you know, hes not just the father of mmos, he's the father of RPG video games period. Ultima was among the very first graphical RPGs ever. And when he was fucking 17
My friend used to play utopia until he found this game and I thought it was fun enough to try and played for a few days I couldn't imagine taking all that time to develop a character in a videogame. and here we are 20 years later and im like maxed in runescape 3. lol(edit btw ultima online felt incomplete and buggy the entire time. like some stuff in the game was like created by fans and you couldnt get what they made themselves. the content was incomplete to like where you oculdnt see the animations attacking you and youd just die to high levels. lol). lol. (edit2 it was prolly cuz i didnt know any better trimmed armor style) edit 3 im sure nobody at mtv wants to see a game creators house? of a role playing mmo lol edit 4.. i started my rpging on cybiko with the downloadable game labrynth. it was before calculator games. lol in my xp
This guy was the only person to answer my emails about how to get into the game industry 25 years ago. He took the time to write back and forth with me, inspiring me to dive in and become a game developer. 25 years and many games later, I still think about how awesome it was that he, as a famous person, went out of his way to help a nobody like me. What an awesome guy. If this is insane, maybe everyone should be a bit more insane.
@@AC-hj9tv I wouldn't say I'm famous (and I would prefer it to stay that way), but I have had the privilege of working with some great teams on some great games 😁
with a title like that i expected the guy to actually have gone insane... didn't seem particularily crazy to me, just rich enough to buy a bunch of unusual stuff
very much this. He basically just got rich and did what rich people do. I mean, throw a stick at a scifi convention and you'll likely hit a goth or horror fan who has old taxidermy and sideshow jarred body parts and stuff. Creepy, sure, but tons of people do it. He could just afford the whole skeleton now
Richard Garriott's D&D character was actually named Shamino. That's why Shamino's character portraits look like Richard Garriot in the Ulitma games. Plus there was originally 3 people that started his game company, him, his brother, and his friend Chuck Bueche aka Chuckles the Jester in the game. Many of the characters in the game are just characters of his friends that he inserted as he was a member of The Society for Creative Anachronism. Also a lot of the props at his house was bought for Ultima VI, which many of the in-game objects were bought IRL in order to study them to give them more realistic in-game stats. I actually ran into him in the hallway of a convention once, and he sat down with me to talk for hours about his past games and projects that was going on at the time (he was still working for NCSoft then). He was one of the nicest people I've met at any convention. Who else would just sit and talk with a fan like that?
I've had only Twitter conversations with, but I also know he's one of the nicest people who "made it" in the video game industry and still keeps genuine contact with the gamers and fans. This video is unnecessary character assassination attempt, albeit a poor one.
@koch2766 British was the nickname his friends gave him. I've never heard (until this video) that he ever used it as the name for one of his D&D characters.
@@DikaWolf There is an interview on UA-cam with Richard Garriot in which he explains the names he used in D&D and how he repurposed them in his games. I'm not sure if I can find that video again. The names Iolo and Dupre were also recurring across the series, although he never mentioned any prior use of those names.
@koch2766 Greg Dykes from Custom Creations was the inspiration for Dupre, who may have also called himself "Christian Richard Dupre" as a member of the Society for Creative Anarchonism, where Garriot used the persona of Shamino Salle. Another friend at the SCA, David Watson, called himself Iolo FitzOwen (and sometimes Triolo). Gwenno was the persona of Watson's wife, Kathleen Jones. Maria is Garriot's personal secretary at Origin, Michelle Caddel. Geoffrey is Jeff Hillhouse, also from Origin. Jaana and Katrina are unnamed personal friends of Garriot's, and Julia an ex-girlfriend, and so on. This makes Garriott naming characters after his own personas seem less egotistical/crazy than this video makes him sound, doesn't it?
I played a game of D&D in I believe 1996 at GenCon where Tracy Hickman and Richard Garriott co-DMed the game. He seemed like a fun guy to hang out with at the time.
I went to high school with Richard. I was even part of an Explorers (part of Boy Scouts) Group with him that was focused on learning computer programming around 1977, long before personal computers were a thing. The group was led by computer programmers and met in a Lockheed office building across the street from the Johnson Space Center. It was surreal watching Richard’s rise to fame, especially living in Texas when during the 90’s there was an insane growth around digital games in Austin. He was a legend. Especially when it came to the Halloween parties he would throw at his castle/mansion. People would travel from all over for a chance to attend it. I do remember all the buzz around Ultima Online, and the expectations it generated. But the game was hacked and his character was actually assassinated, which wasn’t supposed to happen. But it seemed like by then he was already done with EA and ready to move on. There is one anecdote regarding his space flight. After spending all that money to go into space he was on track to become the world’s first second-generation astronaut, seeing that his father Owen was a veteran of SkyLab and the Space Shuttle. However when the Russians, who were ferrying up to space realized this they found some offspring of a Russian cosmonaut, rushed him through training and got him in space just before Richard.
Thanks for those anecdotes! It's surreal to me that you got to meet someone in person who I feel like I have known for decades through his persona alone. Hope he's doing well.
Ultima VII, despise the technological obsolescence and a genuinely shitty semi-automated combat system, is in MANY ways still the unmatched golden standard for recreating a living world in a single player RPG. Its NPC scheduling and the amount of environmental interaction allowed are rarely matched even these days.
@@TucoBenedictoI think Wizardry 7 the dark savant "dos version" was my favorite. There are factions of npcs fighting one another, and special npcs that roam around doing things. Can even collect items you might need for certain things too. That coupled with the fact wizardry 7 has a class system where you can shift and pivot at will, and make a team of ultimate badasses, and crank the difficulty up. Made it one of the best ever made imho. Is there anything more satisfying than casting a maxed nuclear blast and seeing waves of enemies explode? Thats a hard thing to replicate. And I dont think anybody who played that game, will ever forget the battle with the Thief of 9 Worlds...so awesome.
It seems like those old games often did. I suppose that was practical since the technical side of it was so much more simple. Visual content was easily randomized and repeatable, story content written and put in as text, etc. That's why Daggerfall, for example, could be so much more massive than any Elder Scrolls game that came after it. When a quest is just a few bytes or kilobytes of text, pixel art and map design, you can indeed make a hell of a lot of it on a tight budget and with limited computer resources.
@ericwood3709 True, but you also have to remember the computers back then didn't have all the power and resources they do today. Today's PCs are like super computers, far beyond that of an old 8 or 16 bit computer. I played Ultima IV on a C64 which had just 64kbs of ram and was less than 4mhz cpu speed. It would take millions upon millions o C64s to equal the computing power of a modern gaming PC.
I lived in Austin from 1989 to 2001. I actually lived about 2 blocks from Origin headquarters. He had a black Lambo and it was parked there quite often. I guess he and his team were always working. I also saw him at The Yellow Rose strip club once and sent him over a drink. He raised it to me to say thanks. I wouldn't say he was insane, but he was definitely a little unusual! LOL! Got to give the guy credit for what he did for video games back in the day.
I was in the SCA and rubbed elbows with him back in my university days. I lived in San Marcos but went to Austin all the time. He's not a bad guy. Idyl just sounds jealous that he's not a millionaire. XD
@@kingofcastlechaos Lake Austin (in Westcliff up above the 360 Bridge). And not tours but he opened his estate up every other year for Halloween as a massive, interactive haunted house. It was awesome.
Haven't seen him in a while, but I know Richard. He's always been a bit eccentric, but the worst you can say about him is he isn't a great businessman. Not only not insane, but one of the most approachable and friendly rich guys I've ever met. Threw some awesome parties in the 90's. Paid for any employee who was interested to go skydiving. Gave me a couple rides in his Lambo.
I've met him a few times and will back up this. The guy is friendly, and very approachable. He's also one of the few people I've met, that when having a conversation genuinely seem to consider everything they say, not out of a PR sense, or trying to stay politically correct, but because he gives everything you say thoughtful consideration. His passions have changed over time, it's not about games for him anymore. He's more into privatized space travel these days and his family, especially since he married and had kids later in life than most people. On a less serious note... I remember an article I ran across on Facebook years ago about a human skull being donated to an Austin area Goodwill, it was an educational tool for med students. I jokingly messaged him asking if he had donated it. He didn't but he asked me if I thought they would sell it to him. Good 'Ol Richard, he exemplifies the saying about Austin being where all the "weird" people in Texas live.
Random fact about buying skeletons: many movie productions, especially back in the day, would actually buy and import real human skeletons for use as movie props because it was often cheaper than getting fake ones made
Anatomical models used in schools and universities were in the past - and remaining ones still are - of real humans. I've now watched a video by NPR called "Classroom Skeleton: Whose Bones Are These?" on the topic. It's short, very on point, can recommend.
ngl, the dude is kinda inspiring... he invented the MMO genre, became a millionaire, built a badass house (even the skeletons), hung out in space in the ISS, went to the deepest part of the ocean. Sure, his later game endeavors failed but the dude it out there just living like a king
Imagine...comparing a ..for lack of better words...mmo point and click turn based adventure game to Ultima Online. You could have least went with NWN on AOL...which was like what...5 years or so before them both?
I was a stunt man and actor at Richard’s live Tabula Rasa press release event back in Sept. 2007 at his “castle” in Austin where he announced the release date of the game. The Tabula Rasa event was a full-on live action space battle performance that the press and game companies were invited to that included actors and stunt people (including me), gunfire and dozens of live (and huge) explosions and live action, including soldiers rappelling down from a live helicopter. It took place in a large outside concrete construction area near his main house. For my stunt, I was hiding amongst the actual press in the designated press “safety” box disguised as an over-zealous press photographer who ignored warnings and crossed the caution tape when I came face to face with the two main aliens (actors wearing $10k full-size custom alien suits which Richard had modeled directly from the game). The aliens raised their laser blasters which caused my chest to “explode”, blowing a large hole in my shirt and sending a shower of flames and sparks 10 feet into the air in front of me. I still have the leather and copper mortar tube chest plate sand triggering system that held the 12 explosive charges that was taped to my chest (over a padded, fire-retardant undershirt). It was triggered by a hidden momentary switch I had taped to my press camera rig. After getting “blown up” I had to do a full-body face-plant onto the ground before being dragged off by men in black suits. I was pretty bruised but it was awesome! The press (from almost every news agency) had no idea I was a stunt man standing amongst them until I pushed my way through them and got blown up in front of them. I’ve worked with Steve Wolf of Wolfe Stunt Works over the years and we did all of the pyrotechnics for Richard. I’ve also been inside his Austin castle. He’s very friendly in person and easy to talk with. Since then I’ve crossed paths with him several times professionally and personally, mostly at aerospace related events in Austin. My wife helps run ACC’s Game Development Institute and has worked with him as well, and I’m a science presenter and have worked with various aerospace agencies. I’ve got some fun photos of Richard and his wife and my wife and me dressed up in various space and sci-fi related costumes at events that we’ve attended together. You brought back some fun memories so I thought I’d share them!
