What I learned from reading Explore/Create My Life in Pursuit of New Frontiers, Hidden Worlds, and the Creative Spark by Richard Garriott.

It was almost 3 o'clock in the morning when the sound of a glass door being smashed woke me up.

A few seconds later, I heard someone walking on the broken glass.

Hours earlier, my house had been filled with friends who had come to watch huge fragments of the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 crashing into Jupiter.

The first time in history it was possible to watch an extraterrestrial collision in our solar system.

I had built this house on the highest point in Austin just for nights like this, and its centerpiece is a large telescope.

the evening, I had opened the security gates in the front of

the house and turned off the exterior lighting so it would not interfere with our observation.

The spectacle lasted only a few hours and by 10 o'clock my guests were gone.

When the doorbell rang just after midnight, I didn't think too much about it, guessing that someone had just left something behind.

Standing at the front door, shifting nervously from side to side with his hands jammed into the pockets, was a stranger.

Instead, I stood there watching him, to see what he was going to do.

I stood at the window for about a half an hour.

Occasionally, he would walk around the side of the house, and I moved from window to window to follow him.

Then it occurred to me that he was waiting for me to get home.

I began wondering how I could encourage him to leave without letting him know that I was home.

And as I had hoped, he looked around, surprised, watching the gate slowly shut.

He must have realized that he was on the wrong side of the perimeter because he hopped over the fence and disappeared into the darkness.

I watched for several more minutes to see if he'd come back.

But when he didn't return after 30 more minutes, I went back to bed.

3 hours later, someone hurled a large rock through my rear glass doors.

I realized that he must have been standing in the darkness for hours, just watching my house and waiting.

I rushed to the window and looked down to see him cautiously entering my house.

If this was simply a robbery, he probably waited and watched until he was certain that no 1 was home.

So, if I banged on the window above him, I thought, he would realize somebody was in the house and probably take off.

I started banging on the window, and I was so agitated that my fist went right through the glass.

The intruder stopped and looked up at me.

For a few seconds we stood like that, just glaring at each other.

Then I said to him in a clear and loud voice, get the fuck out of my house.

He stood perfectly still for a few more seconds, and then he walked into the house.

The dispatcher told me the officers would be there in 15 minutes.

It would take the intruder only a few minutes to find his way to my bedroom.

My gun safe had about a dozen weapons in it, but I had those guns for the same reason I had crossbows, battle axes, bows and arrows, even a working cannon.

They're all part of the pantheon of collectible history for me.

Knowing about them is essential for creating games.

Until that moment, I had never even considered the possibility that I might actually have to use 1 of those guns to protect myself.

I pulled back the slide and snapped the clip into place.

I could hear him moving around downstairs, talking to someone.

I still had the police dispatcher on the phone.

Then I asked, what do I do in this situation?

The dispatcher answered, matter of factly, Mr.

Garriott, if you feel threatened inside your own home by an intruder, you shoot him.

It was as if 1 of my stories was coming to life in my life.

A few seconds later I heard footsteps crunching on the broken glass directly below me.

Then the intruder started walking up the stairs.

He moved slowly and didn't look up at me for the first few steps.

Finally he paused and for the first time he saw the Uzi pointing at his head.

I warned him, stop right there or I'll shoot.

We stood there 6 feet apart staring at each other.

Then he turned and started walking back down the stairs.

I remember thinking, I don't want to kill this person, but it would be dangerous to let him walk away thinking I wouldn't fire my weapon.

So I aimed the gun just a few inches to the side and fired.

He just continued walking, his back to me.

I lost sight of him, but I could hear him walking around once again talking to someone.

They found him in a guest bedroom, sitting nearly naked on the edge of a bed.

Nothing about the entire incident seemed to affect him.

It immediately became clear that he was very troubled.

His name was Daniel Dukes, and he told them that he had seen a hologram over my house of me beckoning him there to receive the reward he'd earned for completing his quest.

His parents told law enforcement that he had suffered from a mental disorder for a long time and that they had given up on him.

The Police detained him as long as legally possible, and then they released him.

The police arrested him several more times the following year and let me know every time, but eventually he seemed to have drifted away.

Several years later, his obituary appeared in the newspaper.

Initially, authorities believed that he had jumped into the killer whale tank and had been bitten.

But they found his camera and the undeveloped photographs told a different story.

