278: The Rise and Fall of Realtime Worlds
- Thread starter Greg Tito
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The implosion of Realtime Worlds, after taking over $100m from venture capitalists, is also likely to have a major impact on the willingness of investors to put money into unproven IP in the future, and as such is likely to hurt other developers - especially startups. It's going to have a big impact on the whole industry, albeit not one that ground-level gamers are going to notice much.John Funk said:
I loved APB, for all its flaws and inadequacy in many areas, you could really see where there was a labour of love and the foundations of a fascinating game beneath the drudgery. It wouldn't be a tragedy if Realtime Worlds didn't have redeemable qualities- underneath all of the highlighted bureaucracy was an ambitious and inventive, if a little naive, company who wanted to make a bloody good game.
It's a darn shame.
It's a darn shame.
I never played APB (for which I should apparently be grateful). I did see a demo of the character/vehicle customization engine online, and that looked awesome. I almost wish they had just licensed that out to someone else; it looks like something that could have made a profit.
I don't play any MMOs right now, and I have to confess that even without the mediocre-to-poor reviews, I tend to feel that the last thing the hyper-aggressive, smack-talking FPS culture needs in a game is more players. (Yes, I know APB was mostly third-person, but you take my point.) So for someone like me, the concept was kind of doomed from the start.
It is sad to hear of a promising developer self-destructing under its own weight. From the story, it seems fairly clear that whatever organizational problems might have presented themselves, no one in the behemoth had the foresight to recognize that a crucial factor for the success of any MMO game is the time to fix the inevitable player-discovered inadequacies.
I don't play any MMOs right now, and I have to confess that even without the mediocre-to-poor reviews, I tend to feel that the last thing the hyper-aggressive, smack-talking FPS culture needs in a game is more players. (Yes, I know APB was mostly third-person, but you take my point.) So for someone like me, the concept was kind of doomed from the start.
It is sad to hear of a promising developer self-destructing under its own weight. From the story, it seems fairly clear that whatever organizational problems might have presented themselves, no one in the behemoth had the foresight to recognize that a crucial factor for the success of any MMO game is the time to fix the inevitable player-discovered inadequacies.
The irony of this story is that it sounds remarkably similar to the fate of Duke Nukem and 3D Realms.
Those who do not honor their history are likely to repeat it.
Those who do not honor their history are likely to repeat it.
This is a interesting article. As a Classics student at University I approve of your use of Greek tragedy, albeit there is a lot more to Greek tragedy than that.
What might be interesting to compare is that, in a Greek tragedy, the death of a tragic hero (such as Oedipus) was definitely beneficial for society, whether a scapegoat, or a victim of divine plot. So just as Greek society learns from the rise and fall of a deeply flawed individual (who threatens the established rituals of society) perhaps the games industry will also learn from the failures of APB and rejoice at its demise as a good thing by learning from it.
What might be interesting to compare is that, in a Greek tragedy, the death of a tragic hero (such as Oedipus) was definitely beneficial for society, whether a scapegoat, or a victim of divine plot. So just as Greek society learns from the rise and fall of a deeply flawed individual (who threatens the established rituals of society) perhaps the games industry will also learn from the failures of APB and rejoice at its demise as a good thing by learning from it.
They pretty much did the exact same thing as Ion Storm. Sought to over-develop themselves as an entity and failed at the actual 'game' thing. These guys released 1 game before taking on the task of building an Mmo, which is by definition expensive and very technical. My complaint is that the article reads as if its a tragedy for the entire industry, but the reality of the situation is that it's just a nameless company hemorrhaging money over a failed venture. Sure, the numbers are big, $50 million is a lot, but more money and less money has gone into making better games.John Funk said:
Bravo, excellent article. Rarely do we get this kind of insightful analysis about something that happened so recently. For a subculture so obsessed with the latest review actual journalism work surely tends to bide its damn time.
What a story. That's a The Social Network right there. Though I will say right now, they were building their house on shaky foundation. Crackdown was an OK game, (I'm still impressed with the draw distance, I never saw a single car disappear even after I went for a stroll around the island) but it sold a lot more than it should because of the Halo thing it had that I forget what it was and felt a lot better because it was one of the first games of what was then a new console generation. Without having played APB, I think it has some of the same problems of Crackdown: it focuses on a very loose idea and executes them well without ever bothering to fix the more narrow aspects of gameplay. A game in Crackdown's situations is pretty much the only case in which it would have worked.
Now I want to play it. I probably won't since I don't even have time to play Kingdom of Loathing any more, but it's at least gotten me curious.
Also the two biggest examples of companies that get big but remain indiesh are Bungie and Valve and between the two companies the only game I really liked was Portal. So there.