It's sad that we live in an age where the name "Lord British" is unknown. The man was LEGEND back in the 8-bit days, and he kept that legend going well into the 16 and then 32-bit era. The trio of UltimaVII, Ultima Underworld II and Ultima VII Part II: Serpent Isle are so incredibly good...have played them many times. Then we hit the wall with Super Avatar Brothers, aka "Ultima VIII: Pagan." Garriott promised to do better (he released a mea culpa with the Ultima VIII patch). But...he got lost in Ultima Online. That became the future and the proper ending to the Ultima series never really materialised. There were so many good ideas initially for Ultima IX but Ultima Online pretty much killed it, giving us too many chefs in the kitchen working on a badly mangled and neglected code base that eventually saw the light of day as "Ultima Ascension" (which they didn't even want to call Ultima IX on the box). That game...the 3D 3rd person view was nice, but oh so flawed (the scale of the world was comically small). The gameplay was awful, buggy and the plot...oh how I wish we had gotten the now legendary "Bob White" script. What an awful "end" to the Ultima series. Legend has it that Piranha Bytes' "Gothic" series was directly inspired by Ascension, with a focus on "doing it right' (and they did).
since we both were D&D players from the 70's. I got to confront RG at an Austin Gaming event over the MARIO BS, I asked him how an old school adventurer did not have a 50' rope in his kit, he changed the subject quickly
I'm actually kind of glad he got to live out his dream of going to space when had been told as a kid he could not be an astronaut like his dad. That's kind of neat.
This is a pretty fair description of Richard's career so far. I got the pleasure of meeting him personally years ago and hearing his story about his trip into space. He's a fascinating guy full of energy and creativity and I was honored to meet him.
@@WhiteGearedHis father, Owen Garriott, was in fact a Astronaut for NASA. Richard wanted to be one too, but couldn't really apply for it due to apparently having a weak constitution when he was younger. Him being an astronaut now is him living his childhood dream.
@@culwin Martian Dreams is part of the "ultima worlds" series, it's not the ultima universe. They used basically the same engine as ultima VI. And I loved Martian Dreams.
I'm so happy you did a video on Richard. I'm 42 years old. My first ultima game, was Ultima V, on my dad's Tandy 1000 PC back in the late 80s. No hard drive. I have such fond memories of that game, and still have our original copy. I was in awe of Ultima when I was a kid. Then, when I was 16, had just gotten my drivers license, Ultima Online dropped. I drove my mom's car an hour away to the mall, so I could buy it from Electronic Boutique. I somehow convinced her to give me her credit card, and I fell in love w/ the game. Man I was awful to people in UO. lol. I just loved what this dude created. Then... I was there for everything that followed. I was playing Tabula Rasa, which was pretty cool in some ways! I loved when the aliens would actually take over a town, and you and other players would have to fight them off to re-take it, so you could turn in your quests. I liked how instead of just spawning in, there was an alien spaceship that flew down, and beamed in enemies like in Star trek. Shit was neat. Everything else was... "ok", but it was up against WoW. Shroud was just.... even as a lifelong fanboy of the man's work... I couldn't get over how creepy it was selling vials of his blood. He's become a sad laughingstock, and honestly it makes me feel bad. It's a real "never meet your heroes" thing for me. Turns out the guy that made some of the most important games in my life... is a fucking creepy dickbag. Damn. Oh well, great video! I'm not a runescape man, but I discovered your channel when you made... something else that was funny. You're funny and I like it. Keep up the great work dude.
lol, ebay actually removed his listings for his vials of blood due to their "no selling human body parts" policy haha. Pretty sure he still sold them during the "telethons", just not on ebay. ;) @@WhiteGeared
Nice! The I played Ultima IV on NES, but way later in the 2000s. I never actually played III on NES... Ultima V on NES... well that one was just a stinker. @@funkyweapon1981
I got to meet him at the National Apple Users Group meeting in the 80’s when I was a kid. He was totally cool and willing to talk to a kid for 30 minutes about his game
@@noneofyourbusiness4616 LARPs is literally where the character came from. A bunch of the companions in the UItima series (Dupre, Ilio, Janna etc.) are inserts of his real life Renfair friends. As bonus fun fact, Shamino is another one of his LARP character. Richard self inserted himself into the Ultima series twice.
I was promised a video where Richard goes insane! This is just video Richard being Richard! That's the guy that brought my Tabula Rasa avatar data to space station! This just a video explaining why my idol is my idol! :D
Very similar. I met Molyneux circa 1995 and back then his ego hadn't yet reached critical mass. He was very excited about his new game called High Octane. Unfortunately for him Wipeout happened and that was the end of High Octane and soon after he left to form Lionhead. And then he turned into Baron Munchausen.
Need to stop giving him credit for UO. He sold the company to EA in 1992 and worked on Ultima IX, he didn't work on Ultima Online. Sure its based on his fiction. However he was busy with Ultima 9. He didn't work on Ultima Online, which ironically is the more succesfull incarnation of his Ultima Series.
@@grumpygamerguy7629 Dunno where yoiu're getting your info from, but what? You do realize Garriott even played Lord British in the game, right? He didn't leave EA till like 2000....
@@grumpygamerguy7629 there are interviews where goes into detail about making UO. He did sell the company to EA but continued to work on games. You literally have no idea what you are talking about.
@@grumpygamerguy7629 The exact opposite of what you wrote is true lol... he stopped working on Ultima 9 to work on UO. Probably one of the many reasons U9 was shit.
@@JustMe99999 the main reason U9 was shit was because it was rushed by EA. They gave a hard deadline during Christmas that year, knowing that games sell much better during that time. Which is correct, but the game wasn't ready. So it should have been delayed to the following Christmas, or the Christmas after that. Nowadays, a game taking 5+ years to make is the norm. Back then it was unheard of, and game engines were rapidly becoming obsolete because technology was progressing so rapidly.
I knew Richard back in the early 2000s. Dude wasn't insane, he was just living an amazing life. He did keep trying to capture lightning in a bottle, because of course that's what you do after doing it several times since the age of 17. But he, most importantly, made enough money to live out every dream of his youth. Then again, maybe I'm insane because I was into all that crazy shit too.
PS: This video has a real "dude in his basement in front of a greenscreen busting the balls of a guy who made his first million before age 20 and laid the foundation of today's $187B online gaming industry" vibes to it. But I suppose I'm biased.
He is also very accessible. I asked him a random question about his work on Akalabeth and Ultima on Xitter, and he gave me an extensive, personal answer. He is not "crazy", he just refuses to get old and boring, and this is amazing.
As a huge fan of Ultima 6 and 7, this downfall is just insane to me. He did coin the term MMORPG to describe Ultima Online in interviews, but persistent online games used to be called MUDs (multi-user dungeons) or MUSHs (multi-user shared hallucinations) before that. Now those terms are reserved for roguelike MMOs.
I always end the series at 5. Perfect ending. Spoilers: You return to Earth, and your house was robbed. Gives you a reason to go back to Britannia, huh?
If I had a nickel for every game dev who lied about being featured on MTV Cribs, I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice
If I had a nickel for every time a millionaire in the games industry with a wacky house claimed to be on MTV cribs but actually wasn't, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice.
Tommy Tallarico did give a tour of his house for a video that was featured in a PS2 demo disc back in the day. I had that disc and it had a demo for the first Sly Cooper game on it.
I've given a LOT of money to Richard Garriott but I just can't hate the guy. He gave me some of the greatest times and friendships of my life and I'll always think of him with reverence.
Ahh!! I played Tabula Rasa! It was my first ever MMO that i got into and i loved it! I even have my characters in space because of him haha. I was really upset when they were closing the game but i had so much fun when the GM;s and players got to just have almost an insane seige as they spawned mobs and we went crazy, it was super laggy but its really happy memories for me. I also met him in game (i like to think) because he or GM;s would give out gifts like armour dye or this particular beret i remember. He was quite nice and the GM's were definitely when i needed help. So many memories !
Tabula Rasa was one of the most interesting MMOs, almost like Richard saw Anarchy Online and needed to make his own version. I was super hyped and had a TON of fun while it lasted. Class balance was uh... Interesting. I want to say there was a soldier class that was leagues above everything else but it's been years.
@@stinkyboi91 i loved playing the demo class, where you had the two guns that was cryo and o-o the fire one ! but i remember the guardian? who had the staff. I completely forgot that when you lvled you could clone yourself! it is the only game i know of with a system like that
I used to be a guide on UO, and had an opportunity to talk to him briefly about pvp vs pve gaming. It was an …. Interesting conversatio. He then logged in as his LB character for a proclamation, and was promptly killed by a player because he forgot to set his invulnerability flag. 😂😂
Inflation wasn't the point he was trying to make. He was saying that in those days, in the 90's, the video game industry (especially PC gaming) was not seen as the cash cow it is today. So $35 mill was a MASSIVE amount for someone to invest in the industry at the time.
@@batmanjones655 I understand that but I am often curious about what such amounts of money back then would be worth today I think it gives more perspective. And I know others may be curious as well. quite honestly im surprised it wasnt 100 mill in today money
@@moonasha We build communities with modern technologies where money is not the currency but co-operation and bartering is. And pirate games and movies for pastimes. And watch the skies for aliens. Finally we build defence, offence and diplomatic systems to keep check on the slavers called laws and governments. There's no time to be depressed. We play in real life till our ascension to next life.
I implore you to look into the rabbit hole that is Ragnarok Online sometime. The history of that game and the series that it spawned is one hell of a rollercoaster.
I was just chatting to a friend about Richard Garriott. He was a visionary, and deserves credit for that. His only problem is peaking so early in his life. It must be odd to have the majority of your life in front of you, knowing that you were already at the top, and that getting there again is even more difficult than it was the first time.
I remember asking my best friend in college (he introduced me to UO, from an earlier release where they ACCIDENTALLY (😉) published the entire UO source code. See, me and my friends were computer engineering students and coders. We figured out how to get it running, made our own servers, and hundreds of players in both Trammel and Felucca carved out a chunk of the stone from the statue that is my personal identity. Richard did a beautiful thing making UO. We'd never have experienced it without his refusal to take "no" as an answer up to the point of nearly getting security involved. He's crazy, but we needed crazy things done. He gave us the Source. I believe that's all he really wanted. He just wanted us to love him as he felt he truly was, Lord British.... Here's to you Richard. Thanks for all the friggin sewer levels........
For all intents and purposed, Britannia Manor was indeed on MTV cribs. Multiple sources confirm it, and you can find the page it was hosted on via the wayback machine, however video footage itself seems to be missing completely (I did about an hour of digging to find it, unable to find video footage, but able to find confirmation of it's existence. Lost media, folks!)
If it was actually featured, it could be that MTV lost rights to the footage because of a change of ownership or something, and it could have been published in the sweet spot where nobody cared enough to download it. I think there's also a difference between claiming your house was on MTV cribs every chance you get, and your house's wikipedia page claiming it.
@@MrJackets It could be down to something as stupid as them using music from the game(s) and EA owning the rights to said music. If the music was played under the interview and the original masters weren't kept, they'd have flushed the episode after getting the Cease & Desist letter.
I'm actually still obsessed with UO in 2024 and play on a private server called UO Outlands. It's genuinely a great experience and while it has some dated mechanics, there's far, far more than nostalgia carrying it. It's a little tough as a new player to get into because it requires a lot of wiki reading (I'm actually working on a personal project to help on-board new players because I really think it's that good of a game). It usually has about 2500-3000 concurrent players today.
