Well back in the early 1980's, I was creating "Ultima 4" the fourth, obviously, in the "Ultima" series. And unlike most role-playing games at that time, where in a role-playing game, the character you were playing was often your alter ego, meaning you might be this meek, mild-mannered computer nerd, but you were playing the character of "Conan the Barbarian" for example. And that would mean that while you were playing the game, if you were, if you were playing Conan you should act like Conan. And with "Ultima 4" that was the first game where I was speaking about virtues, and I wanted the player to respond to, what I'll call "moral dilemmas" and "ethical challenges" as they personally would respond to it; so not like Conan would, but like they personally would. So the character that you were creating in the game I wanted to be you, not your alter ego. And while doing my research on virtues and ethics and things of this nature, I did a lot of what I'll call "religious readings" to look for ethical parables and moral philosophy. And I'd come across in a lot of Hindu texts the concept of the word "Avatar" and in this case, the Avatar was being used as the incarnation of a belief or a philosophy, or in this a case, a God on the Earth. So that when God came to the Earth, their Avatar was their physical manifestation. And I thought, "Well, that's perfect," because really I'm trying to test you in your spirit being, playing within my fictional realm. So "Ultima 4: Quest of the Avatar" was the first time to my knowledge that "Avatar" was used as your embodiment in the computer game. We actually trademarked the word, so that for many years Origin actually owned the trademark of the word "Avatar," but over the years, as other people picked up its use and people in both paper gaming as well as computer gaming kind of debated whether this could or should be protected, people ultimately challenged it, so ultimately it was given up back to what I'll call "the free use of everyone."
