Destination Games was a computer game development company created in April 2000 by Richard Garriott

Richard Garriott

Richard Allen Garriott is a British-American video game developer and entrepreneur.He is also known as his alter egos Lord British in Ultima and General British in Tabula Rasa...

, Robert Garriott

Robert Garriott

Robert K. Garriott is a computer game industry figure and entrepreneur. He co-founded Origin Systems and Destination Games with his brother, Richard Garriott, and was the CEO of NCsoft-North America until 2008. He is the second-eldest son of NASA astronaut Owen K. Garriott...

 and Starr Long, following their departure from Origin Systems

Origin Systems

Origin Systems, Inc. was a computer game developer based in Austin, Texas that was active from 1983 to 2004...

. ("Destination" is a play on "Origin", the company the Garriotts founded nearly two decades earlier.)

Destination was founded in Austin, Texas

Austin, Texas

Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of :Texas and the seat of Travis County. Located in Central Texas on the eastern edge of the American Southwest, it is the fourth-largest city in Texas and the 14th most populous city in the United States. It was the third-fastest-growing large city in...

 to develop massively multiplayer online role-playing game

Massively multiplayer online role-playing game

Massively multiplayer online role-playing game is a genre of role-playing video games in which a very large number of players interact with one another within a virtual game world....

s. At E3 2001, Richard Garriott announced a partnership making Destination the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 headquarters of South Korea

South Korea

The Republic of Korea , , is a sovereign state in East Asia, located on the southern portion of the Korean Peninsula. It is neighbored by the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east, North Korea to the north, and the East China Sea and Republic of China to the south...

n MMORPG

MMORPG

Massively multiplayer online role-playing game is a genre of role-playing video games in which a very large number of players interact with one another within a virtual game world....

 giant NCsoft

NCsoft

NCsoft is a South Korea-based online video game company, which has published massively multiplayer online role-playing games including Lineage, City of Heroes, Wildstar, Exteel, Guild Wars and Aion.-History:...

. As NCsoft Austin, Destination has mainly focused on developing and supporting the North American version of NCsoft's Lineage

Lineage (computer game)

Lineage is a medieval fantasy, massively multiplayer online role-playing game released in the United States in 1998 by the South Korean computer game developer NCsoft. It is most popular in Korea and is available in Chinese, Japanese, and English language versions...

games.

In 2007 Destination Games released its first game, Tabula Rasa

Tabula Rasa (computer game)

Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa was an MMORPG developed by Destination Games and published by NCsoft, designed in part by some of the creators of Ultima Online including Richard Garriott. The game is an RPG that blends certain shooter aspects into the combat system...

, a sci-fi MMORPG

MMORPG

Massively multiplayer online role-playing game is a genre of role-playing video games in which a very large number of players interact with one another within a virtual game world....

. The game did not sell as well as was hoped, Richard Garriott left NCsoft in 2008, and the game service closed in February 2009. The Destination Games website was taken down when NCsoft moved its United States headquarters from Austin to Seattle—calling it NCsoft West—in 2008.

NCsoft Austin employed five people to run the casual MMOG Dungeon Runners

Dungeon Runners

Dungeon Runners was a medieval fantasy, often satirical MMORPG developed and published by NCsoft. It featured gameplay similar to the Diablo series of games.- Development :...

, but announced in 2009 that support for this game will be ending in early 2010 due to low subscription numbers. As of October 2009, NCsoft employs about 150 people in the former Destination Games office in Austin mainly working in server operations, quality assurance

Quality Assurance

Quality assurance, or QA for short, is the systematic monitoring and evaluation of the various aspects of a project, service or facility to maximize the probability that minimum standards of quality are being attained by the production process...

, and customer support

Customer support

Customer support is a range of customer services to assist customers in making cost effective and correct use of a product. It includes assistance in planning, installation, training, trouble shooting, maintenance, upgrading, and disposal of a product....

 for various NCSoft MMO titles, however development operations have moved completely to other NCSoft subsidiaries on the West Coast. The trademark Destination Games still remains a property of NCSoft.

External links

• Destination Games
  • Forwards to PlayNC US or PlayNC Europe depending on location detected.
  • Original homepage prior to forwarding to NCsoft websites can be found at this Internet Archive
    Internet Archive
    The Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...
    
    link: Destination Games, Inc.