In February 2004, employees at Origin Systems gathered for an all-company meeting in Austin, Texas. Packing boxes were already stacked in the hallways. Managers told the staff that Electronic Arts, which had owned Origin for more than a decade, planned to shut down the studio by the end of April. Employees who remained with EA could relocate to its headquarters in Redwood Shores, California, while work connected to Ultima Online would continue elsewhere.
For a company that had spent two decades telling players that it could create entire worlds, the ending was remarkably ordinary.
Origin Systems had begun in 1983 with a handful of people trying to gain greater control over the computer games they created. By the time Electronic Arts acquired the company in 1992, Origin employed about 160 people, had published more than thirty titles, and stood behind two of the most recognizable computer game series of its era, Ultima and Wing Commander. Over the years that followed, its name would also become connected to Ultima Underworld, System Shock, Crusader, Privateer, and one of the most important online games of the 1990s, Ultima Online.
Its influence reached beyond any individual title. Origin helped demonstrate that computer games could become sprawling interactive worlds, that development could grow from the work of one programmer into the coordinated effort of dozens of specialists, and that games could combine storytelling, simulation, technology, music, cinematic presentation, and player freedom in ways the young industry was still learning to understand.
Long before the company disappeared, its slogan had already explained what Origin wanted to be.
“We create worlds.”
Before There Was Origin
The history of Origin Systems begins before the company itself.
Richard Garriott became interested in computers while still in high school. In a 1986 interview with Computer Gaming World, he remembered taking the only computer class his school offered in 1977 and working with a Teletype system that used paper tape. At the same time, he was becoming interested in fantasy role-playing through games such as Dungeons & Dragons. When the school had no additional computer courses available, Garriott arranged a self-study program and began creating his own fantasy computer games.
He later estimated that he wrote twenty-eight small role-playing games during those high school years.
After graduation, Garriott worked at a ComputerLand store and gained access to an Apple II+. The graphics capabilities of the machine inspired him to create a fantasy game with perspective dungeon scenes. He called it Akalabeth. Garriott initially packaged copies himself in plastic bags and placed them for sale through the store. According to his later recollection, he spent about $200 producing his first two hundred copies.
A copy eventually reached California Pacific Computer Company, which offered Garriott a publishing agreement. The success of Akalabeth helped turn what had been an unusual teenage hobby into a profession. Garriott followed it with Ultima, establishing the fantasy role-playing series that would eventually define much of his career.
Garriott also developed a particular idea about how his games should reach players. He did not simply want a disk handed over in generic packaging. He wanted maps, documentation, artwork, and physical objects that strengthened the illusion that the player had entered another place. When searching for a publisher for Ultima II, he wanted the game packaged in a box with a cloth map. Sierra On-Line agreed.
The relationship worked commercially, but Garriott became dissatisfied with the amount of control he had over his work and uncertain about the business relationship between author and publisher. Chuck Bueche, Garriott’s friend and former University of Texas roommate, had also published games through Sierra.
Eventually, Garriott, his older brother Robert, and Bueche decided that instead of repeatedly looking for publishers willing to treat their games the way they wanted, they would become publishers themselves.
The Birth of Origin Systems
Origin Systems appeared in 1983 at an uncertain moment for the American video game business.
The company’s earliest operations were centered in Texas, with the Garriott family playing a significant role around the young business. Richard supplied the fantasy worlds and programming experience. Chuck Bueche, known to players as “Chuckles,” brought his own programming background. Robert Garriott handled the business side.
A November and December 1983 issue of Softline captured Origin almost at the moment of its creation. Writer Matt Yuen described Richard Garriott and Bueche as experienced game creators rather than genuine newcomers, while Robert Garriott handled the company’s business affairs. The article argued that Origin was essentially a collection of veterans creating something they could finally call their own.
Bueche gave two particularly simple reasons for publishing their own games. They wanted greater control over their products, and they wanted to earn more from them.
