Scott, if I wasn’t the one that made that remark about you leaving Mythic to go to NC Austin, I certainly thought about it.
Might I suggest you are being too kind? But before I blather on, I suppose I should clarify my relationship to Tabula Rasa:
- I never worked at NCsoft, nor did I work on TR
- I know quite a few of the developers who did
- I was at Origin and did talk at length with Richard about his ideas after his transition from Origin, many of which clearly went into TR
- Was on no mailing lists regarding TR
I enjoyed Adam’s post as well. I had the pleasure of working with him at Codemasters and I have always found his objectivity and frankness refreshing. I will posit that what happened to TR can be determined by looking at the name. The creative and business directions for that product were pure rationalization. “We’ll call it ‘Tabula Rasa!’ Why? Because it’s Latin (or something) for Blank Slate. Isn’t that clever?” And when people still didn’t get it after years, “Let’s tack Richard’s name on it, so even if no one gets or remembers the name, they’ll be interested because Richard’s name is on it!”
Dead from the start. A game being made because a game needed to be made. No real soul, no concrete direction. A bunch of very talented people working for years and tearing their hair out to make it work because DAMNIT WE SHOULD BE ABLE TO MAKE IT WORK.
TR should have been killed or kept small and in pre-pro until it was obvious to everyone what made it awesome. What kills me about this is that its a story that is repeated over and over again, particularly in the MMO space. Sure, the opposite happens too…people try to make games because they think they have a great idea, but there’s no business case for it. I spent much of my time at EA and Codemaster’s reviewing countless projects across the globe. Both things need to coalesce along with the ability to actually deliver the product before production begins. I was shocked at how often a project would be literally millions of dollars into development and most of the criteria for success still aren’t met.
The game industry needs to grow up, calm down and finds some discipline to go along with all that pent up creative energy. I can only hope that lessons learned from projects like these are being put to good use, but I am sometimes discouraged because some of the people on these projects have made the same mistakes repeatedly. It’s time for new ideas and new personalities in leadership roles. This didn’t have to be the year of the failed MMO. Many of us could see it coming for each of these games from the very beginning.
