South Korea's NCsoft is a pioneer of the new gaming genre of MMORPG, or massively multiplayer online role-playing games. Banking on the popularity of games such as Lineage, NCsoft is the No. 1 gaming company in Korea. The company is well-positioned to profit from a growing industry: Research firm DFC Intelligence expects the global online gaming market to grow from $4.5 billion in 2006 to $13.1 billion in 2012.
NCsoft has yet to make much of a mark in the West, though, since gamers used to Nintendo's Wii, Sony's (SNE) PlayStation, or Microsoft's (MSFT) Xbox have been slower than their Korean counterparts to embrace playing games online. NCsoft is trying to change that. On Oct. 4, the company announced the acquisition of Carbine Studios, an Orange County (Calif.) group of experienced game designers who have worked on such popular online games as World of Warcraft.
On Nov. 2, NCsoft will face its biggest test yet when it launches its latest product, a 3D game called Tabula Rasa, in North America and Europe. Ahead of the crucial launch, BusinessWeek's Seoul bureau chief Moon Ihlwan spoke to the game's principal developer. Richard Garriott, 46, was the creator of Ultima Online, the first online game introduced in the U.S. Now NCsoft's executive producer, he is the brother of North American CEO Robert Garriott. He joined NCsoft in 2001 and has spent the past six years developing Tabula Rasa.
What inspired you to make Tabula Rasa? What's the principal idea driving the game?
Tabula Rasa was formed out of our surprise to see how little online gaming design has changed over the past 10 years. Since my game Ultima Online [released in 1997], the vast majority of massively multiplayer games have been built with very little variation in the principles that define game design. The name Tabula Rasa, which means "blank slate" in Latin, describes our game design philosophy. We wanted to start over from scratch and really reinvigorate the game design principles for massively multiplayer games. We felt that our team, who made the first big successful MMO [massively multiplayer online] game, was well-suited to take a lot more risks in attempting to do a lot more innovation.
What makes Tabula Rasa stand out from the rest of the pack?
Tactical combat, dynamic battlefields, and ethical parables are the main areas that set apart Tabula Rasa from all previous MMO games. First, Tabula Rasa has a very fast pace and a very tactical combat system compared to most MMOs, which are time-based inventory management games. In Tabula Rasa, the monsters and other creatures position themselves against players in three-dimensional environments. And the players will have to deal with this real-time change in the battlefield, which is very different from other MMOs.
The second is what we call dynamic battlefields. In most MMOs, monsters just respond and wait for you to come to them for experience points and treasure. In Tabula Rasa, the enemies that come into the game are working to take and hold strategic territories. So when players reenter games after a few hours or a few days, the battlefields would have changed dramatically and there will be outposts and the whole sections of the map that will have switched from the player's faction to the enemy's faction, giving the players a very dynamic world to play in.
The third is how we deal with stories. Tabula Rasa is the only MMO, I believe, that includes ethical parables. Players will be judged by how they complete the mission, not just if they complete the mission. So you'll be constantly tested to make sure you are constantly living up to the ideal.
What happens if players don't live up to the game's ethical requirements?
In some cases you might just offend some players who would no longer wish to help you in your journey. In some other cases, whole towns, whole factions, or whole groups of computer-generated characters will choose to work against you instead of working for you. It will change the nature of the game in the sense of whom you'll play with and whom you will play against.