Does a Game Have to Fail to End?

Ars Technica Blog poses the question, based on Tabula Rasa’s ending, if games have to fail to get proper endings.

It seems every game you play ends by pointing at a sequel, with story threads left hanging, characters left floating in the depths of space, or wars left unwon. When was the last time you finished a game and felt completely satisfied by the experience? With Tabula Rasa, at least the ending has come for everyone; there will be no final call from the governor, no last-minute angel investor. The war is going to come to an end, and by all accounts humanity didn’t win, and the game ended with quite the bang. Sure, it was a down note, but the game failed, and a happy ending would be somewhat inappropriate for fans.

Is this what it takes to get a final goodbye from a game? Does a world have to fail to be so decisively shut down? As all the game’s characters die, as the servers are shut down, as the data is erased or backed up and then boxed or whatever happens to MMO data once the game is done, it’s hard not to be a little sad. The sights and sounds of the world of Tabula Rasa are gone, forever. All the memories written into those ones and zeroes will quickly be forgotten, and no one will walk those grounds again. The game never gained the following that NCSoft hoped for. It did one thing better than almost every other game on the market however: end with grace.

It’s a bit odd to ask this based on an MMO as they have aberrant story dynamics, but it’s a good question.