The End of Tabula Rasa - An Interview with Auto Assault's Scott Brown

[Cody Bye]

When the news of Tabula Rasa’s imminent demise hit the internet, the social gamers of our MMO industry lit up like they had just sat on a massive mound of fire ants. Only a few other development companies have had to face the closure of their games and even fewer have had the game operate for such a short amount of time. Out of that selection, Ten Ton Hammer got in touch with NetDevil’s Scott Brown, a man that has been fairly outspoken about his experiences with Auto Assault's closure in 2007, and asked him a number of questions regarding Tabula Rasa’s impending shut down. In part one of this two part interview, we ask Scott about the future of the developers at Destination Games, his thoughts on MMOG closures in general, and how NetDevil bounced back from the end of Auto Assault.

Ten Ton Hammer: It seems like you bounced back pretty well from the closure of Auto Assault. How did you – and perhaps eventually the team at NCsoft – bounce back from the closure of a game?

Scott: It’s hard. When you pour your life into something for four years, it’s hard when it fails. We sat down – Peter, Ryan and I – and asked if we wanted to do this anymore. We really asked ourselves if we wanted to make games or not. Are we going to go fight for this, or not?

To read the rest of our interview with NetDevil's Scott Brown, click here!