He had been hiding in the bushes for several days before jumping into the tank, taking photographs of women's backsides.

The fact that he was found on the back of the whale led the authorities to speculate that the whale had recognized him as an air breather and might have been trying to save him.

And that is how I learned to tell a story.

That was an excerpt from the book I'm going to talk to

you about today, which is Explore Create My Life in Pursuit of New Frontiers, Hidden World and the Creative Spark, and it was written by Richard Garriott.

So I found this book because I saw somebody post something like, hey, more people should build unique and bizarre and like creative homes.

They all of our houses don't have to look the same and then they link to a video about this guy, which is Richard Garriott.

I found out and this bizarre house that he built in Austin, Texas.

It's on the highest point in Austin, Texas.

It's got his own like high-powered telescope and observatory.

It's got dungeons, secret passageways, a collection of all these medieval weapons and science fiction memorabilia.

And in the first few minutes of the video, he gives an overview of his career.

And starting in the 70s, he was 1 of the first successful computer game designers.

And so some of my favorite books that I've read for

the podcast are autobiographies or biographies on video game designers.

The 1 that comes to mind or the 2 that come to mind is episode 195, Sid Meier, who is also making games around the same time that Richard Garriott was.

And then episode number 21, Masters of Doom, which is actually the generation a few years after Sid and Richard

and so as I was watching the video I was like okay this guy thinks very differently than the average person let me go see if I can find

a biography on him I found this autobiography and it turns out people like Ernest Cline which wrote Ready Player 1, Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak have actually read this book and they've all blurbed about it in the book.

And so I wanna jump right into the introduction and as we'll see, he has a mindset that's very, that you and I have talked about over and over again on

this podcast, that the idea that the world is very malleable and that you can actually change the world around you and so he starts off explore and create.

So creation you think of all the things that he made most of the highlights I'm going to focus on is how he built like he was at the very beginning of an industry how he built his company half the book is about his exploration the fact that he went to space the fact that he's been to the bottom of the ocean he explored the Titanic he explored the Amazon River in South America he's gone hunting for meteorites in Antarctica and

so it was interesting as he starts the book saying these

are all it's the same exact that impulse like in the video he says listen the homes I build.

They're very much manifestations of the same creative drive that goes into the games I produce and it's obvious when you read the book that all the same creative drive that he has to explore the world around him and have and have all these unusual experiences.

He applied to building the video game companies that he that made him very wealthy.

These words are inextricable from each other.

We are fortunate to live in such a remarkable era for exploration and creation.

I was lucky to be born at the dawn of personal computers.

I was lucky to be the son of a scientist and an explorer.

I was lucky to learn early on that a deep understanding of the world around you makes you its master." That is the most important sentence to

I was lucky to learn early on that a deep understanding of the world around you makes it makes you its master.

There's 2 quotes that I think about all the time that jumped into my mind when I got to that sentence.

He's like, the world is a very malleable place.

If you know what you want and you go for it with maximum energy and drive and passion, the world will often reconfigure itself around you much more quickly and easily than you think.

I think Richard would agree with that quote.

He would also agree with this quote from Steve Jobs.

Life can be much broader once you discover 1 simple fact.

And that is everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it you can influence it you can build your own things that other people can use and that is a mindset that Richard applied not only to the building of his house the building of his companies the building of the games the virtual worlds in fact 1 of the taglines of I think either his first or second company is, we create worlds.

But also he did all these extreme in-person, live, interactive events.

And some of those are actually in the video.

I do buy into the adage that luck is the intersection of preparation and opportunity.

Opportunities parade past us all the time.

You must expose yourself to the possibility of massive failure, which he does.

Wait till we get to that point where his first game company almost fails and it's directly traced back to a decision he made and so not only do you have

have to believe and you must believe in what you're doing so much that you do it anyway.

This attitude has helped me create and build 2 world impacting industries, computer games and commercial spaceflight.

And then he continues this line of thought with some ideas that helped him build his career.

The first thing is he thinks about building games, just the same thing as creating art interactive stories are where creativity and exploration meet it is a new art form once I've had the pleasure of helping shape what's fascinating so this book I think about 2017 he starts building a computer games in the end of the night like the late 1970s he ends this book saying hey we're still in the infancy of creating virtual worlds of the gaming industry at large.