@@Me4-gc8qs I've got to disagree, it's the same amount of effort to download and install the client and there are a lot of quality of life mechanics in Outlands, some really fun systems like Aspects, it's actively being developed (they just started an open beta for their next expansion yesterday), and the devs are very active in the discord so the players can influence the direction of the game.
@@Me4-gc8qs yeah having played both options Outlands is superior bro. Really should consider giving it a shot. The free to play retail UO still has all poor decisions and patches from years of mismanagement. Outlands is UO reimagined from a time before it was ruined.
Richard doesn't actually act crazy. He has been living out his childhood dream all his life and has the money to do it. I have to go to work every day and live paycheck to paycheck like a lot of people. If I had a lot of money, what would I do with it? I would probably do some things other people think are crazy simply because it's not what THEY would do. But I think that everyone has a little crazy in them, it just gets squashed by society that is structured to only accept that which is perceived as normal. I played those early 80s games at a time when people were throwing their Atari games in the trash. Richard Garriott made PC gaming a viable alternative to consoles, and kept gaming alive prior to the release of Nintendo. As simple as they were compared to today, those Ultima games were something I had never seen before, and I only had Space invaders and Pacman to compare them to. His innovations changed gaming forever.
I wish I could find the recording (if there even is one), but there was talk by Garriott at Quakecon in 2010 about going to space and some of the things he did while he was there that was super interesting. I seem to recall him talking about environmental issues and carrying on some of the work his father did as an astronaut while he was up there.
Back in the day I was a manager for an Electronics Boutique store. I remember Lord British was a guest speaker at one of our manager meeting lunches. He was definitely deep into his alternate persona.
As a 32 year old I remember him being on Crib's and I know someone out there has the footage which now seems to be lost. That was first time I had ever seen him as a kid was on cribs. :D
From what's seen here he's eccentric but idk about insane, only the human remains collection seems borderline to me. Mostly he just seems to be a guy that has too much money and love for fantasy. You could say inserting himself in the games seems narcissistic but he just kept up what he started as a teenager and became known for to Ultima fans so I'm not inclined think the worst of him when it comes to that either.
@@sluxi I watched about half the video, exactly why is everyone saying he is "insane" and "crazy"? Because he can't make big money selling a new video game?
I think it's important to not gloss over Richard's time with Ken and Roberta Williams at Sierra online. While short, his time there was very important for introducing standards that the industry adopted for years onward. Also, Ken and Roberta are wild characters themselves, and their effect on how people make games is still felt today.
Thanks for mentioning Ken and Roberta. (fun fact, I work at a company that acquired Sierra Online at one point, and I've seen entries for them in our Active Directory)
I happened to read about this guy the other day but never connected all of these dots - just heard about the film and space trip. what a wild story, very tommy tallarico vibes.
Garriot did not create the first MMORPG. The first was Neverwinter Nights, no not the one made by Bioware. The one made by SSI and released in 1991 on MSDOS for playing on America Online.
@@NinjaRunningWild I didn't see any Gold Box games on screen at any point. I did see Ultima games which had similar sprites, but they weren't SSI's Gold Box engine. I'll admit that UO was on a completely different scale, but that's like I see people lately saying "Apple invented VR" just because they released the Vision Pro recently, completely ignoring everything that's been going on with VR since the 60s, never mind the VR arcade games in the 80s and 90s, the home VR headsets for PCs back in the 1990s, or any of the development that happened when Oculus revived the concept leading to a bunch of other companies making headsets similar to theirs. Nevermind the Quest 1, the Quest 2, the Quest 3... Apple was first because... they're Apple...
@@NinjaRunningWild The Realm Online AND Merdian 59 came out before this as well. Both are still running. Hell I did the new Icon art for the Realm Online myself about a year back.
I have probably 10,000 hours in Ultima Online from 1998 - 2006. This is fascinating to watch, thanks for the insights behind the game and the legend of Lord British!
You know I'm 54. And when I was in junior high school me and two other friends discovered Ultima on the Atari 800. There was no way to explain how excited We were to play the Ultima series. When we discovered it we couldn't stop playing it and we had to take turns because it was a single player game. so we would have a timer set so that everybody would get 30 minutes but we'd all be gathered around just enjoying something that the graphics were so basic and the adventure was so much fun. We were living in Dallas TX and knowing that this man and his company were down the road basically in Austin? That's pretty cool as was Steve Jackson games that made Ogre and car wars which later was renamed Autoduel and made in the video games and Ogre much later. And then out in West TX you had Lone Star Games making Starfleet battles in a lot of really cool video and board games that are iconic and changed the genre we're coming out of cities right next to us and as little kids basically we could not wait for the next ultimate and thankfully we discovered Ultima II and we got to go back and play Ultima I. It was a very small company that he was running down there and getting your hands on a copy was not easy. Obviously we enjoyed Ultima III And while we were playing it we got stuck we could not find the ancient armor I mean we were just having one of those brain fart moments that shouldn't be a game ender? So we thought well why don't we call down there and ask somebody for the solution. Now in our minds the people making this game were some big company and a glass tower or some **** like that. Is a really small group of people working really hard to get copies and new versions out sort of like when TSR started out with dungeons and Dragons where they were making their own dice in the building and that's why they looked so bad. But it was a golden time. But we called the number on the back for origin down in Austin and the person that answered was very polite and could tell obviously that we were young desperate for a clue. And Remember back then if you called long distance it cost you Money and I'm pretty sure that it was money well spent because I'm pretty sure it was Lord British that we were talking to. I look at him as somebody who wants to bring sort of a mystical world to people of all ages and sort of Willy Wonka. Without all that scary train rides at being killed by the machinery but I digress. What I see is a man Who created some wonderful memories and really advanced games that were of the fantasy genre and he has the money to role play this Lord British character that he really wants to be and that's not crazy hey. I'm pretty sure he falls out of character when nobody's around but he has a job to do just like Santa at the mall and instead of finding it annoying or getting old he really just dives deeper into it. This it brings back memories to him of the golden years and he still has quite a cult following and people still play Ultima online which I cannot tell you how excited I was when it came out. I remember I finished the last Ultima right after I graduated from college. I did see his attempts at pushing the boundaries of what an Atari ST or amiga could do at the time. But there were some really cool stuff in those failed projects that you saw like the intro to several of the games. And then he was gone. And I've never read a bad word about him.. I haven't watched your video yet. I sure hope that you understand what kind of memories you're treading on and trying to put a click baked twist on it because if you're implying that he's a nutjob? Then every cosplayer and everybody who dresses up and goes out and has their medieval battles with their weapons and stuff it just really cuts loose and doesn't give a **** about being a giant nerd you're taking a giant dump on them and that's a shame. An avatar would never act that way. No many people that didn't finish the quests but but I believe that because everything is so archaic to you and if you didn't experience it compared to just going outside and walking around in the heat or Attempting to enjoy some other terrible offering from me hundreds of studios putting out crap games? It really was and is a wonderful memory and if it wasn't for those games and and some others that I played when I was young I wouldn't be able to proudly call myself a nerd. A nerd who grew up to book bands and paint portraits of famous musicians look back at that kid who would get his locker broken into and have his dungeons and dragon stuff thrown all over the hallway in between classes. Those are the crazy people. I really hope you're not one of them or ....would have been
You can buy human skeletons. I'm not sure about now, but when I was in anthro classes in the 80's a lot of them came from India. People would take loved ones and put them in the Ganges; that was a traditional burial technique. And unbeknownst to them, someone would fish the body out of the river and obtain their skeleton to sell. We never got into that part of it.
My high school actually had one back in the 80s. We knew nothing at the time about HOW they got it, but as kids we just thought it was cool. No one knows ANYTHING about the biology class’ human skeleton today though, just kind of quietly… disappeared…
The first one was, in fact, the inspiration for Wolfenstein 3D (and later Doom). John Carmack saw an early version and realised he could make a faster version, suitable for a shooter, if he simplified it a bit.
It would be fun to see a video on the influence of the players of UO on modern gaming. I saw the name Markee Dragon, the guy who almost by himself cornered the housing market in UO and sold plots of land in game for real cash in amounts that could make some Star Citizen backers take pause. There were also map tiles that the developers forgot to "lock down" that were able to be picked up and then sold as rare items to people that wanted to flex. Add in the players who sold in game gold for cash and you will find that the modern micro transaction system we all blame corporations for was actually started by the players.
Good ole Markee. Claimed to be collecting server birth items for a museum then sold to the highest bidder for real dollars. Not to mention the limited edition plates you could only get from player meets. Wonderful guy.
Imanewbie did the same thing when he Quit the game. Never gave any of the stuff donated to him back those still playing. Just sold it all on ebay. That game really brought out quality people.
@@Me4-gc8qs Yesss! I played Atlantic server and was so happy to drop a keep on the corner of fel fire isle. So many Markee properties around me shortly afterwards! One of my neighbors swore he was a Zog Cabal member LOL
I swear Idyl, you're going places. I really love your content lately. I'm honestly considering subbing to Patreon to see more of this type of stuff. Love you!
Met this guy when I was 15-years-old at Queen Mary's, University of London. Where he was giving a talk and participating in workshops on space travel and physics. Was absolutely terrific. He was a genuinely cool guy. Had no idea he was a top tier gamer at the time. Pretty cool.
For me the funniest thing about this guy is how all his post-Ultima game titles got increasingly more passive-aggressive. He went from "fine, I'll start over with a clean slate, a *tabula rasa* if you will" to "fine, the Avatar is dead and everything he ever stood for has been abandoned! Happy now?!"
I've met Richard (and been in his old house in Austin). He's a super nice guy who is living his best life. He also married a ridiculously hot French woman who is also loaded... so hate all you want, he's kicking ass :-)
Back in the day Ultima IX was my escape. Absolutely loved the game and everytime I heard Ultima I thought about Lord British. To now know it was the developer throwing himself in the game with his OC is just mind blowing.
Ultima IX was Skyrim loooong before. It was too far ahead of its time. Truly. Not just so far ahead no one could play it bc it required a graphics card (a part few even owned bc they werent yet standard PC components) or bc it was rushed, but ahead of its time because it was a huge 3D open world that looks and plays like Skyrim. GoG has it. Worth playing.
*Essay Comment* Yeah, Garriott is definitely one weird dude, but that's the expected sort when back then, gamers were considered a weird set of people. You'd get made fun of for "playing games" back then, which is why it was easy to follow the trail to the major topics of Dungeons & Dragons being Satanic and video games too violent. Not sure how much of it is for comedic purposes, but the stuff about space and NCSoft is a bit off. *The Dream* While it's not good optics to go into space while your current work is having poor reception, he had the chance to fulfill his lifelong dream that was always closed off to him, and had to either take the limited time opportunity or see it gone forever. It's hard to imagine losing your dream twice. It's important to note that he had booked the flight a year in advance with Space Adventures, and even underwent surgery for it. While fulfilling his own dream, he also smuggled the ashes of James Doohan (Scotty of Star Trek) into the ISS Columbus so he could also go into the final frontier. Go to space or work for NCSoft? That's an easy decision, and I bet Garriott would make the same choice again. *Tabula Rasa* Tabula Rasa was released on November 7th, 2007. Garriott flew in space on October 12th, 2008, nearly a year later. While he was in quarantine, NCSoft sent out a letter assumedly under Garriott's name to push him out of the company, forcing him to be unable to receive compensation for his stock which would cost somewhere in the millions. Think of how people get fired before they can collect pensions or bonuses, and you get the picture. There's a reason why a district court and the court of appeals sided in favor of Garriott. *In Closing* Do I think he spent his money badly, like on a castle? Yeah. But it is his money. Do I agree that his recent stuff has been turds? Definitely, and he probably won't be successful in video games again. But getting to follow his father's footsteps and his own personal dream at his own expense is something incredibly beautiful.
