APB Message Board

This is the latest in the series of articles about the art technology of games, in collaboration with the particularly handsome Dead End Thrills.

Not only can I straightfacedly say that I enjoyed playing APB, I even have this document to prove it. Being what felt like a voice in the wilderness back then wasn’t what was frustrating, though, it was knowing that the trolls so vocal in the game’s own chat channels weren’t wrong. Such were this MMO shooter’s problems – the anarchy not just of game, you felt, but production – that no amount of charity was going to save it from the bloodlust of gloating critics.

As someone who loves a good character editor and was floored by APB’s ambition, I had a hard time dealing with the bait-and-switch of the game’s customisation modes. (What you built in the editor looked next to nothing like who you played in the game.) Clearly the game couldn’t deal with it, either, which is why much of its landscape is wallpapered in the work of a concept art dream team assembled by Webzen and Realtime Worlds. … [visit site to read more]

Remember APB? It was GTA Online before GTA Online existed. It was a massively multiplayer game of cops and robbers. It launched like a soggy biscuit and its developers, Real-Time Worlds, collapsed just weeks after launch. It was eventually bought by another company, GamersFirst, and turned into a free-to-play game called APB: Reloaded that we still didn’t like.

Yet the game carries on, buoyed by a small but dedicated audience and a team of developers who are clearly passionate about making it better. They’ve done a lot of work over the past couple of years, and a new post on the team’s development blog outlines the game’s future, while also offering some candid thoughts on Grand Theft Auto V.(more…)

In today’s game news from another universe: Modern Warfare’s sensitive depiction of the banality of combat has prompted the Pulitzer committee to add a video games category. Half-Life 3′s midnight launch also brought with it Steam 2. And APB, the most populated and well-received action-MMO of its generation, spawning a cultural revolution and raising gaming to the highest artform, has a sister game in production: the action multiplayer shooter known as APB Vendetta.(more…)

#fineart Artist Arnold Tsang worked on APB before it died and was unceremoniously brought back. He's also, as Capcom fans may soon recognise, part of the Udon crew, who are unrelenting in their ability to release coffee table books full of awesome Street Fighter art. More »

Mr Caldwell has been playing APB Reloaded. We asked him to tell us what he thinks about it. It’s quite the story.

Right, this is the thing…(more…)

Our London-based agent Brendan Caldwell recently talked to the men who are responsible for the resurrection of ill-fated MMO-shooter, APB. Michael Boniface and Zak Littwin, who hail from the original Realtime Worlds team, had quite a lot to say about the current state of their project. Read on for Uzi lovin’.(more…)

It’s a strange sight, seeing APB back on Steam, a year after it went away. Of course this is the new version, brought back to life by K2 Networks, reinvented as a free-to-play game. Which as of today can now be played-for-free via Steam. So, you gonna?

And here’s a sweet thing – the image above is captured from the new version of the game’s opening video. Is it sweet? Or is it slightly creepy? I can’t decide. Cheers Craig.

#apb The concept behind this live-action APB: Reloaded trailer is that people are able to assume new identities in the game and shoot guns. So one lady can morph into a schoolgirl. A business guy turns into a thug. And a nun? More »

Oh, this spate of live action trailers the world is currently suffering from will surely end soon? Beyond giving the message, “we don’t think our in-game graphics are impressive”, I’m not sure what else they’re supposed to convey. But fortunately, this latest for APB Reloaded does occasionally switch to in-game footage. Which, of course, ends up looking (slightly) unfairly lame having just been watching its real-world equivalent shot on high-def film.

(more…)

Apparently it's the time of year when once-dead MMOs rise from the grave. Hot on the heels of closed beta tickets going out for Hellgate, the open beta for APB: Reloaded is now, erm, open. The beta includes several new features first introduced in the closed beta, namely a new skill rating system, reworked "witnessing" mechanics and some new items.

As previously announced, the beta is being hosted by GamersFirst. Those wishing to participate will need to create a (free) GamersFirst account and use its software to download and install the beta.

You know what they say: If at first you don't succeed, join the team doing the remake. Veteran game developer David Jones, responsible for classics like Lemmings, Grand Theft Auto and Crackdown, made an MMO called APB a little while back that eventually closed up shop in record time. Then, a company called GamersFirst bought the rights to APB, and made plans to redevelop it as APB Reloaded. Now, that same David Jones has joined the free-to-play remake in "an advisory role."

Really? GamersFirst says it's excited to have Jones around to "share his vast game design experience during critical design stages of the ongoing development of APB Reloaded." That sounds good, we guess. Everybody deserves a second chance, right?

