Management Team

The Company’s management team brings together four of the video gaming industry’s most experienced talent – all of whom have worked together before, several times, with very successful results in careers that total more than 100 years in the game business with more than 40 of those years spent specifically in the online space.

The first time was at ORIGIN Systems in the 1980s and 90s during which time ORIGIN went from garage startup to an eventual 1992 merger with game publishing leader, Electronic Arts. At the same time, ORIGIN became an iconic industry brand for quality game play and established Austin, Texas as a major global game development center forevermore.

From 2002-2008, members of this team again came together to launch and build the North American and European operations of the leading South Korean online game company, NCsoft Corporation. During this formative period, revenues skyrocketed and the company grew to a network of five development studios and more than 300 employees in North America and another 100 in Europe establishing NCsoft as one of the world's top online game brands.

During the past 25+ years, these serial entrepreneurs have been involved in the creation and market launch of more than 50 best-selling game titles on ever-changing hardware platforms. They also started, sold and kept numerous independent businesses in a wide variety of fields, blasted off into space (literally), deeply studied human relationships and the habits of happiness, and worked on the front lines of community betterment.

In this third iteration of this team in the game business, Dallas is definitely the keeper of the map and holder of the compass as Portalarium charts its course on a large and long journey. Everything in his background has prepared him for this particular role: from 20 years of game development and management experience (most recently at NCsoft) to 10 years of research in psychology and sociology, mapping the habits of human happiness; from single-handedly designing and programming games and educational products on his Apple II+ for Penguin Software in the early 80s to managing hundreds of creative and technical talent on product teams at ORIGIN Systems and Electronic Arts.

With charm, wit and great insight, Dallas can regail an audience of one to one thousand with stories of why we humans do what we do and why the internet is the great equalizer, helping us realize we don’t need more bananas than we can eat, and authentic happiness results from fulfilling our basic human need for social belongingness (from flea pickin’ in caveman days to exchanging virtual pokes on social networks).

Fred’s focus is on building out the company into a well-balanced operation of motivated, passionate, experienced people who work well together to make great games and make a difference in the world. He is carefully crafting all global branding for Portalarium and its products as he has done for several top game studios/publishers in the past as an exec with NCsoft, ORIGIN / Electronic Arts and MicroProse Software back in the day, plus many other entertainment companies in the fields of radio, television, cable television, print, music and retail.

As a restless gamer, Fred plays “hundreds of different games a little bit," trying to stay on top of the market and trends, and to kill time he doesn’t have. He lives in Downtown Austin where he never sleeps because he is actively engaged in community affairs and busy bicycling, kayaking and absorbing loads of the rich local music scene. A political refugee from Poland as a kid, Fred is the least technically proficient member of the team but the only one with a college degree; the rest of the guys try not to hold that against him.

If technical brilliance can blossom in the wake of academic failure then Steve is the poster child. He fell to earth in the heart of West Virginia and got the heck out of there as soon as he had access to wheels, leaving his high school in the rearview mirror. He has built his entire career in the online games business, starting out in the California mountains at Sierra Online programming The Realm. He later moved on to toil at Codemasters, then Digital Anvil / Microsoft Game Studios, Wolfpack Studios / Ubisoft, and finally NCsoft in Austin where he led the team (as producer/lead programmer) that brought Dungeon Runners to market.

As CTO, Steve lives deep in the code and also stays very close to player feedback to make Portalarium’s products and services the best they can be. He is also well known for his pointed sense of humor, off the wall remarks, complete disdain for social decorum, and even his wisdom. You just never know where this guy is coming from – and that’s part of the fun of it.

Richard was born in the UK to American parents while his father, Owen, was a Cambridge professor and was raised in Houston when his dad became a NASA scientist-astronaut. So, one might say that Richard was destined for “lofty” aspirations, also incorporating plenty of his mother’s artistic talents along the way. Under his gaming nom de plume, Lord British, he programmed his first computer game, Akalabeth, for the Apple II in 1980. Thereafter he launched the first installment in his legendary fantasy role play game series, Ultima, through his own game company, ORIGIN Systems, founded with his brother, Robert. Success came quickly and prompted Richard to drop out of his studies at the University of Texas to pursue computer game creation full time.

The Ultima series enjoyed a prosperous nine-edition run before giving way to the groundbreaking, Ultima Online, widely regarded as the first commercially successful massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) and is still providing fun for many thousands today in 2010 as a product of Electronic Arts. Richard went on to found a new game studio, Destination Games, which was acquired by NCsoft, and there he remained working on the online game Tabula Rasa until it launched in 2007.

He then set his sights on outer space. After a year of intense training, Richard blasted off in October 2008 to the International Space Station (ISS) on Soyuz TMA-13 through another of his ventures, Space Adventures. That 12-day excursion proved to be a life-changing experience. Richard's story -- from growing up as the son of an astronaut, to building a computer gaming franchise and empire, to his wonderous journey to the ISS -- has just been chronicled in a full-length 2010 documentary feature film, Richard Garriott: Man On A Mission which debuted at the recent South-by-Southwest Film Festival.  Richard also hosts a British-based learning website in conjunction with the U.K Space Agency, GovEd Communications and many other partners called Our Space - Digital Adventures In Space.   

Since his return to earth Richard has set about “greening” his entire lifestyle footprint and dedicating himself to projects that will help improve the world through the privatization of space travel and improved personal ground transportation. But games, fun and adventure remain a vital part of his daily routine so he will be closely involved in Portalarium’s evolution, including the design and development of several yet-to-be-announced premium titles which will take him back to his gaming roots while advancing the state of gameplay in social networking environments.