“You’re leaving here… for NCsoft? You *know* Tabula Rasa is going to crash and burn, right?”
– heard from someone when I announced my plans to leave Mythic, a year and a half before Tabula Rasa shipped
Adam Martin, formerly CTO of NCsoft Europe, has posted his own …post-mortem isn’t a good word, more of a memoir of his peripheral experiences with Tabula Rasa’s launch. It’s a good read – and you should go read it now. As his posting title puts it, “We need to talk about Tabula Rasa; when will we talk about Tabula Rasa?”
Well, Adam’s a bit safer in that he’s on a whole other continent. Here in Austin game development, it’s hard to find someone who isn’t, at a maximum, one degree removed from someone who was involved, at one point or another, with TR. It was a massive project, it employed a great many people over its lifetime, and at least half of the resumes currently sitting in my email are from people involved, at one point or another, with TR. Combine that with Midway’s long-running explosion and you have most of the Austin game development community polishing resumes.
So what happened?
My take is pretty similar to Adam’s, actually. I was considerably closer geographically, but not that much closer from a development perspective. To mirror Adam’s “who is this guy and why is he pontificating, again?” bona fides, I…
- …was a designer on another, smaller project at NCsoft Austin’s office (hired as system designer, eventually promoted to lead designer)
- …wasn’t on the TR dev team
- …am not much for FPS games, am pretty sad at them, and usually die horribly in Team Fortress 2
- …used that as an excuse for staying as far away from TR discussions as possible
- …it was a pretty weak excuse, yeah.
- …was on the same mailing lists Adam was (save the cool management ones he was privy to, which was probably for the best) and heard much the same angst, cheerleading, and general “holy crap what now” gestalt.
Gathering Feedback, Putting It Into A Box, Never Speaking Of It Again
As TR moved closer to release, company wide, we were *ordered* to start particpating in weekly playtests. As I mentioned, I wasn’t really fond of shooters, and clung to that Get Out Of Jail Free card fiercely. I mean, being one of the most obnoxiously opinionated persons on internal email lists, along with the whole ranting on the web for a decade thing, having an excuse *not* to have an opinion on That Thing Looming Over All Of Us was pretty sweet.
But closer to release, we were told to play the game and give feedback. Which I did. I think my overall feedback was “it wasn’t THAT bad” (for those at Mythic who remember the blistering we-should-probably-fire-your-ass-right-now-for-that-very-unhelpful-email feedback I fired off about Imperator prior to its final E3, that may raise an eyebrow or three). It *wasn’t* that bad. The tutorial was kind of meh, then got kind of cool, then you wandered around and shot things. It wasn’t World of Warcraft, which I considered a plus. I didn’t really enjoy playing it, but it wasn’t for me.
(I’m sure my somewhat constant resentment over Tabula Rasa being the twelve thousand pound gorilla which had dozens of programmers and a floor full of artists while our project was flailing about wildly for just one concept artist and maybe a server programmer or two had nothing to do with it. But I digress. For now, We’ll get back to that somewhat constant resentment in a bit.)
The calendar moved forward inexorably, and TR went into marketing beta – you know, where anyone can play it so they get ALL excited and make guilds and get ready for release and… yeah, that didn’t happen. People downloaded the game, had varying degrees of the “it’s not THAT bad” reaction, and didn’t play it again.
This was noted. One of the mantras that went around production discussions after Auto Assault’s launch square into the pavement was that if you can’t get people to play the beta for free, you have serious, serious issues. Tabula Rasa had those issues. Not as bad as Auto Assault – there were people doggedly playing every night and presumably enjoying themselves, and metrics were duly assembled to measure every movement those testers took. But it was pretty clear, at least from my completely disassociated and busy with my own thing viewpoint, that there wasn’t a lot of excitement.
So, as Adam mentioned, a survey was sent out shortly before the game was scheduled to release, anonymously asking, among other things, if the game should be delayed. I put that it should, based on the Auto Assault beta-not-lit-on-fire thing and the general principle that if you have to ask if it should be delayed, it probably should be. But I didn’t feel very passionately about it one way or the other. (I’m told later that most of the team DID feel pretty passionately about it and made it known so.)
The survey’s results weren’t announced. Internal rumors swept pretty widely (I know, because if they got to my end of the building, they were pretty wide) that the results were almost unanimously for a delay.
