Realtime Worlds’ latest game, APB, has been under wraps for much of its development. Rather than show it off too early and risk disappointing (and misleading) players, the company’s co-founder and creative director David Jones said that it wanted to wait until they had something to show first. At this year’s E3, we got the first in-depth look at the game. Afterward, we had a chance to talk with Jones about the game’s history, features and much more.
Game Informer: Could you go over All Point Bulletin's development history? Did it start off as an MMO?
David Jones: Well, we never actually called it an MMO. What we just wanted to do was something different, a persistent online space. But as you can imagine, you say that anytime and people say, 'Oh, it's an MMO,' and therefore an MMO leads to an MMORPG, and so everyone has very fixed perceptions. So it just always started off as, you know... I've never done an RPG before. You know the kind of games I do like Crackdown and GTA and stuff, it was like well if we could move something like that to an online space. And that's where it started off as, and that's where it's always been. It's a persistent online game, but it's not like any MMO out there. For me it's something new, it's hard to define it, and I don't think we can until people play it, and then they go out and see something different. Hopefully, we can create a new genre.
GI: We've heard stories about Crackdown's success taking Realtime Worlds by surprise...
Jones: No, I think it took Microsoft by surprise, it never took us by surprise. [laughs]
GI: Is that why you moved towards APB instead of a Crackdown sequel, or was APB something you always wanted to do?
Jones: A bit of both. Basically, we were quite happy. We had APB in development, Microsoft weren't quite sure how Crackdown was going to do. Once again, it’s probably my fault because I make these games that are always a bit different. And really until you demo them to people, then they go, 'Oh, actually I see what it's about.' And by that time we've kind of just gone full steam ahead, because they [Microsoft] were unsure if they really wanted to commit to a sequel. So then you say ‘OK, then we'll just forge ahead with APB.'
