Richard Garriott: King Of All Nerds

Motherboard journeys to the enchanted realm of Austin, Texas to visit Richard Garriott, aka Lord British. In the early 80s, Garriott used the pile of money he’d amassed as a high-school student selling ziplock-baggied copies of his home-programmed computer role-playing games to start up Origin Systems, the company responsible for Ultima installments III through IX and pretty much single-handedly shaping the world of video RPGs as we (the nerds) know it.

From this not-so-humble beginning, Garriott has gone on to develop some of the most innovative video games of all time (including the first ever MMORPG, 1997’s Ultima Online), design and build the most insanely awesomely crazy house of all time, and travel into space out of his own pocket. He is basically living the fantasy of any number of 12-year-old boys currently collecting their battered copy of The Silmarillion out of a mud puddle next to school.

Richard traces the evolution of his fascination with creating virtual and non-virtual-but-seem-like-they-should-be-virtual worlds and shows us his homemade cauldron of magic spikes. We think he should be thankful he was born in the last century, because there’s no way that shit would have flown during the Inquisition.

Richard shows us the grounds of Britannia Manor, an elaborate house combining the teenage fantasies of like five separate breeds of boy. Seriously, you’ve got a full 360-degree rotating observatory for the astronomy nerd, a skeleton dungeon for the goth, a bunch of hidden passage ways and trick mirrors for the Clue enthusiast, and a working three-horse merry-go-round for the… um, equestrian I guess. Anyways, it’s huge and for years in the early 90s it played host to one of the most elaborate haunted houses in the history of Halloween.

It is literally a palace of wonders and we’re not even telling you about the best part. Oh wait, we already mentioned the skeleton dungeon. Dang.