That desire for control became one of the most important themes in Origin’s history. The company wanted creators to build games as experiences rather than simply produce software that could be placed on a store shelf.
Origin’s first major release was Exodus: Ultima III. The same 1983 issue of Softline carried an Origin advertisement for Ultima III and Bueche’s Caverns of Callisto. From an address on Upper Bay Road in Houston, the young company marketed Ultima III for $54.95 and Caverns of Callisto for $34.95 under the slogan “Originators of Excellence.”
The advertisement is a small but revealing artifact from the company’s beginning. Origin was already presenting itself as more than a distributor. Its identity rested on recognizable creators, ambitious games, distinctive worlds, and the idea that software could carry an author’s personality.
Even the company’s name fit that ambition.
When Softline asked how they had selected “Origin,” Bueche and Garriott apparently had no elaborate explanation. Yet the magazine concluded that if their plans succeeded, the name would prove appropriate.
From Houston to New Hampshire
Origin survived a difficult period for the computer software business and quickly began growing beyond its founders.
In 1985, the company relocated from Houston to Londonderry, New Hampshire. Robert Garriott had family and professional reasons for remaining in New England, and the move temporarily brought the company’s operations together there. Richard Garriott later remembered the period less fondly than his life in Texas, but it coincided with one of the most important creative turns in the history of Ultima.
By 1986, Garriott told Computer Gaming World that Origin’s staff had grown to more than twenty people, including roughly a dozen programmers and translators working both inside and outside the company.
Origin was also learning how to function as a publisher without giving up its independence. Electronic Arts distributed Origin’s products to major retail chains that would have been difficult for a smaller publisher to reach on its own, while Origin retained responsibility for development, advertising, and most other aspects of its business. At that point EA was a partner in distribution, not the owner that it would later become.
The increasing size of the company mattered because Richard Garriott’s games were becoming increasingly difficult for one person to build.
Akalabeth, he recalled, had taken about three months. Ultima I required roughly nine months. Ultima II took a year, as did Ultima III. By Ultima IV, development had stretched to approximately two years.
The reason was not simply that the games were getting bigger.
Garriott was beginning to ask more of them.
Ultima IV and the Idea That Games Could Mean Something
Released in 1985, Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar represented a major change in what Origin’s best-known series was trying to accomplish.
Earlier fantasy games generally gave the player an identifiable villain to defeat. Garriott instead designed Ultima IV around the player’s behavior. The goal was to become the Avatar by demonstrating virtues derived from Truth, Love, and Courage.
Garriott explained in 1986 that fan mail had caused him to think more seriously about the messages contained in his games. Players were reading meaning into what he created, even when he had not consciously placed that meaning there. He began asking whether a fantasy role-playing game could encourage the player to think about responsibility rather than simply reward theft, violence, and accumulation.
The result was a game in which the player was not merely improving statistics. The player was being judged.
The opening questions helped determine the character who entered Britannia. Actions inside the world affected the player’s progress toward the virtues. Garriott wanted the person sitting at the computer to identify with the character and feel responsible for what that character did.
It was an early expression of the philosophy that would increasingly define Origin.
The company’s games would not simply contain levels.
They would contain places.
Back to Austin
Richard Garriott never developed much affection for New England, and in 1987 he returned to Austin with much of Origin’s technical and creative staff. Robert Garriott and part of the company’s business operation remained in New Hampshire for a time, leaving Origin divided between a creative center in Texas and business functions in New England.
By the beginning of 1989, the New Hampshire operation was closed and the company consolidated in Austin.
That move would have consequences far beyond Origin itself.
Austin was developing into an important technology center, but Origin became one of the magnets around which the city’s game-development community formed. Programmers, artists, producers, designers, writers, and engineers came through the company. Some remained for years. Others eventually left to form studios of their own or joined companies that helped establish Austin as one of the major centers of American game development.
Inside Origin, meanwhile, the era of the lone programmer was disappearing.
