1: into shades of gray and things that you do. The
Speaker 1: game is smart enough to know what's going on and
Speaker 1: to to react to the decisions that you make and
Speaker 1: have other non player characters you know, react to you
Speaker 1: differently based on the things that you do. That's pretty sophisticated.
Speaker 1: That's a lot more immersive, that's a lot more like
Speaker 1: real life. So uh you know, maybe for the non
Speaker 1: gamers who are listening to us, and they're probably very
Speaker 1: few of them, I'm guessing, um, you know, you would say, Okay,
Speaker 1: well that's more intriguing. That's the kind of thing that's
Speaker 1: gonna get uh more if you will non geeks interested
Speaker 1: in games, because you know, say, well, this is this
Speaker 1: is a lot more like you know, what I'm used
Speaker 1: to in my own life. So and you can you
Speaker 1: can see the effects of this kind of game design today.
Speaker 1: I mean, like the game Fable, for example, I think
Speaker 1: owes a lot to this ultimate model. UM. In Fable,
Speaker 1: those choices you make as a character determine your character's outcome,
Speaker 1: It determines what your character looks like, it determines how
Speaker 1: everyone reacts to you. And I think that that's all
Speaker 1: based on this same kind of philosophy that Richard Garriott
Speaker 1: really sort of championed early on. UM. Now, the later
Speaker 1: games in the Ultimate series there were nine of them total.
Speaker 1: In the nine official full on Ultimate games, there were
Speaker 1: also a few expansions and a couple of little side
Speaker 1: games as well, but the last two, in particular, Ultimate
Speaker 1: eight and Ultimate nine kind of got a little of
Speaker 1: a well, there's a little backlash from the fans. Ultimate
Speaker 1: eight had a different system of controls than the previous
Speaker 1: ultimates did, and not all fans found it very entertaining.
Speaker 1: UM and Ultimate nine, a lot of people felt even
Speaker 1: though it was delayed quite a few times, I felt
Speaker 1: that it was still rushed when it came out, So
Speaker 1: there was a bit of a, like I said, a
Speaker 1: little bit of a backlash by this point. And and again,
Speaker 1: this is a point where the games were so complex
Speaker 1: that groups of people had to work on them. It
Speaker 1: was no longer possible for Richard to to design a
Speaker 1: game from start to finish and build it all himself.
Speaker 1: And speaking of other parties, it was in and Electronic
Speaker 1: Arts bought Origin System UM, so you know they had
Speaker 1: a transaction for thirty five million dollars in stock um.
Speaker 1: And by that point, you know, he was a multimillionaire already,
Speaker 1: you know, founded a mansion. Yeah, I'll have to go
Speaker 1: a little bit later. The mansion is is Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a that's another matter entirely. Yeah, the Electronic Arts situation
Speaker 1: was kind of the beginning of the end. UM they love.
Speaker 1: The company continued to produce UM some some pretty good
Speaker 1: games during that time, but Electronic Arts began to cancel
Speaker 1: a lot of the projects that the origin team had
Speaker 1: been working on, and eventually that I think UM made
Speaker 1: Richard decide to leave the company entirely. He resigned from
Speaker 1: Electronic Arts and founded a different company UM called Destination Games.
Speaker 1: But uh, and I've never talked to him about that.
Speaker 1: It seemed like one of those kind of taboo subjects. UM.
Speaker 1: So I don't really know what the whole story is
Speaker 1: behind it, but I can imagine it has to be
Speaker 1: a little frustrating to see the something that you've created
Speaker 1: kind of get the back burner by a larger corporation,
Speaker 1: especially if you were told to head on like early
Speaker 1: in the deal that you were going to have a
Speaker 1: lot more control. Um. I don't know the details behind that.
Speaker 1: I don't know that necessarily that happened, but he did
Speaker 1: leave the company and found it an new company, So
Speaker 1: that tells you something, right well. Of course, Electronic Arts,
Speaker 1: for its part, is very very large, as in eight
Speaker 1: hundred pound guerrilla gaming in a multi multibillion dollar industry
Speaker 1: at this point, and they have responsibilities to their shareholders,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure that it was probably something along those lines.
Speaker 1: You know, when you get to a to that point,
Speaker 1: when you're that size, you uh, some of your decisions
Speaker 1: are dictated more by the bottom line than others. Um. Well.
Speaker 1: And and one of the thing I wanted to point
Speaker 1: out about the games that he made back when he
Speaker 1: was with Origin and e A UM, he was also
Speaker 1: responsible for the creation of Ultima Online, which is one
Speaker 1: of the very first graphic based massive multiplayer online role
Speaker 1: playing games m m O RPGs. Was that ever did
Speaker 1: that ever take off? Ultima Online did very well. Um,
Speaker 1: it was although it was always battling ever Quest right
Speaker 1: the time, and I think it eventually was pretty much
Speaker 1: they they also ran, but they had its own hardcore
Speaker 1: base of fans, um and so it was never it
Speaker 1: was never a failure. It just I think EverQuest eventually
Speaker 1: outpaced it and and just kept the lead from that
Speaker 1: point on until of course World of Warcraft, which now
Speaker 1: dominates everything. Um. But yeah, that's that's another thing you
Speaker 1: have to kind of credit Richard for. I mean, granted
Speaker 1: it was a team of people who put that together.
