The Time I Annoyed Lord British and He Gave Me His Debris

This signed cover of original Ultima, received from Lord British himself, is one of my prized possessions. He created the Ultima series and is my single greatest design influence. This cover has hung in my office for many years.

How I got it may not be a funny story, but it is a story.

In 1982 or so, I was 12 years old and lucky enough to go to a 2 week summer computer camp in Lake Tahoe. (This is back when home computers were very exciting but so expensive that few could obtain them. You could pay good money to let your children go and spend two weeks actually touching them.)

The counselors were all computer nerds and taught us basic stuff on Apples and Atari 800s. I didn’t yet own a computer, but I had already started writing games in little classes at the community college and they totally fascinated me.

One of the counselors was Lord British. Word soon got around that the counselor with a weird title actually wrote games that sold in stores. His next game, Ultima 2, was coming out soon, and it was rumored that he had a playable copy with him. We were excited.

He taught a class on making your own computer game. I got into it. Each student, under his direction, spent 2 weeks writing a simple text adventure game. I finished mine.

During the weekend, I went off on some stupid camp activity I have forgotten about. When I got back, I found that Lord British had already demo-ed Ultima 2 for the kids. They were all completely excited about it, and I had missed it.

Being a highly assertive, feral, annoying child, I immediately went on a crusade to get Lord British to do another Ultima 2 demo. The prospect of seeing an unreleased video game in actual development was mind-boggling exciting to me. I begged him for another demo every chance I got, even though he made it so clear even I realized that he had absolutely no interest in doing so.

Obviously, this was appalling behavior. In my limited defense, I grew up in a small town in the 70s and this was just about the first time I ever met someone even remotely like me. And who actually had a job doing it! And not only did he make money making video games, but he was a camp counselor too!!! How cool was that!? It was a brief glimmer of hope for a lonely child. I’m not even slightly proud of how I behaved, but who among us is without sin?

Anyhoo, he finally got fed up with me. He said, if I left him alone, I could instead have a signed copy of an old Ultima cover he had in his suitcase. (He literally rummaged through all his junk looking for any piece of debris that would rid him of me.) I took his highly generous offer. Best I was going to do.

Twelve years later, I started writing my first game for money. When I did, I found that Lord British had given me a far greater gift than a demo or an autograph: An enormous treasure trove of ideas from which I could steal relentlessly.