Origin Systems - Notable Employees

Notable Employees

Origin employed many young game developers over its tenure who have since gone on to leading roles in numerous game development companies, especially in Austin. Among its prominent employees were (alphabetically):

• Andrew Sega was a Software Engineer/Composer who went on to work for Digital Anvil.
• Britt Daniel was a composer for numerous titles and went on to found the rock band Spoon.
• Chris Roberts creator of the Wing Commander series. Founder of Digital Anvil, later acquired by Microsoft.
• John Romero was shortly working for Origin in 1987-1988 before co-founding id Software.
• Ken Demarest created the technical prototype for Ultima Online, directed Bioforge, led programming on Ultima VII and coded on Wing Commander.
• Martin Galway was a Sound Designer/Composer and Audio Technician who went on to work at Digital Anvil.
• Mike McShaffry was lead developer of several of the Ultima series. Later co-founded other Austin studios and has written and taught on game development theory.
• Paul Isaac was technical lead on the Wing Commander and Strike Commander series. He later became a lead developer at Digital Anvil worked on Freelancer and more recently joined Certain Affinity as engineering lead.
• Paul Steed was a leading artist on the Wing Commander series and went on to serve as an art lead for id Software on the Quake series.
• Raph Koster was lead designer of Ultima Online and later joined Sony Online Entertainment in Austin developing Everquest II and Star Wars Galaxies.
• Raymond Benson was head writer on Ultima VII: The Black Gate, contributed some writing to Ultima VII, Part Two—Serpent Isle, and went on to work as a game designer for MicroProse and Viacom New Media, then later became an official continuation author of the James Bond novels.
• Richard Garriott, aka "Lord British", creator of Ultima, and cofounder of Origin. Later founded Destination Games, acquired by NC Soft.
• Rob Corell worked on the Wing Commander franchise, Ultima VIII and Crusader. He went on to Simtex where he worked on Master of Orion II. He then spent 11 years at Adobe Systems as a senior architect for numerous projects, including CreatePDF.com, Adobe Bridge and Photoshop.com. He currently works at Portalarium.
• Robert Garriott, brother of Richard Garriott, cofounded Origin and Destination Games.
• Sheri Graner Ray was a writer and designer on several of the Ultima series. Went on to work with several major companies including Sony Online Entertainment and Cartoon Network. Also founder of Women in Games International.
• Tom Chilton was lead designer on Ultima Online: Age of Shadows and went on to be a lead designer for Blizzard Entertainment.
• Tony Zurovec was the designer on Crusader: No Remorse and Crusader: No Regret and worked on Ultima VIII: Pagan. He went on to work with the company Digital Anvil on Loose Cannon.
• Warren Spector producer of Ultima Underworld which was developed by Doug Church and Looking Glass Studios as well as System Shock, Wings of Glory and numerous other titles. He later joined Ion Storm Inc. and managed its Austin office, creating Deus Ex.
• Zack Booth Simpson was Origin's director of technology and research fellow and went on to co-found Titanic Entertainment and later became a pioneer of interactivity as a fine art with installations in museums around the world.