We suspected this was coming. Sorry guys. :(
I think there’s an official response forthcoming, but suffice to say the numbers in the story are pretty offbase.
Jebus, why does anyone give Garriot that kind of money anymore? It’s been years since he’s done anything decent.
Sorry to anyone who got laid off too :(
Er, I’m reluctant to comment and this is not deemed official or anything.
I will say however:
- There have been no layoffs.
- The Korea Times reporter has frequently misrepresented NCsoft and specifically NCsoft North America many times in the past.
— Alan
Your skill at wasting development funding has improved! (235)
It’s a shame, since TR isn’t really that bad a game, but it did take them an awfully long time to get to that point and it sounds like they got themselves into a position where their only hope was for it to succeed mega-bigtime, instead of going for something more modest.
Edit: (Or maybe not. Bah, pretend this post was in front of Alan’s…)
Which does not contradict the future tense used in the article.
- The Korea Times reporter has frequently misrepresented NCsoft and specifically NCsoft North America many times in the past.
Which is not specific evidence as regards actual facts they got wrong regarding measurable numbers in this article.
I don’t mean to pick on you or discourage further input regarding what you see happening, but right now schadenfreude does seem to have some grounding.
I would hope (providing the numbers are true in that article) that the nearly $30 million NCSoft paid the Garriott brothers in stock was for more than just Tabula Rasa, that they are contracted to produce more game sin the future. If it was just for one game, that seems ridiculous, even as crazy as Koreans are for MMOs. $100+ million for development of an MMO is astounding. Even WoW would have had trouble justifying that much expenditure up front.
Yeah, let’s not pick on the guy who stuck his neck out prior to the official comment (which I’m told is coming), please.
Not to prove/disprove anything related to NCSoft Austin, but I found the following of interest:
(source: Frictionless Insight)
Well “officially” I suppose we believe that you should take anything the Korea Times writer says with a very large grain of salt. He is responsible for several inflammatory articles containing sloppy reporting and erroneous content in the last year.
Now reasonably I think this line of thought should be applied to the current article in question in a number of cases. Frankly I think the line about “sloppy reporting” was being pretty generous.
— Alan
That’s a shame if true, although not entirely unexpected. It seemed unlikely TR would make back its costs in a reasonable period of time after the entire initial design with rainbow butterflies and unicorns was tossed in favor of space marines. Hopefully we start hearing some good things about Aion soon.
I wish he;d make some friggin singleplayer games again. why the hell did he ever get into multiplayer? has he ever had success at it aside from UO? one mp game does well, yet almost every sp game he did was decent, and he sticks with mp only?
I’m tempted to cal him crazy but you know… the outfit and all. fish/barrel.
This is of course not true. Successful MMOs split the initial devteam between live content and the expansion pack.
I really miss the old Ultimas, and there just hasn’t been anything like them.
I wish Richard would put together a small team (like 6 people) and make games like that again – 2D, not focusing on tech at all, just focusing on making a rich world and interesting characters and gameplay. That would be great, and cheap too.
No, I think he meant good ones.
I wish he;d make some friggin singleplayer games again. why the hell did he ever get into multiplayer? has he ever had success at it aside from UO?
I agree that it would be nice for Garriott to get back to single player RPGs, but I wouldn’t merely characterize what he did as “getting into multiplayer.” He helped create the MMO genre with UO, and it was a culmination of something he had wanted to do ever since he hosted pen-and-paper D&D sessions for his friends as a kid. Given that, it’s understandable to me why multiplayer would still have its hooks in him. It’s not like he jumped on a bandwagon with it – he helped build the bandwagon.
I’m tempted to cal him crazy but you know… the outfit and all. fish/barrel.
IMO Garriott will have to reach Phil Spector levels of craziness before he wears out the good karma that Ultimas I-VII have earned him.