Origin Systems was founded to stop Richard Garriott worrying about his publishers. By 1983 he had published three Ultima games with two companies and was not sure either had given him “a fair shake”. So he, his brother Robert and a friend from school, Chuck Bueche, started their own, just as the 1983 crash in the American computer industry began. It was, Garriott said, “probably the worst possible time for a new company start-up”. Nine years later Electronic Arts paid about $35 million for it. In between, Origin made the Ultima games, put Mark Hamill into a space-combat game, and trained so many developers that Austin, Texas, grew a games industry around it.
Fast facts
- Founded: 1983, in Houston, Texas, by Richard Garriott (“Lord British”), Robert Garriott and Chuck Bueche.
- Moved: to Manchester, New Hampshire, then to Austin, Texas, from 1986.
- Slogan: “We create worlds”, in its advertising from 1989.
- Best-known games: the Ultima series, Wing Commander (1990), Ultima Underworld (1992), Ultima Online (1997).
- Owner from 1992: Electronic Arts.
- Closed: 2004.
A garage in Houston
Garriott told the story to the German magazine PC Player in 1999. Sierra On-Line, which had published Ultima II, would not convert it for the new computers then appearing, and he went looking for a publisher for Ultima III. Robert had other plans. Origin started with $70,000: $25,000 each from Richard and Robert (who, Richard said, borrowed his share from him) and the rest from their parents. The first office was the family garage, where they programmed by day and folded boxes and copied disks by hand at night. Their mother ran the art department, according to the same magazine, and their father, the astronaut Owen Garriott, had written the maths routines in Akalabeth and the first Ultima.
The Ultima name got the company through the crash. “Fortunately the name Ultima was familiar to distributors,” Garriott said in 1986, “and Ultima III, our first product, was picked up right away.” By then Origin had about 20 staff, including a dozen or so programmers and translators, and Robert, with degrees from Rice, Stanford and MIT’s Sloan School, was its president. Electronic Arts distributed Origin’s games so they could reach chains such as Toys-R-Us and Sears, but Origin kept its own marketing, advertising and development.
Origin moved to New Hampshire, where work on Ultima IV began. Garriott did not like the East Coast. In 1986, against his brother’s wishes, he took the Ultima team back to Texas, to Austin. Origin had about 40 staff; his team was five of them, and the rest stayed in New Hampshire. In January 1989 Computer Gaming World found the company still split: business decisions were made “in the staid New England environs of New Hampshire, while Lord British has assembled a creative team in Austin”. Eventually, Garriott said, everything moved to Austin. Two of the people who stayed in New Hampshire, Paul Neurath and Doug Church, went on to Looking Glass, which made Ultima Underworld for Origin.
Designers who arrived in Austin
Austin in 1986, Garriott recalled, was full of computer talent, and programmers and designers simply turned up. Among them were Chris Roberts, Greg Malone (Moebius, Windwalker), Todd Porter (Knights of Legend) and Warren Spector. John Romero worked on conversions for Origin in 1987. The composer Martin Galway came as a contractor for Roberts’s first Origin game, Times of Lore (1988), and became its audio director; in April 1991 The One reported that he ran a sound department of two composers and two technicians.
ACE found Warren Spector in February 1991 producing Martian Dreams, one of the Worlds of Ultima games built on the Ultima VI engine, and described him as “one of the most experienced role-playing game designers and writers in America”, who had “worked for Steve Jackson Games and TSR, the company responsible for the Dungeons & Dragons series of products”. His own summary of the job, delivered from the most comfortable chair in the building: “I’m head whip-cracker.”
How Britain bought Ultima
Origin had no British office, so its games reached Britain through whichever publisher held the distribution. In the late 1980s that was MicroProse: advertisements in 1987 for Autoduel and Ogre were signed “MicroProse Software Ltd. Origin Systems Inc. Joint venturers in Europe”, and in January 1988 the Tetbury address sold Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny, with a box to tick “for more information on the Origin range”. By March 1990 the same catalogue was advertised by Mindscape International Limited, PO Box 1019, Lewes, East Sussex. For most British players in the period, one of those two names was the one to write to.
“We create worlds”
The motto sits under the Origin logo in its advertising from 1989 onward. Beside it in March 1990 was another trademark: Space Rogue, a space-combat and trading game, was advertised in ACE as “the seamless integration of space flight and role playing that makes SPACE ROGUE the first ORIGIN Cinematic Experience”. The cinematic label, which the company is remembered for through Wing Commander, was first attached to a game few people now name.
The software house of 1990
The British press noticed Origin’s year. In December 1990 ACE wrote that Origin “must be developing a strong claim” to its software house of the year award: first “Ultima VI transformed the Ultima series with yet another quantum leap in playability”, then Roberts “brought us the superlative Wing Commander”. In February 1991 it added: “With two Ultima titles and Chris Roberts’s outstanding Wing Commander, Origin was on a roll. Many believe this Texas-based company to be the software house of 1990.” Its reporter visited Origin’s “16000 square foot air-conditioned building in Austin”.
Wing Commander
ACE introduced Roberts as “the exBrit creator of the world’s first cinematic space combat simulator”. It recorded that Wing Commander took 77 person-months: Roberts and four other programmers, four artists, a sound-effects specialist and three writers. “Afterburners are the key to successfully winning the fights,” Roberts advised, and the minimum time to finish the game was “eight hours solid playing”.