There was no delay.
Whoops.
You’re The Next Contestant On The Game Is Wrong
All during this time, I was pretty busy. Our game was trying to move into full production. We were the next product scheduled for shipment after Tabula Rasa. We were scrambling to fill some pretty key hires, justify an ambitious/insane production schedule, and generally get our shit into gear.
Right about then, the following things happened:
- We were faced with some pretty key technical issues (I can’t go into any further detail, just assume for the moment they made us look like complete blithering idiots and go from there)
- Tabula Rasa shipped, promptly flopped, and everyone went “uh… What the hell?”
- Everyone in management decided that was *not* going to happen again, and most had their own theories on how that would be prevented.
- The poster child for making sure it was *not* going to happen again became… us.
There was a company meeting about then, which was designed to boost the company morale. Chris Chung had just taken over from Robert Garriott, people were scared about their future, and we were tasked, as a key part of our presentation, to show how kickass we were.
We failed.
We had no game systems to show, because we had no functioning game server beyond a prototype that we had migrated away from months prior. We showed a depressing landscape of twisted trees and rocks, and our lead designer, who normally is one of the most inspirational speakers I’ve heard in the industry, understandably wilted under the stress of YOU MUST SAVE OUR COMPANY NOW and gave a pretty depressed speech about the game’s fiction that didn’t match much of what was shown onscreen. The internal response was brutal to the point of sadism, and in a failing of management was made known to the leads along with who gave the comments. Most of whom were… on Tabula Rasa.
This was not helpful to morale, to put it mildly.
Things got worse. An executive from Korea came to check on our progress, and was surprised that we were working on an MMO. (I wish I was joking.) We were told that our jobs weren’t in danger, really. It’s FINE. You’re good for at least a few months or so.
Meanwhile, Tabula Rasa chugged on.
We soldiered on, moved inexorably towards our first playable demo. It was a really kick-assed zone, our artists (which we finally had) outdid themselves, our programmers (which we finally had) did awesome work, I had taken over lead design duties due to the former lead being promoted onward and upward at his own request (his vision of the game long before eviscerated by budget cuts) and we were gonna kick ass, it was gonna be great, everything was finally firing on all cylinders, we were going to show everyone at the company that we could follow through on our promises and our ninjitsu was superior and and and the first team playtest we did on the new server failed completely.
The team meeting following that was unpleasant. I imagine the same “it was your fault no it was your fault no you” conversation took place at Tabula Rasa more than once.
Shortly thereafter the project was cancelled. Not one of the highlights of my career, especially since I was one of the folks who had to man up and tell our superiors that no, we were not going to be able to deliver a playable demo on schedule and yes, we knew what that meant. Our team shrunk by 2/3rds as we swiftly moved to working on a new prototype to justify our continued existence.
Meanwhile, Tabula Rasa chugged on.
There was another company meeting, which was designed to boost company morale. We were told that we were eminently replacable in general (which I’m told later was a wildly, wildly misconstrued statement, but to put it mildly, did not boost company morale) and that our team in specific was a “distraction” from NCsoft’s core business model. Everyone, including me, immediately began looking for work.
When we were finally let go a month later, it wasn’t a surprise, and most of us already had offer letters in hand elsewhere. (I was given the option to transfer to another NCsoft studio, but declined, as we had put down roots here in Austin.) At this point, my personal perspective came to an end, since I, well, didn’t work there any more.
Meanwhile, Tabula Rasa chugged on.
What Would Snarky Bloggers Do?
So, I don’t have any magic solutions for what should have been done differently. My personal view on Tabula Rasa is that it was a project in search of reasons – the original design was “let’s make a game both Korea and the US will go for”, and when that failed, it became “let’s make a game both shooter fans and MMO fans will go for”. Not being a full shooter and not being a full MMO, it didn’t do well at attracting either. But that’s from the outside looking in – any armchair designer could figure that out.
To quote Adam:
When the organization disempowers you, and nothing you do seems able to make a diference, but – in your opinion – the impending event is an “extinction-level” disaster, is resignation the only valid response? Surely not?
Our response was to keep our heads down and do the best that we could at our jobs. From what I gathered from hallway conversations with others, that was a fairly universal take. It’s what you CAN do.
