Origin Systems, Inc. (latterly just "
Origin") was the game developer founded by Robert and
Richard Garriott in
1983. Origin was responsible for the
Ultima and
Wing Commander series, as well as numerous other innovative PC games (
Strike Commander,
Bioforge,
System Shock, etc.), which continually rewrote the rules as to what could be done in a PC game . Origin were purchased by
Electronic Arts in the early Nineties. Due to the catastrophic failure of
Ultima IX and the increasingly
nihilistic corporate culture of EA (translation: treating their developers like shit, and drastically cutting funding to
online games - a move which we can but hope will ultimately destroy them), Origin is now defunct.
Chris Roberts had left years previously to form Digital Anvil (where he expressed his creative freedom by ... err, being bought by Microsoft and nearly getting sacked). Richard "Lord British" Garriott was fired after the U9 debacle (and is currently forming a new team with ex-Origin employees), and Warren Spector currently works for Ion Storm (who are increasingly looking like the inheritors of the Origin crown - Daikatana excepted). It seems unbelievable that the creators of so many great games, including Ultima Online, can suffer such a fate. But hopefully the people mentioned above, and all the other Origin staff, can go on to create great games under new, and more enlightened, management.
"We Created Worlds..."