LOL wut? Spending his money on Castles is literally the best use of his or anyone's money. Youre crazy. But good job pointing out NCSoft's illegal activities and RG winning his lawsuit rightfully.
In my high school programming class Richard “Lord British” was a pen pal to several of us. UO wasn’t out then. We were playing Ultima 1 and 2 on Apple 2’s and 2E. He gave us hints on game creation and encouragement. Class of 1986!
Shroud of the Avatar is literally free-to-play, there is intentionally not much you get from the subscription other than some game store coin and cool unique items each month. You should do the main quest line, which is three regional quests plus a fourth combined quest. Just don't expect hand-holding, like being told when you're in too high level of an area and should work on other stuff instead. And take some time to do fishing, and play with the housing system too.
i mean this in the most positive way possible but that man is NOT neurotypical. that man is what at least five of my autistic friends would be if they had several million dollars.
100%. Those times were definitely a significant era of gaming for me personally. I totally still miss the humor and references from the SQ series. It's a shame that the last Space Quest, marking the end of Roger Wilco's adventures, essentially had to be a fan remake.
I met Richard Garriott at a game expo in Austin ages ago, when the Shroud of the Avatar was just getting started. It was cool to shake hands with a gaming legend... even though the legend was on the final downswing.
Dudes been to space, the bottom of the ocean, owned a dope mansion and you guys can only imagine what else hes been into. He is more successful than 99% of us will ever be.
Both bigger successes & harder failures. More money, more effort, higher stakes. He's eaten expencive meals we'll never taste, & smelled astronaut farts in space.
More than just the first mainstream MMORPG, Richard Garriot is a videogame founding member right up there with Shiguru Miyamoto, Roberta Williams, David Crane etc. One of those people who created the gaming industry as we know it today. The Ultima games, particularly numbers 6 and 7, were influential in my early life. It's reasonable to say that in his personal life, 'Lord British' is one of the true great eccentrics, but to be fair he rode the wave and lived the spoils of his success.
I remember playing Ultima Online back in the late 90is the first few times. The game had such a great atmosphere, it had all I ever hoped to see in a game and that all online, with many other players. It was such a big thing back then to be part of it, at least to me. I tried many other MMOs ever since, nothing really made me feel like UO did. Still, some of them have been great in their own way.
Great video, but he always said as much himself - he always told everyone that he is a little bit insane and extravagant. It was part of his whole brand as a designer. To me no bad decision or missjudgement he makes now could ever take away the monumental positive impact he had on game development and design.
What happened to Richard Garriot? People did. His dream was to make a game where his players could adventure, socialize and have fun. He found out that a good portion of the players were just terrible people being entertained by his game acting like trash. I'm sure when you find out you don't like the people you are making games for things change. He basically stopped caring about it after that. I think it's pronounced Garriot not GaryOT hehe.
Richard Garriott and the Ultima virtue system inspired me as a kid to develop the values I have and become the person I am, I am forever thankful to Mr. Garriott and the Ultima series, and Ultima Online as well for creating such awesome memories and making me experience things that at the time I thought they were absolutely out of this world, together with meeting and chatting with people from every corner of the world, and teaching me the english language
Ultima Online was not a big part of my life but I remember it being something important and very alive. It was a genuine true fun times. Thanks to this madman genius
It was until the elites role players started playing. You know the one who wouldn't even speak to you unless you role played and had a background story for your character. Sucked so much when starting off first day noone will help with simple questions because you are no role playing... Then they would go on hte forums and whinge about how the forced pvp playstyle ruined their game. At least the pvpers would talk to you and even give tip on how to avoid pvpers. The elite RP's ruined that game with their whinging and to this day still deny it.
Try asking an archeologist what the typical time is between grave robbing and archeologic surveying and most will say, "well, it's an uncomfortable answer but, usually it's around 50 years."
The single-player Ultima games are still an amazing series. I feel like everyone who likes RPGs should play them. Also, good to note that Garriot also coined the term Shard for having separate instances of the entire world/database on separate servers. The term is not only used in the MMO industry (RPG or otherwise), but also in IT, wrt to copies of databases on separate servers to allow for scalability in the same manner.
To be fair to Richard, he's already had one of the most influential hands in gaming, if not the most influential when you look at all the ganes that were directly inspired by Ultima and Ultima online and all the industry ideas and terms he came up with (like fornexample he was one of if not the first creators to go with the idea of making game boxes really really cool looking and filling them with cool stuff) And he occasionally just does really awesome things that he dreamt of doing like going to space or the bottom of the ocean and seems to be enjoying life, so even if he never makes another hugely succesful game again he'll have already solidified his legacy in that industry and had success beyond most people.
He is right with the assessment on games prioritising in min-maxing, these statistics takes the fun out of the mmo genre. Guy is eccentric but a genius, Ultima is insanely rich in depth and every non playable characters with in-depth background and relationships. Many successful games like BG3 follow similar ideals.
A lesser known factoid about the dude is he invented his own extended memory manager for Ultima 7. At the time DOS games were severely crippled by the first 640k issue. Also Ultima Online is still up and going. It's worth checking out for gaming history buffs, but not much else anymore. I thought it was the 14.4k bps modem I was using at the time, but it turns out the game just plays like a$$
Had a max level character when I was age 12 on UO lol. Was such a good game. Killing ogres and getting the cloak with the hood plus your awesome title like grandmaster slayer of ogres lol for example. Such a good game
Honestly I went into this just wanting to make a video about the father of MMORPGs but instead it turned into so much more. Thanks for watching!
you know, hes not just the father of mmos, he's the father of RPG video games period. Ultima was among the very first graphical RPGs ever.
And when he was fucking 17
Loved the video! Can you do Chris Roberts next?
My friend used to play utopia until he found this game and I thought it was fun enough to try and played for a few days I couldn't imagine taking all that time to develop a character in a videogame. and here we are 20 years later and im like maxed in runescape 3. lol(edit btw ultima online felt incomplete and buggy the entire time. like some stuff in the game was like created by fans and you couldnt get what they made themselves. the content was incomplete to like where you oculdnt see the animations attacking you and youd just die to high levels. lol). lol. (edit2 it was prolly cuz i didnt know any better trimmed armor style) edit 3 im sure nobody at mtv wants to see a game creators house? of a role playing mmo lol edit 4.. i started my rpging on cybiko with the downloadable game labrynth. it was before calculator games. lol in my xp
Annd you missed so many juicy details haha, nice research though ! But I assure you, the rabbit hole goes even deeper
You could make your own hour long video on the Star Citizen scandal. You shoulda done the research on them
This guy was the only person to answer my emails about how to get into the game industry 25 years ago. He took the time to write back and forth with me, inspiring me to dive in and become a game developer. 25 years and many games later, I still think about how awesome it was that he, as a famous person, went out of his way to help a nobody like me. What an awesome guy. If this is insane, maybe everyone should be a bit more insane.
Are you famous yet
@@AC-hj9tv I wouldn't say I'm famous (and I would prefer it to stay that way), but I have had the privilege of working with some great teams on some great games 😁
He wasn't insane yet.
with a title like that i expected the guy to actually have gone insane... didn't seem particularily crazy to me, just rich enough to buy a bunch of unusual stuff
Yeah, is straight up hyperbole.
Yeah. This video came off as a series of cheap shots. Not impressed with the creator at all.
John McCaffey: hold my fentanyl
very much this. He basically just got rich and did what rich people do. I mean, throw a stick at a scifi convention and you'll likely hit a goth or horror fan who has old taxidermy and sideshow jarred body parts and stuff. Creepy, sure, but tons of people do it. He could just afford the whole skeleton now
I was expecting him to have ended up running naked down main street armed with a medieval crossbow and calling himself Lord British
Richard Garriott's D&D character was actually named Shamino. That's why Shamino's character portraits look like Richard Garriot in the Ulitma games. Plus there was originally 3 people that started his game company, him, his brother, and his friend Chuck Bueche aka Chuckles the Jester in the game. Many of the characters in the game are just characters of his friends that he inserted as he was a member of The Society for Creative Anachronism. Also a lot of the props at his house was bought for Ultima VI, which many of the in-game objects were bought IRL in order to study them to give them more realistic in-game stats. I actually ran into him in the hallway of a convention once, and he sat down with me to talk for hours about his past games and projects that was going on at the time (he was still working for NCSoft then). He was one of the nicest people I've met at any convention. Who else would just sit and talk with a fan like that?
I've had only Twitter conversations with, but I also know he's one of the nicest people who "made it" in the video game industry and still keeps genuine contact with the gamers and fans. This video is unnecessary character assassination attempt, albeit a poor one.
He used both Shamino and British in his D&D days, and probably some others
@koch2766 British was the nickname his friends gave him. I've never heard (until this video) that he ever used it as the name for one of his D&D characters.
@@DikaWolf There is an interview on UA-cam with Richard Garriot in which he explains the names he used in D&D and how he repurposed them in his games. I'm not sure if I can find that video again. The names Iolo and Dupre were also recurring across the series, although he never mentioned any prior use of those names.
@koch2766 Greg Dykes from Custom Creations was the inspiration for Dupre, who may have also called himself "Christian Richard Dupre" as a member of the Society for Creative Anarchonism, where Garriot used the persona of Shamino Salle. Another friend at the SCA, David Watson, called himself Iolo FitzOwen (and sometimes Triolo). Gwenno was the persona of Watson's wife, Kathleen Jones. Maria is Garriot's personal secretary at Origin, Michelle Caddel. Geoffrey is Jeff Hillhouse, also from Origin. Jaana and Katrina are unnamed personal friends of Garriot's, and Julia an ex-girlfriend, and so on. This makes Garriott naming characters after his own personas seem less egotistical/crazy than this video makes him sound, doesn't it?
I played a game of D&D in I believe 1996 at GenCon where Tracy Hickman and Richard Garriott co-DMed the game. He seemed like a fun guy to hang out with at the time.