Unfortunately it wasn’t enough, for our project, and ultimately, for Tabula Rasa as well. There’s nothing that you can point to and say “here was the big mistake”. There were a lot of tiny mistakes, and they built up.
Would delaying Tabula Rasa’s open beta have saved it? Probably not.
Would delaying Tabula Rasa’s release have saved it? Probably not.
In the end, some games – most games, actually – just fail. Tabula Rasa was one of those. There wasn’t anything obvious or magical to it. It just wasn’t a game that very many people got passionate about. The biggest failing, though, was that it was in development about twice as long and spent twice as much as it had any right to. And that’s what promotes it, in this snarky outside blogger’s view, from understandable failure to extinction-level company-slaying train wreck. That took precedence over any design failure or engineering failure or art vision or whatever your personal opinion on why it failed might be.
It just. took. too. much. money.
#1 by Random Poster on January 16th, 2009
Good Read, Been wondering ever since you left NCSoft what it was like around there before the poo hit the fan.
#2 by Veritas Gax on January 16th, 2009
If I could highlight one theme that I realized ran through the studio some time into my employment there ended it was that there was no continuity, no stability whatsoever in terms of projects being given a direction and being allowed to just get there. Our project was a victim (hilariously so, really) of it, but so was TR.
Most people nowadays subscribe to the notion of making sure something is good and fun before releasing it, and if it’s broken, you should try to fix it as soon as you can. The less obvious corollary to this mantra is that you can only bend some ideas and concepts so far before they break.
In these cases, recognizing that the game idea just isn’t going to work and probably needs to be put out of its misery is key, but so often that realization is relegated to whispers and thoughts because naturally, people don’t want to get laid off.
Art Min had a great philosophy for this when he took over as Exec Producer: “Teams don’t fail, projects do”. It was supposed to encourage teams to try things and for management to understand that the cost of doing business is a lot of failures, which hopefully lead towards a smashing success.
It’s pretty telling that he was told he had to remove that line from his PPT.
#3 by Matt on January 16th, 2009
How long had your project been in development? Maybe the first playable demo was too ambitious for a first playable demo? Certainly, in a situation where someone else controls the money, you always need a kickass demo, no matter how kludged together and faked.
Not that that would’ve saved your project. As a publisher-owned studio, the personal relationships are probably more important, and I don’t know how you work that between Austin and Korea. Really a tough situation.
#4 by Openedge1 on January 16th, 2009
It is so funny to read someone’s first hand experience of TR, someone who had their hands on the game before release, someone who felt the same as I did when I played it.
it wasn’t THAT bad.
It also wasn’t that good. And that right there is what put it over the edge.
Lets use a game that everyone thinks is going to fail this year of ‘09 to compare it.
Age of Conan is NOT that bad (notice the inflection). Actually it is somewhat good. The COMPANY is to blame for where the game sits at this time. They changed what did not need to be changed, and farked around with the true concept of the game…
The COMPANY of course is trying to rectify this by making the game even BETTER. And thanks to the fact it is NOT that bad, it can at least somewhat succeed.
Tabula Rasa had nowhere to go, as it was not THAT bad, and was not that good. No amount of fixing could make it better is the problem.
That makes all the difference right there.
#5 by Halibut Barn on January 16th, 2009
A lot of that could probably be copied/pasted into Hellgate: London’s story, too. Took too long, cost too much, pushed out too early, fixed up too late…
I played TR for a little while, and my take on it is pretty much along the ‘too average’ lines. There wasn’t anything terribly wrong with it, but there wasn’t anything compelling enough to make you want to play it instead of WoW either.
#6 by Trevel on January 16th, 2009
I’m in the same boat with the Tabula Rasa beta/demo. I played it. It was meh. Interesting ideas, not what I was promised, not what I’m interested in, a few game-breaking features — the last can be fixed, the first two can’t. Or at least can’t without a disaster of Galaxies:NGE proportions.
For free, Meh might have worked. For a one-time cost, Meh might have worked. Subscription fee? Never.
#7 by Vaxhacker on January 16th, 2009
As someone who was both on the TR development team for a long time, and then later on Scott’s unnanounced project…I can state without reservation that my answer to Adam’s question (“if you see the trainwreck coming, do you get off the train?”) is a resounding yes.