What a story. That's a The Social Network right there. Though I will say right now, they were building their house on shaky foundation. Crackdown was an OK game, (I'm still impressed with the draw distance, I never saw a single car disappear even after I went for a stroll around the island) but it sold a lot more than it should because of the Halo thing it had that I forget what it was and felt a lot better because it was one of the first games of what was then a new console generation. Without having played APB, I think it has some of the same problems of Crackdown: it focuses on a very loose idea and executes them well without ever bothering to fix the more narrow aspects of gameplay. A game in Crackdown's situations is pretty much the only case in which it would have worked.
Now I want to play it. I probably won't since I don't even have time to play Kingdom of Loathing any more, but it's at least gotten me curious.
Not quite so. There comes a point where you get so big the 'indie' mentality starts to fail. You can't just act based on the idea that everyone in the company knows each other and completely accepts the company culture when you have over a thousand employees. The trick is to know when to make the switch, otherwise you'll end up putting needless distance between the high-ups and the people actually doing the project as well as burdening the company with having to teach new hires and come up with work for them to do - as in the case we just read - or you'll end causing your company to collapse onto itself when each of its sides grows too big to communicate properly and they lose the daring edge that being inde grants you without trading it for the business foresight being a large heartless corporation grants you.Ephraim J. Witchwood said:
Also the two biggest examples of companies that get big but remain indiesh are Bungie and Valve and between the two companies the only game I really liked was Portal. So there.
An interesting read about a classic mistake, I do feel sad about the collapse of real time worlds through. Being a Scot myself I like to see local success stories.
[nationalpride]
We might be a small country but we tend to cause a substantial impact. You do get some points for not calling them English though, that would have seriously irritated me.
[/nationalpride]
Another thought: Scotland does tragedy arguably better than anyone, the greeks quantified the expression but we seem to insist on living it.
[nationalpride]
Yea that bugged me a bit as well, I am aware that Scotland (and for that matter Britain) is not nearly as populated as the states and just looking at population size you could get the wrong idea. But that doesn't excuse failing to recognise a city as a city.Unrulyhandbag said:
We might be a small country but we tend to cause a substantial impact. You do get some points for not calling them English though, that would have seriously irritated me.
[/nationalpride]
Another thought: Scotland does tragedy arguably better than anyone, the greeks quantified the expression but we seem to insist on living it.
There were a number of things the company did wrong in actually administering their game and dealing with their playerbase as well.
- They ignored a large number of problems that had been pointed out to them during their beta period. The "go AFK at a kiosk and rack up cash" bug, terrain glitches, issues with their matchmaking system, weapon imbalances, easy-to-defend rooftops with one entrance which made whoever "owned" them almost impossible to dislodge... all of this had been pointed out to them during the beta and "keys to the city" event, and yet the game went live with almost none of them addressed.
- They didn't crack down on cheating. Their decision to use the Unreal engine was a double-edged sword- it's a great engine, yes, but it's also possibly the most hacked engine around as well. Cheating was widespread almost right out of release, and RTW's decision to use Punkbuster- an anticheat program which pretty much any cheat program worth anything is coded to avoid- compounded with having to withdraw PB from the servers for more than a month because of insane amounts of lag, resulted in cheaters running rampant and blatantly showing off their downloaded "skills". Honest gamers were left to their own devices when dealing with cheaters, and any effort to "name and shame" with gameplay footage of cheating on their North American forums was met with deleted forum threads and even suspended posting privleges. Repeated claims by the developers of being proactive in dealing with reported cheaters were deflated by form-letter responses to Emailed complaints (sometimes weeks after the incident, and not even mentioning the reason for the complaint) and blatant cheaters carrying on unpunished despite numerous complaints.
- They ignored half of their playerbase. The North American half, specifically. Granted, we can't expect a Scotland-based company to be able to provide full and complete attention to a group of players who are four to seven hours behind their clocks, but during my entire time in playing APB, the NA forums never had more than ONE moderator handling issues and responding to questions, and more often than not the NA forums were practically abandoned by RTW while the UK forums saw repeated discussions with several company reps. I for one got the feeling that RTW tolerated its American audience more than welcomed them.
If none of these problems had arisen, would All Points Bulletin and Realtime Worlds still be around? I can't say; my crystal ball is in the shop. But those issues were definitely more pebbles in the eventual landslide that buried an otherwise good company and promising game.
- They ignored a large number of problems that had been pointed out to them during their beta period. The "go AFK at a kiosk and rack up cash" bug, terrain glitches, issues with their matchmaking system, weapon imbalances, easy-to-defend rooftops with one entrance which made whoever "owned" them almost impossible to dislodge... all of this had been pointed out to them during the beta and "keys to the city" event, and yet the game went live with almost none of them addressed.