I went to high school with Richard. I was even part of an Explorers (part of Boy Scouts) Group with him that was focused on learning computer programming around 1977, long before personal computers were a thing. The group was led by computer programmers and met in a Lockheed office building across the street from the Johnson Space Center. It was surreal watching Richard’s rise to fame, especially living in Texas when during the 90’s there was an insane growth around digital games in Austin. He was a legend. Especially when it came to the Halloween parties he would throw at his castle/mansion. People would travel from all over for a chance to attend it. I do remember all the buzz around Ultima Online, and the expectations it generated. But the game was hacked and his character was actually assassinated, which wasn’t supposed to happen. But it seemed like by then he was already done with EA and ready to move on. There is one anecdote regarding his space flight. After spending all that money to go into space he was on track to become the world’s first second-generation astronaut, seeing that his father Owen was a veteran of SkyLab and the Space Shuttle. However when the Russians, who were ferrying up to space realized this they found some offspring of a Russian cosmonaut, rushed him through training and got him in space just before Richard.
Thanks for those anecdotes! It's surreal to me that you got to meet someone in person who I feel like I have known for decades through his persona alone. Hope he's doing well.
Oh, the golden age of CRPGs.. those 8 bit Ultima RPGs packed more into the game worlds than even many modern games. The memories still warms my heart.
Ultima VII, despise the technological obsolescence and a genuinely shitty semi-automated combat system, is in MANY ways still the unmatched golden standard for recreating a living world in a single player RPG. Its NPC scheduling and the amount of environmental interaction allowed are rarely matched even these days.
Quest of The Avatar is probably the best RPG memory that I have.
@@TucoBenedictoI think Wizardry 7 the dark savant "dos version" was my favorite. There are factions of npcs fighting one another, and special npcs that roam around doing things. Can even collect items you might need for certain things too. That coupled with the fact wizardry 7 has a class system where you can shift and pivot at will, and make a team of ultimate badasses, and crank the difficulty up. Made it one of the best ever made imho.
Is there anything more satisfying than casting a maxed nuclear blast and seeing waves of enemies explode? Thats a hard thing to replicate.
And I dont think anybody who played that game, will ever forget the battle with the Thief of 9 Worlds...so awesome.
It seems like those old games often did. I suppose that was practical since the technical side of it was so much more simple. Visual content was easily randomized and repeatable, story content written and put in as text, etc. That's why Daggerfall, for example, could be so much more massive than any Elder Scrolls game that came after it. When a quest is just a few bytes or kilobytes of text, pixel art and map design, you can indeed make a hell of a lot of it on a tight budget and with limited computer resources.
@ericwood3709 True, but you also have to remember the computers back then didn't have all the power and resources they do today. Today's PCs are like super computers, far beyond that of an old 8 or 16 bit computer. I played Ultima IV on a C64 which had just 64kbs of ram and was less than 4mhz cpu speed. It would take millions upon millions o C64s to equal the computing power of a modern gaming PC.
The logical side of me says Richard is batshit crazy. The illogical side of me says dude is living his best life.
Two things can be true.
I feel like anyone living their best life is going to look crazy to normal people. Happiness is not normalized these days.
Truth. If you told me you loved your job and you are thrilled that you are allowed to go to work, I will call you a liar or a crazy man.
Who is to say what’s normal and what is not. 😜🤪😛😝
@@mikepalmer1971 Who could even tell these days.
I lived in Austin from 1989 to 2001. I actually lived about 2 blocks from Origin headquarters. He had a black Lambo and it was parked there quite often. I guess he and his team were always working. I also saw him at The Yellow Rose strip club once and sent him over a drink. He raised it to me to say thanks. I wouldn't say he was insane, but he was definitely a little unusual! LOL! Got to give the guy credit for what he did for video games back in the day.
That Lambo was featured in Need For Speed 1.
I was in the SCA and rubbed elbows with him back in my university days. I lived in San Marcos but went to Austin all the time. He's not a bad guy. Idyl just sounds jealous that he's not a millionaire. XD
He used to have tours of his house out by Lake Travis. Possibly Halloween related, but can't remember since I never was lucky enough to go.
@@kingofcastlechaos Lake Austin (in Westcliff up above the 360 Bridge). And not tours but he opened his estate up every other year for Halloween as a massive, interactive haunted house. It was awesome.
@@kingofcastlechaos That is true. He was a huge Halloween fan and did his place up to show it
Haven't seen him in a while, but I know Richard. He's always been a bit eccentric, but the worst you can say about him is he isn't a great businessman. Not only not insane, but one of the most approachable and friendly rich guys I've ever met. Threw some awesome parties in the 90's. Paid for any employee who was interested to go skydiving. Gave me a couple rides in his Lambo.
I've met him a few times and will back up this. The guy is friendly, and very approachable. He's also one of the few people I've met, that when having a conversation genuinely seem to consider everything they say, not out of a PR sense, or trying to stay politically correct, but because he gives everything you say thoughtful consideration. His passions have changed over time, it's not about games for him anymore. He's more into privatized space travel these days and his family, especially since he married and had kids later in life than most people.
On a less serious note... I remember an article I ran across on Facebook years ago about a human skull being donated to an Austin area Goodwill, it was an educational tool for med students. I jokingly messaged him asking if he had donated it. He didn't but he asked me if I thought they would sell it to him. Good 'Ol Richard, he exemplifies the saying about Austin being where all the "weird" people in Texas live.
Random fact about buying skeletons: many movie productions, especially back in the day, would actually buy and import real human skeletons for use as movie props because it was often cheaper than getting fake ones made
Anatomical models used in schools and universities were in the past - and remaining ones still are - of real humans. I've now watched a video by NPR called "Classroom Skeleton: Whose Bones Are These?" on the topic. It's short, very on point, can recommend.
Thats creepy no wonder some places is haunted then@@MJFallout
There were skeleton farms in India.
@@funkyweapon1981In the West we call those "graveyards."
in poltergeist, the skeletons in the pool when the girl falls in are all real, but they didn't tell the actress until after the shoot
ngl, the dude is kinda inspiring... he invented the MMO genre, became a millionaire, built a badass house (even the skeletons), hung out in space in the ISS, went to the deepest part of the ocean. Sure, his later game endeavors failed but the dude it out there just living like a king
invented it 2 years after i was already playing the realm online a RPG (graphical may i add) with 2000+ players.
Inspiring!
Imagine...comparing a ..for lack of better words...mmo point and click turn based adventure game to Ultima Online. You could have least went with NWN on AOL...which was like what...5 years or so before them both?
You mean living like a Lord........
Yeah, he may be odd but insane?
@@snorman1911 I still dont understand how this is the biggest debate when its provable easily that he didnt invent the 1st MMORPG at all.
I was a stunt man and actor at Richard’s live Tabula Rasa press release event back in Sept. 2007 at his “castle” in Austin where he announced the release date of the game. The Tabula Rasa event was a full-on live action space battle performance that the press and game companies were invited to that included actors and stunt people (including me), gunfire and dozens of live (and huge) explosions and live action, including soldiers rappelling down from a live helicopter. It took place in a large outside concrete construction area near his main house. For my stunt, I was hiding amongst the actual press in the designated press “safety” box disguised as an over-zealous press photographer who ignored warnings and crossed the caution tape when I came face to face with the two main aliens (actors wearing $10k full-size custom alien suits which Richard had modeled directly from the game). The aliens raised their laser blasters which caused my chest to “explode”, blowing a large hole in my shirt and sending a shower of flames and sparks 10 feet into the air in front of me. I still have the leather and copper mortar tube chest plate sand triggering system that held the 12 explosive charges that was taped to my chest (over a padded, fire-retardant undershirt). It was triggered by a hidden momentary switch I had taped to my press camera rig. After getting “blown up” I had to do a full-body face-plant onto the ground before being dragged off by men in black suits. I was pretty bruised but it was awesome! The press (from almost every news agency) had no idea I was a stunt man standing amongst them until I pushed my way through them and got blown up in front of them. I’ve worked with Steve Wolf of Wolfe Stunt Works over the years and we did all of the pyrotechnics for Richard. I’ve also been inside his Austin castle. He’s very friendly in person and easy to talk with. Since then I’ve crossed paths with him several times professionally and personally, mostly at aerospace related events in Austin. My wife helps run ACC’s Game Development Institute and has worked with him as well, and I’m a science presenter and have worked with various aerospace agencies. I’ve got some fun photos of Richard and his wife and my wife and me dressed up in various space and sci-fi related costumes at events that we’ve attended together. You brought back some fun memories so I thought I’d share them!
So many brilliant comments here. Shame there's no footage of this!
It's sad that we live in an age where the name "Lord British" is unknown. The man was LEGEND back in the 8-bit days, and he kept that legend going well into the 16 and then 32-bit era. The trio of UltimaVII, Ultima Underworld II and Ultima VII Part II: Serpent Isle are so incredibly good...have played them many times. Then we hit the wall with Super Avatar Brothers, aka "Ultima VIII: Pagan." Garriott promised to do better (he released a mea culpa with the Ultima VIII patch). But...he got lost in Ultima Online. That became the future and the proper ending to the Ultima series never really materialised. There were so many good ideas initially for Ultima IX but Ultima Online pretty much killed it, giving us too many chefs in the kitchen working on a badly mangled and neglected code base that eventually saw the light of day as "Ultima Ascension" (which they didn't even want to call Ultima IX on the box). That game...the 3D 3rd person view was nice, but oh so flawed (the scale of the world was comically small). The gameplay was awful, buggy and the plot...oh how I wish we had gotten the now legendary "Bob White" script. What an awful "end" to the Ultima series.
Legend has it that Piranha Bytes' "Gothic" series was directly inspired by Ascension, with a focus on "doing it right' (and they did).
The Underworld games were made by Looking Glass, a completely different company. The first only got the Ultima branding thanks to Warren Spector.
since we both were D&D players from the 70's. I got to confront RG at an Austin Gaming event over the MARIO BS, I asked him how an old school adventurer did not have a 50' rope in his kit, he changed the subject quickly
I'm actually kind of glad he got to live out his dream of going to space when had been told as a kid he could not be an astronaut like his dad. That's kind of neat.
This is a pretty fair description of Richard's career so far. I got the pleasure of meeting him personally years ago and hearing his story about his trip into space. He's a fascinating guy full of energy and creativity and I was honored to meet him.
And now I understand why there's spaceships in Ultima 1 and 2.
There is?! Hmm his astronaut spirit was there all along it seems.
There's also Ultima Martian Dreams (set on Mars obviously)
@@WhiteGearedHis father, Owen Garriott, was in fact a Astronaut for NASA. Richard wanted to be one too, but couldn't really apply for it due to apparently having a weak constitution when he was younger. Him being an astronaut now is him living his childhood dream.
@@culwin Martian Dreams is part of the "ultima worlds" series, it's not the ultima universe. They used basically the same engine as ultima VI.
And I loved Martian Dreams.
@@philippenachtergal6077 Whoa, we got some kind of Ultima expert in the comments here
I'm so happy you did a video on Richard. I'm 42 years old. My first ultima game, was Ultima V, on my dad's Tandy 1000 PC back in the late 80s. No hard drive. I have such fond memories of that game, and still have our original copy. I was in awe of Ultima when I was a kid. Then, when I was 16, had just gotten my drivers license, Ultima Online dropped. I drove my mom's car an hour away to the mall, so I could buy it from Electronic Boutique. I somehow convinced her to give me her credit card, and I fell in love w/ the game. Man I was awful to people in UO. lol.