A 1991 Origin technology report described the transformation directly. According to the company’s own account, a modern state-of-the-art game could require a team of fifteen to twenty-five specialists working for twelve to eighteen months. Programmers were now joined by artists, writers, musicians, producers, designers, testers, and other specialists.
Origin had begun as a way for individual authors to control their creations.
Less than a decade later, it was helping invent a model in which those creations required entire teams.
“We Create Worlds”
Origin’s corporate identity evolved along with its games.
The early “Originators of Excellence” advertising eventually gave way to a far more memorable statement: “We create worlds.”
Few slogans have fit a game company better.
By the end of the 1980s, Origin’s catalog stretched beyond Ultima. Its designers experimented with science fiction, fantasy, role-playing, strategy, vehicle combat, and simulation. Games such as Autoduel, 2400 A.D., Times of Lore, Space Rogue, Bad Blood, and others reflected a company that was willing to build around individual designers rather than restrict itself to a single franchise.
The arrival of figures such as Warren Spector and Chris Roberts further expanded what an Origin game could be.
Roberts, who joined Origin in the late 1980s, initially worked on games including Times of Lore and Bad Blood. He soon began developing something much more ambitious, a space-combat project originally known as Wingleader.
It would become the second great franchise in Origin’s history.
Wing Commander and the Interactive Movie
At the Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago in June 1990, Origin announced Wingleader with language that sounded almost like a challenge.
The company promoted groundbreaking graphics, spatial stereo sound, and what it called a new cinematic game experience. Chris Roberts promised that players would not think about space combat simulations in the same way again.
Before the game reached stores, Wingleader became Wing Commander.
The finished game placed players inside a war between humanity and the Kilrathi, but its importance came as much from presentation as premise. Missions existed inside a larger campaign. Characters spoke to the player between flights. Success and failure could affect the course of events. Music, animated sequences, cockpit graphics, and character interactions created the sense that the player was participating in a science-fiction drama rather than simply launching another round of a flight simulator.
The series grew quickly.
Origin advertising for Wing Commander II emphasized improved graphics, digitized speech, dynamic opponents, music, and what it explicitly called “cinematic storytelling.” By February 1992, internal franchise material stated that the Wing Commander line had sold more than half a million games.
The implications reached beyond a single successful series. Wing Commander demonstrated that increasingly powerful PCs could support forms of spectacle once associated primarily with film and television.
Origin had spent the 1980s asking how deep a computer world could become.
Now it was asking how dramatic one could feel.
Origin at Its Independent Peak
The years around 1990 to 1992 represented an extraordinary period of experimentation.
Origin’s surviving 1990 product-development plan shows how many ideas were being pursued at once. Ultima VI, Bad Blood, Savage Empire, Martian Dreams, the project that became Wing Commander, future Ultima games, spinoffs, and concepts that never reached the market all competed for attention. Some schedules held. Others slipped by years. Some games disappeared entirely.
What the document reveals most clearly is ambition. Origin was trying to build more worlds than it could realistically finish.
In 1992 alone, the company’s name became associated with several major developments in computer role-playing.
Ultima VII: The Black Gate continued Garriott’s pursuit of an increasingly interactive world. Objects could be moved and combined, characters followed schedules, and the player was given unusual freedom to interact with the environment.
That same year, Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss, developed by Blue Sky Productions and published by Origin, placed players inside a fluid first-person three-dimensional fantasy environment. The project helped introduce designers and producers whose influence would extend far beyond Origin.
The company was pushing toward several possible futures at the same time.
Then its own future changed.
Electronic Arts Buys Origin
On September 10, 1992, Electronic Arts announced that it had agreed to acquire Origin Systems.
The deal called for EA to exchange approximately 1.3 million shares for Origin’s outstanding securities, placing the value of the transaction at about $35 million.
Contemporary United Press International reporting gives a valuable snapshot of Origin at the moment of acquisition. The company had around 160 employees and had published more than thirty titles. During the fiscal year that ended February 28, Origin reported approximately $13 million in sales and $3.2 million in pretax profit. Ultima VII was appearing on software bestseller lists.
