Tabula-Rasa posts

Richard "Lord British" Garriott is all thumbs up this week but not because he's going into space again. According to the Austin American-Statesmen web site the legendary game developer got awarded $28 million from a jury in Austin, Texas on Thursday in a lawsuit that Garriott filed last year against his former employer, MMO game publisher NCsoft.

Garriott claimed in his lawsuit that he was fired from NCsoft, where he made the failed sci-fi MMO Tabula Rasa, in late 2008. However he then claimed that NCsoft told him that his firing was turned into a into a "voluntary" dismissal. In his lawsuit Garriott claimed that changing his firing into a resignation forced him to cash in his stock options in NCsoft quickly rather than wait for up to 10 years to do so. In so doing he claims he lost millions of dollars.

The jury agreed with Garriott's view and awarded him $28 million which, ironically enough, should be enough for Garriott to spend on another space flight if he wanted. A lawyer for NCsoft said the publisher "will be considering all options for next steps in the legal process".

It's been over a year since legendary game designer Richard Garriott has been officially involved with the game industry. Today the creator of the Ultima RPG series and the first successful MMO Ultima Online has announced his involvement with a new company called Portalarium.

Garriott is the VP and creative director at the Austin, Texas based company which has already released its first product in beta form: It's a Facebook-based game app called Sweet @$! Poker. Garriott has been joined in his new venture by several people who have worked with him at his previous company Origin Systems and later at NCsoft.

In his press release Garriott stated, "This really takes me back to my roots in the game business – small development teams, low barriers to entry, affordable budgets for quality projects, and unlimited new interactive frontiers to explore together with our customers". The goal is also not just to make games, either. Portalarium's press release states, "Together with its player community, the company will be raising money and promoting real-world activities in support of enlightened social causes."

You may remember that after helping to create the sci-fi MMO Tabula Rasa, which launched from NCsoft in 2007 after several years in development, Garriott quickly left the day-to-day operations of the game to train for his well publicized space flight to the International Space Station. Soon after returning from his 10 day flight in October 2008 he announced his departure from NCsoft who quickly decided to shut down Tabula Rasa. However in May 2009, Garriott sued NCsoft, claiming he was in fact fired from the company

NCsoft's latest financial numbers show that the Korean-based MMO developer/publisher is riding high on the success of their latest game, Aion, in its home country. According to Gamasutra, NCsoft had profits of $27.12 million for the quarter that ended June 30 compared to $4.92 million in profits from the same period a year ago.

Of course, Aion has yet to launch in the US and Europe but NCsoft's CFO Jaeho Lee is confident that the game will do well in those territories when they are released. In a conference call with investors following the financial results he stated, "We are guessing that Aion will be -- could be -- the second [most] successful MMO in the US market next to World of Warcraft." At the moment, pre-orders for Aion are selling well via both Steam and on Amazon.com's web site.

It looks like there's some bad blood between Tabula Rasa creator Richard Garriott and his now former employer NCsoft. GamePolitics is reporting that Garriott has filed a lawsuit against NCsoft alleging "breach of contract, fraud and negligent misrepresentation." According to their story, Garriott claims that he was fired from NCsoft in late 2008. However he also claims that later he was told that his firing was turned into a into a "voluntary" dismissal internally by NCsoft.

Garriott claims in his lawsuit that changing his firing into a resignation kept him from cashing in millions of dollars in NCsoft, which he says would have been made available to him if he was fired. His lawsuit says having his departure read as voluntary allowed NCsoft to cancel those stock options "within ninety days of his departure." Garriott is seeking "more than $27,000,000 in actual damages".

Garriott joined NCsoft in 2001 after departing Origin Systems, the game development company he founded and where he created the Ultima RPG series and the MMO Ultima Online. He worked on Tabula Rasa for six years before its release in 2007. However the MMO was not a commercial success and NCsoft shut down Tabula Rasa last February. So far NCsoft has not responded to Garriott's lawsuit.

Even in this time of PC games that have huge budgets and massive amounts of team members working on them, the road to completion can be filled with obstacles. While the normal development time for a game from its conception to completion is now running close to three years for a big AAA title there have been some games that have taken even longer to make.

