by Stacy Jones on Mar 10, 2011
APB (All Points Bulletin) has become a staple piece for discussing epic failures in online gaming. While the game itself was a great concept, and one that held a lot of potential, some design decisions and a lack of polish helped send this title to an early grave after less than three months of operation. But thanks to free-to-play publisher GamersFirst, the game was given a second chance under the new name of APB: Reloaded and the game is now on the road to launch for the second time.
GamersFirst subsidiary Reloaded Productions sent APB into closed beta, welcoming thousands of testers back to San Paro, and learning from past mistakes and improving on the game's balance is a key focus for the team. GamersFirst COO Bjorn Book-Larsson recently took some time to talk with Eurogamer about what initially went wrong with the game and where the original developer Realtime Worlds went wrong with the game. One of the most notable topics discusses was game balance and how the initial launch made late-coming players little more than sitting targets for those that had been in the game for a while.
The first wave of players that went into the game would slaughter everyone else. No one else had a chance. It was no longer a shooter based on specialised skills. It was literally a slaughter-fest.
Book-Larsson admits that despite having several issues during its initial launch, APB was "impeccably" coded and speculated that bureaucracy at Realtime Worlds hindered the game's development. Book-Larsson goes on to discuss the communication breakdown and political bubble that formed at the now defunct developer and how it helped attribute to the problems of development. You can read the full interview with Book-Larsson at Eurogamer.