What happened to gaming's Waterworld?

[Administrator]

Back in 2008, Realtime Worlds was sitting pretty. A year after the release of the well-received Crackdown, the Dundee-based studio's founder and GTA creator David Jones managed to net $50m for its pet project, the ambitious MMO APB: All Points Bulletin. He was positive about its chances, and given the interest in the project and the pedigree behind it he had every right to be. APB would be the company's first big online game, he thought. Instead, it was to be Realtime Worlds' last.
Three months after APB's much-delayed launch in September 2010 Realtime Worlds announced it would be closing down, and taking the APB servers down with it. After five years of development and having cost the company just shy of $110 million, APB was open for just 86 days.
So how did a game in which some of the brightest developers in Scotland poured their skills and dreams come to deliver a deathblow to an esteemed company? Video games had found their Waterworld, but how had APB managed to turn into such a disaster?
Read more…


More...