Zoned in

Auto Assault closing its doors – a retrospective
By Michael Lafferty

The game may not have been a financial hit, but it did succeed on certain levels

On Monday, NCsoft announced that its vehicle-combat massively multiplayer online title, Auto Assault, would close at the end of the summer – August 31.

Auto Assault allowed players to take on one of three classes, with vehicles that were customized (look-wise) for the different factions. The idea was a simple one. You undertook missions, drove through a post-apocalyptic landscape, hitting jumps, and running over the enemies you did not manage to annihilate with ranged weapons or nasty spikes affixed to the bumpers of your vehicle.

There were quests attached to a storyline and players could convoy for team missions that were harder but yielded higher rewards.

The game launched in April of 2006, but the signs were already in place that the game was not doing well, in terms of subscriber base, when there was a server consolidation just three months into the games release, when all of the North American servers were consolidated in July of 2006.

Auto Assault Screenshot

Now, after working so hard to make the game viable, to draw in subscribers and sustain the effort, it reached a point where both NetDevil and NCsoft saw the game as not a viable proposition. It is important to remember that while we all enjoy playing games, it is a business and when a point is reached when profit is too small, or nonexistent, then business decisions must be made.

Through the course of the industry’s history, there have been titles that were strong, entertaining and very well done. For one reason or other, those titles (and even companies) were not cost effective enough to warrant continuation of the series. Even in the MMO field, the notion of online racing and car-driven gameplay was explored before, and they eventually went in the same direction that Auto Assault finds itself heading. Electronic Arts had a terrific game called Motor City Online … well, okay, terrific in this writer’s mind. The game required skill, had auctions and when it closed, I was forced to say goodbye to a stable full of Mustangs, won at auction, that were set up for the game’s various tracks.

Even Test Drive Unlimited’s dev team professed to enjoying MCO to the point that some of the elements found their way into TDU.

There will, undoubtedly, be games in the future that borrow elements from Auto Assault. And while there is the remnants of a community – those who stayed with the game as others played and left for other pastures – who will miss the game and the fun it brought, there is a bigger picture that should be seen.

Hats off to both NetDevil and NCsoft for creating the game and launching it in the first place. The odds were against them, but both companies invested the time and money on an effort to explore the territory. They produced the best game they could and took their chances. And that, in itself, is a victory. Stagnant ideas, or rehashing familiar game territory, will be the end of the industry. There are not many taking big chances and trying to buck the odds. NetDevil and NCsoft did just that.

During a recent trip to the NCsoft offices in Austin, there were rumblings. One of my colleagues, when the subject of Auto Assault was brought up, referred to the game as a “noble failure.” How right he was. Auto Assault was a noble failure. It was the attempt to do what no one else was doing.

The game failed because the money was not there to sustain it. It did not fail because the developers did not put time and effort into making the best game they could.