And 1 thing that he repeats over and over again in

the book is something that helped him create his games is the fact that he's just spent a lot of time learning broadly.

So this is the first time he mentions that he mentions it over and over again.

I created some of the first virtual worlds.

I did it with little to go on, largely through trial and error.

Like any good artist in any other medium, I became a polymath.

I studied subjects from philosophy and religious history to architecture, languages, physics, and fashion.

And then he tells us what he believes he believes that games are in fact the single most important form of media games have become much more than pleasant diversions.

They have a huge opportunity to be the media form of the 21st century.

And then he ends the introduction with, even the way the book, even the

You don't have to read it chronologically.

I did, of course, but he even says, you can read this book straight through, but if you prefer to jump around to follow your own passion and interests, I encourage you to do so.

I hope by exploring the pages that follow and taking on the challenges I offer within them, thinking about what you would do in many of these same situations, you will feel as though you have embarked on your own adventure." And so Richard, like every person that we study, has this deep base of historical knowledge.

He's very curious about the achievements of people that live long before he did.

And he talks about like these people are my heroes.

He's going to mention somebody that has had a huge influence on my life as well.

So he says my heroes are people who took epic journeys into the unknown, often at substantial personal risk.

I am simply following the path that they carved into history.

I fancy I fancy myself and an admirer of men like polar explorer Ernest Shackleton.

So I read the most famous book on Shackleton back on.

The book is called Endurance, Shackleton's Incredible Voyage.

And I actually have another biography of Shackleton.

This guy named Ranouf, I think it's Ranouf Finas or something like that, Finanus, I don't know how to pronounce his name but he's a explorer he wrote this autobiography that has maybe the best title for an autobiography that I've ever heard and he titled it mad bad and dangerous to know so in addition to being an explorer he also is like a prolific writer and he wrote a biography on Shackleton and so I both those books eventually read them and of course make a podcast on them

this before but I see Shackleton's face like

several times every day because every time I

pick my phone he's my lock screen And it's not like you can get some, in fact, I've seen covers of books with Shackleton with like, you know, clean shaven, looks like he's well rested.

This is Shackleton mid-expedition, beard with ice and snow encrusted in it.

Looks like he's on the borderline of death.

And I wanted to put it on the lock screen of my phone because of his family motto.

So every time I pick up my phone I glance I see Shackleton and I'm reminded and I'm reminded don't even think for a second that you're gonna give up Quitting is not an option and you can just win by just endure He says by endurance we conquer and I like to repeat that to myself and really think about it I mean if you really think about what he's saying that is an entire story told in 4 words.

So anyway Shackleton is hugely influential.

So if you haven't read the book or haven't listened to that podcast I highly recommend.

I think your life would be better knowing Shackleton and his story than not knowing it.

He's gonna start his first, he's gonna start his first game when he's still a senior in high school.

And so the prehistory to him starting his own game is playing other games.

And before computer games, he was obsessed with tabletop games.

The most important tabletop game that he ever played was Dungeon and Dragons and he's going to describe like the influence that D&D has on him building his games but really I think about like you can think about D&D as a metaphor for building a company.

And this idea, if we want to continue this metaphor, it's going to continue over the next 2 pages.

D&D is a role-playing game, an interactive story that is negotiated between the narrator, the dungeon master, and the participants or players.

So remember, we're not reading this to think of like what D&D is or the idea of playing games.

We're using this as a metaphor for what it's like to build a company.

The dungeon master or founder or game master creates the elaborate fantasy and the people playing with him or her take the roles of specific characters in that story interacting with the other players to solve problems and to move the adventure forward.

And so I got to that paragraph and I read, re-read that the last part of the last sentence again, interact, interacting with the other players to solve problems and move the adventure forward.

And that's exactly, I think that's 1 of the best metaphors for building a company.

Made me think of the way that if you go, like, so if I could bring back 1 person, 1 great entrepreneur from history from the dead, and I can only choose 1, and I can't, you know, obviously I think the obvious example is Steve Jobs so we're gonna say hey you can't pick Steve Jobs in that case my number 1 pick is Edwin land and you probably already picked up on that because I've done what 4 podcasts of on them I've read 5 books on them I'm about to reread that book insisting on

next few weeks to make another podcast on it But that's the way he talked about in multiple cases where he's like, you know, he ran he built Polaroid.

