All Point Bulletin rises from its grave

All point bulletin. Where do i start? I was one of the many people who pre-ordered this game hoping the developers would really listen to the community. But since the beta to the initial launch of the game there was barely anything that the team had improved and the community feedback was pushed to one side and ready to be looked at AFTER they had sold as many copies of the game as they could. The main issues with this game was the fact that it didn't work at all. The balancing was all over the place, you could use a spas shotgun and rape someone that was on the other side of the road! there were too many problems with users lagging and getting memory leaks and what not.



However the developers really tried to make it work, they were passionate about it too (Who wouldn't be passionate for developing a game for 5+ years?) but all in all its unfortunate for them that it couldn't work properly.

Here is a summary of the reasons why All point bulletin failed that Luke Halliwell (an ex employee of Real Time Worlds) posted on his blog;

• (Founder of RTW) Dave Jones had a Reality Distortion Field where employees could believe almost anything. (An example is that they believed the game would come together at the last minute)


• They spent all the money made available to them (Luke says they were following Parkinson's Law) and as a result, hired way too many staff members with useless jobs.


• As a result, time was wasted with numerous meetings that went nowhere.

• Hired the wrong people and as a result, there were arguments between the people who wanted to become more "corporate" and imitate other large companies and others who wanted to keep the company the same way.



• The Development Team and Business Team were separated to the point where the Business team handled all the finances and the Development team was kept in the dark about the actual costs for everything.



• Mentions that while the gameplay and mechanics were poor, they were part of a larger problem. He says, It would be tantamount to pointing the finger at a small number of staff and saying “it was all your fault”.


• They were afraid to show of their game and even the so called, "live" gameplay was practiced over and over by the staff.


• They wanted to wait until the mechanics were perfect before allowing users to test the game but without feedback there was no way they would reach that level.


• Even the community team had many divisions which prevented other teams from reading the forums or another team to record forum activity. All these divisions got in the way of communicating with the players.

All in all. Blame the manager, Dave Jones. The team really wanted this game to take off and spend considerable amounts of time and effort but it was the managing area that failed on all levels. I mean could you really see a game work if it was hidden from the public for soo many years? That would be a very risky move.


Now that small rant is over. Real time worlds failed to find a buyer in time and the company was shut down. Employees lost their jobs. And the manager probably didn't give a damn either way.










Lately, a company called GamersFirst has the acquired Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) to APB and will be relaunching the game under a new name, All Point Bulletin: Reloaded. The firm who were trying to restructure real time world, Begbies Traynor. Has said that even though the studio could not be saved the sale of APB would ensure that all ex employees will be payed their outstanding wages and holiday pay.

GamersFirst have other games that are Free-To-Play such as MKZ and War rock. Both being very successful. And they aim to heal the bad reputation that has scarred APB, they aim to achieve this by making All Point Bulletin Free-to-play. Yes, you heard me. Free.



Joshua Hong, CEO of Gamers First had this to say;


"We believe in putting our gamers first by encouraging the community to tell us what they like or dislike and then incorporate that feedback into our evolutionary development process. The core principle is to completely eliminate all economic barriers for gamers to experience our games."



We really hope they manage this game much better and would like to see a few ex employees come back to All point bulletin to finish what they started. Who knows.



I however will be giving this game a try (again) and will hope for the best.

Let the streets of San Paro re-open!