Origin would continue operating in Austin as a wholly owned subsidiary. Robert Garriott remained president and CEO of Origin while also becoming an Electronic Arts vice president. Richard Garriott continued as creative director while becoming an executive producer for EA.
The acquisition was particularly notable because Origin and Electronic Arts already had history.
EA had distributed Origin products during the 1980s, but the relationship had broken down years earlier. Contemporary Computer Gaming World coverage of the acquisition recalled tensions between Richard Garriott and EA surrounding the release of Deathlord, which Garriott believed resembled Ultima too closely.
In 1992, however, the two companies reunited under very different circumstances.
Origin had creative talent and valuable franchises.
Electronic Arts had capital, distribution, and growing international reach.
For a company producing increasingly expensive games, the combination offered opportunities that independence could not easily provide.
Origin Inside Electronic Arts
The acquisition did not immediately erase Origin’s identity.
Throughout the 1990s, the Austin studio continued producing or overseeing ambitious projects. Wing Commander became increasingly cinematic. Privateer turned part of that universe toward a more open-ended style of trading, exploration, and combat. Crusader: No Remorse offered fast isometric action. BioForge experimented with cinematic presentation and three-dimensional characters.
Origin was also closely involved with projects developed by other studios.
Looking Glass Technologies developed System Shock, released in 1994 with Origin serving as publisher and producer. The game’s combination of exploration, environmental storytelling, player choice, and the artificial intelligence SHODAN became enormously influential in later immersive games.
Origin’s culture had become a meeting place for several design traditions. Richard Garriott represented the idea of the large simulated fantasy world. Chris Roberts pushed toward cinematic spectacle. Warren Spector became increasingly interested in worlds that allowed players to solve problems through different methods. Developers who passed through Origin carried pieces of those ideas elsewhere.
Yet the studio’s relationship with its parent company was not always easy.
Origin wanted to experiment.
EA increasingly needed predictable commercial returns from increasingly expensive projects.
Those priorities could coexist when a game succeeded. They became much harder to reconcile when projects ran late, grew in scope, or entered uncertain markets.
The greatest example of both the opportunity and the risk was a project that attempted to turn Britannia into a place inhabited not by computer characters alone, but by thousands of actual people.
Ultima Online
The project that became Ultima Online began modestly.
Raph Koster, who became one of its principal designers, later recalled that the original game had been conceived for a much smaller population. Development began with an early prototype in 1995 before the core team came together later that year. The expected audience was limited, especially by later standards.
Then interest exploded.
Koster remembered that after tens of thousands of people expressed interest in testing the game, the team had to rethink the underlying technology. A world originally intended for a few hundred simultaneous users had to prepare for thousands. The designers experimented with economies, ecology, crafting, housing, combat, social behavior, and systems that allowed players to affect one another in ways that were difficult to predict.
The developers discovered something important.
When thousands of human beings entered a simulated world, they did not behave like carefully scripted characters.
They behaved like human beings.
Players found loopholes. They stockpiled resources. They attacked one another. They formed communities. They created markets and social hierarchies. Systems that looked elegant on paper collided with the creativity, cooperation, greed, humor, aggression, and unpredictability of a real population.
The resulting problems became part of the game’s importance.
Ultima Online was released in September 1997 and became one of the first graphical massively multiplayer role-playing games to reach a broad commercial audience. It was not the first online role-playing game, nor the first graphical virtual world, but its scale and commercial visibility helped bring the concept of the MMORPG into the mainstream computer game industry.
Origin’s old slogan had become literal.
It had created a world.
Then it had allowed players to live in it.
The Beginning of the End
By the end of the 1990s, the company that created Ultima was changing rapidly.
Ultima IX: Ascension, released in 1999, became the final numbered single-player installment in Richard Garriott’s long-running series. Meanwhile, Electronic Arts increasingly viewed online games as the future of the Origin operation.
The tensions came to a head in 2000.