I have no regrets doing so, either. It sucks to admit defeat, true, but it is not as bad as the alternatives. I was also on (“the ill-fated”) UO2 project, and being cancelled was a far worse experience. And on UO2, I wasn’t aware enough to see the warning signs of impending doom. They were less clear (though in hindsight, present) on TR, but on my last team at NCsoft, there was an easily identifiable decision that I believed was the deathknell of the project. And so, that was my cue to exit, despite all of the good things I could point to – great design, talented team, etc.
Now, if you have a family and can’t hop jobs, etc. there are definitely mitigating circumstances, and I can understand why hanging on to a paycheck is a good thing. But personally, if I think that my game is headed towards failure, and it’s out of my control to prevent that…then I’m gone. Life is too short.
#8 by Klaitu on January 16th, 2009
Forgive me if this is a stupid question, because I’ve never been a developer or anything..
It seems to me that if I were an executive at a company that makes video games, and my livelyhood depended on making an awesome product, that I would play said product personally to see if it really was going to be awesome.
Does this not happen or something? Surely suits can play video games.
#9 by Matthew Weigel on January 16th, 2009
I’m contemplating writing from my perspective on this as well; I think it is different enough from yours and Adam’s to possibly be useful as well. On the other hand, my old project is still alive, and I’m disinclined to give those guys trouble by saying much right now.
I will, however, point out that the survey results were eventually released internally – I think it was February or so when it went up on the Sharepoint. It was pretty interesting.
I kind of waffle on “teams fail” vs. “projects fail.” I’d say there’s another angle, and sometimes failure stems from the process. When you have a team that is married to a failing process, I think you’ll find that the team can be strongly linked with failure as well. If you can convince such a team to change their process and culture – something Adam addresses a bit in his blog – I think you’ll also see more success in their projects.
I’m reminded of what a local Austin programmer/start-up founder wrote on the subject of finding success, even starting with a terrible project: http://blog.asmartbear.com/blog/your-idea-sucks-now-go-do-it-anyway.html. What he doesn’t say (too clearly, anyway) is how you get from ‘terrible idea’ to ’success.’ I’d say that it’s a strong, fast feedback loop where you figure out what’s doing well and what’s not along the way. Projects will change a lot more, but less frequently end in failure, if you stick to that principle (at least, in my opinion).
#10 by Az on January 16th, 2009
They *can* play them, but not everyone enjoys the same things. Even among people who actually like games, tastes differ. You can’t have Bob The Exec playing an FPS demo, and he just can’t see the fun, so he cans the project.
#11 by Matt on January 16th, 2009
“It seems to me that if I were an executive at a company that makes video games, and my livelyhood depended on making an awesome product,”
Then you would be a mythical creature, frolicking with the unicorns. Look around for high-ranking executives who fared poorly after their projects did the same. You will be hard pressed to find them.
#12 by dartwick on January 16th, 2009
I wish I was rich and could produce my own MMO.
#13 by Kevin Gadd on January 16th, 2009
I really wish you hadn’t had to go through such a painful experience with your project at NC, regardless of the circumstances involved – it saddens me that even as the industry grows more ‘mature’ and brings in more yearly revenues, things like this still continue to happen. Nobody deserves to be treated like that. I hope NC wises up and stares their organization-wide failings in the face, so they can address them and do right by all their employees.
#14 by Abalieno on January 16th, 2009
That took precedence over any design failure or engineering failure or art vision or whatever your personal opinion on why it failed might be.
I don’t think so, Lum.
I think it was the poor vision and lack of strong design that caused the long dev cycle. People started open their eyes too late. It was a project born on the wrong premises, all the other aspects originated from there.
The amount of money was a kind of consequence to a faulty process.
Lack of focus for Garriott was probably the leading mistake. He looks like someone who stopped caring for games long ago, but stayed in the industry just because he enjoyed the popularity.
It also seems that there’s too much importance on “feedback”. Feedback is worth nothing if you don’t know how to read and use it.
#15 by Merkwurdigliebe on January 16th, 2009
Question is: can the MMO industry every get away with what Seinfeld did? First couple of seasons of Seinfeld were abysmal, but the network execs let it continue and eventually it became good. Of course TV shows can no longer get away with that; they must be instant hits and are then allowed to slowly spiral into utter crap (e.g., Desperate Housewives, Friends, ER, Lost, etc.). So maybe I have answered my own question. If the MMO industry is anything like the network TV industry then in this economic climate you had better make an instant hit or you are fuct. So, um, I guess people who want to make a good MMO (e.g., Eve-Online) and not a great MMO (i.e., WoW) need to follow a business model other than “throw shitloads of cash at development and hope you can be like Blizzard.”
