Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Need your DNA in space? Yeah, we thought so. Thankfully Richard Garriott is here to help. Well, if you’re in the US anyway. (Apparently EU law prevents it taking place – any lawyers out there know why?) “What,” you ask incredulously, “are you on about?”

Well, it seems that in a deeply peculiar promotion for the middling NCSoft MMO, Tabula Rasa, players are being offered the chance to have their DNA sequenced, digitised, and fired off into space as part of the “Immortality Drive”, to accompany Lord “Richard Garriott” British’s expedition to the International Space Station in October 2008. You know, in case the human race gets wiped out and we needs spares.

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Cho Jin-seo of the Korean Times has started internet grumblings with his latest piece where he reports that Tabula Rasa, “has proven to be a financial disaster”. With information taken from an investor conference call, he claims that it’s only seen 5 million in revenue when TR was believed to cost 100 billion. It also claims that Garriott started the project more than twice, the studio is now to be downsized, while the project leaders, “will keep their position”. However Robert Garriott has been replaced by Chris Chung from his position as head of the organisation and the-not-ex-Lord-British Garriott is, “free from day-to-day operations”. More here.

The article’s already been strongly argued as misleading from NCsoft Sources, noting the reporter in question had previously written reports from conferences he never even attended.
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[At this point in these postmortem features, I decided to mix it up a little for PC Format. Since they were integrated into the mod-section of the magazine - with the subtext that they were inspirational things for readers thinking about becoming games developers - I thought a look at how a designer got to be a designer could be fun. Luckily, Harvey, who's previously worked on landmark games including Deus Ex and System Shock, was up for it. The interview was done after the end of Ion Storm Austin, but before he'd joined Midway to work on Blacksite.]

We all look back, in an unholy mix of nostalgia and self-analysis. It’s what this column is all about. This time, however, we’re going to take an alternate route through this terrain. Rather than follow the path of a game, and what went right and wrong, instead we’re going to follow a career. How it started, how it moved on and what was learned at each step. And, indirectly, one of the most common questions that arrive in our inbox: “How do I get into the games industry”. Here’s a case study of how one man did. The man in question? Harvey Smith, who started back in 1993 in Quality Assurance at Origin and continues to this day at Midway.
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The lovely chaps over at C&VG have placed my Gamer review of Tabula Rasa on an info-podium for the assembled hordes of the electric internet to gawk at. Join them! In it, I find myself surprised to find myself saying things like…

Open betas are awesome things; you get to play a game for free. Open betas are terrible things; the game you get to play may not be awesome, at least yet. When I played the Tabula Rasa beta, I found myself charmed by some of it, but with a mass of worries. Now it’s released, it’s probably my favourite persistent-world MMO since City of Heroes.

Loads more about Betas, MMOs in 2007 and Tabula Rasa beneath the cut. Read the rest of this entry »