Richard Allen Garriott is a British-American video game developer

Video game developer

A video game developer is a software developer that creates video games. A developer may specialize in a certain video game console, such as Nintendo's Wii, Microsoft's Xbox 360, Sony's PlayStation 3, or may develop for a variety of systems, including personal computers.Most developers also...

 and entrepreneur

Entrepreneur

An entrepreneur is an owner or manager of a business enterprise who makes money through risk and initiative.The term was originally a loanword from French and was first defined by the Irish-French economist Richard Cantillon. Entrepreneur in English is a term applied to a person who is willing to...

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He is also known as his alter ego

Alter ego

An alter ego is a second self, which is believe to be distinct from a person's normal or original personality. The term was coined in the early nineteenth century when dissociative identity disorder was first described by psychologists...

s Lord British in Ultima and General British in 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 well-known figure in the video game industry, Garriott was originally a game designer and programmer

Game programmer

A game programmer is a software engineer, programmer, or computer scientist who primarily develops codebase for video games or related software, such as game development tools. Game programming has many specialized disciplines all of which fall under the umbrella term of "game programmer"...

 and now engages in various aspects of computer game development and business.

On October 12, 2008, Garriott launched aboard Soyuz TMA-13

Soyuz TMA-13

Soyuz TMA-13 was a Soyuz mission to the International Space Station . The spacecraft was launched by a Soyuz-FG rocket at 07:01 GMT on 12 October 2008. It undocked at 02:55 GMT on 8 April 2009, performed a deorbit burn at 06:24, and landed at 07:16...

 to the International Space Station

International Space Station

The International Space Station is a habitable, artificial satellite in low Earth orbit. The ISS follows the Salyut, Almaz, Cosmos, Skylab, and Mir space stations, as the 11th space station launched, not including the Genesis I and II prototypes...

 as a self-funded tourist, returning 12 days later aboard Soyuz TMA-12

Soyuz TMA-12

Soyuz TMA-12 was a Soyuz mission to the International Space Station which was launched by a Soyuz FG rocket at 11:16 UTC on 8 April 2008. It docked to the Pirs module of the station on 10 April 2008. Landing occurred at 03:37 on 24 October...

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In 2011 he was married and changed his name to Richard Garriott de Cayeux.
Garriott was born in Cambridge

Cambridge

The city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, and raised in Nassau Bay, Texas

Nassau Bay, Texas

Nassau Bay is a city in Harris County, Texas, United States, bordering the southeastern edge of the city of Houston. It is located in the Clear Lake Area near Galveston Bay, directly adjacent to the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center. The population was 4,170 at the 2000 census...

, United States

United States

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

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