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Working part time in a computer store, Richard had shown his role-playing game – Akalabeth: World of Doom – to his manager. The man was so impressed that he asked Richard to make copies that he could sell from the shop.<\/p>\n
It caught the eye of one of the first gaming distributors, who said he wanted to ship them nationwide. Some 30,000 copies were sold, from which Richard was paid $150,000 in royalties “for a few weeks of afterschool time at high school”. <\/p>\n
That amount of money was nearly three times his father’s annual Nasa salary. “I sat down with the rest of the family, who said ‘well, this is a good idea, maybe you should do more of these’, and I started my career.”<\/p>\n
His parents did, however, insist that he still went to university, and so he enrolled on a degree at the University of Texas at Austin. While at college he released the first instalment of his fantasy world, role-playing game series Ultima. Think dungeons and dragons, medieval knights, and wizards. <\/p>\n
With Ultima 1 selling 50,000 copies, Richard ultimately dropped out of college to focus on making computer games full time. And together with his brother he set up a business called Origin Systems to release the later versions of the game.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n