In April, contemporary reporting confirmed that Richard Garriott had left the company he had helped create. More than twenty other employees were reportedly laid off, with additional reductions possible. Projects including Privateer Online and a secret Garriott project known as “X” were reportedly canceled as the company concentrated resources around online Ultima products.
An internal message attributed to Origin CEO Jack Heistand explained that Garriott wanted to create major new properties that Origin was no longer positioned to pursue. EA, according to the same account, was prepared to invest heavily in Origin and Ultima, but wanted those resources concentrated on projects it considered commercially prudent.
Garriott’s departure was more than the exit of an executive.
Origin Systems had been created partly because he wanted control over how his games were made.
Seventeen years later, he no longer controlled the company that had been built to provide that freedom.
Origin Closes
Origin survived Garriott’s departure, but the studio’s remaining years were increasingly defined by online development, restructuring, and canceled projects.
Then came February 2004.
Electronic Arts was consolidating development operations, and Origin’s Austin studio was marked for closure. Employees were offered relocation opportunities or severance. Ultima Online would continue, but the physical studio that had created it would disappear.
The closure ended a company, but it did not end its most literal world.
Ultima Online remained active long after Origin disappeared. On September 24, 2026, the official development team celebrated the game’s twenty-ninth anniversary, marking nearly three decades since players first entered the persistent online Britannia.
Origin had been gone for more than twenty years.
One of its worlds was still running.
The Austin Legacy
The disappearance of Origin Systems did not erase the network of people it had created.
Former Origin developers spread throughout the game industry. Some founded companies. Others joined major studios or became leading designers, producers, artists, engineers, and executives. Austin’s modern game-development community grew partly from these connections.
Later accounts of Austin’s gaming history repeatedly identify Origin as one of the companies that helped establish the city as a major development center. Teams and individuals connected to Ultima, Wing Commander, and other Origin projects eventually contributed to studios across Texas and beyond.
Warren Spector carried ideas about simulation, storytelling, and player choice into later projects. Chris Roberts continued pursuing cinematic space games after leaving Origin. Raph Koster and other Ultima Online veterans became major figures in the development of online worlds. Numerous programmers, artists, designers, and producers carried Origin’s methods into companies whose players might never have realized where those ideas originated.
The company’s surviving records have also become historical artifacts.
The Dolph Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin preserves the ORIGIN Systems / Electronic Arts Papers, including digital data tapes and Betacam material produced between 1992 and 2000 in connection with Ultima and Wing Commander. The collection is small compared with the scale of Origin’s output, but its presence in an archival institution reflects how dramatically the status of video game history has changed since the company’s beginnings.
In 1983, Origin was a young software company selling games for home computers.
Today its development materials belong in archives.
Why Origin Systems Matters
Origin Systems occupies an unusual place in video game history because its story follows the growth of the computer game industry itself.
It began when individual programmers could create commercial games almost alone, copy them onto disks, place them in simple packaging, and communicate directly with players.
It grew during the years when boxes, manuals, maps, art, music, and increasingly elaborate software turned computer games into larger entertainment products.
It flourished as designers began building enormous simulated spaces and development teams grew from a few programmers into groups of specialized professionals.
It helped popularize cinematic game presentation through Wing Commander.
It helped redefine the possibilities of interactive role-playing through Ultima.
It published and produced projects such as Ultima Underworld and System Shock that pushed toward deeper simulated environments.
Then, with Ultima Online, it helped demonstrate that a game world could become a persistent social space populated by thousands of people rather than a journey experienced by one player at a time.
The company also experienced the other side of the industry’s growth. Bigger games required bigger budgets. Bigger budgets brought corporate oversight. Creative independence became harder to maintain as development costs increased and publishers consolidated studios.
Origin Systems was born partly because Richard Garriott, Robert Garriott, Chuck Bueche, and their collaborators wanted greater control over the games they made. It ended as one small part of a global publisher deciding where its development resources should be concentrated.
Between those two moments, it helped change what a computer game could be.