I just loved what this dude created. Then... I was there for everything that followed. I was playing Tabula Rasa, which was pretty cool in some ways! I loved when the aliens would actually take over a town, and you and other players would have to fight them off to re-take it, so you could turn in your quests. I liked how instead of just spawning in, there was an alien spaceship that flew down, and beamed in enemies like in Star trek. Shit was neat. Everything else was... "ok", but it was up against WoW. Shroud was just.... even as a lifelong fanboy of the man's work... I couldn't get over how creepy it was selling vials of his blood. He's become a sad laughingstock, and honestly it makes me feel bad. It's a real "never meet your heroes" thing for me. Turns out the guy that made some of the most important games in my life... is a fucking creepy dickbag. Damn. Oh well, great video! I'm not a runescape man, but I discovered your channel when you made... something else that was funny. You're funny and I like it. Keep up the great work dude.
Selling vials of own blood?! Lol maybe that inspired the selling of e-girl bath water?
lol, ebay actually removed his listings for his vials of blood due to their "no selling human body parts" policy haha. Pretty sure he still sold them during the "telethons", just not on ebay. ;) @@WhiteGeared
Mine was Exodus on the NES. I'm the same age, btw.
KISS put their blood in their comics. That gay rapper has his blood in those gay shoes he designed.@@WhiteGeared
Nice! The I played Ultima IV on NES, but way later in the 2000s. I never actually played III on NES... Ultima V on NES... well that one was just a stinker. @@funkyweapon1981
I got to meet him at the National Apple Users Group meeting in the 80’s when I was a kid. He was totally cool and willing to talk to a kid for 30
minutes about his game
I love this guy larping as his oc 24/7
He doesn't.
@@noneofyourbusiness4616 LARPs is literally where the character came from. A bunch of the companions in the UItima series (Dupre, Ilio, Janna etc.) are inserts of his real life Renfair friends. As bonus fun fact, Shamino is another one of his LARP character. Richard self inserted himself into the Ultima series twice.
@@astrobia94 None of that supports the claim that he LARPs 24/7.
@@astrobia94 Shamino is his D&D character and SCA persona.
its not larping, he IS his oc - its recursive
I was promised a video where Richard goes insane! This is just video Richard being Richard! That's the guy that brought my Tabula Rasa avatar data to space station!
This just a video explaining why my idol is my idol! :D
Hey that’s my footage of LB & BT at the first ever Ultima Dragons UDIC convention at Disneyland.
He kinda went through the same professional life arc as peter molyneux if you think about it.
Very similar. I met Molyneux circa 1995 and back then his ego hadn't yet reached critical mass. He was very excited about his new game called High Octane. Unfortunately for him Wipeout happened and that was the end of High Octane and soon after he left to form Lionhead. And then he turned into Baron Munchausen.
Ah but DungeonKeeper.. DUNGEONKEEPER was so good... it erases all sins
@@Lagrangeify Remember that Molyneux cube tapping game on the early iphones, he claimed it would be life changing forever!
@@Pyraus Regarding Garriot I would say the exact same thing about ultima 7. That one is enough for me to put him firmly in GOAT territory!
Similar but Garriott managed to do it without becoming a total fraud
NCsoft is one of the most predatory companies in the MMORPG industry so General British skimming them is a legit military victory for all mankind.
Need to stop giving him credit for UO. He sold the company to EA in 1992 and worked on Ultima IX, he didn't work on Ultima Online. Sure its based on his fiction. However he was busy with Ultima 9. He didn't work on Ultima Online, which ironically is the more succesfull incarnation of his Ultima Series.
@@grumpygamerguy7629 Dunno where yoiu're getting your info from, but what? You do realize Garriott even played Lord British in the game, right? He didn't leave EA till like 2000....
@@grumpygamerguy7629 there are interviews where goes into detail about making UO. He did sell the company to EA but continued to work on games. You literally have no idea what you are talking about.
@@grumpygamerguy7629 The exact opposite of what you wrote is true lol... he stopped working on Ultima 9 to work on UO. Probably one of the many reasons U9 was shit.
@@JustMe99999 the main reason U9 was shit was because it was rushed by EA. They gave a hard deadline during Christmas that year, knowing that games sell much better during that time. Which is correct, but the game wasn't ready. So it should have been delayed to the following Christmas, or the Christmas after that.
Nowadays, a game taking 5+ years to make is the norm. Back then it was unheard of, and game engines were rapidly becoming obsolete because technology was progressing so rapidly.
I knew Richard back in the early 2000s. Dude wasn't insane, he was just living an amazing life. He did keep trying to capture lightning in a bottle, because of course that's what you do after doing it several times since the age of 17. But he, most importantly, made enough money to live out every dream of his youth. Then again, maybe I'm insane because I was into all that crazy shit too.
PS: This video has a real "dude in his basement in front of a greenscreen busting the balls of a guy who made his first million before age 20 and laid the foundation of today's $187B online gaming industry" vibes to it. But I suppose I'm biased.
@@thedreadduckunderrated comment! ☝🏻
No, I see that, too.@@thedreadduck
@@thedreadduckso true! 😂😂😂😂
He is also very accessible. I asked him a random question about his work on Akalabeth and Ultima on Xitter, and he gave me an extensive, personal answer. He is not "crazy", he just refuses to get old and boring, and this is amazing.
Uuum, it's actually pronounced par-ma-zhah-na
you don't know ANYTHING i will be filing a lawsuit against you for defamation
@@IdylOnTVummm it's ackshually pronounced ahparmajohnoh
Actually it's parl-muh-schzee-ohn-nuh
I thought it was par-mee-shee-in
😂
As a huge fan of Ultima 6 and 7, this downfall is just insane to me.
He did coin the term MMORPG to describe Ultima Online in interviews, but persistent online games used to be called MUDs (multi-user dungeons) or MUSHs (multi-user shared hallucinations) before that.
Now those terms are reserved for roguelike MMOs.
I love trad rls and muds! I dream of making a mud to play with my friends in discors
Why does everyone forget NWN for AOL?
Ultima Online was originally going to be called "Multima."
I always end the series at 5. Perfect ending. Spoilers:
You return to Earth, and your house was robbed. Gives you a reason to go back to Britannia, huh?
@@funkyweapon1981 Ultima V is the perfect game, to me. My most favorite out of the entire series! I love that ending.
I'm so glad to know that both Richard Garriot and Tommy Tallarico were definitely on an episode of MTV Cribs
Lol, a man of culture you are!
His mother is very proud
Their mothers are so proud.
@@PicturesqueGames "where?! Where is she??!"
If I had a nickel for every game dev who lied about being featured on MTV Cribs, I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice
his story teaches well the concept of stopping at the peak or at least being self-reflective enough to know when to shift a gear down
Or at the very least, try to do something different instead of constantly attempting to relive the glory days.
yeah! i think psychologically it all stems from trying to step out of the shadow of his father's achievements and fame@@Elonyx.studios
If I had a nickel for every time a millionaire in the games industry with a wacky house claimed to be on MTV cribs but actually wasn't, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice.
Tommy Tallarico did give a tour of his house for a video that was featured in a PS2 demo disc back in the day. I had that disc and it had a demo for the first Sly Cooper game on it.
I've given a LOT of money to Richard Garriott but I just can't hate the guy. He gave me some of the greatest times and friendships of my life and I'll always think of him with reverence.
Why would you hate him?
Ahh!! I played Tabula Rasa! It was my first ever MMO that i got into and i loved it! I even have my characters in space because of him haha. I was really upset when they were closing the game but i had so much fun when the GM;s and players got to just have almost an insane seige as they spawned mobs and we went crazy, it was super laggy but its really happy memories for me. I also met him in game (i like to think) because he or GM;s would give out gifts like armour dye or this particular beret i remember. He was quite nice and the GM's were definitely when i needed help. So many memories !
Tabula Rasa was one of the most interesting MMOs, almost like Richard saw Anarchy Online and needed to make his own version. I was super hyped and had a TON of fun while it lasted. Class balance was uh... Interesting. I want to say there was a soldier class that was leagues above everything else but it's been years.
@@stinkyboi91 i loved playing the demo class, where you had the two guns that was cryo and o-o the fire one ! but i remember the guardian? who had the staff. I completely forgot that when you lvled you could clone yourself! it is the only game i know of with a system like that
As much shit as I give Richard in this video, he always seemed to genuinely care about the communities that formed around his games.
I still have the dog tag from the collectors edition of that game :)
Wow that brings me back.
I used to be a guide on UO, and had an opportunity to talk to him briefly about pvp vs pve gaming. It was an …. Interesting conversatio. He then logged in as his LB character for a proclamation, and was promptly killed by a player because he forgot to set his invulnerability flag. 😂😂
Wow, that's legendary. If you hadn't talked to him he might not have forgotten to turn that on and the legendary incident may not have happened!
For anyone curious about it, $39 million in 1999 is worth $71,807,286.91 today
Is that accounting for the real inflation, of the fake numbers being used by the government?
Inflation wasn't the point he was trying to make. He was saying that in those days, in the 90's, the video game industry (especially PC gaming) was not seen as the cash cow it is today. So $35 mill was a MASSIVE amount for someone to invest in the industry at the time.
@@batmanjones655 I understand that but I am often curious about what such amounts of money back then would be worth today I think it gives more perspective. And I know others may be curious as well. quite honestly im surprised it wasnt 100 mill in today money
that... that is incredibly disturbing and depressing. Jesus christ, what are we even doing? Sooner or later it's going to catch up to us
@@moonasha We build communities with modern technologies where money is not the currency but co-operation and bartering is. And pirate games and movies for pastimes. And watch the skies for aliens.
Finally we build defence, offence and diplomatic systems to keep check on the slavers called laws and governments. There's no time to be depressed. We play in real life till our ascension to next life.
I implore you to look into the rabbit hole that is Ragnarok Online sometime. The history of that game and the series that it spawned is one hell of a rollercoaster.
I was just chatting to a friend about Richard Garriott. He was a visionary, and deserves credit for that. His only problem is peaking so early in his life. It must be odd to have the majority of your life in front of you, knowing that you were already at the top, and that getting there again is even more difficult than it was the first time.
any credit he deserved he destroyed by scamming his most loyal fans (myself included) out of thousands.
@@23desdfe345r2fd23f23 What was that?
His castle was kooky but it's a shame that the new owner demolished it.
Was that the 1st one or the 2nd?
@@pointnemo369 2nd, IIRC
I remember asking my best friend in college (he introduced me to UO, from an earlier release where they ACCIDENTALLY (😉) published the entire UO source code.
See, me and my friends were computer engineering students and coders. We figured out how to get it running, made our own servers, and hundreds of players in both Trammel and Felucca carved out a chunk of the stone from the statue that is my personal identity. Richard did a beautiful thing making UO. We'd never have experienced it without his refusal to take "no" as an answer up to the point of nearly getting security involved.
He's crazy, but we needed crazy things done. He gave us the Source. I believe that's all he really wanted. He just wanted us to love him as he felt he truly was, Lord British.... Here's to you Richard. Thanks for all the friggin sewer levels........
For all intents and purposed, Britannia Manor was indeed on MTV cribs. Multiple sources confirm it, and you can find the page it was hosted on via the wayback machine, however video footage itself seems to be missing completely (I did about an hour of digging to find it, unable to find video footage, but able to find confirmation of it's existence. Lost media, folks!)