#16 by Mystery on January 16th, 2009
“Question is: can the MMO industry every get away with what Seinfeld did? ”
Sure, look at Runescape: An indy title with a java front end that, when it was released, supported under 100 concurrent players. It gained a cult following, and the interface generally improved (all with, at the outset, the work of only one programmer). Soon (like 2001-2002) they started charging for premium access, hired other developers, and got to work.
Now, I occasionally hear from kids that are peers of my children who find the game, play it to death, and disdain WoW. Jagex, the company founded by the original developer and 2 business partners, now employs 350 people internationally, and just the other week they debuted a new “high resolution” version of the game interface.
#17 by Elbows on January 16th, 2009
What was Garriot’s role in this failure. It seemed like when the going got tough he left the fucking planet. What was his stake in this and is his reputation tarnished as a result?
#18 by Brian 'Psychochild' Green on January 16th, 2009
A very interesting perspective on it all. One problem I worried about when I bought Meridian 59 is that I wouldn’t know the appropriate time to let go if it came to that. As people have pointed out, it’s really hard to essentially put yourself out of a job (or, in my case, admit that I made a failed investment funded by credit cards). I really don’t consider M59’s resurrection to be a failed project, but I have made the hard decision not to work on it full time.
But, I did get to make the decision, instead of someone making it for me. I didn’t have the impossible task of being on the project that had to become the savior of the company. I also knew where my personal breaking point was, and a woman that loves me but knows how to put her foot down.
Garriott gave a presentation at a GDC about the time TR was scheduled to release. He explained the previous failures during the development of the earlier versions of TR. One problem, he pointed out, was that there were three executives in charge (him, Jake Song, and Starr Long), and no one really wanted to point out the crap ideas from the others. Unfortunately, it looks like that problem continued even after they restructured. I heard someone say that if it had been anyone besides Garriott at the helm, the project would have been canned much sooner. As much as I think TR got a bit of a bad rap, it’s probably a shame someone didn’t kill the project sooner and save NCSoft a whole lot of pain.
#19 by Sullee on January 16th, 2009
As a player I can’t help but compare to HG:L (which I found to be much better than TR btw). Essentially, I didn’t view them as something I would pay a subscription for. Neither game presented any content (in the time I played them) that was even remotely challenging and this more than anything else disqualified them as subscription worthy. It wasn’t that I hated them but rather I felt they should not try to bill like MMO’s when the play they provided was single player with bits of online thrown in.
Anyway, sad story and I hope those involved all hit the ground running with more wisdom than before.
#20 by Mercury on January 17th, 2009
Feedback in a box: this is something that I have never understood, as an industry outsider (so to speak). There must be someone or some small team that pulls the trigger with the knowledge that such action is a mistake.
SOMEONE or SOMEONEs knew the game was not fun. If a delay will not save it, why can’t they cancel? Sure, it’s very far along and it’s going to be near agony to cancel it… but look what happened after launch. There’s a whole world of hurt waiting outside the womb. As grim as it sounds, people knew. Someone knew.
Do these things just take on a life of their own, like any other highly-creative effort? It’s hard for me to fathom, with so much money on the line.
#21 by Ramification on January 17th, 2009
@Klaitu
Honestly, I believe this question should be annotated with sarcasm and made rethorical.
#22 by UnSub on January 17th, 2009
@Mercury: When you’ve got a lot invested in something and acknowledging the unpopular issues publicly might see you lose a lot of money / time / your job, it is human nature to take the easier path and hope for the best.
Also, if TR was cancelled, people lost their jobs anyway. And perhaps it could get a few extra patches post-launch that would fix the major issues? After all, it wasn’t that bad, right? Deciding to launch was the easier decision. It ended up where it ended up.
#23 by Jeremy Preacher on January 17th, 2009
@Klaitu:
Robert Garriott played the hell out of TR, at least for the first month of internal beta. (After which I left the company, for completely unrelated reasons.) I had the next office over, and got to listen to all the gunfire through the walls
#24 by Outlawedprod on January 17th, 2009
”if you see the trainwreck coming, do you get off the train?”