He ran Polaroid for His tenure at the head of his company was longer than almost any other founder executive in American history It was like 50 years or I can't like he started when he was I think what 1819 and it got kicked out unfortunately when

he was like what 70 something that I don't have the exact numbers in front of me

but it was an extremely decade after decade after decade of building the same company which is really fascinating but he would always say like this is like I feel like I'm leading my like I'm running company like I'm leading students on this grand scientific experiment but towards the end of the book a triumph of genius which I covered all the way back on Founders number 134, he gives, Edwin Land gives this acceptance speech.

And he uses that opportunity to encourage you to continue the sense of adventure and exploration that your descendants had.

This is a, there's only a few sentences, but

This is a direct quote from Edwin land land chose to pay tribute to the process of invention by analogy to the basic American sense of adventure and exploration and now this is where what this is now land talking we are becoming a country of scientists and however much we become a country of scientists, we will always remain first of all that same group of adventurous transcontinental explorers pushing our way from wherever it is comfortable into some more inviting, unknown, and dangerous region.

They are the gold mines of the intellect.

And when the great scientists and the innumerable scientists of today respond to that ancient American urge for adventure then the form that adventure takes is the form of invention and obviously inventions are usually built around companies right cars any companies are really usually built around inventions he invented instant photography That is what Polaroid was built around.

Then the form that adventure takes is the form of invention.

And when an Invention is made by this new tribe of highly literate highly scientific people new things open up and then lands deep historical knowledge like to think about

were in that man's head And so to me when I'm reading this last sentence here He's drawing on everything not only everything he experienced but everything that he studied and he knows about human history, and he wraps it up for us here.

Always those scientific adventurers have the characteristic, no matter how much you know, no matter how educated you are in science, no matter how imaginative you are, of leading you to say, I'll be darned, whoever thought such a domain existed.

And so what the hell does that have to do with what you and I are talking about because where we are in this book where in the story there is no such thing as a computer game, right?

He's only thinking, I'm obsessed with D&D, I'm a teenage dungeon master.

And you're gonna see as this story continues, this like, oh, wow, well, okay, not only can I make my own game, right?

And then He progresses through trial and error and doing that but then He's like, oh wait I can sell this thing that I was doing for free that I'm completely obsessed with that I love so much and then by doing that

I can create my own company That is 1 of the best feelings in the world.

So I jumped ahead a little bit but it's just fascinating how all these things like I just love the fact how all these people in different domains are right in completely different experiences.

They just think and they arrive and they're like oh this is truly possible to create something new, something that never existed.

So let me go back to the book because I'm getting way ahead of myself and we'll get there in time.

This was before the emergence of computer games.

I'm a teenager, I'm an online, or excuse me, I'm a teenage dungeon master in D&D.

There's gonna be a slight digression here, which is why I started the podcast where I did, because a huge theme of the book is the importance of storytelling.

Steve Jobs has told you and I over and over again that storytellers are the most powerful people in the world.

Richard Telles has said, listen, storytelling is extremely powerful, just like Steve Jobs said, but it also can be learned.

You can learn how to do this I learned that each game was only as good so again this this other paragraph here to let me tie back to what I started this on this is really to me a metaphor of building a company well

to you and then I'll add something onto it

I learned that each game was only as good as the ability of

the game master to craft a story and manage the negotiations into a compelling narrative.

We also turned to being game master and it was quickly obvious that while some people were very good at it, most were not.

That is when I began to really understand the power of storytelling.

in this book with another book I saw an excerpt from.

The guy that worked with Steve and helped lead the development of the iPod, Tony Fadell, has this new book.

And I saw this quote from it and it was on something that's very unique and again it's all gonna be tied to the fact that Steve Jobs knew the power of story and it's on the fact that the story defines the product and it's not the other way around.

So I just want to read a few paragraphs from this real quick.

Before he told you what a product did, he always took time to explain why you needed it.

And he made it all look so natural, so easy.

I'd watch other CEOs give pitches before, and they hardly know what their supposedly revolutionary product was.

Sometimes they didn't even know how to hold it right.

But customers and the press would always be in awe of Steve's presentations.

No prepared speeches, slides with almost no words.

He just knows what he's talking about and it all hangs together.

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#257 My Life in Pursuit of New Frontiers, Hidden Worlds, and the Creative Spark