If it was actually featured, it could be that MTV lost rights to the footage because of a change of ownership or something, and it could have been published in the sweet spot where nobody cared enough to download it.
I think there's also a difference between claiming your house was on MTV cribs every chance you get, and your house's wikipedia page claiming it.
@@MrJackets It could be down to something as stupid as them using music from the game(s) and EA owning the rights to said music. If the music was played under the interview and the original masters weren't kept, they'd have flushed the episode after getting the Cease & Desist letter.
I'm actually still obsessed with UO in 2024 and play on a private server called UO Outlands. It's genuinely a great experience and while it has some dated mechanics, there's far, far more than nostalgia carrying it. It's a little tough as a new player to get into because it requires a lot of wiki reading (I'm actually working on a personal project to help on-board new players because I really think it's that good of a game). It usually has about 2500-3000 concurrent players today.
I keep hearing about Outland. Might try it eventually...
Prev merchant just dropped the kasa bro.
Now OU has a Free to play option those private servers aren't worth the effort.
@@Me4-gc8qs I've got to disagree, it's the same amount of effort to download and install the client and there are a lot of quality of life mechanics in Outlands, some really fun systems like Aspects, it's actively being developed (they just started an open beta for their next expansion yesterday), and the devs are very active in the discord so the players can influence the direction of the game.
@@Me4-gc8qs yeah having played both options Outlands is superior bro. Really should consider giving it a shot. The free to play retail UO still has all poor decisions and patches from years of mismanagement. Outlands is UO reimagined from a time before it was ruined.
Richard doesn't actually act crazy. He has been living out his childhood dream all his life and has the money to do it. I have to go to work every day and live paycheck to paycheck like a lot of people. If I had a lot of money, what would I do with it? I would probably do some things other people think are crazy simply because it's not what THEY would do. But I think that everyone has a little crazy in them, it just gets squashed by society that is structured to only accept that which is perceived as normal.
I played those early 80s games at a time when people were throwing their Atari games in the trash. Richard Garriott made PC gaming a viable alternative to consoles, and kept gaming alive prior to the release of Nintendo. As simple as they were compared to today, those Ultima games were something I had never seen before, and I only had Space invaders and Pacman to compare them to. His innovations changed gaming forever.
I wish I could find the recording (if there even is one), but there was talk by Garriott at Quakecon in 2010 about going to space and some of the things he did while he was there that was super interesting. I seem to recall him talking about environmental issues and carrying on some of the work his father did as an astronaut while he was up there.
Back in the day I was a manager for an Electronics Boutique store. I remember Lord British was a guest speaker at one of our manager meeting lunches. He was definitely deep into his alternate persona.
As a 40 year old man who remembers most of this, as well as 'ol Dick G., I had no idea he was this batshit. Thanks.
As a 32 year old I remember him being on Crib's and I know someone out there has the footage which now seems to be lost. That was first time I had ever seen him as a kid was on cribs. :D
He wasn't. This guy is just a loser that's never made any accomplishments of his own. Jealousy much?
From what's seen here he's eccentric but idk about insane, only the human remains collection seems borderline to me. Mostly he just seems to be a guy that has too much money and love for fantasy. You could say inserting himself in the games seems narcissistic but he just kept up what he started as a teenager and became known for to Ultima fans so I'm not inclined think the worst of him when it comes to that either.
@@sluxi Yes not even eccentric. Just fun seeker, with the wealth to back it up.
@@sluxi I watched about half the video, exactly why is everyone saying he is "insane" and "crazy"? Because he can't make big money selling a new video game?
I think it's important to not gloss over Richard's time with Ken and Roberta Williams at Sierra online. While short, his time there was very important for introducing standards that the industry adopted for years onward. Also, Ken and Roberta are wild characters themselves, and their effect on how people make games is still felt today.
Thanks for mentioning Ken and Roberta. (fun fact, I work at a company that acquired Sierra Online at one point, and I've seen entries for them in our Active Directory)
I happened to read about this guy the other day but never connected all of these dots - just heard about the film and space trip. what a wild story, very tommy tallarico vibes.
Tommy still wins the insane-person competition but Richard's a shoe in for silver
Garriot did not create the first MMORPG. The first was Neverwinter Nights, no not the one made by Bioware. The one made by SSI and released in 1991 on MSDOS for playing on America Online.
He actually had a brief scene of the Goldbox engine while saying that. I think he’s aware.
@@NinjaRunningWild I didn't see any Gold Box games on screen at any point. I did see Ultima games which had similar sprites, but they weren't SSI's Gold Box engine.
I'll admit that UO was on a completely different scale, but that's like I see people lately saying "Apple invented VR" just because they released the Vision Pro recently, completely ignoring everything that's been going on with VR since the 60s, never mind the VR arcade games in the 80s and 90s, the home VR headsets for PCs back in the 1990s, or any of the development that happened when Oculus revived the concept leading to a bunch of other companies making headsets similar to theirs. Nevermind the Quest 1, the Quest 2, the Quest 3... Apple was first because... they're Apple...
@@NinjaRunningWild The Realm Online AND Merdian 59 came out before this as well. Both are still running. Hell I did the new Icon art for the Realm Online myself about a year back.
I have probably 10,000 hours in Ultima Online from 1998 - 2006. This is fascinating to watch, thanks for the insights behind the game and the legend of Lord British!
You know I'm 54. And when I was in junior high school me and two other friends discovered Ultima on the Atari 800. There was no way to explain how excited We were to play the Ultima series. When we discovered it we couldn't stop playing it and we had to take turns because it was a single player game. so we would have a timer set so that everybody would get 30 minutes but we'd all be gathered around just enjoying something that the graphics were so basic and the adventure was so much fun. We were living in Dallas TX and knowing that this man and his company were down the road basically in Austin? That's pretty cool as was Steve Jackson games that made Ogre and car wars which later was renamed Autoduel and made in the video games and Ogre much later. And then out in West TX you had Lone Star Games making Starfleet battles in a lot of really cool video and board games that are iconic and changed the genre we're coming out of cities right next to us and as little kids basically we could not wait for the next ultimate and thankfully we discovered Ultima II and we got to go back and play Ultima I. It was a very small company that he was running down there and getting your hands on a copy was not easy. Obviously we enjoyed Ultima III And while we were playing it we got stuck we could not find the ancient armor I mean we were just having one of those brain fart moments that shouldn't be a game ender? So we thought well why don't we call down there and ask somebody for the solution. Now in our minds the people making this game were some big company and a glass tower or some **** like that. Is a really small group of people working really hard to get copies and new versions out sort of like when TSR started out with dungeons and Dragons where they were making their own dice in the building and that's why they looked so bad. But it was a golden time. But we called the number on the back for origin down in Austin and the person that answered was very polite and could tell obviously that we were young desperate for a clue. And Remember back then if you called long distance it cost you Money and I'm pretty sure that it was money well spent because I'm pretty sure it was Lord British that we were talking to. I look at him as somebody who wants to bring sort of a mystical world to people of all ages and sort of Willy Wonka. Without all that scary train rides at being killed by the machinery but I digress. What I see is a man Who created some wonderful memories and really advanced games that were of the fantasy genre and he has the money to role play this Lord British character that he really wants to be and that's not crazy hey. I'm pretty sure he falls out of character when nobody's around but he has a job to do just like Santa at the mall and instead of finding it annoying or getting old he really just dives deeper into it. This it brings back memories to him of the golden years and he still has quite a cult following and people still play Ultima online which I cannot tell you how excited I was when it came out. I remember I finished the last Ultima right after I graduated from college. I did see his attempts at pushing the boundaries of what an Atari ST or amiga could do at the time. But there were some really cool stuff in those failed projects that you saw like the intro to several of the games. And then he was gone. And I've never read a bad word about him.. I haven't watched your video yet. I sure hope that you understand what kind of memories you're treading on and trying to put a click baked twist on it because if you're implying that he's a nutjob? Then every cosplayer and everybody who dresses up and goes out and has their medieval battles with their weapons and stuff it just really cuts loose and doesn't give a **** about being a giant nerd you're taking a giant dump on them and that's a shame. An avatar would never act that way. No many people that didn't finish the quests but but I believe that because everything is so archaic to you and if you didn't experience it compared to just going outside and walking around in the heat or Attempting to enjoy some other terrible offering from me hundreds of studios putting out crap games? It really was and is a wonderful memory and if it wasn't for those games and and some others that I played when I was young I wouldn't be able to proudly call myself a nerd. A nerd who grew up to book bands and paint portraits of famous musicians look back at that kid who would get his locker broken into and have his dungeons and dragon stuff thrown all over the hallway in between classes. Those are the crazy people. I really hope you're not one of them or ....would have been
You can buy human skeletons. I'm not sure about now, but when I was in anthro classes in the 80's a lot of them came from India.
People would take loved ones and put them in the Ganges; that was a traditional burial technique. And unbeknownst to them, someone would fish the body out of the river and obtain their skeleton to sell. We never got into that part of it.
The skeletons you can buy today are usually Uyghurs, a minority in China who faces genocide by the conservative Chinese government :(
My high school actually had one back in the 80s. We knew nothing at the time about HOW they got it, but as kids we just thought it was cool. No one knows ANYTHING about the biology class’ human skeleton today though, just kind of quietly… disappeared…
The two Ultima Underworld games were among the best I've ever played. They pre-date Doom and was more advanced in every way in my opinion.
The first one was, in fact, the inspiration for Wolfenstein 3D (and later Doom). John Carmack saw an early version and realised he could make a faster version, suitable for a shooter, if he simplified it a bit.
It would be fun to see a video on the influence of the players of UO on modern gaming. I saw the name Markee Dragon, the guy who almost by himself cornered the housing market in UO and sold plots of land in game for real cash in amounts that could make some Star Citizen backers take pause. There were also map tiles that the developers forgot to "lock down" that were able to be picked up and then sold as rare items to people that wanted to flex. Add in the players who sold in game gold for cash and you will find that the modern micro transaction system we all blame corporations for was actually started by the players.
Good ole Markee. Claimed to be collecting server birth items for a museum then sold to the highest bidder for real dollars. Not to mention the limited edition plates you could only get from player meets. Wonderful guy.
Imanewbie did the same thing when he Quit the game. Never gave any of the stuff donated to him back those still playing. Just sold it all on ebay. That game really brought out quality people.
Do you remember the purple item fiasco?
@@Me4-gc8qs Yesss! I played Atlantic server and was so happy to drop a keep on the corner of fel fire isle. So many Markee properties around me shortly afterwards! One of my neighbors swore he was a Zog Cabal member LOL
Starr is also an interesting character. Famous of having a room full of watches that he only wears once.
I swear Idyl, you're going places. I really love your content lately. I'm honestly considering subbing to Patreon to see more of this type of stuff. Love you!
I would highly recommend it. We get to bully him mercilessly and he still lets us have a say in the videos. Wild guy.
Truly a legend. It blew my mind I could mix the flour and water pit it in the oven and bake bread.
This is amazing. I want to share this with everybody who even knows vaguely of him or Ultima.