Someone needs to ask the Duke Nukem Forever guys how they have been so successful to stay in business !!
#25 by Matt on January 17th, 2009
@Outlawedprod
Max Payne, I believe.
#26 by Klaitu on January 17th, 2009
Well my point was that in the end, the reason TR failed was because nobody played the game, and nobody played the game because it sucked more than the competitors.
So, if Robert Garriott was playing the game, couldn’t he tell that the game sucked before it was released?
I mean, I know his “marketing side” would never admit that it sucked, but surely in some sense there was the smell of impending doom
#27 by Mist on January 17th, 2009
So uh, is AION gonna save NCSoft or what?
#28 by exSPAMmer on January 17th, 2009
Not a chance in Hell. Guild Wars 2 probably will but it may come as too little, too late. Aion is pretty but it’s very, very bizarre and doesn’t translate well from it’s Asian roots to North American sensibilities.
While Aion may appeal to the anime crowd, it will never appeal to a wide enough audience to be anything more than a niche title. Seoul needs to take a hard look at NC West and realize that Lineage-esque games don’t appeal to the average MMO player. City of Heroes and Guild Wars do. Guild Wars sold how many millions of copies? 7, I think?
Back to TR. TR failed for three simple reasons; lack of focus, lack of good leadership and a total lack of accountability.
#29 by Adam on January 17th, 2009
Gw2 possible to “save” ncsoft, WTF?
Guys, you do realize, don’t you, that NCsoft is a billion dollar (ish) company that makes perhaps a quarter of it’s revenues in America and Europe combined? And is headquartered next to the biggest online games economy in the world, which doesn’t even speak English?
I don’t think it matters what happens in the western Market, unless they catastrophically fail in Asia…
#30 by exSPAMmer on January 17th, 2009
NC West, Adam, which is what NCsoft is in North America.
#31 by Joe on January 17th, 2009
I am current player. In the short time I’ve played I’ve seen many changes. Unfortunately I still see lots of little things. Things that say ” we had no real quality assurance.”
Things like NPCs with the voice of the other gender. There have been a few that had 2 or more quests to give and would deliver them in a voice from both genders. I can go on and on. None of them have really been deal breakers. Some sure tried to be. Despite its flaws the game is still better then World of Warcraft. I probably say that about any game that isn’t blatently built on grinding.
Mr, Garriott – If you happen to see this please go back to single player games. The titles you and your team at Origin came up with are still concidered must-plays by some of us. There are still active fansites around these games. Single player is where you really shined. Come on back and give Bioware and Valve a run for their money.
#32 by Michael Leza on January 18th, 2009
I bought TR when it hit the clearance bin to give it a try (my policy on MMOs ever since I got burned several times in succession by DAOC, Planetside, and D&D online is to never spend more than 10 bucks on them if I haven’t had a chance to free-trial them). I played for an evening, went out and started doing quests, and realized I was better off just going back to my WOW characters. TR had all this hype about being new and exciting, and it turned out that I was once again running around doing inane shit for people so I could get a slightly better version of the gear I already had. Oh, this shotgun gives me +2 instead of +1 to my primary stat, I guess I better use it! For some reason, this shotgun I found in a cave is better for me than the standard issue military shotgun!
That kind of can make sense in a fantasy setting. In a science fiction setting, it just gets stupid really fast.
#33 by Iconic on January 18th, 2009
@Adam: For those of us who are not in Asia, the only thing that DOES matter is how well NCsoft does in NA/Europe.
Both as consumers who hope to see new products and as people in the software industry who are/have been dependent on those jobs.
#34 by Ian Miles Cheong "Sol Invictus" on January 18th, 2009
That was indeed a good read. It’s always interesting to read about the goings-on behind the scenes of a failed game, and what could be more suitable than a game that spent 7 years in development and over 50 million dollars?
While I never really had any anticipation for Tabula Rasa, I always had the feeling that things weren’t really “going as planned”, especially after the original game vision (the one with unicorns and club ravers) had been scrapped for something completely different. Apart from the CGI trailer, the game failed to really engage me in all of its gameplay videos.
At the very least, the original vision of the game sounded pretty interesting with players leading unique stories and attack forms that revolved around dance and movement instead of a run-of-the-mill science fiction shooter with generic alien bad guys.