The series grew with Origin. Wing Commander II followed in 1991. Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger (1994) filmed Mark Hamill and Malcolm McDowell for its story scenes. Accounts of its budget differ: Computer Gaming World put it near $3 million in September 1994 and PC Player at $4 million in 1995, while PC Player’s 1999 history of Origin said about $18 million and a small loss. That history also said the third and fourth games each sold about half a million copies, and that American television networks covered the release as they would a film. Roberts later left to found Digital Anvil, where he directed the Wing Commander film released in 1999. Computer Gaming World’s Hall of Fame came to include Wing Commander, Wing Commander II and III and Crusader: No Remorse (1995), alongside four Origin Ultima games.
Electronic Arts
In 1992 Electronic Arts agreed to buy Origin. The Australian Commodore and Amiga Review put the value at about $35 million and reported that Origin then had 160 staff and had published more than 30 titles; EA’s chief executive, Larry Probst, called it “an excellent fit”. Garriott recalled in 1999 that the number of projects and staff doubled soon after the takeover, with 15 products in development in the first year. Asked about sales, he said an Ultima game sold on average about 250,000 copies and a Wing Commander about twice that.
Not every later game worked. Ultima VIII: Pagan (1994) disappointed players, and Lord British apologised in an open letter. Ultima Online (1997) was Origin’s biggest success: by 1999 it had about 125,000 paying subscribers, and Origin announced that it would make only online games from then on. The last single-player Ultima, Ultima IX: Ascension (1999), shipped with so many bugs that Computer Gaming World disqualified it from its role-playing award. Garriott left in 2000 and set up Destination Games, which joined the Korean publisher NCsoft; Computer Gaming World reported in 2001 that he had hired about 50 former Origin staff laid off by EA.
In February 2004 EA announced that it would close Origin in Austin and offered its staff severance or a move to California; a planned online game, Ultima X: Odyssey, was cancelled. Computer Gaming World’s Hall of Fame that October called Origin “dead and gone”. Ultima Online carried on without it and is still running.
Origin University
PC Player noted in 1999 that when Origin arrived in 1986 it was the only games developer of note in Austin, and that the city now had about 40, most of them founded by former Origin staff. The joke in Austin, it said, was “Origin University”: you joined Origin, stayed a year or two, then started your own company.
Sources
- Computer Gaming World issue 26, March 1986, pp. 18–21, interview with Richard Garriott: the three publishers, founding Origin with Robert Garriott and Chuck Bueche during the 1983 shake-out, Ultima III as the first product, about 20 staff, Robert’s degrees, the distribution deal with Electronic Arts, the Manchester, New Hampshire, address.
- Computer Gaming World issue 122, September 1994: “Wing Commander $3 Million”, Wing Commander III’s budget.
- PC Player (Germany), March 1995: Wing Commander 3 made for $4 million.
- PC Player (Germany), October 1999, pp. 170–176, Origin history with Garriott’s own account: the $70,000 start, the garage and the Houston office, the move to New Hampshire and back to Austin in 1986, Neurath and Church, the designers who arrived in Austin, the EA takeover and 15 products, sales of 250,000 per Ultima, Wing Commander III’s budget and sales, Roberts and Digital Anvil, the Ultima VIII open letter, 125,000 Ultima Online subscribers and the move to online games; “Origin University”; Owen Garriott’s maths routines and the family’s part in the company.
- Computer Gaming World issue 55, January 1989, p. 32: the business in New Hampshire and the creative team in Austin.
- ZZAP!64 issue 31, November 1987: Autoduel and Ogre advertisement (“Joint venturers in Europe”). Issue 33, January 1988: Ultima V advertisement from MicroProse, Tetbury.
- ACE issue 30, March 1990: Space Rogue advertisement from Mindscape International, Lewes.
- Compute! issue 113, October 1989, and Computer Gaming World issue 64, October 1989: Origin advertisements with “We create worlds”.
- ACE issue 39, December 1990: Software House of the Year, Ultima VI and Wing Commander; the Wing Commander team and Roberts’s quotes.
- ACE issue 41, February 1991: Origin “on a roll”; Warren Spector and Martian Dreams; the 16,000 square foot building.
- The Australian Commodore and Amiga Review vol. 9 no. 11, November 1992, p. 70, “EA Acquires Origin”.
- Computer Gaming World issue 187, February 2000: Ultima IX disqualified from the role-playing award.
- Computer Gaming World issue 206, September 2001: Destination Games, NCsoft and the former Origin staff.
- Computer Gaming World issue 243, October 2004, pp. 66–67, Hall of Fame: Garriott and Origin, and the Origin games in the Hall of Fame.
- “EA to Close Origin Systems”, Game Developer, 24 February 2004 (web, secondary). https://www.gamedeveloper.com/game-platforms/ea-to-close-origin-systems
- Wikipedia, “Origin Systems” and “Richard Garriott” (accessed September 2026) (web, secondary): the cancellation of Ultima X: Odyssey; Garriott leaving in 2000. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_Systems
- See the Martin Galway and John Romero entries for their sources.