Realtime Worlds’ Dave Jones has affirmed that All Points Bulletin is much closer to Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty than Blizzard’s World of Warcraft experience.
When it comes to personalization and customization ”nobody’s trying to push the envelope”, with Jones admitting his APB could be ”intimidating” to the more casual MMO gamers.
”WoW’s great, and it’s attracting huge numbers, but let’s face it there’s probably still more players on GTA and Call of Duty in terms of online,” Jones tells Gamasutra in an interview.
Realtime Worlds’ aren’t chasing the WoW formula for success as so many others have tried to do, instead they’re tapping into the hunger of GTA and shooter fans.
”They love online games, they spend all their time there, but really, nobody’s trying to push the envelope in terms of personalization, customization, persistence, matchmaking, so many areas that are ripe for somebody to come in,” he continues.
”It’s intimidating for those with less experience, or less time maybe, who want to dip in and dip out of the game.” APB will have instances of 100 players at a time, meaning the player base is fragmented through matchmaking. ”100 is good, it means you can be kind of personal.”
100 players means they can pack in a 1000 civilians to otherwise terrorize or protect. What about those players who don’t respond to an APB? ”If you’re having a coffee and a donut, and they put out an APB and you don’t respond, we very very quickly recognize that kind of stuff and put the APBs out to other enforcers, et cetera,” explains Jones, ”and we start taking rep away from those players that don’t respond, so it actually works very very well, because I just think the setting, you know, law enforcement versus criminals, is so perfect for that.”
All Points Bulletin is expected on PC in ”early 2010” say EA, with an Xbox 360 version in the works.