Speaker 1: It wasn't you know, it wasn't a one man show
Speaker 1: or anything, but any but he was definitely a champion
Speaker 1: of that. I got to see UM Ultimate Online in
Speaker 1: a beta build UM about a year before it actually
Speaker 1: went live, and I was I was really intrigued by it.
Speaker 1: It looked a lot like Ultimate six in terms of graphics,
Speaker 1: so it actually went backward because at that point, I
Speaker 1: think Ultimate eight had been out for a while, so
Speaker 1: it actually went backward as far as graphics are concerned.
Speaker 1: But Ultimate six was also a really popular entry into
Speaker 1: the series, so I didn't think it was a bad
Speaker 1: thing at all. And it was also one of the
Speaker 1: first to have sort of the in game economy. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was really really kind of nifty. Of course, everything
Speaker 1: that Richard does he tries to, you know, make sure
Speaker 1: there's some innovation involved. UM. But so when Richard left
Speaker 1: and founded Destination Games, he merged with another company called
Speaker 1: nc soft. Actually Destination Games merged with nc soft. Richard
Speaker 1: didn't that would have been weird. It would have been
Speaker 1: like the Borg. So they put him in charge of
Speaker 1: the Austin office of n c soft and that's when
Speaker 1: Richard began work on a new massively multiplayer online role
Speaker 1: playing game called Tabula Razza, which had a science fiction
Speaker 1: uh background as opposed to fantasy. Now he's really into fantasy.
Speaker 1: I mean well, I mean, like we said, he was
Speaker 1: really into the dungchess and dragons, and he was really
Speaker 1: into uh, you know, he went by Lord British for
Speaker 1: the longest time, and he dresses in Elizabethan often not
Speaker 1: as much as he used to, but yes, I mean
Speaker 1: you would see him dressed in dressed Gettish, yes, and
Speaker 1: well to the point where he really enjoys that kind
Speaker 1: of the whole pageantry and theatricality of it. He also
Speaker 1: was part of the Society of Creative Anachronism or s
Speaker 1: c A, which is all about recreating kind of this medieval,
Speaker 1: this idealistic medieval Renaissance sort of recreation um, the Middle
Speaker 1: Ages is we would have it to be, I believe
Speaker 1: was one of the mottos of that organization, which I
Speaker 1: may or may not have belonged to at one point. Um.
Speaker 1: But he also you were mentioning the mansion he would
Speaker 1: also he has has he owned a mansion that had
Speaker 1: secret passageways you can only get through from one room
Speaker 1: to another by solving a puzzle. Or you would be
Speaker 1: in an upper gallery and there'll be no way to
Speaker 1: get to the lower gallery unless you moved a certain
Speaker 1: object a certain number of times and then a magical
Speaker 1: staircase would appear. Um. He would occasionally turn this mansion
Speaker 1: into a full fledged haunted house. Uh. He would do
Speaker 1: it like every other year, and he would hire Hollywood
Speaker 1: special effects companies to come to his mansion and converted
Speaker 1: into this haunted house. So we're talking, you know, motion
Speaker 1: picture quality special effects going on at this thing. And
Speaker 1: he would let people come. He would give out tickets.
Speaker 1: Uh you do the ticket thing to in order to
Speaker 1: keep a good control on traffic. But I'm pretty sure
Speaker 1: he did it was all for free. Yeah, you know.
Speaker 1: I think he might have auctioned some off for charity
Speaker 1: or something. But he didn't charge people to come in
Speaker 1: and see his stuff. He just he loved this kind
Speaker 1: of theatricality and he loved to share it with other people.
Speaker 1: Still does I'm sure. I don't think he does the
Speaker 1: Halloween stuff anymore. I think he stopped doing that. It
Speaker 1: just became um too complicated. Uh. I believe sometime around
Speaker 1: the late nineties, maybe the early in two thousand, two
Speaker 1: thousand one, he stopped doing it. But well, that's uh,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of the story of a successful game designer.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're if you're making that kind of
Speaker 1: money and living this kind of lifestyle, you'd want to,
Speaker 1: you know, probably keep going if you were really into games. Right,
Speaker 1: just yeah, you're doing games for except for the fact that, yeah,
Speaker 1: you would think that, uh, and you'd be wrong. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Richard Garriot is no longer producing games, at least as
Speaker 1: far as we can tell. Right now, um, we we
Speaker 1: need to talk about his most recent famous exploit, which
Speaker 1: is that Richard Garriott became a space tourist. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: I think he would disagree with you. He become a
Speaker 1: space ambassador. No, no, no, now, see this is part
Speaker 1: of the deal because um, this article and Wired, which
Speaker 1: is pretty interesting. It really gets into like I said,
Speaker 1: really it's more about Star City, which is where the
Speaker 1: cosmonauts train. Now, when you enter training, according to this article,
Speaker 1: when you enter training at star City, you are a cosmonaut.
