Tabula Rasa Interview with Richard Garriot: Interviews

It's not often that one has the opportunity to pick the brain of a person responsible for helping to shape an entire of genre of games, but the Armchair Empire recently had that chance with Richard Garriott. In this interview we discuss Mr. Garriott's upcoming MMOG, Tabula Rasa, while also touching upon getting Ultima Online off the ground, as well as the MMORPG genre in general. The Armchair Empire would like to thank Mr. Garriott for taking the time to answer our questions, and Valerie "Pann" Massey for making this interview happen.

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Tabula Rasa Interview with Richard Garriott

Conducted by Mr. Nash

November 19, 2005

What are some of the similarities and differences that you have noticed in the development process on Tabula Rasa compared to when you were trying to get Ultima Online off the ground?

Richard Garriott: Mostly differences. With UO, we were in a fight to exist at all. No one believed in MMOs, so we had no funding. No one knew what features would be popular so we built lots of things not knowing how or if players might like it. We were writing code that had never been tried before, so it was hard to get it working well. With TR, the company has faith in MMOs, that’s all we do. We have a basic understanding of how to put it together, most all of our engineers have done it before. We have a basic understanding of what has come before in design, so now we are trying to push the envelope and bring new types of game play to players. That has been hard in its own way.

Is the name “Tabula Rasa” entirely a nod towards the game being a blank slate after Ultima Online, or does the name also bare significance in some other way?

Richard Garriott: Primarily that’s it. It was meant to be a working title, but as it became known and since it does parallel our main fiction that begins with the devastation of Earth, we decided to keep it.

Will there be any opportunities for players to operate large pieces of technology such as vehicles, gun turrets, and so forth in Tabula Rasa?

Richard Garriott: While vehicles are part of our long term plan they will not be in the game for ship.

Will ethics play a role in the game, allowing players to follow a path of either good or evil?

Richard Garriott: Our game is primarily a PvE game, and thus players do not have the “evil” path available to them; however, each of our worlds does have ethical parables. The players will be introduced to and become engaged in more than just combat. It does not have an Ultima-style enforced Virtue system.

Since Tabula Rasa is taking place in outer space, there’s the implication that the game world will be quite large. Initially, just how big will this game be in terms of exploration?

Richard Garriott: The game will launch with 2 or 3 planets to explore, but we will provide new planets as fast as we can make them!

Can players’ actions have any sort of long-term impact on the game world? ie. If players on a server consistently fail to defeat the Bane, will they slowly lose territory?

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Richard Garriott: Players can make temporary changes in the battles for planets. The Bane and Human forces will carry on the battles with or without player participation and the battles will ebb and flow of their own accord. With players, areas of the map can be held for certain amounts of time, though the Bane will mount periodic onslaughts to retake the spaces.

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There’s a lot of talk of instancing in Tabula Rasa. To what extent will we see this? Will it be like Guild Wars where all of the adventuring takes place in an instance?

Richard Garriott: TR includes massive battlefield areas that are shared spaces. We also have instanced spaces we use for story telling and more complex scenarios.

When combat in Tabula Rasa is mentioned, there’s a lot of talk about how it takes the aim and shoot aspects of an FPS, and combines it with the dice rolling facets of RPGs in determining whether or not a shot strikes, and how much damage it does. That being said, what other rolls will players be able to perform in combat besides shooting at things? Will they be equally as visceral?

Richard Garriott: TR is a game about a war to save humanity from extinction. To that end, everyone is somehow engaged in the battle, but the roles are diverse. We have front line soldiers, stealthy rangers, field engineers that set up and destroy equipment, and bio-medic types as well. While these sound familiar, the way TR is played is very unique to MMPs, I believe people will be happy.

As MMORPGs have evolved, a number of different player types have come to be, each looking to get something different out of the genre. How have you been trying to balance Tabula Rasa so that as many people as possible will be happy with what they see? How tricky is the process?

Richard Garriott: This can be tricky or impossible, especially if you try to be all things to all people. But what you really need in a game is to support enough interrelated roles that people find an interesting role for themselves that interrelates to the roles of others in a compelling way. Trying to provide ALL possible roles is asking for trouble.

In some MMORPGs, the community can slowly develop a mentality of there being a “right” way of doing things, like a “right” character build, a “right” set of weapons to acquire, and so forth. How are you tackling this dilemma in Tabula Rasa?

Richard Garriott: That mentality springs out of the “min/max” attitude of a level grind oriented game. TR is a game where content is metered out by accomplishments more than levelling. We hope this will lessen the drive to have the one optimal item to maximize levelling. In our game levelling is less the focus of game play.

Why do you think that in the world of MMORPGs fantasy has dominated in terms of popularity, while science fiction-based games in the genre have only seen a few titles grab a substantial amount of mind share among gamers?

Richard Garriott: I think in the areas of RPGs fantasy is always the 1^st and easiest game to create, as it involves very familiar metaphors and “low tech” “historical” “slow” technology to simulate. Sci-fi offers more challenge at many levels.

You have mentioned in previous interviews that the sale of in-game items for real world money is unstoppable. If that is the case, why don’t publishers of MMOs simply take this practice in-house and make the money themselves instead of letting a third party cash in on their IP?

Richard Garriott: As soon as you sell items in-house, you open yourself to legal problems. Right now we sell only the right to connect and be entertained. If we sell a sword, what if the sword is lost by the data base? We get sued! What happens if we nerf the usefulness of the sword to balance the game? We get sued! What happens if we allow a trade for that sword that the player thinks is unfair? We get sued! What happens if that sword “wears out” faster than the player thinks is fair? We get sued! There is also the issue that in many games these kinds of transactions can affect the enjoyment of the game for others as professional “farmers” monopolize resources. That being said, we’d love to figure out a way to support this kind of activity so we are strategizing ways around those problems.

In Ultima Online, members of the development team were known for taking avatars into the game world and interacting with the players. Will we be seeing more of these types of events in Tabula Rasa?

Richard Garriott: Back in the day, we enjoyed doing that as creators, and likely still would. But the number of people we ever met was very small and we found that many who did not see us felt slighted by the apparent favouritism we showed by where and when we would play. Additionally, it would usually change the “natural order” of the game. So, the self-imposed rule on our staff is now to be much more secretive when we play. However, we may still make our presence known for a few key events and moments.

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