By Kim Tong-hyung
Staff Reporter
As NCsoft looks to shake off years of mediocrity and restore some luster as a computer games industry superpower, its most famous, and most expensive, employee excused himself from the rebuilding process.
Richard Garriott, the iconic, multimillionaire game developer and recent space tourist, announced Wednesday (KST) that he is leaving NCsoft to pursue undisclosed future plans.
Joining the Korean online game publisher in 2001, Garriott was the creative mind behind ``Tabula Rasa,'' a role-playing action game featuring shooting aliens, which took the company seven years and an estimated 100 billion won (about $74 million) to put on the market.
However, Tabula Rasa is proving to be a monumental bust, managing just 1.8 billion won in sales during the third-quarter, dead last among the company's five massively multiplayer online game (MMO) franchises.
In a posting at Tabula Rasa's Internet site (www.rgtr.com), Garriott said the experience from his recent space travel sparked new interests that he intends to devote his ``time and resources'' to.
``It has been quite an unforgettable journey, one that I will treasure for the rest of my life … I thank the development team for pushing hard to get polish, updates and new content out every month since launch, a feat that I think is unusual in MMO development,'' Garriott wrote.
``This news is difficult for me to deliver. I am honored to have worked with the team I've had and I'm grateful to the community who makes this game so unique and fun.''
Garriott's departure surprises nobody, as NCsoft had been mum about his role since the company consolidated its North American and European organizations under its new Seattle headquarters, called NCsoft West, in September.
Garriott, who been on temporary leave over the past months, unloaded all of his remaining 390,000 plus shares in NCsoft between February and August this year, which would have earned him more than 17.8 billion won.
The extra cash would have certainly been helpful in paying for his $30 million ticket for boarding a Russian spacecraft last month, following the footsteps of his father, Owen, a former astronaut.
Inking Garriott was certainly a bold investment for NCsoft, which spent 43 billion won to acquire the American's company, Destination Games, in 2001 and allocating 2.06 million shares in stock options to him, his brother Robert, and other Destination employees.
By adding Garriott, the company hoped to enhance its profile among Western gamers as it looked to further expand to the lucrative markets of North America and Europe. However, with Tabula Rasa tanking in the standings, it is now clear that NCsoft will never get a good bang for its buck on the Garriott deal.
The company has yet to decide whether to pull the plug on Tabula Rasa.
``Tabula Rasa is earning around two billion won in sales per quarter and we are discussing with our American management on ways to promote the game and rescue it from its money-loser status,'' said Lee Jae-ho, NCsoft's chief executive officer, in a conference call Wednesday.
NCsoft had emerged as the kingpin of the Korean online gaming industry based on the success of its role-playing games ``Lineage,'' ``City of Heroes,'' and ``Guild Wars.''
However, the company's failure to deliver a mega-hit in recent years has resulted in an erosion of profit.
In a regulatory filing Wednesday, NCsoft reported that its third-quarter net income dropped by more than 50 percent year-on-year to around five billion won. Sales were at 78.3 billion won, representing about a 2 percent annual drop, while its operating profit dropped by nearly 53 percent at 4.6 billion won.
The company, however, is optimistic about the future with its latest fantasy game, ``Aion,'' creating a roaring buzz after entering open beta testing Tuesday.
NCsoft started off with 18 servers, each capable of supporting 5,000 users, but had to increase the servers to 25 with gamers flocking to have a try.
Although the company hasn't announced an official launch date, commercial services are likely to start in early December.
``Dragging the open beta testing for more than a month just makes us lose money,'' said Lee.
He also said that the number of concurrent users for Linaeage and ``Lineage II,'' currently NCsoft's most popular products, showed little change after the start of Aion's open beta testing, downplaying the worries that the new game would cannibalize a big chunk of the company's current customers.
The company plans to offer Aion on every major global market by the end of 2009, with the North American debut likely to come sometime after the fist half.
``We will phase in Aion's debut by region, but we don't think the game will reach North American markets until the after earlier part of next year,'' said Lee.
During the third-quarter, sales in Korea accounted for 59 percent of the company's revenue, while North American sales accounted for 13 percent, followed by Japan, 13 percent; Europe, 6 percent; and Taiwan, 4 percent.