- They didn't crack down on cheating. Their decision to use the Unreal engine was a double-edged sword- it's a great engine, yes, but it's also possibly the most hacked engine around as well. Cheating was widespread almost right out of release, and RTW's decision to use Punkbuster- an anticheat program which pretty much any cheat program worth anything is coded to avoid- compounded with having to withdraw PB from the servers for more than a month because of insane amounts of lag, resulted in cheaters running rampant and blatantly showing off their downloaded "skills". Honest gamers were left to their own devices when dealing with cheaters, and any effort to "name and shame" with gameplay footage of cheating on their North American forums was met with deleted forum threads and even suspended posting privleges. Repeated claims by the developers of being proactive in dealing with reported cheaters were deflated by form-letter responses to Emailed complaints (sometimes weeks after the incident, and not even mentioning the reason for the complaint) and blatant cheaters carrying on unpunished despite numerous complaints.
- They ignored half of their playerbase. The North American half, specifically. Granted, we can't expect a Scotland-based company to be able to provide full and complete attention to a group of players who are four to seven hours behind their clocks, but during my entire time in playing APB, the NA forums never had more than ONE moderator handling issues and responding to questions, and more often than not the NA forums were practically abandoned by RTW while the UK forums saw repeated discussions with several company reps. I for one got the feeling that RTW tolerated its American audience more than welcomed them.
If none of these problems had arisen, would All Points Bulletin and Realtime Worlds still be around? I can't say; my crystal ball is in the shop. But those issues were definitely more pebbles in the eventual landslide that buried an otherwise good company and promising game.
Small nitpick, the chorus could and sometimes did alter the course of events in a tragedy, Euripides' Ion being a prime example. Although, I am having trouble thinking of an example from Aeschylus or Sophocles at the moment so those plays might work for your premise. Sorry, another Classics major and I'm currently translating that play so it stood out.
ὕβρις is the root of so many failures, I guess this was no different. APB had a lot of interesting concepts in it too, shame to see it and the company crash so hard.
ὕβρις is the root of so many failures, I guess this was no different. APB had a lot of interesting concepts in it too, shame to see it and the company crash so hard.
Yes, yes there is. There is a huge difference between bureaucracy adopted out of neccessity because large organizations are difficult to manage and bureaucracy for the sake of bureaucracy.Ephraim J. Witchwood said:
It's like covering your car in advertisements because that's what you've seen NASCAR do and thinking it will make it run faster.
"Setting up offices in the small Scottish town of Dundee, Jones had a great vision for the game that would end up being APB."
Hmmm. Last time I looked out my window Dundee looked like the 4th largest City in Scotland. not to get too picky.
Hmmm. Last time I looked out my window Dundee looked like the 4th largest City in Scotland. not to get too picky.
Why is it titled "Designer Shines a Light" when the guy speaking is a software engineer? Just curious.
People can look into the whys and wherefores of APB and Realtimes failure all they want, but at the end of the day, I don't think it would have made a difference if they had been managed well. The game was fundamentally flawed in that it was only fun for about 5-6 hours (in 2 hour stints) and there was no point to it.
There was no motivation for the police to go and stop criminals. Its not like stopping them mattered at all, they didn't go to prison, it didn't make the city safe for other citizans, it didn't do anything. Likewise for the criminals, their only reason to exist was to shoot police and give them something to shoot at. The whole game revolved around getting more money to get a bigger gun to get more money to... oh, now i'm bored!
Sure, a lot of MMO's have this problem, but at least they have challenging, team based end game content that gives a point to all the leveling before it (if there is a challenge to overcome, especially as a team, people will try it) but APB had nothing. You just did the same thing over and over and over for no reason whatsoever.
Anyone who wants to see a police vs criminals system implemented well should go and play Face of Mankind. In many ways its a terrible game, but if you give it a chance to get into it, some of the coolest things can happen to you in that game. Any game that allows players to send other players to prison, and then another group of players to try and break the criminals out of prison, while the police have to always man and defend to prison to ensure that doesn't happen, is pretty cool.
There was no motivation for the police to go and stop criminals. Its not like stopping them mattered at all, they didn't go to prison, it didn't make the city safe for other citizans, it didn't do anything. Likewise for the criminals, their only reason to exist was to shoot police and give them something to shoot at. The whole game revolved around getting more money to get a bigger gun to get more money to... oh, now i'm bored!
Sure, a lot of MMO's have this problem, but at least they have challenging, team based end game content that gives a point to all the leveling before it (if there is a challenge to overcome, especially as a team, people will try it) but APB had nothing. You just did the same thing over and over and over for no reason whatsoever.
Anyone who wants to see a police vs criminals system implemented well should go and play Face of Mankind. In many ways its a terrible game, but if you give it a chance to get into it, some of the coolest things can happen to you in that game. Any game that allows players to send other players to prison, and then another group of players to try and break the criminals out of prison, while the police have to always man and defend to prison to ensure that doesn't happen, is pretty cool.
So you believe that if the game was built with a group that managed things well like Obsidion or Valve, the game would have still ended up like shit because the whole game concept was shit.Xennon said:
That is an interesting viewpoint.
