Tag Archives: Tabula Rasa

Bye bye, erm, Tabula Rasa

No-one can really say, hand on heart, that this was a surprise.

While the games media was very quick to pile in whenever Tabula Rasa looked shakey, and perhaps over-zealous in their declarations of its impending death, the truth is the game was never in that good shape subscriber wise. It never did as badly as Auto Assault (which had problems beyond the game itself), but it was never called a ‘hit’ internally. At least, not with a straight face.

For me, personally, it was symbolic of the last attempt by NCsoft to do something a little bit different. At least, it was when I joined the company in 2004 - when it was still ‘unicorns in space’, and before it became Starship Troopers. Having said that, a year after the reboot, I really liked what I played in 2005 (and still maintain that if by some miracle it could have been released then, it would have been a hit) but by 2007 it was never, ever going to be serious competition to… well, anything really.

I know some people will use this as an opportunity to spout craziness like “Sci-fi MMOs don’t work!” but in reality, the truth is the same as it’s always been: not-so-great games don’t work. They can do okay, for a while, but they’ll never be hits at launch.

Nope, you need to give those not-so-great games some time; whether it’s in development (assuming you know what you’re doing and just need more time) or in public release (assuming you listen to your community and know what you’re doing).

Sadly, Tabula Rasa didn’t get it.

Garriott… innn… SPAAAACCE!!

We have blast-off. The first ever games designer… in spaaace… etc.

No, the date wasn’t ringed on my calendar. I vaguely remember being told he was going up in mid-October, but I never paid much attention to the exact date even at NCsoft, so thanks BBC. I hope he has a safe and successful flight, and that he feels it’s worth the THIRTY MILLION DOLLARS (approximately) that he paid for the privilege.

That’s a heck of a lot of money to follow in Dad’s footsteps. If he wanted to save money, he could have gone Virgin Galactic, who’ll be charging a lot less - but then Richard’s going to be up for ten days, not ten minutes.

In case you’re wondering, that eye-popping budget was never bandied around much at NCsoft when I was there - but not for the reason you might be thinking. See, it’s all Richard’s money. (Nope. I didn’t think Ultima was that big either.) Not a penny came from NCsoft. Which is good. Because otherwise right now you’d probably be wondering just what else that cash could have been spent on.

Instead of just thinking: “So how is this supposed to help Tabula Rasa, exactly?”

Yeah, work can be weird

Got someone to throw a glass of water over a colleague today - and caught it all on film. Boy, some days… more on what that’s about soon enough.

Working hard on everything Leipzig. Pay attention to Twitter, if you’re that way inclined (or if you’re not, the most recent updates are on the front page here) and you’ll get a minute-by-minute.

Okay, you won’t, that would be stupid, but you’ll get occasional random updates when I’m too busy to sit and type here. Tonight my brain isn’t functioning enough to do anything more creative, so you see me here, rambling.

Let’s see. Read More »

Podcast, episode 3 - Tabula Rasa talk

I almost forgot! This went live on Friday after a few delays. If you’re fed up of listening to the sound of my voice, then this is the episode to download; I’m hardly in it!

Yep, this time out I hand over the MIC to Avatea, who talks for quite a while with Starr Long, Tom Potter and Victor Meinert - all of Destination Games, who in case you didn’t guess from the title are responsible for Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa. If you’re a TR fan you should give it a listen - and even if you aren’t, quite frankly… I mean otherwise why am I making all this effort??

As always you can listen to the podcast via a live stream, subscribe to it, or download the MP3 and do whatever you like with it in the comfort of your own home. There’s even a transcript! So enjoy.

Oh, and I’d love to hear (as always) what you’d like to see in upcoming episodes.

Official, and non-official, Facebook stuff

I’ve noticed in the last few days that a few people have been becoming ‘fans’ on Facebook of this City of Heroes Page. While it’s cool that people want to be fans of COH, I wanted to point out to y’all that it’s not an ‘official’ page. (There isn’t an official ‘Page’ yet, but there will be.)

One of the big issues with Facebook Pages is that anyone can create them, and they don’t get vetted as official or not. As a result there are lots of well-meaning fans who create Pages that are totally unofficial. While there’s nothing wrong with this, I just wanted to point you to some Pages (and Groups) that I know are official, because we set ‘em up. If you’d like to become a fan/join a group, and want to get the inside scoop direct from the source, then join these. Read More »

Boxing in Tabula Rasa - seconds out, round one!