I was hoping you'd mention how Lord British managed to get assassinated in U:O. That was just funny.
Your snarky little jokes aside, this guy is a legend in gaming and deserves his success.
Met this guy when I was 15-years-old at Queen Mary's, University of London. Where he was giving a talk and participating in workshops on space travel and physics. Was absolutely terrific.
He was a genuinely cool guy.
Had no idea he was a top tier gamer at the time. Pretty cool.
I like how most mid-sized UA-camrs are being sponsored by Raid or Factor meals, yet this chad is bringing us SNHU deals and changing lives, respect
Factor meals sounds good though.
For me the funniest thing about this guy is how all his post-Ultima game titles got increasingly more passive-aggressive. He went from "fine, I'll start over with a clean slate, a *tabula rasa* if you will" to "fine, the Avatar is dead and everything he ever stood for has been abandoned! Happy now?!"
I've met Richard (and been in his old house in Austin). He's a super nice guy who is living his best life. He also married a ridiculously hot French woman who is also loaded... so hate all you want, he's kicking ass :-)
@joustingdude Incredibly intelligent and business savvy French Woman to you. ^_^
I still hope for him to settle back in Austin someday.
Back in the day Ultima IX was my escape. Absolutely loved the game and everytime I heard Ultima I thought about Lord British. To now know it was the developer throwing himself in the game with his OC is just mind blowing.
Ultima IX was Skyrim loooong before.
It was too far ahead of its time. Truly. Not just so far ahead no one could play it bc it required a graphics card (a part few even owned bc they werent yet standard PC components) or bc it was rushed, but ahead of its time because it was a huge 3D open world that looks and plays like Skyrim.
GoG has it. Worth playing.
Came for RunEscape, stayed for the history. Good shit bro bro.
I think Lord British may be the actual player character of our reality
You mean ... The Avatar?
I kind of want to get a beer with this guy
The first game I ever bought (wing commander) was published by origin. Love him or hate him dude is living the dream.
*Essay Comment*
Yeah, Garriott is definitely one weird dude, but that's the expected sort when back then, gamers were considered a weird set of people. You'd get made fun of for "playing games" back then, which is why it was easy to follow the trail to the major topics of Dungeons & Dragons being Satanic and video games too violent. Not sure how much of it is for comedic purposes, but the stuff about space and NCSoft is a bit off.
*The Dream*
While it's not good optics to go into space while your current work is having poor reception, he had the chance to fulfill his lifelong dream that was always closed off to him, and had to either take the limited time opportunity or see it gone forever. It's hard to imagine losing your dream twice. It's important to note that he had booked the flight a year in advance with Space Adventures, and even underwent surgery for it. While fulfilling his own dream, he also smuggled the ashes of James Doohan (Scotty of Star Trek) into the ISS Columbus so he could also go into the final frontier. Go to space or work for NCSoft? That's an easy decision, and I bet Garriott would make the same choice again.
*Tabula Rasa*
Tabula Rasa was released on November 7th, 2007. Garriott flew in space on October 12th, 2008, nearly a year later. While he was in quarantine, NCSoft sent out a letter assumedly under Garriott's name to push him out of the company, forcing him to be unable to receive compensation for his stock which would cost somewhere in the millions. Think of how people get fired before they can collect pensions or bonuses, and you get the picture. There's a reason why a district court and the court of appeals sided in favor of Garriott.
*In Closing*
Do I think he spent his money badly, like on a castle? Yeah. But it is his money. Do I agree that his recent stuff has been turds? Definitely, and he probably won't be successful in video games again. But getting to follow his father's footsteps and his own personal dream at his own expense is something incredibly beautiful.
Great comment!
LOL wut? Spending his money on Castles is literally the best use of his or anyone's money. Youre crazy.
But good job pointing out NCSoft's illegal activities and RG winning his lawsuit rightfully.
Say what you want about the man, but his statement on min-maxing and dps in games today is spot-on. Change My Mind.
Fucked up in the crib playing Softporn Adventure
softporn adventure any% speedrun when
In my high school programming class Richard “Lord British” was a pen pal to several of us. UO wasn’t out then. We were playing Ultima 1 and 2 on Apple 2’s and 2E. He gave us hints on game creation and encouragement.
Class of 1986!
Holy fuck. I want to play this guy's mmorpgs now. He is wild and has somehow managed to win life even tho he ultimately failed his mmorpg dreams.
Shroud of the Avatar is literally free-to-play, there is intentionally not much you get from the subscription other than some game store coin and cool unique items each month. You should do the main quest line, which is three regional quests plus a fourth combined quest. Just don't expect hand-holding, like being told when you're in too high level of an area and should work on other stuff instead.
And take some time to do fishing, and play with the housing system too.
On behalf of myself and many others, THANK YOU for putting checkpoints and letting us skip the ads. I love that so much.
i mean this in the most positive way possible but that man is NOT neurotypical. that man is what at least five of my autistic friends would be if they had several million dollars.
I like the ways that the old Sierra Online creators inserted themselves into their "Quest" RPGs, always self-deprecating.
Like the Two Guys From Andromeda?
100%. Those times were definitely a significant era of gaming for me personally. I totally still miss the humor and references from the SQ series. It's a shame that the last Space Quest, marking the end of Roger Wilco's adventures, essentially had to be a fan remake.
Lord British is not insane, he’s actually a great guy, and my personal hero.
I met Richard Garriott at a game expo in Austin ages ago, when the Shroud of the Avatar was just getting started. It was cool to shake hands with a gaming legend... even though the legend was on the final downswing.
I can't believe Lord English would do this.
hes already here
😂
@@draagon9900honk honk
Did his sub-personas Lord Scotland, Ireland and Wales desert him? :(
Lord English was never so good at art to make something millions would love.
I wonder how much Ready Player One's Halliday was based on this guy. Feels so close to me.
Dudes been to space, the bottom of the ocean, owned a dope mansion and you guys can only imagine what else hes been into. He is more successful than 99% of us will ever be.
Both bigger successes & harder failures. More money, more effort, higher stakes. He's eaten expencive meals we'll never taste, & smelled astronaut farts in space.
I could do without the farts and the outer space. And the ocean, fuck that place.@@LikaLaruku
@@funkyweapon1981dont let fear rule your life. Live.
More than just the first mainstream MMORPG, Richard Garriot is a videogame founding member right up there with Shiguru Miyamoto, Roberta Williams, David Crane etc. One of those people who created the gaming industry as we know it today. The Ultima games, particularly numbers 6 and 7, were influential in my early life. It's reasonable to say that in his personal life, 'Lord British' is one of the true great eccentrics, but to be fair he rode the wave and lived the spoils of his success.
I remember playing Ultima Online back in the late 90is the first few times.
The game had such a great atmosphere, it had all I ever hoped to see in a game and that all online, with many other players.
It was such a big thing back then to be part of it, at least to me. I tried many other MMOs ever since, nothing really made me feel like UO did. Still, some of them have been great in their own way.
Richard Garriott made amazing video games in the same amount of space you would think of as a small rounding error.
Oh no, my game failed. Looks like I'll need to cry into my big bag of money as I fall asleep on the International Space Station.
Great video, but he always said as much himself - he always told everyone that he is a little bit insane and extravagant. It was part of his whole brand as a designer. To me no bad decision or missjudgement he makes now could ever take away the monumental positive impact he had on game development and design.
Here's to wondering what happened to all those Shroud of the Avatar preorder blood vials.
What happened to Richard Garriot? People did. His dream was to make a game where his players could adventure, socialize and have fun. He found out that a good portion of the players were just terrible people being entertained by his game acting like trash. I'm sure when you find out you don't like the people you are making games for things change. He basically stopped caring about it after that. I think it's pronounced Garriot not GaryOT hehe.
Richard Garriott and the Ultima virtue system inspired me as a kid to develop the values I have and become the person I am, I am forever thankful to Mr. Garriott and the Ultima series, and Ultima Online as well for creating such awesome memories and making me experience things that at the time I thought they were absolutely out of this world, together with meeting and chatting with people from every corner of the world, and teaching me the english language
Ultima Online was not a big part of my life but I remember it being something important and very alive. It was a genuine true fun times. Thanks to this madman genius
I was on that game from server up to server down almost every day. Ultima Online was just so much fun.
It was until the elites role players started playing. You know the one who wouldn't even speak to you unless you role played and had a background story for your character. Sucked so much when starting off first day noone will help with simple questions because you are no role playing... Then they would go on hte forums and whinge about how the forced pvp playstyle ruined their game.
At least the pvpers would talk to you and even give tip on how to avoid pvpers. The elite RP's ruined that game with their whinging and to this day still deny it.
He understood itemization in game.. brilliant mind for satisfying items.. that’s what he contributed
Oh god, how have I never noticed the rat tail before? I must have mentally blocked it out.
Try asking an archeologist what the typical time is between grave robbing and archeologic surveying and most will say, "well, it's an uncomfortable answer but, usually it's around 50 years."
So when can we expect the Star Citizen video?
The single-player Ultima games are still an amazing series. I feel like everyone who likes RPGs should play them. Also, good to note that Garriot also coined the term Shard for having separate instances of the entire world/database on separate servers. The term is not only used in the MMO industry (RPG or otherwise), but also in IT, wrt to copies of databases on separate servers to allow for scalability in the same manner.
He definitely, undeniably, 100.00% made fetch happen with that term.
To be fair to Richard, he's already had one of the most influential hands in gaming, if not the most influential when you look at all the ganes that were directly inspired by Ultima and Ultima online and all the industry ideas and terms he came up with (like fornexample he was one of if not the first creators to go with the idea of making game boxes really really cool looking and filling them with cool stuff)
And he occasionally just does really awesome things that he dreamt of doing like going to space or the bottom of the ocean and seems to be enjoying life, so even if he never makes another hugely succesful game again he'll have already solidified his legacy in that industry and had success beyond most people.
Ultima and Wizardry were the big two influences on Japanese RPGs, which were the source of a lot of anime tropes.
He is right with the assessment on games prioritising in min-maxing, these statistics takes the fun out of the mmo genre. Guy is eccentric but a genius, Ultima is insanely rich in depth and every non playable characters with in-depth background and relationships. Many successful games like BG3 follow similar ideals.
A lesser known factoid about the dude is he invented his own extended memory manager for Ultima 7. At the time DOS games were severely crippled by the first 640k issue. Also Ultima Online is still up and going. It's worth checking out for gaming history buffs, but not much else anymore. I thought it was the 14.4k bps modem I was using at the time, but it turns out the game just plays like a$$
getting Ultima 7's Voodoo memory manager to run on my first computer provided me taught me DOS and gave me my first lessons on how computers worked!
@@thomass6927 I wonder how many of us learned DOS and computers exactly because of Ultima 7's memory manager... I was 14 and this story is also mine.
That memory manager was a huge issue if you wanted to play Ultima 7 under anything Windows 9x till Exult came out.
Interesting fact about Chris Roberts. He worked on a lot of the Ultima title's long before he headed up development on Wing Commander.
Had a max level character when I was age 12 on UO lol. Was such a good game. Killing ogres and getting the cloak with the hood plus your awesome title like grandmaster slayer of ogres lol for example. Such a good game