Though the original launch of APB could be considered an extremely costly beta for the free-to-play APB Reloaded, GamersFirst is still working out the details of the new version, starting with a closed beta that began back in February.

If you're ready to try the cops-and-robbers MMO again for the first time, GamersFirst is hosting an open beta starting May 18. You might actually play before that, as the company is beginning to let new players in now -- to "slowly turn up 'the heat' on our servers before going fully 'open,'" as GamersFirst's Bjorn Book-Larsson described it.

You'll need to be 17 (18 outside of the US), have a GamersFirst account, and then sign up online using the same email address. Good luck to those of you trying to get in, and those of you trying to maintain the servers!

Ah, APB. That most ill-fated of games. What shall become of you? Well, we will soon be able to have a better idea, thanks to being able to get our hands on GamersFirst’s free-to-play reboot of the game. The open beta kicks off on May 18th, and I suspect a fair few people will be popping by to see whether the new owners have managed to deal with the game’s various problems. What’s also fascinating is the openness with which the APB Reloaded blog has been dealing with things like cheating. Take a look at the section on cheating in that last post, for example: “We have ON PURPOSE not kicked hackers for over a week to monitor what they are doing. That clearly will change. One semi-famous aimbot site realized that we had caught a slew of their users over the weekend (though we did so silently), then they stopped their own hack, and then earlier today re-enabled it. Sigh… when will they ever learn.”

And so on.

We know that events in the video gaming industry are cyclical, but we never expected them to cycle quite this fast. Dundee, Scotland-based developer Realtime Worlds developed APB before being shut down last year. The IP was then picked up by developer GamersFirst, who is now opening a new studio in Edinburgh, Scotland under the moniker Reloaded Productions.

The new studio will import the staff that's currently working to rebuild the interrupted online FPS, and will also open up 22 additional positions for folks who live in the area. Perhaps some Realtime Worlds staffers who haven't quite gotten back on their feet yet could land in these new openings! Not only would that add to the cyclical nature of the project, but it would also be a great example of human resource recycling. Go green, Reloaded Productions!

#pc When it stopped taking applications last night, the new owner of APB, the cops-and-robbers MMO, said it had more than 100,000 requests to participate in the beta for APB: Reloaded, a free-to-play reboot. More »

GamersFirst says that more than 100,000 people have registered to play in the APB Reloaded beta, the reboot of the ill-fated Realtime Worlds MMO crime shooter from last year. That's not bad at all -- at its height, APB was hosting 130,000 registered users, and that was after its release and the press that came along with it. Of course, those 130K weren't able to keep the game or the studio afloat, but with nearly as many players eager for the beta as played the original game, it looks like there's some solid interest in the title returning.

Of course, GamersFirst's version of the game will be free-to-play, and those games tend to out-populate their paid competition by leaps and bounds. Reloaded Productions, which is running the game for GamersFirst, says the beta registrations "far exceed the number of people [we] actually expected or even needed for the first Closed Beta," but says that only about half of the registrations will actually get into the beta, which will start at the end of this month.

The official Twitter account for APB Reloaded, the free-to-play relaunch of the troubled MMO shooter by GamersFirst, says that the closed beta of the new version will begin as soon as next month. Information will reportedly be sent out to interested parties (presumably including former APB players, though you can sign up on the official site as well) this week. Then, in February, closed beta servers will come back online as the game gets its second chance to succeed.

GamersFirst told Joystiq recently that its first priority is to "get the game up and live again" and then drop an unreleased patch, open up some of the zones originally locked to free players and, finally, institute microtransaction plans and offerings like premium accounts. The company also plans to target new markets with the game, specifically Brazil and South America. Here's hoping the second go-round turns out better than the first one did.

With the news of APB rising from the grave as APB: Reloaded, Joystiq spoke with GamersFirst's CTO and COO Bjorn Book-Larsson. The company is a free-to-play publisher which maintains a steady following and, as you can imagine, we were left with plenty of questions following the announcement -- the biggest being: why?

APB was largely seen as a failure, both commercially and critically. It was called "ambitious" by some, which may have been its biggest problem. But for Book-Larsson, it's all about opportunity. "We think of it as an opportunity," he told Joystiq. "It's worth our effort to take it and combine it with all of the user data we have and let the game take its time to reach its full potential."

Curfew to be lifted in San Paro.

