Realtime Worlds goes into Administration :(

People are lucky they didn't have a lifetime sub for APB lol. This will go down in the books as the quickest online subscription-based failure in history, eclipsing HGL and Tabula Rasa. Things have already slowed down majorly in terms of AAA online releases, but I suspect it will crawl now that companies can't support post-release without major backing.
 
[quote name='Hydro2Oxide']Between APB and Crackdown 2, I think something went horribly horribly wrong with RTW.[/QUOTE]
They didn't do Crackdown 2.
 
What Chibi said. And it's a pain in the ass making a MMORPG, it's not uncommon for them to fail. Especially when they try something new (thus why there is a billion + 1 WoW clones).
 
[quote name='Hydro2Oxide']Between APB and Crackdown 2, I think something went horribly horribly wrong with RTW.

An ex-RTW employee spoke out, scroll down to his wall of text

[/QUOTE]
(ffs, I can't even quote your link because I'm a new member. Ridiculous:roll:)

They deserve to be fired for wasting 50 million on a shallow, boring, soulless MMO, he seems to think he should still be paid even though their game is a gigantic failure....ADAPT, EVOLVE or DIE, MOTHERfuckER!!!
 
APB never really looked that good to me. It was great that RTW tried something new however the end result, as someone mentioned before, was APB and a severely disappointing Crackdown 2. If only RTW made the sequel to Crackdownl Things would be so different.

I remember listening to the Kotaku podcast when RTW guys were talking about the game. They really believed in what they had.
 
I'm sort of confused by how all this appened. APB sounded like a terrible idea from the beginning, while Crackdown was a great idea executed well.

So instead of a sequel, we get some of that team doing...what...just reusing art and stuff to remake a worse version of the original game, while the original company is making a terrible MMO? It's a shame.

That APB is bad doesn't surprise me, but I am surprised that Crackdown 2 sounds...just bizarre...like they hardly had any time to make it or something. It seems like it should have been released as a lower price spin off or something, with the real Crackdown 2 released later.
 
I read a bit about the alleged cost of APB last night ($100 million).

Why did the investors think that was a good idea? For starters, it's an MMO, which means it's not going to make its money back right away. MMOs are long-tail businesses, and the ones that have been the most stable/profitable seem to be aware of that. Plus there's no strong brand name (Star Wars, Star Trek, Final Fantasy, etc.) to justify such a high price tag... and even the MMOs with such names attached don't cost that much to make. Yeah, it's from the creator of GTA and Crackdown, but with very few exceptions (like name-above-the-title Sid Meier) a creator's name doesn't hold as much weight as an established franchise.

I don't blame Realtime Worlds for making the game they wanted to make, but... stupid, stupid, stupid investors.
 
I saw APB at E3 last summer and I was only peaked mildly by it. I looked at it and thought "Oh, that's kind of cool.". But, it was an MMO, so I did not have much interest in purchasing it. However, I do not understand what is so bad about it, because I could not get into the beta for whatever reason. I got in, just I couldn't get into the game, because it told me something about my Graphics card? My interest in the game lowered then, and now we come to this.

I always usually say, Pay to Play MMOs are usually good, while Free to Play MMOs are almost always bad. Sadly, in this case, APB was not one of those good MMOs. Good luck Realtime Worlds.
 
[quote name='Hydro2Oxide']Between APB and Crackdown 2, I think something went horribly horribly wrong with RTW.

An ex-RTW employee spoke out, scroll down to his wall of text

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/08/16/redundancies-at-real-time-worlds/[/QUOTE]
Indeed, and ExRTW confirmed my suspicions. APB was too ambitious, relying too much on the cool customization to offset the mediocre game play and bizarre pricing plan. I really wanted APB to happen, but knew it wasn't meant to be (having learned well from Hellgate London). They should have stuck with Crackdown 2 to produce a superior sequel.
 
Honestly, what gamers want isn't infinitely customizable options. What they want is good gameplay and a little bit of customizeability, just enough so that the character feels like it's their own. APB and Borderlands are both prime examples of the fact that using vast customizable options as your games major selling point isn't fun or a good idea.
 
Borderlands is supposed to be fun though (I haven't played it yet because the PC version has activation, and I don't feel like playing it on a console). My impression is that it's not so much customization on Borderlands, it's like procedurally generated guns, which is fun to say :lol:

But yeah, I'm not real huge on customization, though that's why I pick the default Commander Shepard and don't play The Sims or Little Big Planet :whistle2:D (plus I had it's controls and gameplay even aside from not caring about building my own stuff).
 
[quote name='help1']Honestly, what gamers want isn't infinitely customizable options. What they want is good gameplay and a little bit of customizeability, just enough so that the character feels like it's their own. APB and Borderlands are both prime examples of the fact that using vast customizable options as your games major selling point isn't fun or a good idea.[/QUOTE]

huh?

Borderlands has very little customizing of your character, you can't change your gear or anything. I think you can name your character, and change the colors of your outfit. There's lots of different guns, but you can't really customize those either. And Borderlands gameplay/shooting mechanics are some of the best I've ever played. So, not sure where you were trying to go with comparing the two, they've nothing in common.
 
[quote name='help1']APB and Borderlands are both prime examples of the fact that using vast customizable options as your games major selling point isn't fun or a good idea.[/QUOTE]
What are you talking about? Borderlands sold 2 million copies between October and December '09 (split between 3 systems, but that's still great), with a metacritic score of low-to-mid 80s (all said info at wiki); due to said success, more DLC has been announced and we'll probably see a sequel in the future. APB has apparently sold just over 9000 units in the roughly the same amount of time (no, not joking), with a metacritic score of 58 (metacritic); they were expecting to support over 100k players at minimum to remain financially sound, but less than 10% of that even showed up.

There was a little customization in Borderlands with skill trees, but that didn't stop Gearbox from delivering a solid game. APB had customization up the wazoo (mostly on non-essential stuff), which isn't a bad thing in itself, but RTW failed to deliver a solid game. So how are those two even remotely the same fail, in your opinion?
 
I've never quite understood games with such long development histories... only recently did we get FFXIII and Alan Wake, and although the graphics on both were pretty impressive, there was't really anything that made me say "oh, so THAT'S why it took 5 years!" (wasn't AW supposed to be an open world game btw? I still enjoyed it but I came into it thinking you could explore the whole game region), add to this the failure of games like APB and the vaporware of games like Duke Nukem Forever and I'm left baffled by the game making industry. Why do certain games seem to drag in development? Is it really all spent on making a quality game or are there other factors involved? You would think investors would really be cracking down on this kind of stuff.
 
[quote name='eastshore4'](wasn't AW supposed to be an open world game btw? I still enjoyed it but I came into it thinking you could explore the whole game region)[/QUOTE]

It was, indeed, originally intended to be an open world game, but the development team began to feel like they were losing control of the narrative. Some of the detail of the backgrounds show off the last remains of Alan Wake's open world.
 
THIS actually sounds like it could have been an interesting GTA style game, but as a rule I don't really like the genre so I'm glad it is what it is. I think Crackdown's the only one I've ever really loved almost unconditionally (the vehicles don't work, but you don't need them).
 
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