#35 by JustSomeITGuy on January 19th, 2009
Thanks for the interesting read.
I’m in IT myself and been thinking about developing an mmo myself for some years now.
Currently, i get to learn a lot of what not to do by reading reports of the many failing companies.
To date the theme seems to be not to listen to your customers.
Which is kind of logically and sad at the same time.
Logically, because most IT developer companies do that, so why should the gaming industry be any different? (sarcasm)
Sad, because it’s about time that changed.
I played TR a lot at the beginning, but stopped after half a year or so although i really liked it.
Why? Well,
a) it was unplayable in Europe. Either the servers were underpowered or programmed not to be efficient or not to scale well, for whatever reason the game being an mock FPS responded far to slow to anything.
Strangely enough, the player base cried for more muscle on the servers from the very beginning but got _no_ perceiveable reaction from NCS. Never. Almost Our whole clan left because of that.
b) it didn’t offer any variation in gameplay.
Which was strange to notice, because the world was big and diverse, and the story seemed to be epic, but after having squashed the zillionth mob, in the same way, we were asking us “ok, what else can we do?”.
I turned out to be nothing, the crafting was a farce, no economy, no fun in trading, no role playing props, nothing left to do.
The people built a big world but forgot to build a game on it.
That only works if you’re developing a sandbox game, but TR is as far from any sandbox as can be.
So it’s back to waiting for decent sci-fi mmo, which isn’t as depressing as eve-online.
#36 by nekoken on January 19th, 2009
From the get go I thought that TR was going to be headed for a bad end. “From the same team that released UO too early.” “From the same people who didn’t manage to bring you UO2.” “From the same designers of the last, bug-ridden Ultima.” That’s what ran through my head. I realize there were external pressures in all of those cases, but at the end of the day the quality of the product is owned by the designers and engineers.
I played the beta of TR. It was ok. It didn’t crash all the time, and it was somewhat clear what you were supposed to do to start out. There were logic holes in the progression, but with enough experimenting you could usually figure out where to go or what to do next. The controls were weird though. Not quite MMO, not quite FPS.
Then I bought the retail game. It was worse than the version of the beta I played. The plotline was more muddled with the starting out of your character being less intuitive. There was too much lag for any of the FPS-esque component to do anything. It felt more like a pseudo turn based RPG like Orcs and Elves. And it just wasn’t interesting. I got bored and never bothered logging back in after the first 3 weeks or so. I’d say it was about as fun and interesting as Matrix Online or Planetside was to me. In other words not very fun at all.
With so many of these games it is obvious the first time you play whether or not the game is going to be any good. Thinking back to a few betas I played; EverQuest was amazing in beta because nothing else at the time had the same level of realism or immersion. Visually and aurally it was exponentially ahead of its competitors. World of Warcraft was obviously going to succeed. It took the good parts of EverQuest and then got rid of all of the hard parts, making it accessible to those who weren’t into masochism. Asheron’s Call was hideously ugly even though the game itself was functional. Asheron’s Call 2 was a mess in beta and a mess once it went live. The game engine was fundamentally broken, and the chat system didn’t work for many months. Vanguard was buggy, slower than heck, and half done. I could go on and on, but it is sad just how many of these games repeat the same mistakes or have a skewed view of reality.
#37 by Jerry on January 20th, 2009
I played in the Tabula Rasa beta. It was entertaining enough, but the concept was flawed from the start. MMOs can be about gear, they can be about character progression, they can be about questing or grinding; but what the successful one all have in common is having options. In TR you roleplayed a “soldier of the Alliance fighting against the evil Bane.” You could roleplay a soldier with a shotgun, a soldier with a rifle, a soldier with a pistol, etc. But there was essentially no room for personal motivations or goals. It just amazes me that with so many people and so much money involved, no one really noticed this issue.
Age of Conan is totally different kettle of fish. The core game is fine, but Funcom doesn’t really seem to grasp what it has. It’s as if everyone over there bought into the hype that it was going to be the WoW-killer. When that didn’t happen, they became confused. It’s a niche product! Funcom needs to figure out exactly what niche they want to fill and then make the game excellent in that niche. If they try to make it “all things to all people” they’re going to fail because there are already at least three major MMOs that have that ground covered. (I’m thinking of WoW, EQ2, and LoTRO, but EQ1 and UO might also fit that bill; depends on how many subscriptions you feel constitute a “major” MMO.)
