Apparently, Tabula Rasa is shutting down. Is it strange that I think the name is strangely prescient? It’s Latin for “blank slate“, and is typically used to suggest a newborn’s lack of mental content. It even makes some sense in a game genre that is built around player-created and nurtured avatars.
And yet, I can’t shake two thoughts:
One, “ashes to ashes, dust to dust”… the game will fade back into the nothingness from whence it came. That’s the philosopher in me speaking, and he can often be safely ignored. Philosophy is not reality, after all.
Two, expecting players to bring their own fun to fill the “blank slate” (and charge them for the privilege of doing so) isn’t necessarily the best business plan. I’ve not played the game, and I know, it’s not like Second Life (which demands a lot of its “patrons”), but still, as a general rule, you can’t charge people for the privilege of being creative. You can give them toys (tools), and charge them one time fees for those, but charging continued access to toys will, more often than not, mean that truly creative people will go find other toys.
…and that’s about as far as I’m going to take the analogy. It’s a general game design philosophy; players want to have fun, and it’s the designer’s job to provide it. User generated content may be all the rage in some game design circles, but you can’t charge people for making their own games. You can charge for the middleware or take a percentage of the proceeds, but the subscription model doesn’t fit. Also, thanks to Sturgeon’s Law, be prepared for a world based on user-generated content to be… well… full of static.
From what I know, Tabula Rasa is still a regular MMO despite the name that suggests something more creative or free.
Probably the undoing of Tabula Rasa (other than the incredibly buggy 1.0 release) was the unpredictability – towns could be dynamically captured by NPC factions, which as Yahtzee stated in his Zero Punctuation vide review could mean you go away on an epic quest, and come limping back on what little health you have remaining to find the town is now completely occupied by enemies.
It was a decent idea, but very flawed in execution.
What you describe is what I have lately noted ALL MMO’s to be.
Blank Slates for people to inhabit and make it fun.
They give you a basic core set of mechanics and content. The longevity is the “chat room” features afterwards.
That social network if you will.
You pay 15 a month to “hopefully” play with others. If not, you must hope that the content given to you is worth that time you are alone.
About 90% of the time it is good for 30 days…then it gets stale.
Most MMO’s if focused on can be “completed” in that first 30 days. If not, then hey 15 bucks to continue is not a bad deal..
Eventually though, why continue.
Guess we have to continue to watch and see if this market is still viable in a year or two.
Someone needs to get it right to introduce a reason to continue logging on…kinda like WoW does.
While it’s very important to allow players to create their own stories and experiences within a MMO, the player really needs to have a compelling reason to be a part of a world. There has to be some kind of political, societal and religious context for the player to find their identity in.
Just as light is only light because of darkness. We need a developed world full of people, towns, cities, wildernesses to provide the player with a canvas with which to define themselves.
The perfect MMO in my mind, is a good balance between over-riding story arc and an open-ended sandbox. Both can compliment each other if done right.
After a while I get really tired of feeling like a spectator when I see the stories acted before my eyes in games like WoW. The answer is to give players more tools for them to playe more of a pro-active part in the virtual worlds they inhabit. Devs: stop being so afraid your players will ruin your precious creations.
The classic example of a barren world with nothing but players was Asheron’s Call 2. It eventually tanked because there was no reason for players to call that world their home. The worst thing you can ever do is promote a “player finds themselves in a barren land and rebuilds the world from the ashes…” type of MMO. That’s just laziness on the part of the dev team.