Origin Systems

Origin Systems was a video game developer and publisher founded in March 1983, best known for creating the Ultima and Wing Commander franchises.

Chris Roberts joined Origin Systems in 1987 with a publishing contract and made Times of Lore and Bad Blood, as well as WIng Commander I and WIng Commander II.

Origin was acquired as a wholly owned subsidiary by Electronic Arts in 1992.

Chris Roberts didn't want to sell Wing Commander to EA however the terms of the deal were that if they were buying Origin they had to get Wing Commander and Ultima. It was a dealbreaker if Chris Roberts said no and a lot of other people that had helped to build the company up over quite a long time would have their payoff for all the hard work destroyed. So Chris Roberts agreed, the sale went through for $35 million in stock. As part of the deal he had to sign a four year employment contract ending in 1996.

Soon after the acquisition, Chris Roberts was greenlit on Wing Commander III bringing in real life actors.

Wing Commander IV followed but it showed to Chris Roberts that Origin was moving in a direction that he wasn't particularly interested in. In 1996, when his EA contract expired, he left Origin 9 years after having joined it, to create Digital Anvil.

Electronic Arts quickly began curbing the developers' habit of Doing It for the Art and prioritized commercial success instead.

Like many top CRPG developers of The '80s, Origin was hit hard by the mid-90s crisis of the genre, and encountered severe financial troubles on the publishing side of its business, despite the massive successes of the early Wing Commanders and Ultima VII.

Origin Systems finally disbanded in February 2004, joining Bullfrog and Westwood as the third in the long list of developers EA had acquired and shut down

Origin helped create the idea of a budget game, at the time games would sell at full price for several years in a row. In the 1990s technology was accelerating, with computers changing more quickly and games disapearing from the shelves more quickly. About a yrear after the release of Wing Commander, Origin came with the idea to ship discounted games to stores. This idea was later followed by the likes of Electronic Arts Classics selling cheaper older games.

Trivia

 * Chris Roberts wrote many conversations for Ultima IV