Garriott laments Tabula Rasa beta

Testers put off final release, apparently

Veteran MMO creator Richard Garriott, has this week revealed where he feels the marketing of Tabula Rasa went wrong: the beta test.

The Destination Games boss says that the beta test of Tabula Rasa saw many potential fans of the game 'burn out' on an incomplete product, which wasn't ready for mass-consumption and could have dissuaded those who would have enjoyed the final release.

"I actually think the biggest mistake was made not by the marketing department, but by the development team," Garriott told business site Gamasutra. "We invited too many people into the beta when the game was still too broken; we burned out some quantity of our beta-testers when the game wasn't yet fun."

"As we've begun to sell the game, the people who hadn't participated in the beta became our fast early-adopters. And the people who did participate in the beta, we've had to go back to and say 'look, look, we promise: we know it wasn't fun two months ago, but we fixed all that. Really, come try it again.'"

Garriott believes a more selective approach to beta-testing would be more fruitful next time around.

By Luke Guttridge