Waiting for a game can be especially hard for fans who are sometimes subject to tons of hands-on previews, screenshots, dev diaries and videos. Fans occasionally have to deal with this sort of thing for years between the announcement of a game and its final shipment to stores. Today Big Download takes a look at 10 games that took quite a while to finish and examines whether the wait was worth it. As a rule we decided to gauge the history of a game's development from the date of its original public announcement to its shipment date (some games on this list were in development before the official announcement).

Click on the image above to continue reading PC games that took the slow boat to completion

This weekend NCsoft finally shut down the servers for their failed sci-fi MMO Tabula Rasa but the remaining players made the most of the final few hours playing Richard Garriott's latest creation as they batlled an alien invasion. In the end the battle to save humanity was won and then . . . well, NCsoft just pulled the plug.

Launched with much fanfare in October 2007 after several years in development (and apparently at least one major shift in the game design) Tabula Rasa never really got off the ground in terms of signing subscribers. The above YouTube video shows the last few minutes of game time and our sister site Massively has some more videos along with a final Tabula Rasa gallery.

NCsoft has given players of Tabula Rasa ample time to prepare for the shutdown of their sci-fi MMO but Saturday will be the final day that the game, developed by Ultima and Ultima Online creator Richard Garriott, will be made available for its players. After Saturday the servers will be shut down.

Our sister site Massively reports that the game universe is preparing for a massive alien invasion that will mark the last in-game event for Tabula Rasa. It's not too late to download the client from NCsoft and participate in the final stand. Meanwhile Garriott, who has now left, NCsoft, has already made it known that he's interested in getting back into the game business.

Richard "Lord British" Garriott has kept to himself about the shut down of the MMO he worked on for six years, Tabula Rasa, but today our sister site GameDaily has posted up a brief chat with the legendary game designer where he opens up for the first time about NCsoft's decision to close down the game's servers at the end of February (announced just a few days after Garriott left the company).

Garriott states that in his opinion Tabula Rasa "...should have continued -- in the sense of, it was a game that was hitting its stride enough where it could keep what I'll call a critical fan base, and had the opportunity to continue to be grown." He added, "But I'm also not what I'll call terribly surprised, either, that the company would choose this path. I think NCsoft looks at it as an opportunity cost issue -- where they put those resources and people on that, or something new. They chose something new."

Garriott also talked about the strong likelyhood of returing to the game industry and when ask if he would be interested in working with Electronic Arts on a revival of his Ultima series he states, "Conceptually? Sure. The property Ultima is still very near and dear to my heart. I think that if, by hook or by crook, I had access to that property, either in solo-player or multiplayer, I would absolutely love to continue to play in the Ultima universe."

Richard "Lord British" Garriott is understandably excited about telling others about his recent trip to Earth orbit and living for a few days on the International Space Station. If you happen to be in the Austin, Texas area on January 24 you can hear him speak about his trip into space.

The ZACH theater will host two talks by Garriott (one at 2:30 pm, the other at 8 pm) where he will chat, show artifacts from his trip and never before seen videos of his space trip. There will also be a Q&A session with him following his presentation. If you want to go it's going to cost you; regular admission is a whopping $65 ($35 if you are 12 and younger and just $15 for the 2 pm chat if you are a student). You can bet some folks will ask him why Tabula Rasa, the MMO he developed at NCSoft for six years, failed.

[Via Massively]

It's only been a month and a half since Richard "Lord British" Garriott left NCsoft but apparently the creator of the Ultima franchise and Ultima Online is ready to get back to making games again. In a new BBC web site article Garriott indicates his next game project will return him to the genre that made him famous and rich.

He is quoted as saying, "After 25 years at Origin, the last thing I wanted to make was yet another medieval fantasy game. Now, after a very interesting break, I'm keen to get back into the fray and work on a new game. Probably medieval fantasy and probably online; there's something very powerful about getting people together."

Garriott's last project was, of course, the sci-fi MMO Tabula Rasa. After launching with much fanfare in October 2007 after a genesis of several years, NCsoft elected to shut down the game after the end of February 2009 due to poor sales. The decision came a little over a week after Garriott announced he was leaving the company.