You’re Doing It Wrong, Part I
Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009A Postmortem
On February 28, 2009, one of very few active science fiction-oriented MMORPGs came to an abrupt end after only 16 months online. Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa, developed by Destination Games under the direction — or at least the branding — of Lord British himself (since promoted to General), the possible creative brain behind the well-known Ultima series of PC games, was released November 2, 2007 with relatively little fanfare and a very tepid reception from the gaming community, especially where it concerns the numerous review sites now sadly instrumental to the success of many a title. Despite its namesake being almost synonymous with great storytelling and gameplay, Tabula Rasa garnered nothing but excessively heavy-handed criticism and, after apparently repeatedly failing to meet quarterly earnings expectations by publisher NC Soft, the Korean company behind City of Heroes, Lineage, Guild Wars and their associated spin-offs and sequels, it was announced that it would be prematurely cancelled after it had reached only 12 months and 3 weeks of service. While possibly not an uncommon occurrence in the game development market — after all, it seems a great number of games die off while still in development, never having been published at all — I’ve the impression this particular situation warrants some postmortem analysis because of a very unique set of circumstances that may be partially responsible for the pre-emptive demise of what I considered to be a great offering in video gaming entertainment. More importantly, this latest casualty of the entertainment industry as a whole — video games, film, television or print — really just presents another symptom of an ongoing infection; a plague being treated by that industry with mediocre, monotonous, and uninspired content.