Garriott has a "50:50 hit/miss ratio"

By Robert Purchese Published 1 March, 2010

Still "pleased" with Tabula Rasa, though.

Ultima Online and Tabula Rasa creator Richard Garriott has explained that his hit-to-miss ratio is about 50:50.

"Just for the record with Tabula Rasa and other games: I have about a 50:50 hit/miss ratio with the publication of all my games," the developer-cum-space-explorer told GamesIndustry.biz.

"And by the way I think 50:50 is mighty good - so although Tabula Rasa didn't find a sufficiently big audience for NCsoft to wish to continue it, I'm actually still very pleased with a lot of the innovations we brought to bear on the game, and I think there's a lot of ways in which it succeeded to at least the design vision we were attempting.

"In hindsight, even I would be critical of a wide swathe of things in Tabula Rasa, but that's no different to any others games I've done," he added.

Tabula Rasa - reviewed and re-reviewed on Eurogamer - was released in November 2007. Sales didn't meet expectations and in February 2009 the pug was pulled.

Ultima Online, meanwhile, is still a "very healthy" MMO - one that's doing better than many new virtual worlds, according to lead designer Tim Cotten.

Having left NCsoft, Richard Garriott's turned his attention to small-scale social games and created new company Portalarium. He's happy, and excited.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (19) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Pastici #1 2 years ago

    The pug was pulled? That's not a nice way to treat dogs.
    Edited by 1 at 01/03/10 @ 15:19

  • Diogo_Ribeiro #2 2 years ago

    "He's happy, and excited" and expecting more of our money to go back to space. Hope he brings more than poker next time.

  • Kremlik Verified Co-Founder, Crash To Desktop #3 2 years ago

    Yea ofc he was 'pleased' with TR - he got to go into space because of it, thats all he really wanted.

    added: Bah D you beat me to it
    Edited by 1 at 01/03/10 @ 15:25

  • sneetch #4 2 years ago

    Bought Tabula Rasa, never worked for me or a friend of mine, the guys running the game blamed our ISPs for doing something arcane and exotic to the data being sent and received and washed their hands of the matter. The result was that we never even got to play the damn game (we played the beta though, that worked fine).

    Still bugs me that but my point is that this game could have done a lot better and might still be running if they had set it up properly and had better staff working for them.

  • tonynibbles #5 2 years ago

    "Tabula Rasa game info. BUY NOW"

    /clicks

    /is surprised to see product page

  • unacomn #6 2 years ago

    It's one year to the day since the The Last Battle for Earth. Huddled in that crater, Neph everywhere, Bane approaching, and then... the darkness.

  • Koozer #7 2 years ago

    I thought Tabula Rasa was a bloody good start for an MMO, if only it had continued to be polished and grown...

  • actionfitz #8 2 years ago

    Tabula Rasa was a big bag of Gash tbh.
    That's from my own personal experience of 30 wasted English pounds.

  • Distributor #9 2 years ago

    Funny how, even after the chips are down on the table, developers STILL find something positive to say.
    Id give these guys more respect if they were honest about the plain failings that their game had.

  • Tyronne #10 2 years ago

    How about ultima underground 3?

    He could work on that.

  • unacomn #11 2 years ago

    Ultima Underworld wasn't his baby. Blue Sky (Looking Glass) made it 100%, the Ultima title and universe was attached to it later on in production. I can't remember the name of the lead guys on the game, read a sweet article about it on CVG, but during it's production Warren Spector joined in.

    Hmm, now if Garriot and Spector were to work on a game, that does not involve mice, It would be awesome.
    Edited by 1 at 01/03/10 @ 17:20

  • MrFuzzles #12 2 years ago

    I quite enjoyed Tabula Rasa. I've played most of the major mmo's since Anarchy Online, and TR is one of the few ones I could play just for the sake of playing and not to progress my character. Shooting dudes and taking/defending outposts together with my friends was just fun.

  • optimusprym8 #13 2 years ago

    TR didn't fund his space trip, RG funded his space trip. RG funded a lot of TR as well.

  • Fab4 #14 2 years ago

    50:50 isnt very good, its the predictable outcome of a random distribution of 2 states.

  • smelly #15 2 years ago

    >How about ultima underground 3?

    *underworld.

    I'd be just happy to see ultima 10.. Bring back the avatar!

  • newt #16 2 years ago

    I've loved Tabula Rasa and I miss it tremendously. It was the perfect MMO / online shooter crossover for me, set in a world that was unique and worth exploring. It's a shame that it got axed before it could blossom into something truly spectacular.

  • Darkedge #17 2 years ago

    TR had massive potential but due to a really tortured development - 6 years+ and complete rebuild after 3 years of team and game tech it couldn't be given a real opportunity to develop when live. If it had had an extra 3months dev and had run the beta properly (they invited 100K people in closed beta ffs which is monumentally stupid when you know there are stability issues) it wouldn't have been such a lame duck at launch.
    Bummer really, awesome graphics (in places), good fun, great siege/battle stuff and such a huge scope to build on that. The last day was extremely sad fighting that battle on earth to the death.

  • stoopidgreg #18 2 years ago

    50:50 is good? i call that breaking even.

  • krisskross #19 2 years ago

    Oh dammit, I cant stand to hear about Garriot anymore!
    He better stayed in space.
    Petition for releasing tabula rasa server source as open?