Anti-Aliased: You've been Auto-Assaulted

by Seraphina Brennan Dec 1st 2008 at 4:00PM

Filed under: Sci-fi, MMO industry, News items, Opinion, Tabula Rasa, Anti-Aliased

"Absolutely. [The restructuring] has no impact on Tabula Rasa. ... I don't know where the rumors are coming from, but with [marketing blitz] Operation Immortality in full swing, the team's very dedicated to that game, and they are still working on it," said David Swofford, Director of Public Relations of NCsoft to Edge Online on September 11th.

"Tabula Rasa is a triple-A MMO. It is a game that is very much in the wheelhouse of what NC West and NCsoft globally are all about," said David Reid, President of Publishing of NC West on September 24th. "...we see improvement happening in Tabula Rasa. We're encouraged by it."

So, NCsoft, how does it feel to absolutely lie through your teeth to players and staff about Tabula Rasa?

I saw the warning signs, and I tried to bring it up nicely. I kept seeing the constant staff shake-ups, and continued to grin and hope for the best. I even saw Richard Garriott himself walk away from the development, a very bad omen in hindsight, and the lot of us gamers just nodded along and thought that TR was going to continue along smoothly.

I mean, how couldn't it, when we saw many wonderful improvements to the game coming down the line. The addition of post-apocalypse planet Earth, the inclusion of a first-person shooter camera angle, and actually using scopes on guns like the Torqueshell Rifle. (Author's Note: That probably would have made the sniper class more worthwhile, as you could actually scope and scout.) There were just too many improvements on the assembly line to declare the game as "walking into the sunset."

But, no, the announcement came with a sudden shock to everyone's system. There was no gradual easing into it, there was no winding down of development. It's as if someone just phoned the design team and said, "We're pulling the plug. You can stop now. Surprise!"

What I think makes this so hard for everyone involved, including any MMO player, is that the parent publisher kept smiling, shaking hands, and affirming to us that any fears we had were ill-founded and completely wrong. Yet, they still felt free to turn around, shoot the staff in the foot, and then point and say, "Look, it's dying! Really!"

Certainly, we've been told by David Swofford that this decision was truly a bottom line decision. TR wasn't pulling in the money they wanted to pull in, so they just cut their losses and called it quits -- something I'm actually pretty comfortable with. From the perspective of a corporation, that's what you want to do when things are really going south.

But to have things go from high as pie to six feet under in the span of a two month period is pretty hard to do. Saying things like that makes me feel like I'm being talked down to as a customer; as if I didn't have enough brainpower to go and see that TR was under-performing NCsoft estimations for months. Be honest with us guys. Tabua Rasa was not living up to the company's expectations right from launch. Even with the US economy really getting hit, something in me just finds it hard to believe.

It smacks of the Auto Assault story, where Netdevil was highly interested in keeping the game alive by taking on the publishing rights, yet NCsoft didn't really wish to negotiate and, instead, opted to kill the game.

Or how about Hellgate: London? Where the Asian version is going to keep going under the power of HanbitSoft but the US version is getting the proverbial bucket kick by Namco-Bandai? At least that has a single-player version, right?

But for MMO players, this isn't the first time we've been lied to. No, we're quite accustomed to our companies becoming Januses of the MMO industry. Electronic Arts did the same "shake hand, smile, shoot game" stunt to Earth and Beyond, the old space MMO made by Westwood Studios, The Sims Online/EA Land developed by Maxis, and Motor City Online developed in-house by EA. They almost did the same type of deal to Ultima Online, but we have Mark Jacobs to thank for stepping in and defending the title. Thanks Mark! So, for those of you keeping score at home, Electronic Arts: 3, NCsoft: 2.

Next page: But there is hope... >>

Tags: anti-aliased, auto-assault, eab, earth-and-beyond, featured, hanbitsoft, hellgate-london, joystiqfeatures, mco, motor-city-online, namco-bandai, ncsoft, ncwest, tabula-rasa, the-sims-online

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

KillerDr3w said on 6:13PM 12-01-2008

This is precisely the reason why I won't be buying another NCSoft MMO again.

I won't waste my money or time on a MMO they haven't at least tried to scale down and restructure before shutting down.

NCSoft have shown on two occasions that scaling down isn't an option for them. The game either performs as planned, or they shut it down. They don't settle for anything else.

