Quick Take
- Narration: Christopher Grove handles the alternating Explore/Create chapter structure with energy and intelligence, keeping a sprawling life story coherent across nine hours.
- Themes: Invention as identity, the intersection of gaming history and physical exploration, the privilege that enables both
- Mood: Enthusiastic and generous, with occasional flashes of genuine wonder
- Verdict: A memoir structured around an unusual life, best listened to by those who want to understand how a video game pioneer also ended up plumbing the Titanic and riding to the International Space Station.
I finished Explore/Create on a Sunday evening after listening through most of Saturday and Sunday morning, which says something about its forward momentum. Richard Garriott is not a writer in the literary sense, and this is not a memoir that pretends to be. It is something rarer and in some ways more interesting: a genuinely unguarded account of a life organized around two verbs, and the particular freedom that allowed those verbs to define everything.
For those who need context: Garriott created the Ultima series of role-playing games in the late 1970s and 1980s, coined the term Avatar for an in-game character representation, and essentially invented the template for what we now call MMORPGs with Ultima Online. The fortune that followed funded expeditions to the Titanic, meteorite hunts in Antarctica, and in 2008, a trip to the International Space Station as one of the first private citizens to purchase a voyage there. His father is the astronaut Owen Garriott. He grew up literally watching people train for space. The privileges layered into this life are considerable, and to Garriott’s credit, he is not entirely oblivious to them, though his self-examination on this front is lighter than some readers might wish.
The Alternating Structure and Why It Works
One reviewer described the book’s unusual architecture accurately: chapters alternate between Explore and Create, the adventure chapters and the gaming industry chapters, woven together thematically rather than strictly chronologically. This is a genuine structural innovation for a memoir, and it works because the two categories illuminate each other. The same compulsiveness that drove Garriott to build increasingly elaborate game worlds also drove him to purchase a trip to the bottom of the Atlantic. The same capacity for obsessive detail that defined Ultima’s worldbuilding shows up in his Antarctic meteorite expeditions. Christopher Grove as narrator earns his keep here, maintaining tonal coherence across what could otherwise feel like two different books alternating chapters.
The Gaming History Inside the Adventure Story
For listeners who came up with Ultima, or who have any interest in how the modern video game industry formed from the hobbyist computing culture of the late 1970s, this is essential listening. Garriott traces the creation of Akalabeth and the original Ultima games with the kind of specific technical and creative memory that only an actual participant can offer. He describes the accidental discoveries, the commercial near-misses, and the deliberate philosophical decisions, particularly around virtue systems and morality in gaming, that made the Ultima games distinctively ambitious compared to their contemporaries. A reviewer who identified as a game developer of twenty-eight years called the book brilliantly inspirational, and for that specific audience, the characterization holds.
Where the Memoir Stays on the Surface
The book’s weakness is what one reviewer diplomatically called its portrayal of an extremely privileged life. Garriott is honest about the advantages that flowed from his father’s NASA career and from the early commercial success of his games, but the memoir rarely dwells in difficulty for long. The haunted house he built annually in Austin, his elaborate medieval-themed parties, the collection of artifacts and curiosities: all of these are presented with the enthusiasm of someone who has never had to choose between competing priorities because the resources were always sufficient. For some listeners this exuberance is infectious. For others it creates a slight distance from a subject who never seems to have truly struggled. Neither response is wrong; both are worth factoring into your decision to listen.
Who Should Listen and Who Should Skip
Listen if you were shaped in any way by the Ultima games, if you are interested in the early history of commercial video game development, or if you have a particular fascination with the emerging private space industry and want to hear from someone who has actually been there. Also worth your time if you are drawn to the figure of the generalist adventurer, someone who pursues excellence across multiple domains and has the resources to act on that pursuit seriously. Skip it if you want a memoir with deep emotional interiority, extended reflection on failure, or the kind of unflinching self-examination that the best literary memoirs provide. Explore/Create is cheerful, informative, and frequently surprising. It is not a painful book. At nine hours, that is not a criticism.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do you need to be familiar with the Ultima games to enjoy Explore/Create?
No prior gaming knowledge is necessary. Garriott explains the Ultima series and its place in gaming history with enough context that complete newcomers can follow the significance of what he describes. The gaming chapters are a substantial portion of the book but are written accessibly for a general reader.
How much of the audiobook covers Richard Garriott’s trip to the ISS versus his gaming career?
The ISS section is one of the book’s showcase chapters but occupies a smaller proportion of the total runtime than the gaming history. The alternating Explore/Create structure means space, the Titanic, Antarctica, and other adventures share time with detailed accounts of building the Ultima franchise and Ultima Online.
Does Christopher Grove’s narration suit the dual Explore/Create chapter structure, or does the format create tonal inconsistency?
Grove handles the structural alternation well. He maintains a consistent energy and register across both categories of chapter, which is essential given how different the adventure material is from the technical gaming history. The performance is one of the book’s genuine assets.
Is Richard Garriott’s connection to his astronaut father Owen Garriott a significant thread throughout the memoir?
Owen Garriott’s career at NASA is central to understanding Richard’s early exposure to exploration culture and his eventual decision to pursue private spaceflight. The father-son dynamic is present throughout, handled with admiration rather than psychological complexity.
