Tabula Rasa

Bye bye, erm, Tabula Rasa

No-one can really say, hand on heart, that this was a surprise.

While the games media was very quick to pile in whenever Tabula Rasa looked shakey, and perhaps over-zealous in their declarations of its impending death, the truth is the game was never in that good shape subscriber wise. It never did as badly as Auto Assault (which had problems beyond the game itself), but it was never called a ‘hit’ internally. At least, not with a straight face.

For me, personally, it was symbolic of the last attempt by NCsoft to do something a little bit different. At least, it was when I joined the company in 2004 – when it was still ‘unicorns in space’, and before it became Starship Troopers. Having said that, a year after the reboot, I really liked what I played in 2005 (and still maintain that if by some miracle it could have been released then, it would have been a hit) but by 2007 it was never, ever going to be serious competition to… well, anything really. Continue reading

Garriott… innn… SPAAAACCE!!

We have blast-off. The first ever games designer… in spaaace… etc.

No, the date wasn’t ringed on my calendar. I vaguely remember being told he was going up in mid-October, but I never paid much attention to the exact date even at NCsoft, so thanks BBC. I hope he has a safe and successful flight, and that he feels it’s worth the THIRTY MILLION DOLLARS (approximately) that he paid for the privilege.

That’s a heck of a lot of money to follow in Dad’s footsteps. If he wanted to save money, he could have gone Virgin Galactic, who’ll be charging a lot less – but then Richard’s going to be up for ten days, not ten minutes. Continue reading

Yeah, work can be weird

Got someone to throw a glass of water over a colleague today – and caught it all on film. Boy, some days… more on what that’s about soon enough.

Working hard on everything Leipzig. Pay attention to Twitter, if you’re that way inclined (or if you’re not, the most recent updates are on the front page here) and you’ll get a minute-by-minute.

Okay, you won’t, that would be stupid, but you’ll get occasional random updates when I’m too busy to sit and type here. Tonight my brain isn’t functioning enough to do anything more creative, so you see me here, rambling.

Let’s see.

We’ve now seen whizzo 3D mockups of the booth for Leipzig/GC. They look fantastic. I was tempted to ask if I could put them up here, and might still do. I always love looking at those sort of things – photo realistic fantasy architecture. The scale of the stand is just colossal, too. We were looking at one view and someone said “We’re thinking of replacing those TVs, as they might be too small.” Without being sarcastic* I had to say “What TVs?” as I couldn’t even see them.

Some pointing revealed them – three 42in widescreen TVs… which looked like matchboxes on the side of this stand. It’s… big. Continue reading

Podcast, episode 3 – Tabula Rasa talk

I almost forgot! This went live on Friday after a few delays. If you’re fed up of listening to the sound of my voice, then this is the episode to download; I’m hardly in it!

Yep, this time out I hand over the MIC to Avatea, who talks for quite a while with Starr Long, Tom Potter and Victor Meinert – all of Destination Games, who in case you didn’t guess from the title are responsible for Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa. If you’re a TR fan you should give it a listen – and even if you aren’t, quite frankly… I mean otherwise why am I making all this effort??

As always you can listen to the podcast via a live stream, subscribe to it, or download the MP3 and do whatever you like with it in the comfort of your own home. There’s even a transcript! So enjoy. Continue reading

NCE podcast – subscribe now!

Hey, as I said I’d mention it – you can now subscribe to (deep breath) The Official NCsoft Europe Podcast. Just click here and Feedburner will do the rest.

Even if you’ve already listened to the first two episodes do me a favour and subscribe anyway – we can keep track of subscriber numbers that way. And of course you get the latest episodes conveniently delivered to you, in digital format, like a special delivery by a postman of the future.

Also, while I have you here: how cool was this? (No, I don’t do birthday parties. Except in person. And then I dress like a clown. And charge by the second.)

Listen to this: MiniCon interviews

If you’d like to hear all manner of NCsoft staff talking up a storm (plus Draw the World Together artists like David Nakayama and Andrew Wildman, to boot) then Split Infinity Radio and MusicWorldRadio have you covered, baby.

I had the pleasure of talking over the weekend with Riff, AKA Scarlet Shocker, of MusicWorldRadio, and also with Simon, AKA DJ Villain, of Split Infinity. Both had plenty of questions to ask and I hope I answered ‘em well. I’d like to thank them both for taking the time out to come down to the event and do the interviews – I hope you had a good time guys, and we’ll definitely see you next year!

Keep reading for all the links and information you need….

 

Split Infinity Radio presents…

First of all, Split Infinity have a bunch of different interviews live. You can get to an index of all of them from this news story, but if you prefer you can download the MP3s directly. The links below are all separate MP3 downloads, so you can get each one easily. The interviews include all of the following peeps:

From NCsoft Europe

Tabula Cast Episode 16

Just listening to Shawn and John in Tabula Cast Episode 16, which went live today. John gives a really good rundown on the MiniCon and his experience of it – I’m very glad he managed to attend, but still kicking myself that I didn’t get to chat to him. It’s worth downloading just for that if you missed the event.

I think I’ve listened to three or four episodes of Tabula Cast today,  and I’m really starting to like it. Shawn (who I believe used to produce Guildcast, a Guild Wars podcast; he’s obviously as good at naming things as we are) has a good, easy rapport with John, and the fact that one is distinctly English and one is American really helps the flow of the audio.

Ultimately we want to have a co-host on the NCE podcast, we’ve just got to figure out if it’ll extend things unnecessarily; we also want to keep our podcasts until 30 minutes, so… we’ll see.

Anyway, go listen, you’ll enjoy I think.

Socialising in Tabula Rasa

This is pretty darn cool; a helpful guide to socialising when you’re not shooting bug-eyes. Found via our very own site, so it’s not like I’m telling any TR players anything new.

I feel dumb I didn’t know / hadn’t heard of this ‘GAX’ thing. Must check it out. Other note to self: start listening to more MMO podcasts… I’m behind. There’s just not enough hours in the damn day. (Having a five minute commute and a busted iPod doesn’t help.)