The story of collaborative creative efforts from different cultures is one with many disasters and few triumphs. Generally, efforts gel best when cultures have organically grown closer together over a long period of time, or when corporations hothouse that process with investment and care.

Right now, one of the most fascinating cross-cultural exchanges is between the North American and the Korean game markets, which are so different as to be polar. In the U.S companies like Nexon, Webzen and NCSoft are trying, one way or another,  wow gold farming to Koreanize the market. MTV Networks and Acclaim have looked at ways to bring Korean MMOs to America.

Why wouldn¡¯t they? The American market is already a stew of home-grown influences as well as strong flavors from Japan and Western Europe. The melting pot can always accommodate something new.

It goes the other way too, EA recently demonstrated its determination to get a piece of Korea and China through the partial acquisition in Neowiz. The influence of StarCraft on the Korean imagination is well-documented. Japanese developers are also seeking ways to give their products a more-Western-friendly feel, impacting the domestic output.

But Asia has rarely been as welcoming to American cultural output as Europe or South America. And, frankly, America has shown little inclination to start playing unadulterated Korean games, generally caricatured as being a cross-between endless grinds and chat-rooms. Monster hits like Lineage and MU Online are here, but their impact has been microscopic in comparison to back home.

MMOs that are played cross-culturally¡ªlike Final Fantasy XI, Guild Wars and WoW¡ªare the exception rather than the rule, and were certainly not designed by trans-cultural teams or with any cross-cultural motives in mind.

Western Content

So the Koreans are finding ways to expand through a policy of Westernizing its content or creating Western content and seeing if it can be modified for the domestic market. That¡¯s one of the reasons why Richard Garriott was brought in to help work up NCSoft¡¯s U.S. based MMOs. Who better than the man behind Ultima and a key component of Ultima Online?

But NCSoft¡¯s U.S. output thus far has largely been from subsidiary ArenaNet (GuildWars) as well as other developers like NetDevil (Auto Assault) and Cryptic (City of Heroes / Villains). Internally, Dungeon Runners and Tabula Rasa have yet to be released. The latter¡¯s history has been far from smooth-running and has become something of an object lesson in the dangers of trans-Oceanic development.

Garriott says, ¡°We started with a very international crew trying to make a collaborative game design between the US and Asia. We wanted to make one game that was going to solve all the design and artistic issues for both territories.¡±

It didn¡¯t work out. Neither side was really digging what the other was producing. Language and time-barriers became a problem. After two years of coh influence development, the game was scrapped and handed over to NCSoft¡¯s US office. They retained the basic idea, but otherwise started over.buy cheap wow gold

Garriott explains, ¡°W e realized we were always compromising and problems weren¡¯t getting solved.¡± On the Korean side, designer Jake Song quit the company. In the U.S, the game¡¯s entire art and most of the code was tossed away. A large proportion of the team was replaced. The experiment had been a failure.

NCSoft began again, with a more coh influence realistic approach. ¡°We erased, abandoned that first couple of years worth of work which was a huge tragedy. But we felt that compared to finishing something that neither territory would really think was operable we should use the design skills of the local team and create a game for America and Europe. The Korean office could take it and see what we might do to optimize it for the Asian territories.¡±

Tabula Rasa is now noted as a potential landmark on the MMO scene, offering an innovative action sci-fi design that¡¯s been created with one audience in mind.