SXSWORLD

In addition to vaunted music and tech- nology scenes, Austin can also claim to be the cradle of modern video game design. While the city hosts dozens of smaller and independent companies working on games and gaming tech- nology, not to mention extension offices of heavy hitters like Blizzard, BioWare and EA, less well-known is the fact that much of the way that games are played and designed originated in Austin. It all goes back to Richard Garriott's Origin Systems. The company's classic Ultima series of action role playing games (RPGs) brought the charac- ter-building elements of tabletop and pen-and-paper games like Dungeons & Dragons to video games. If you're playing a game in which you choose traits and skills for your character, you can draw a direct line back to the Ultima series. Ultima Underworld was the first game in true 3D and Origin's Wing Commander series set new stan- dards for graphics. 1997's Ultima Online was the first successful MMORPG (mas- sively multiplayer online role-playing game) and is still being played today. Origin Systems had been started in the Garriott family garage before Richard, with his brother Robert, formally moved it to Austin in 1983, becoming the only computer gaming company for 1,000 miles. "We imme- diately began to have a huge amount of success, especially in the areas of f inding great people to make games, and great leaders to lead games," remembers Garriott. One of those hires was Warren Spector. "Austin's kind of the arche- typal creative place," Spector explains. "You have the perfect storm of loca- tions to make games, which combine elements of tech, music, movies, writing and so on. All those elements still exist here, which is why Austin is still a center of game development matched by only a handful of locations around the world." At Origin, Garriott hired local writers, artists and musicians, including Spoon's Britt Daniel. "In the very early '80s, there were no such thing as computer artists," Garriott said. "But there was already in Austin this great arts scene largely built around the music industry … the people who would make concert posters for Armadillo World Headquarters and things like that. They became the f irst generation of computer artists." Starr Long, who started with Origin as a playtester and quickly rose to become the director and manager behind Ultima Online, remembers Origin as hard-working and inventive. "It was still very early in the game industry, so it was total and constant invention of everything," Long says. "Right now, when you want to make a game you have all these options: if you need a game engine you use Unity or Unreal, if you need assets you can buy assets in the Unreal assets store … back then you had to invent every- thing. Imagine trying to make a movie and having to invent a camera f irst." As often happens to developers, Origin's relationship with its parent company soured, and it was closed. Though seemingly disastrous, events like this have a flip side for Austin's gaming industry, as talented devel- opers often head to other companies The Not-Quite Gaming Capital: Austin's Role in Modern Gaming By Rob Preliasco "Back then you had to invent everything. Imagine trying to make a movie and having to invent a camera first." 3 4 SXS W O R L D | M A R C H 1 5 , 2 0 1 8 | SXSW.COM Richard Garriott at SXSW 2013. Photo by Bobby Longoria/Getty Images

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