As Tabula Rasa joins the ranks with the other games that were forced to close their servers after a rough launch and disappointing sales, we wonder if the trend of disposable MMOGs will continue. Has the value of catering to the fans become lost in a blur of bottom lines and fiscal management?
Savanja salutes the game that was born from brilliance and dies from disinterest, while fans mourn and critics gloat, in the editorial Tabula Rasa: The Fate of a Disposable Game.
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Like many, I played beta and that was about it. I was turned off by the first person shooter feel and the interface controls that were awkward and unnatural to me. Clearly I wasn't the only one that felt this way. Tabula Rasa had a very liberal open beta and while many logged in to play for weeks and even months while it was free to do so, the shine wore off before the game even hit the shelves and the game had a rather bleak launch and from there, the numbers just kept falling.
I am a long and older Online Game player, and I really liked TR. It was not type of game that I could play for an extended period of time, needing to take breaks once in a while... but I was really into the majority of the game design. I am also not much into PvP with all the time demands and personal commitments that go with it. so I would just logon for a few hours and do whatever I wanted to do... which was pleasing for me. Most of the missions were soloable, and did not always take that much time. So it was a good in/out game.
The game play was not too bad, and the chaoic nature of the Outpost fights was good. I must admit that I had fun and enjoyed the Sim for what it was.
I will miss TR and definately wish it was not shutting down. With that said, I also do not want to get back into the game only to have it yanked out from under me again... so I will not go back. I want to invest my time into something I know will be here tomorrow.
Farewell, TR!!!... and so goes my trust of NCSoft (with a few other game companies), though I fully understand their reasoning for shutting down TR. Perhaps with some thought, it can be salvaged later in one form or another.
As Tabula Rasa joins the ranks with the other games that were forced to close their servers after a rough launch and disappointing sales, we wonder if the trend of disposable MMOGs will continue. Has the value of catering to the fans become lost in a blur of bottom lines and fiscal management?
I think it is a real disgrace that these companies don't either find a way to run the game low budget, with little or no support/new content, or sell it off to someone willing to run it.
I know the companies think that if they do this then people will keep playing the "dead game" and not whatever game they make next. But if you screw people out of a game they love, what are the odds they will jump at a chance to play your next game anyway?
I recall Lord Byron, or whatever his name is, try to make excuses for the game's lack of success a while back. If I had any interest in playing the game before then, I did a little, it vanished completely at that point.
Tabula Rasa got what was coming to it in my opinion. Well, not really, I actually hope that Lord Byron got what was coming to him. Yeah, that statement he made ticked me off.
We live in an economy built on "disposable" so it doesn't surprise me that even mumorpugers are not immune.
We live in an economy built on "disposable" so it doesn't surprise me that even mumorpugers are not immune.
So very true. I wonder though if game makers are going to start taking this into account? I mean, taking years upon years and spending truckloads of money is going to become less appealing if the return ends up coming from initial sales and only a few months of good sized sub revenue. Will this lead to shorter dev times, less costs and inevitably, poor game quality?
Tabula Rasa: The Fate of a Disposable Game
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