Garriott "would continue" Tabula Rasa

By Oli Welsh Published 16 January, 2009

Creator feels it wasn't given a chance.

Ultima and Tabula Rasa creator Richard Garriott has told GameDaily that he's disappointed that NCsoft didn't stick with his science-fiction MMO longer.

"Of course, I wish it had continued," Garriott said. "I also, personally, think it should have continued - in the sense of, it was a game that was hitting its stride enough where it could keep what I'll call a critical fan base, and had the opportunity to continue to be grown."

Garriott left NCsoft in November following his trip to the international space station. Weeks later, the MMO publisher canned his game. Garriott's remarks to GameDaily suggest he no longer had much influence at the company by the time he left.

"If I were in charge, I would continue to grow it, because MMOs are long-term plays, and that's what you should do with them," he argued. "That being said, we had already lost a fair number of critical team members... I wish it had continued." "I think NCsoft looks at it as an opportunity cost issue - where they put those resources and people on that, or something new. They chose something new," Garriott said.

Garriott told GameDaily that he was "still in the middle" of debriefing, medical experimentation and analysis of his space flight, and has no plans for further game development just yet. But he expects to return.

"Some day in the future, it's hard not to assume I will get back into gaming," he said. He didn't rule out a return to Ultima, or new ventures in either single-player or online gaming.

Picture of Oli.

About Oli Welsh

Oli is Eurogamer's acting deputy editor and reviews editor and likes to take things one word at a time. He is among the best dressed people in South London.

Read more articles from Oli by visiting the Oli Welsh archive page.

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Comments (16) Latest comment 3 years ago

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

  • kangarootoo #1 3 years ago

    Hmmmm. Sounds like he didn't really see the business side of things as being as important as NC Soft did. I'm sure lots of gamers would agree with him, but at his level of experience in the business he should really be giving that sort of thing more consideration.

  • autogunner #2 3 years ago

    i dont see why anyone would attempt to compete with wow, at least at the moment. wrath ofthe lich king trumps all MMO releases this year, and its only an expansion.

  • kangarootoo #3 3 years ago

    He is right that an mmo is a slow burner, but that doesn't guarantee everything.

    You can probably be sure it won't make money in the first months, but you can't at all be sure it will START making money after that time.

    At what point should an investor say "no more money, its not a good investment"? We can't just dismiss the business side of things, because without wise investment there would be no games industry and no games for any of us to play.

  • Hunam #4 3 years ago

    To be fair, he was the one who put his name on the project and then decided to quit after his flight of fancy. He says he didn't have much influence by it's no coincidence that the game was canned right after he ditched it for his personal life.

  • space_ace #5 3 years ago

    return to ultima \o/

  • TheBoyChris #6 3 years ago

    Ultima Online 2... it'll never happen, but we can dream eh?

  • Hunam #7 3 years ago

    UO2? The game so good it got cancelled twice.

  • 4thVariety #8 3 years ago

    TR looked like a 3rd person shooter, yet it did not reward the same things a shooter rewards such as reaction time, manual aiming, manual dodging. And when 90% of the game is shooting stuff and running around, then that should be fun. If it's not, then people will move on quickly. Fans of "my number > your number" games tend to flock to one game really because the impulse of comparing one's genitalia size will always drive people to the biggest platform. Grinding to be the best in the tenth most popular game, just doesn't cut it. And since all long term MMO content is grind content, people quit MMOs after they are done with the non-grinding part.

    AoC, same story. Sold a lot of units, had people excited, they completed it, content ran out, grind is not fun, excitement went away, next game please.

  • tonynibbles #9 3 years ago

    Diddums.

  • Kami #10 3 years ago

    Not to bang on about this but how much does it cost to take a trip to the International Space Station?

    Mr Garriott, please kindly get your priorities in bloody order before you tell a company to continue on a game you could have invested in more yourself. It never had to come to this...

  • sneetch #11 3 years ago

    Maybe ensuring that your customers could actually play the damn thing would also have been a good idea? I bought it, my friend bought it, we'd both been in the beta with no issues and neither of us could even connect to the character creation server.

    Their technical support was neither terrible supportive nor all that au fait with the technology: they more or less blamed our ISPs and left us to it.

    Needless to say we gave up quickly, thankful that we'd bought it for half nothing a couple of months after launch and left very wary of anything with NC Soft attached to it.

  • Macross #12 3 years ago

    same herei actually kind of enjoyed the game when i played it (a friend also got it) but the servers & lag was so terrible i could often traverse half of one of the maps only to find myself back where is started 10 minutes later.

    id have probably stuck with it if i could have actually played it.

    shame to see it go.

  • boyscout #13 3 years ago

    singleplayer ultima would be sweet. no more online stuff.

  • smelly #14 3 years ago

    "singleplayer ultima would be sweet. no more online stuff. "

    +10

    LOVED ultima.. hated the online shit

  • MrsPacMan #15 3 years ago

    You're all a bunch of wankers. You have not a clue what you talk about.

    Imbeciles

  • actionfitz #16 3 years ago

    MrsPacMan
    18-Jan-09 22:33:36

    You're all a bunch of wankers. You have not a clue what you talk about.

    Imbeciles

    ------

    lol.
    hit a nerve much?