Henry said on 6:26PM 12-01-2008

Is this a rebuttal to Zenke's softball "interview"? Because that didn't clarify things at all, and this would have served better as a head-to-head feature (I realize that Michael doesn't necessarily agree with it shutting down either).

You know how MMO companies always say that the 800 lb. gorilla in the room (World of Warcraft) is good for the industry as a whole? Well, all these MMOs that recently shut down is only good for WoW - why would anyone invest their money and time in a game that will shut down? And NCsoft has two of them? Get the hell out of here. The costs for keeping the servers running would have been marginal compared to the costs to date, and this is a serious blow to their reputation as no one is likely to try any of their products except for Guild Wars. An executive said he wanted players to think of NCsoft as "that great MMO company" than "that Korean game company" - not likely to happen now.

Celestial Lord said on 7:00PM 12-01-2008

Say what you want about SOE, but at least you know that their MMOGs will still be open two years after launch.

Colin Brennan said on 1:30AM 12-02-2008

Indeed. For all their faults, they certainly keep their games going... almost no matter what. Can't say anything bad about that.

Celestro said on 11:20PM 12-01-2008

It doesn't take much knowledge in corporate management to know that the Development Team were most likely trumped by the Corporate-level managers at NCSoft in their outlook on the game's success or failure and its future. It's not uncommon for two different tiers of management to have goals in two different directions. Obviously it makes them look bad in the public's eye, but most MMO companies don't care much about that aspect, unfortunately.

Colin Brennan said on 1:29AM 12-02-2008

I agree, and it's why I'm putting the staff of TR in the same boat as the players. We're all up the creek on this one thanks to NCsoft, especially the staff of Tabula Rasa who have been nothing but hardworking and inventive in their attempts to keep the game noteworthy. I, personally, was really looking forward to that FPS camera view, and it was probably going to lead to me re-subscribing when it came out.

torak said on 1:10AM 12-02-2008

I was looking at Aion but after this....NOT.

I mean I understand that they are in the business to make money but they way they have handled their last two games is really pathetic.

NCSoft can leave the western market for all I care at this point. They brought us (published) one really good game, Guild Wars.

Other then that they have been f**king the pooch in our market first by letting "bots run wild" for years in Lineage 2, then not adjusting the L2 XP tables until just recently so they are sane, let that idiot Lord British run everything into the ground while he was playing spaceman, pulled the rug out from under AA and now TR after claiming everything was peaches and cream.

They should have been up front about TR.

McGillicutti said on 7:14AM 12-02-2008

To the Author, Colin:

A group of loyal TR players, what's left after the perfectly timed to kill a Christmas comeback pre-Black Friday announcement of Tabula Rasa's shutdown, have been working on saving Tabula Rasa.

Many ideas are being floated. Some by real estate people who can get some cash, others by people who have a non profit that can give them a tax deductible receipt, and another that wants to buy controlling interest by exchange of grassroots marketing the game.

We have some people offering up hosting of the game who own their own hosting company for a number of years. Others offering cash contributions and other still offering bandwidth.

I know this situation looks dire and NCSoft has proven to be stubborn to a fault in the past. Yet we feel we must try, not just for our game but for all gaming and gamers. If we can do this we might just change the way the gaming industry looks at customers, maybe even change the way the EULA is interpreted as a unilaterally binding document on the player without any obligations on the part of the provider. A majority player owned game could just do that.

Of course with TR our goals are to save the game while pay off the debt accrued against the game, and give Taek Jin Kim an opportunity to save face with the board of NCSoft.

I just thought you should know there are people working on a way to fix it.

Our web address is http://changingwind.org/savetr

Thank you for your article and giving this issue some attention.

JohnnyHero said on 1:22PM 12-03-2008

I played the beta of Tabula Rasa. When the beta period came to a close and they announced they wanted 7 bucks or more a month for this piece of garbage I laughed all the way to the control panel as I uninstalled it.

Thor said on 1:43PM 12-08-2008

@McGillicutti - Best of luck, sincerely, in your efforts. The Auto Assault community, while not so large as the TR one when the axe came, attempted similar and similarly "generous" offers with low to no NCSoft response.

May your efforts be more productive.

A few of the Auto Assault faithful were frustrated and put those ignored and untapped offers and resources into a new ground-up indie MMO instead.

Apokalypsos is not a $100M game, but it's progressing and has been steady for over a year in pre-production and light initial development. The forums have a TR "welcome" area and we'd be glad to hear your thoughts or at least, commiserate on the death of yet another salvageable, high-potential MMO.