The slogan survives because it captured that ambition better than any list of products could.
Others wrote software.
Origin Systems created worlds.
Sources & Further Reading
Write sources in chicago style with full url
Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin. “ORIGIN Systems / Electronic Arts Papers, 1992–2000.” Texas Archival Resources Online. https://txarchives.org/utcah/finding_aids/03593.xml
Video Game History Foundation Library. “Origin Systems.” Game History Library. https://library.gamehistory.org/agents/corporate_entities/556
Yuen, Matt. “New Players: Origin Systems.” Softline 3, no. 2 (November–December 1983): 25–27. https://www.cgwmuseum.org/galleries/issues/softline_3.2.pdf
Durkee, David. “Profiles in Programming: Lord British.” Softline 3, no. 2 (November–December 1983). https://www.cgwmuseum.org/galleries/issues/softline_3.2.pdf
Origin Systems. “Origin Systems” advertisement. Softline 3, no. 2 (November–December 1983). https://www.cgwmuseum.org/galleries/issues/softline_3.2.pdf
“Inside Ultima IV.” Computer Gaming World, no. 26 (March 1986). https://www.cgwmuseum.org/galleries/issues/cgw_26.pdf
Origin Systems. Origin Systems Product Catalog. Londonderry, NH, ca. 1987. https://www.mocagh.org/origin/origin-catalog-alt.pdf
Ferrell, Keith. “Dungeon Delving with Richard Garriott.” COMPUTE!, January 1989. https://colorcomputerarchive.com/coco/Documents/Magazines/Compute%20%28Clean%29/Compute_Issue_104_1989_Jan.pdf
Garriott, Richard. “The Golden Days of Computer Games.” Computer Game Developers’ Conference, May 7, 1989. Audio recording. Video Game History Foundation Library. https://library.gamehistory.org/agents/people/207
Garriott, Robert K., et al. “From Developer to Publisher.” Computer Game Developers’ Conference, May 8, 1989. Audio recording. Video Game History Foundation Library. https://library.gamehistory.org/repositories/2/archival_objects/21126
Garriott, Robert K., Trip Hawkins, Gary Carlston, et al. “The Publishers’ Panel.” Computer Game Developers’ Conference, May 8, 1989. Audio recording. Video Game History Foundation Library. https://library.gamehistory.org/repositories/2/archival_objects/21144
Addams, Shay. The Official Book of Ultima. Greensboro, NC: COMPUTE! Books, 1990. https://www.mocagh.org/origin/completeultima1ed.pdf
Origin Systems. 1990 Product Catalog. Austin, TX: Origin Systems, 1990. https://mocagh.org/origin/origin-90catalog.pdf
Origin Systems. “Wingleader.” Press release, June 1990. Reproduced by Roberts Space Industries. https://robertsspaceindustries.com/en/comm-link/spectrum-dispatch/12724-Announcing-Wing-Commander
Origin Systems. Origin Systems 1990 Product Development Plan. 1990. Preserved by the Origin Gallery. https://gallery.ultimacodex.com/origin-systems-1990-product-development-plan/
Origin Systems. Software Entertainment Technology Report. Austin, TX: Origin Systems, 1991. Preserved by the Origin Gallery. https://gallery.ultimacodex.com/origin-software-technology-report/
Addams, Shay. The Official Guide to Ultima. 2nd ed. Greensboro, NC: COMPUTE! Books, 1992. https://www.mocagh.org/origin/completeultima.pdf
Taylor, David. “Lord British: A Fantasy Interview.” April 23, 1992. Originally distributed through Usenet. https://groups.google.com/g/comp.sys.mac.games/c/1dcbwsginO8
United Press International. “Electronic Arts to Buy Origin Systems.” September 10, 1992. https://www.upi.com/Archives/1992/09/10/Electronic-Arts-to-buy-Origin-Systems/3828716097600/
“Electronic Arts and Origin Pool Resources in ‘Ultimate’ Acquisition.” Computer Gaming World, no. 100 (November 1992): 176. https://library.gamehistory.org/repositories/2/archival_objects/9043
