This is probably some of the worst news I’ve heard in a long time. The newspaper reporter in me wants to wait until it’s been verified by something other than the Internet, but, well, there’s more than one source for the memorial wishes there.

John Watson was a former Origin Systems employee, who started as a tester and earned credits programming, designing, writing and in at least one case contributing artwork to Ultimas 7 and 8, Crusader: No Remorse, Wing Commander II and Ultima Online, among other projects. I’d known he was part of a startup team that included Ragnar Scheuermann and Chris L’Etoile working on an MMO called 9th Dominion, but I’d lost track of him after that. According to his last resume, he’d gone on to The Collective to work on Getting Up for Atari and Marc Ecko. He’d apparently been wanting to come back to Austin for yet another startup project with friends.

While we were all at the fundraiser for the UT Videogame Archive last week, just before the Austin GDC started, John Watson was apparently killing himself with sleeping pills.

I never got to meet the guy.

And I don’t think I have anything else to say about it.