Speaker 1: So he is a cosmonaut. I'm sorry, but NASA will
Speaker 1: not call him an as you not. And he apparently
Speaker 1: takes exception of that. Um. The article suggests that maybe
Speaker 1: it's because he's into player classes. Could he wants the
Speaker 1: title to level up as an astronaut as opposed to
Speaker 1: cosmat multi class. Yeah, the Americans call him a space tourist, um,
Speaker 1: but but not the Russians. And he uh in October
Speaker 1: lasted off for space Yasaya's rocket YEP at t M
Speaker 1: A thirteen YEP, went to the International Space Station spent
Speaker 1: more than a week up there. As I recall YEP
Speaker 1: YEP and and and his fascination with space. This isn't
Speaker 1: a new thing just because the Russians offered this. Oh
Speaker 1: did I say the Russians just offered this? Well, he
Speaker 1: became a donor to the X Prize Foundation, and he
Speaker 1: actually uh started this organization called Space Adventures, which sells
Speaker 1: seats on Russian spacecraft for trips into space. And that's
Speaker 1: kind of how he ended up there. He um, but
Speaker 1: seat for thirty million dollars. About to say, I think
Speaker 1: it's up to thirty million dollars And apparently from what
Speaker 1: he said, that's quite a bit of his money. Um.
Speaker 1: He came, you know, this is not pocket change for him.
Speaker 1: This is a serious investment. Um, Andrew wants to go
Speaker 1: again and it may be uh up to forty five
Speaker 1: million by the time he does that, So he may
Speaker 1: he may be starting another game company. Well yeah, because
Speaker 1: on November eleven, he wrote an open letter to the
Speaker 1: Tabula Raza website which essentially announced his he was resigning
Speaker 1: from the nc soft company and was leaving to pursue
Speaker 1: other interests. But that's about as much as we can
Speaker 1: tell from that letter. I mean, there was, it was
Speaker 1: fairly cryptic. We know that the inspiration for this was
Speaker 1: his trip to the International Space Station, so presumably it
Speaker 1: has something to do with space exploration, possibly private space exploration,
Speaker 1: but we don't really have any details other than that.
Speaker 1: At this point, he hasn't really elaborated on his reasons
Speaker 1: for for resigning and or what his other pursuits will be. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and again he's into it. This is not just the
Speaker 1: Russians taking him into space and he gets to hang
Speaker 1: around in the space station. He actually has to take
Speaker 1: a part in working on science experiments. Um he has
Speaker 1: to flush the space party if he needs flushing, and
Speaker 1: he had to be trained on every piece of equipment
Speaker 1: in case something went wrong. Right, It wasn't a passing
Speaker 1: fancy kind of thing. Now. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: apparently he had to study Russian for four hours a
Speaker 1: day so that he could actually read the instrument panels.
Speaker 1: So I mean, he this is you know, this is
Speaker 1: not something that he has to take lightly. This is
Speaker 1: something he has to be ready for in all capacities.
Speaker 1: It's not just flying around and going hey, yeah there's Mars.
Speaker 1: So yeah, he was. He was a cool guy back
Speaker 1: when I met him. Uh, and now he's super cool.
Speaker 1: Um And I'm really interested to see what he does
Speaker 1: next because he he he gets behind his projects with
Speaker 1: such energy and passion and uh and a real curiosity
Speaker 1: that you can't help but admire the work he's done.
Speaker 1: Even if you're not a big fan of computer games,
Speaker 1: you know, there's there's no question that a lot of
Speaker 1: work went into what he has accomplished so far. So
Speaker 1: it's very exciting to think that he's gonna tackle something
Speaker 1: new and I kind of kind of curious to see
Speaker 1: where it goes. Now, Um, I have am I gonna
Speaker 1: miss his games? Yeah? I loved the Ultimate series. Um
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, it's kind of a bummer to
Speaker 1: think that he's not going to be doing that anymore, probably,
Speaker 1: But I am glad to see that his work has
Speaker 1: inspired other people so at least to get you know,
Speaker 1: kind of following his footsteps. That's true. And you know
Speaker 1: he's only Yeah, he's still a young guy, so there's
Speaker 1: plenty of time. Well, I think that's a really good
Speaker 1: uh overview of Richard Lord British or General British gariot. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you want to learn more about these kind of topics,
Speaker 1: we can read things like how M M O RPGs work.
Speaker 1: Those articles are live right now on how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com. And I guess we'll say Hale and well
Speaker 1: met Tia again really soon for more on this and
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics. Because it how stuff works dot com.
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