Personally, the fate of Auto Assault and Tabula Rasa has pretty much convinced me never to waste any money on NCSoft titles. Why should I take a chance on a game published by a company with a history of pulling the plug? If Asheron’s Call, Shadowbane, and Horizons can survive, I’m sure AA and TR could have been made profitable. I find it hard to believe that neither of these games were able to operate efficiently enough to cover their variable costs. So NCSoft is off my list of “approved companies” :^P
#38 by Ashendarei on January 20th, 2009
I played the TR beta, and I wasn’t thrilled. Granted, the sci-fi angle of MMOs has never gone over well with me (see: SWG) and the last sci-fi pc game I truely enjoyed was Master of Orion II: Battle at Antares.
From the outsider / consumer point of view the game seemed almost intent on obfuscating every little detail and making things far more detailed then they had any right to be.
I felt like I was playing one of those old D&D games that required a full guide spread across your lap and a notepad with scribbled notes and strats just to be able to play the game.
That being said, I do like the fact that not all MMOs are trying to parrot WoW completely and while I *DO* love the fantasy / Sword&Shield type MMOs and RPGs it’s nice to see a bit of diversity in the mix.
~Ash
#39 by DoubleD on January 22nd, 2009
TR wasn’t a MMO, wasn’t a shooter. If it could not find an identity how would players?
MMO’s have
- Character customization
- Social hubs
- Action is paced at different speeds. Town areas social (low) Dungeons high.
- Involved skills, (People love to map out their character’s skills)
- PVE / PVP for long term involvement.
- Avatar ownership (Identity)
Shooters have
- Guns
- Fast pace action
- Quick respawn
- PVP! PVE whaat? for long term involvement of the players.
- No avatar ownership (Identity)
The #1 problem I had with TR was it’s pacing and interface. It felt wrong. Pacing was way to fast to really team with people. The instances confusing. Want to turn off a MMO player? Release a game with broken skills.
I liked the concept and story, but it felt too much of it having an identity crisis. Too many cooks in the kitchen thing.
Wasn’t sure what it ws
#40 by EpicSquirt on January 22nd, 2009
I left Tabula Rasa as a player because there was no objective based PvP on the horizon that would have any meaning to TR’s world.
I’d like to know who had the silly idea to release an MMO so heavily focussed on PvE.
That, the amount of quest bugs, missing content from level 40+ on and the redesign of the skills & abilities all the way short after release led me to the conclusion that TR:
- never had a clear concept,
- wasn’t ready for launch because even the not existing concept didn’t get implemented.
Also, did DG develop an own game engine for TR? If so, that would have been another mistake.
#41 by Kain Shin on January 23rd, 2009
Well written, sir! I think on a meta level, the game is an example of a product in the field of creativity whose core was driven by pure business aspirations. I want to believe that every great game begins with an honest passion for the art at its center.
#42 by Vaxhacker on January 23rd, 2009
What MMO engines were commercially available in the spring of 2001, pray tell, that might have been used?
#43 by mmm on January 25th, 2009
Someone asked earlier about Richard Garriott, what the hell did he do besides being a shiny rock-star and no answer was given. Does anyone have the answer to that question? Or is it just another Daikatana on a different scale?
#44 by EpicSquirt on January 26th, 2009
@Vaxhacker
Gamebryo?
It’s not like you have so stick with the software you initially decided to use all the way through the process of developing your product; unless you’ve designed some monolithic monument, where no part can be exchanged.
#45 by Veritas Gax on January 29th, 2009
Gamebryo is a renderering engine but that doesn’t make it an “MMO engine”. IIRC, Emergent has been developing an MMO engine proper for a while now but in ‘01 such a thing wasn’t so much as a twinkle in some dev’s eye.
I still haven’t heard of a reasonably successful commercial MMO that has shipped on a third party “MMO engine”. Or have I missed a press release?
#46 by Tikayyan on March 14th, 2009
Planetside was actually fantastic once the chips fell and fate made it a 50K subscriber niche game rather than a chart burner.
Being a PvP-only game with purely player-character driven gameplay it’s curious to me that it’s popped up in conversation here a few times being compared to or grouped with RPGs.