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Tabula Rasa Q&A - Richard Garriott Pt2 Feature
Jon Wilcox
13/07/2007
TVG continues our chat with the Destination Games boss about his upcoming MMO for NCsoft...
In the first part of our conversation with Richard 'Lord British' Garriott, we asked about some of the key changes that Destination Games were bringing to the MMO genre in Tabula Rasa, along with the difficulties faced during the game's six year development.
During this second, and concluding part, TVG asks about the potential appeal of Tabula Rasa away from North America and Europe, and his recent trip on the Vomit Comet with Professor Stephen Hawking...
TVG: By the sound of it Richard, the new features will be pushing what has been something of a stagnant genre forward - do you think that other developers will follow suit too?
Yeah, I really believe that is true. It's just like the model UO [Ultima Online] and EQ [EverQuest] created, there was plenty of room for improvement over a decade until WoW. I'm sure that there'll be improvements to be made [to what we're doing], but I do feel strongly that this more real-time approach to combat, missions that have more grey areas to them, particularly the dynamic battlefields that we've created - those are the things that I believe the industry will broadly try to adopt.
TVG: With such a change in the dynamic of gameplay, do you think Tabula Rasa is something that will appeal to audiences in the Far East, such as Korea, where the MMO space is much more popular than it currently is in the West?
Well the good news and bad news about us taking so long to build the game, is that the market continues to grow in their appreciation of each other. When we first joined NCsoft corporately six years ago, the market in Korea wasn't very interested in 3D games at all - they were more interested in top-down, click on the ground and walk over there - MMOs. It wasn't until the success of a few first-person shooters a couple of years after that, that they were interested in any way, shape, or form, in a 3D MMO.
Originally, Korea in general was quite un-interested, not just in Tabula Rasa, but even games like World of Warcraft - if that had been released few years earlier, it would have been in trouble in the East.
The next big issue would be how PvE and PvP is dominant [in the different territories]. In Korea, they still tend to be more PvP orientated, whereas in the West, there's a stronger appreciation for more mission-based, PvE activities. But that is something that is changing over time; we're seeing more PvP coming into US offerings, and there are more mission-based PvE in Asian offerings.
Probably the trickiest elements that haven't closed the gap yet, are the characters themselves that you put in as avatars. In the West, our Indiana Jones or Arnie characters are the buff heroes, but in the East, the big muscle bound guys tend to be the bad guys - the heroes are more svelte who do well because of their inner chi and not because of their outer musculature. We are going to have to make some modifications to our character models to properly fulfil the fantasies of the various territories. That's something that I don't see coming together, though the market may close over time, but it's fortunately something that we can solve just be unleashing the very talented art talent pool we have in Asia to create some new avatars for the Far Eastern market.
TVG: Tabula Rasa is scheduled for release in the West in the third quarter; are you planning a simultaneous global release, or will Tabula Rasa be pushed back into 2008 in the Far East?
We're going to do 2008 for releasing in the East; we're closing in on what territories will be simultaneous - it'll at least be the United States and Europe - but for Korea and China, it'll be 2008.
TVG: As well as Tabula Rasa, you've also had a hand in several other NCsoft titles. What were you able to bring to those titles, and was there anything you learnt from them when it came to tweaking Tabula Rasa?
Sure, the Lineage team was interesting to me for a number of reasons. First of all was the cultural business methodology differences between East and West, which had nothing to do with videogame design, but nonetheless was quite interesting to just learn how to engage the designers in Korea and make sure you came across as an interested partner, rather than an outside critic.
Also, it was just the fact that I analyse the differences of the original Lineage especially - Lineage one is a very difficult game by Western standards. You have to work pretty hard to level your character up to the higher levels of the game, and in some of the best features of the original Lineage were the Castle Sieges, which are features you don't really experience until you get to those higher levels. So in the US, when we finally got to see those, you were immediately impressed with the power and the success of the feature, and two things occur to you. One is "Wow, how can I capture that incredible feature for the US", and secondly, "How can I make sure that when we deliver Lineage to the US, that we can get players to experience this - how can we soften the earlier experience?" Western players demand that instant gratification quite early on, otherwise they won't see it at all.
TVG: A couple of months ago, you went on the Vomit Comet as a big supporter of private space flight. Was it what you hoped it would be, and what are your extraterrestrial ambitions for the future?
Well of course one of the interesting things was that I'd never met Professor [Stephen] Hawking prior to that - I think that all of us computer nerds are conceptually big fans of Stephen Hawking, so I was very much looking forward to it. But I also didn't know what to expect for it, especially with some understanding of his physical condition, I wasn't sure how awkward it would be to have a conversation with him. It was probably the thing that I was incredibly impressed with, was how amazingly chatty Hawking is. In spite of the slow method of word selection typing he has to do, we spent two days with him doing a variety of activities with him including lectures, pre-flight briefings, and of course the flight itself. And in each of those turns, even though he couldn't respond in real time beyond a smile or a yes and no, between them, he would type away and before we would start the next activity, he would then present us with his thoughts on the things that we'd done thirty minutes before. Those remarks were always eloquent, and thoughtful, touching remarks. I was really very impressed with how capable he is in a social setting like we were for those two days.
Flying in zero-G is one of the first customary steps in the journey, and helps you understand how you feel physiologically during zero-G. In my case I've done that a number of times before. I'm not only an investor in Space Adventures but with people up in the International Space Station, something that I'd like to do in the not too distant future, but also the Zero-G company that took Stephen Hawking up into the plane, and I'm an early founder of the X-Prize too. Space is something I'm quite enthusiastic about, and it's something that I hope I'll be going into in the future...
TVG: Sounds good - thanks for talking to us today Richard, and best of luck with the rest of Tabula Rasa's development.
Thanks a lot.
TVG would like to thank Richard Garriott for sitting down to talk to us about Tabula Rasa, and his endeavours into the Final Frontier. Tabula Rasa will be launching across North America and Europe later in 2007...and Korea sometime in 2008!
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