Lord British wrote a memoir! Explore/Create Book Review
Richard Garriott, the creator of all the amazing Ultima and Ultima online games, published a memoir back in 2017.
It is called “Explore/Create My Life in Pursuit of New Frontiers, Hidden Worlds, and the Creative Spark”. In this book Mr. Lord British himself tells the story of not only how he created and perpetuated his gaming empire, but he tells the story of the many adventures he has personally been involved with ranging from exploring the ruins of the Titanic all the way to being one of the first private citizens to actually leave this planet, joining his father, Owen Garriott in being an astronaut.
Although I picked up the paperback copy, I actually finished it by listening to it on audible. At the speed I listen at, it took roughly 6 hours to complete. As I mentioned the book starts out with him in the explore phase, exploring the depths of the sea, the ruins of the titanic, before it shifts back into telling the story of how he got started programming which was when he was still in high school. His first released game was called “Akalabeth” which he sold in the store he worked in, Computer Land. It is:
Quoting:
“…now recognized as one of the earliest known examples of a role-playing video game[1] and as a predecessor of the Ultima series of games…”
It sold over 30,000 copies earning him approximately $150,000 at an early age, more than three times his father’s annual salary at the time.
His Moniker “Lord British” came about because his friends said when he answered the phone he sounded British, and he started using that name for his characters in Dungeons and Dragons, and it carried on from there.
Interlaced in between the stories of creating the Ultima series of games, the book switches back and forth between exploring and creating also jaunting back and forth in time, documenting his major adventures in real life, the exploring, and creating. I am going to focus this review mostly on the create phases, particularly on the early game development of the Ultima series. Ultima I: The first Age of Darkness, was release in June 1981. Garriott was able to reuse some of the code written for “Akalabeth” for the game. He lamented it outsold “Akalabeth” by a “substantial margin”.
As he completed the coding for Ultima II, although happy it was better than Ultima I, he knew it could be even better so he set off working on Ultima III.
By this time he was already receiving feedback for the game, and he found out people were not all playing the game the same way or we’re playing it in unintended ways. Many people were choosing to kill everyone in the game, the guards, the towns people and Lord British himself, essentially playing as the bad guy.
Which brings us to the reason for the radical design change for his next game, “Ultima IV quest of the Avatar”. One of the things he wanted to incorporate was the creation of a new language. He was trying to come up with a language that anyone in the world could decipher. He dedicated an entire chapter to it.
I never really knew just how much thought went into the creation of Ultima IV.
Quoting:
“I believe Ultima 4 – quest of the avatar was the first video game in history to focus on morality rather than killing”
This game was designed to judge a players morality. It guides people from the age of darkness into the age of light. Silently watching the players behavior.
It was a game that in some ways helped shape the morals of the people that played the game. In fact, in the book, he listed testimonials from people claiming just that. While on the topic of creating things, in real life Mr. Garriott used to host strange haunted house & Halloween parties. Where he would employ magic tricks and illusions to entertain his guests. These were often elaborate, costing in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, again owing to his creative nature.
Eventually his company Origin, was purchased by Electronic Arts in 1992 for 35 million dollars. The book did discuss some of the financial ups and downs of a variety of his business dealings. Just before being fired from Electronic Arts, Richard Garriott created Ultima Online, which is widely credited as one of the first MMORPGs, massively multi-player online role playing games. Ultima Online was a precursor to many other games that went on to be hugely successful such as Eve online and World of Warcraft. In the game you could purchase items such as property, swords or armor that had real world value. Ultima Online was one of the first games that you could purchase in-game items from people in real life, say for example,, from Ebay. This created a sort of online economy.
Switching back to real life, Richard Garriott was attempting to be certified to fly into space. During that journey the book reports he discovered he had a hemangioma in his liver and could not fly to space until it was medically repaired. While operating they also decided to remove his gall bladder. After the operation he was green lit. But before exiting this planet, in 2007, he had one more adventure in mind. He participated in what I would call a humanitarian mission, which was to send the theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, into zero gravity. He wrote all about that in the chapter titled, “Don’t Kill Stephen Hawking”. For those unaware, Stephen Hawking had suffered from the disease, ALS, up this point for more than 40 years and was completely paralyzed, only able to move his cheeks a bit. Going up in that plane and being able to experience weightlessness must have been an incredible experience for him. I can only imagine.
The following year in 2008, Richard Garriott was set to go on his space mission, to the International Space Station.
His planned trip to space was reported to cost 30 million dollars.
Quoting:
“On October 12, 2008, after a year of training in Russia, Garriott became the second second-generation space traveler”
From <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Garriott>
There was a whole chapter dedicated to using the bathroom on the space ship.
Richard Garriott is an amazing human being. The things he has been able to accomplish in his lifetime, most of us can only dream of. He’s still relatively young, so I have to assume he has many more adventures ahead of him. He’s interesting & inspirational, using his creativity and imagination he was able to dream up and create whole new worlds. He created his own meta verse before meta was meta and even before oculus rift was even thought of. Richard said in an interview if you respond to him, either by sending a letter, or sending a tweet, even if your accomplishment was just completing his book, he will respond in kind.
The book clocks in at 291 pages. One obvious things missing from the Audio version are the beautiful color photos which adorns the centerfold of the book. You also don’t get to see all the wonderful celebrity endorsements from people like Elon Musk, Ernest Cline, Stephen Hawking, and Steve Wozniak to name a few, on the dust jacket.
The book is available on Amazon.com in both audio and digital formats.
Highly Recommended
Postscript:
Book Purchase Link: https://www.amazon.com/Explore-Create-Pursuit-Frontiers-Creative/dp/006228665X
Website:
RichardGarriott.com
There was a terrific interview over at the Retro Tea break channel with Richard Garriott
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU90N4Cbj10
Wired magazine covered his trip with Stephen Hawking:
https://www.wired.com/2007/04/richard-garriot/
On the GDC youtube channel there is also a really nice Ultima Online postmortem video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnnsDi7Sxq0
Stephen Hawking zero-g by 3rdaxis:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmurxp8m9Dk
