The other Garriott, Robert, spills attraction to Tabula Rasa

GameDaily Biz sat down with the other Garriott, Robert, NCSoft North America CEO and brother to Richard HRH Lord British Garriott (guess they both didn’t quit), to talk about Tabula Rasa, microtransactions (*gasp!*), and a bunch of other stuff. Long three-page interview. Can we concentrate instead on TR and the microtransaction bits?

Obviously Brother Richard is trying to change the way we look at and play MMOs with Tabula Rasa, and when Brother Robert describes the game along the lines of a shooter title. Finding traditional MMOs ho-hum boring, what attracts Robert to TR is that it is, in many respects, a shooter. You hide behind obstacles like a shooter, you take your shots like a shooter… only doing so with a bunch of other people and in a deep game system like in MMOs.

Microtransaction’s turn. NCSoft will be looking at several micropayment models for their games. The real question they’re asking is, what model to use. Think about it: they’ve got Guild Wars, that’s essentially pay once, play for life, he observed. They’ve got other games that live off subscriptions. They’ve got coming games that use NC Coin micropayments.

How would this play to Tabula Rasa? We don’t know – Robert offers no clues in that direction. Given the variety of weapons and equipment in the game, it’s not too hard to imagine either an online shop for equipment, or at the least allowing equipment exchanges among players (with the right price, of course), but that does run into a certain multiplayer taboo concerning ubers. It’s also easy to imagine a Guild Wars model of pay-once, but that’s certainly taking a big risk with a very much radical new MMO property.

GameDaily Biz sat down with the other Garriott, Robert, NCSoft North America CEO and brother to Richard HRH Lord British Garriott (guess they both didn’t quit), to talk about Tabula Rasa, microtransactions (*gasp!*), and a bunch of other stuff. Long three-page interview. Can we concentrate instead on TR and the microtransaction bits?

Obviously Brother Richard is trying to change the way we look at and play MMOs with Tabula Rasa, and when Brother Robert describes the game along the lines of a shooter title. Finding traditional MMOs ho-hum boring, what attracts Robert to TR is that it is, in many respects, a shooter. You hide behind obstacles like a shooter, you take your shots like a shooter… only doing so with a bunch of other people and in a deep game system like in MMOs.

Microtransaction’s turn. NCSoft will be looking at several micropayment models for their games. The real question they’re asking is, what model to use. Think about it: they’ve got Guild Wars, that’s essentially pay once, play for life, he observed. They’ve got other games that live off subscriptions. They’ve got coming games that use NC Coin micropayments.

How would this play to Tabula Rasa? We don’t know – Robert offers no clues in that direction. Given the variety of weapons and equipment in the game, it’s not too hard to imagine either an online shop for equipment, or at the least allowing equipment exchanges among players (with the right price, of course), but that does run into a certain multiplayer taboo concerning ubers. It’s also easy to imagine a Guild Wars model of pay-once, but that’s certainly taking a big risk with a very much radical new MMO property.