The TabulaBlogger (and Caster) himself, Shuttler, organised a little boxing tourney in Tabula Rasa for his clan-mates… and they have the video to prove it. As I said to him, Survivor’s Eye of the Tiger makes everything better:

In case you didn’t know, recent patches to Tabula Rasa added this boxing ring as an extra, so now players can duel with good old fashioned fists, and as you’ll see in the video, feet. And guns. Boxing in the future ain’t like boxing now, you know that, right?

While we’re talking TR, if you’ve yet to try it, scoot on over to Zortel’s new blog who’s been documenting her experience with the trial that’s currently being given away at TVG. (As I mentioned over there, if you’re wanting to get a Starter Pack for Tabula Rasa, you’ll have to wait… they’re not available. Yet. And while we’re in parentheses, you need to register at TVG to claim your key. Yeah, nothing’s really free in this world, eh?)

Some random linkage

Few things that caught my eye recently…

Developers within NCsoft are working in Java, and more specifically something called the jMonkey Engine. Don’t ask me any more than that, I’m not a programmer! Anyway, using the JME, some of the Austin programmers have been creating world-building tools, and got to show them off at a recent Java conference. Joshua Slack posted the time-lapse video over on his blog, so go check it out; it’s pretty cool.

Quite a few people asked me at Comic Expo whether they could get trial keys for Tabula Rasa; the reason I didn’t have any is that we had a lot of trial deals about to hit… and now they have. (Although right now I can’t see where the TVG key offer is, myself. If I find it I’ll update.)

While we’re talking Tabula Rasa, this is a pretty good time to try the game as Deployment 8 just hit the live servers. (’Deployment’ sounds so much better than ‘patch’, don’t it?) Final bit of random Tabula Rasa news… our interview with some of the DG folk is in the can for Episode 3 of the podcast. It’s a long ‘un… by the way, Episode ‘2.5′ is coming really, really soon.

Finally, given that there’s more than a few MMOs in active development right now and pure Darwinian science says that not all will survive, it was interesting to read this ‘intervention’ over at Elder Game. Essentially it’s a checklist of ‘trouble ahead’ signs that any developer should be looking for. As a reveal of not-unheard-of practices in the games industry, it’s a bit depressing (especially if you’re an MMO developer who sees their own project in it) but interesting, nonetheless, especially considering the author, Eric Heimburg credits himself with being a systems designer on the ‘upcoming’ Star Trek Online. Hmmm.

Does raise an interesting point to finish on, though. As Eric points out, MMOs have really long development cycles, so why waste your life working on a bad one? Good question, but if you ask me, more applicable to your life in general. You don’t get much time on this earth, relatively speaking - so don’t spend too long doing stuff you hate.

Which leads me neatly to my task of the day - getting together a workable ‘breaking into the MMO industry’ presentation….

Tabula Rasa: Wonders

Oooooh. Purty.

YouTube Preview Image

Via Shawn at Massively. There’s a high-res version too if you want to go for the full effect.

Write a Tabula Rasa haiku, win a sketch…!

The latest episode of TabulaCast is now live - and inside it, there’s a competition!

If you’d like to win a sketch of your Tabula Rasa character, all you need to do (’all’ he says, jokingly) is write a haiku relating to, well, Tabula Rasa. If you’re judged the best of the bunch, you’ll win a free sketch from Draw the World Together. And while I’m not saying it’ll look this good, this was the sketch John (AKA ‘Shuttler’) himself got at the recent MiniCon…

… by Mr Andie Tong… you never know.

So if you want to be in with a chance to win, get yourself over to TabulaCast and download Episode 22, or if you haven’t got time to listen you can find the details at John’s Tabula Blogger site, too.

Of course if writing a haiku sounds like too much effort - you can always just come to the Comic Expo and get a sketch yourself!

NCE podcast - subscribe now!

Hey, as I said I’d mention it - you can now subscribe to (deep breath) The Official NCsoft Europe Podcast. Just click here and Feedburner will do the rest.

Even if you’ve already listened to the first two episodes do me a favour and subscribe anyway - we can keep track of subscriber numbers that way. And of course you get the latest episodes conveniently delivered to you, in digital format, like a special delivery by a postman of the future.

Also, while I have you here: how cool was this? (No, I don’t do birthday parties. Except in person. And then I dress like a clown. And charge by the second.)

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