Smithsonian National Museum of American History. “Exodus: Ultima III.” Smithsonian Institution Collections. https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/object/nmah_323001
The Strong National Museum of Play. Finding Aid to the Mark Day Papers. Rochester, NY: The Strong. https://www.museumofplay.org/app/uploads/2021/09/Finding-Aid-to-the-Mark-Day-Papers_010816.pdf
Video Game History Foundation. “Ultima VII: The Black Gate Voiceover Source Backup Tape.” ca. 1992. Video Game History Foundation Library. https://library.gamehistory.org/agents/corporate_entities/556
Koster, Raph. “A UO Postmortem of Sorts.” Raph Koster’s Website. Originally written June 2000. https://www.raphkoster.com/games/snippets/a-uo-postmortem-of-sorts/
Koster, Raph. “Did Players Destroy the UO Ecology?” Raph Koster’s Website. https://www.raphkoster.com/games/snippets/did-players-destroy-the-uo-ecology/
Ho, Jennifer. “Lord British Leaves His Origin.” GameSpot, April 26, 2000. https://www.gamespot.com/articles/lord-british-leaves-his-origin/1100-2542005/
Electronic Arts. 2002 Annual Report. Redwood City, CA: Electronic Arts, 2002. https://www.annualreports.com/HostedData/AnnualReportArchive/e/NASDAQ_ERTS_2002.pdf
Feldman, Curt. “EA Reportedly Shuttering Origin.” GameSpot, February 24, 2004. https://www.gamespot.com/articles/ea-reportedly-shuttering-origin/1100-6089911/
Feldman, Curt. “Origin Obit Confirmed.” GameSpot, February 26, 2004. https://www.gamespot.com/articles/origin-obit-confirmed/1100-6090094/
Ramsay, Morgan. “Richard Garriott.” In Online Game Pioneers at Work, 107–168. Berkeley, CA: Apress, 2015. https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/online-game-pioneers/9781430241867/9781430241850_Ch06.xhtml
Garriott, Richard, and David Fisher. Explore/Create: My Life in Pursuit of New Frontiers, Hidden Worlds, and the Creative Spark. New York: William Morrow, 2017. https://search.worldcat.org/title/1012732338
Contato, Andrea. Through the Moongate: The Story of Richard Garriott, Origin Systems Inc. and Ultima. 2 vols. 2019–2020. https://www.andreacontato.com/through-the-moongate
Maher, Jimmy. “Origin Systems.” The Digital Antiquarian, May 2013. https://www.filfre.net/2013/05/origin-systems/
Maher, Jimmy. “From Squadron to Wingleader.” The Digital Antiquarian, April 2017. https://www.filfre.net/2017/04/from-squadron-to-wingleader/
Koster, Raph, Starr Long, and Rich Vogel. “Classic Game Postmortem: Ultima Online.” Presented at GDC Online, 2012. https://gdcvault.com/play/1016678/Classic-Game-Postmortem-Ultima
Cifaldi, Frank. “Ultima Online Creators Remember the Good and Bad of Its Early Days.” Game Developer, October 11, 2012. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/-em-ultima-online-em-creators-remember-the-good-and-bad-of-its-early-days
Donovan, Tristan. Replay: The History of Video Games. East Sussex, UK: Yellow Ant, 2010. https://www.si.edu/object/replay-history-video-games-tristan-donovan%3Asiris_sil_945553
Garriott, Richard. “Origin.” Richard Garriott. https://richardgarriott.com/gaming-v-3/origin/
Game Developer. “We See Farther: A History of Electronic Arts.” Game Developer. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/we-see-farther—a-history-of-electronic-arts
Game Developer. “Before Star Citizen, There Was Wing Commander: How Chris Roberts Got His Start.” Game Developer. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/before-i-star-citizen-i-there-was-i-wing-commander-i-how-chris-roberts-got-his-start