Origin Systems

Origin Systems was founded in 1983 by Richard Garriott — better known to players as Lord British — together with his brother Robert and their father's backing. Richard had already built a following as a teenage prodigy whose homemade fantasy games sold from Ziploc bags in a computer store; Origin was the vehicle to do it properly. Its motto said everything about its ambitions: "We create worlds."

The company's soul was the Ultima series. Beginning with Ultima III: Exodus in 1983 and reaching its philosophical and technical zenith with Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar — a role-playing game about becoming a virtuous person rather than merely slaying a dark lord — the franchise defined the Western RPG. Later entries like Ultima VII pushed home computers to their limits with living, reactive worlds, and Ultima Underworld pioneered the immersive first-person dungeon that would influence a generation of designers.

Origin's second pillar arrived in 1990 with Chris Roberts' Wing Commander, a cinematic space-combat game whose branching campaign, orchestral score, and film-style production values felt like an interactive movie years before the phrase was fashionable. Its sequels recruited Hollywood actors and enormous budgets, making Origin a byword for spectacle.

In 1992 the company was acquired by Electronic Arts, a partnership that provided resources but gradually eroded independence. Origin's late masterpiece was Ultima Online in 1997, one of the first commercially successful massively multiplayer online RPGs, which created a persistent virtual world inhabited by tens of thousands of players and helped birth an entire genre.

But under EA the studio's traditional single-player projects were repeatedly cancelled, key talents including both Garriott and Roberts departed, and the once-visionary house was reduced to maintaining Ultima Online. In 2004 EA closed Origin Systems for good.

The worlds it created outlived it. The Ultima and Wing Commander series remain landmarks, the immersive-sim lineage it seeded runs through countless modern games, and its founders went on to shape online gaming and, in Roberts' case, one of the most ambitious crowdfunded projects ever attempted. Origin promised worlds and, for two decades, kept its word.