#gamersfirst In September, Realtime Worlds' cops and robbers MMO APB: All Points Bulletin closed its doors. In early 2011, free-to-play MMO publisher GamersFirst launches APB: Reloaded. GamersFirst CTO and COO Bjorn Book-Larsson tells Kotaku how the resurrection is going down. More »

The earlier reports are true: Reloaded Productions Inc., a subsidiary of GamersFirst -- which is, in turn, part of K2 Network -- has purchased the presumed-deceased MMO, APB, from its creator Realtime Worlds. The publisher plans to relaunch the game sometime in the first half of 2011 as APB: Reloaded, a free-to-play iteration utilizing the micro-transaction model.

Come back later today for an interview with GamersFirst's COO and CTO, Bjorn Book-Larsson, for an answer to the most crucial question: Why?

The failed MMO returns with an all new free to play system next year...

Josh Howard spoke at the IGDA Leadership Forum last week, specifically about how to keep a team motivated throughout the dev cycle. However, on the minds of almost everyone attending was the closure of Realtime Worlds and APB: All Points Bulletin -- which has since apparently been purchased -- a game that the introduction to Howard's speech called an "ambitious" title.

"Ambitious is a polite way of putting it," said Howard, who served as executive producer on the ill-fated MMO. "If something fails, it's ambitious. If something succeeds, it's just a big hit." But, as he strayed away from APB: All Points Bulletin and got to the meat and potatoes of his chat -- a discussion on leadership solutions for development managers -- Howard did eventually come back to the MMO to talk a bit about how he felt the morale of the team was negatively affected over the course of development.

It seems the dead-on-the-vine action-MMO APB may get a second shot at life thanks to K2 Network, which just purchased the property for just over $2.4 million, according to GamesIndustry.biz sources. Those same sources say the game may be up and shooting again by year's end.

If you're unfamiliar with K2, the publisher makes a habit of taking in stray US and international MMOs with no place else to go. When Acclaim went belly up, for example, K2 picked up 9Dragons and carefully nursed it back to health. What we're saying, basically, is that K2 is the crazy cat lady of publishers.

Here's hoping they can do something for APB which was scarcely out of kittenhood before it was left in a cardboard box on the side of the road.

#apb "Nine months of hard work," could salvage All Points Bulletin, the failed cops-and-robbers MMO, but don't expect Codemasters to be the one doing the work, says the publisher's online general manager. More »

Eurogamer's piece on Realtime Worlds' collapse is an interesting read for anyone curious about the final weeks of the developer. The studio collapsed in September, shortly after launching APB, a Grand Theft Auto-esque MMO that ran out of gas after 86 days.

Almost the whole piece is told through the words of Realtime Worlds' Community Officer Ben Bateman. His story is relentlessly optimistic about the state of the studio and the development of APB, especially so during the portion where he tells of QA's warnings and complaints from APB beta testers being acknowledged, but ultimately ignored.

Acknowledgment of reality doesn't set in until after APB launches and the hard subscription figures showed the game wasn't going to make it. Then come the painful details of how layoffs went down and how the studio eventually shut down. Give it a read for the human interest angle on a sad business tale.

It was rumored yesterday that Realtime Worlds creative director Dave Jones was moving to the United States in order to join Epic Games. Jones has since contacted Develop, informing the site that the initial report seen in the Herald Scotland was incorrect. Commenting directly on the Develop story, Jones said, "I'm still in Dundee and not in any way joining Epic. No idea where that rumour came from."

Before founding Realtime Worlds and developing both Crackdown and the recently closed APB, Jones contributed to several well-known titles, including the original Grand Theft Auto and Lemmings.

[Image credit: Jon Jordan]

The fallout from the closure of APB and developer Realtime Worlds continues this week, with the Herald Scotland reporting that creative director Dave Jones may be joining Epic Games. The report notes that Jones is "linked with a senior post" at Epic and adds that he is "known to be a close friend" of Mark Rein. If true, the report lends credence to recent rumors that Epic is interested in acquiring the rights to APB. (We've contacted Epic for comment and will update this story with any new information.)

Meanwhile, former Realtime artist Tahir Rashid tells the Herald Scotland that 70 percent of the Realtime staff has yet to receive redundancy payments.

#pc Given the fact the game shut down after only three months, there weren't many subscribers to MMO title APB. If you were one of the lucky/unlucky few, don't go expecting a refund, because you won't be getting one. More »

The short, brutal life of APB (and developer Realtime Words) recently ended, with consumers seemingly unable to reclaim whatever investment they put into the MMO. However, despite not receiving refunds, consumers are reportedly obtaining compensation in other ways.

Gamasutra and Dtoid both report that players have been offered a discount or free game after contacting EA's support line. According to the administrators behind Realtime Worlds' bankruptcy, consumers should contact the retailers from which they purchased the game in order to pursue "entitlement to any refund."