Explore/Create

Richard Garriott De Cayeux

• 22 februari 2018
• 9780062286666

Samenvatting:

An inventor, adventurer, entrepreneur, collector, and entertainer, and son of legendary scientist-astronaut Owen Garriott, Richard Garriott de Cayeux has been behind some of the most exciting undertakings of our time.

Richard Garriott’s story begins with an Apple II and a dream. At eighteen, he spent his entire life savings—two hundred dollars—to produce Akalabeth, his first video game. The first week he sold maybe a dozen copies, but soon after, the California Pacific Computer Company came calling, asking to publish the game.

Never could Richard have foreseen that this would become a multibillion-dollar industry. He would go on to launch Ultima, a seminal series of role-playing games. Ultima Online was the first massively multiplayer online role-playing game, and was named one of Time’s 100 greatest video games ever. Throughout, Richard has aspired to build the most lifelike gaming worlds possible, allowing players to interact with every object on the screen, experience consequences for moral transgressions, and fully personalize their gaming journey.

Away from the screen, Richard has also pushed the limits of human experience. A lifelong adventurer, he has plumbed the depths of the Atlantic Ocean to see the remains of the Titanic and hunted for meteorites in Antarctica, and in 2008 he became one of the first private citizens to travel into space. He was named by Maxim as one of the “Six Most Interesting Men You Can Actually Meet,” and was the real-life inspiration for James Halliday in Ernest Cline’s classic Ready Player One, soon to be a major motion picture directed by Steven Spielberg. Here, in his own words, is his extraordinary life story.

Richard Garriott has been many things: video game pioneer; wildly successful entrepreneur; and daring adventurer. In 1997, Garriott, who is known online by the handle "Lord British," forever changed the video game industry when he published Ultima Online, the first massively multiplayer, online role-playing game (MMORPG). Garriott's game, highly successful in its own right, was the originator of a genre that would later spawn such smash hits as World of Warcraft, and it was the first videogame to truly tap into the transformative power of the internet. Garriott made hundreds of millions on Ultima and subsequent games, and spent much of the money funding expeditions to the furthest reaches of the earth -- and outer space.

Drawing upon the two guiding tenets of Garriott's life -- exploration and creation -- his memoir, Explore/Create, follows his many passions to the extraordinary places they have taken him. Garriott brings us on an expedition to Antarctica to hunt for meteorites, and explores the wreckage of the Titanic in a submarine (nearly dying in the process). He becomes one of the first civilians to fly in outer space, and later arranges a zero-G flight for Stephen Hawking, watching the legendary physicist experience weightlessness for the first time. And above all, Garriott introduces us to many of the wondrous and magical things we can find in our own backyards.

A larger-than-life figure, Garriott has been hailed as a "game god" (PC Gamer), as one of "The 6 Most Interesting Men You Can Actually Meet" (Maxim), and was the inspiration for one of the main characters in Ernest Cline's bestselling novel Ready Player One (movie adaptation directed by Steven Spielberg forthcoming). Here, in his own words, is his extraordinary life story.