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Tabula “Losing Lots of Money” Rasa

By Warren Stallworth on Tuesday, February 19, 2008 at 6:58 AM EST  

Tabula Rasa Losing Money

Remember that game Richard Garriott decided to make that had a sci-fi vibe going for it and a hardened military woman as its trademark character? Yeah, neither do I. Apparently neither did anyone else.

Kotaku got hold of a rumor that suggests NCSoft Austin Studio will be downsized due to the development cost and terrible sales of Tabula Rasa, Richard Garriot’s baby that was supposed to return him to the heavens of game design where the Ultima series originally put him. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen and The Korea Times is reporting that the studio “has proven to be a financial disaster.”

NCSofts Chief Financial Officer Jae-ho Lee revealed in a conference call:

Because of this disappointing result, some downsizing in Austin is inevitable. We are going to revamp our Austin development organization… I should admit that the actual result of Tabula Rasa has been disappointing… If you talk about our development cost we spent in the past several years, probably we are not making any money from this Tabula Rasa project. That should be the reality.

Things look rather serious in Austin. It’s unclear how many employees will be let go but NCSoft is considering keeping enough on board to at least maintain Tabula Rasa.

However, according to website Massively, members of NCSoft they spoke with stated that The Korea Times article is making a bigger deal about this than there actually needs to be and that things aren’t nearly as bad as they might seem. Clarifications put the Austin studio as having only “some” downsizing while NCSoft is gearing up with a multi-million dollar campaign to push Tabula Rasa in Japan, a territory where many of Garriot’s games sell well.

Whatever ends up happening, one might say that Lord British is truly not a lord of anything anymore.

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