Real Time Worlds 'Will Go Under Sooner Rather Than Later'
Ex-studio employee reveals that APB has 'torpedoed' the company.
An ex-member of Real Time Worlds has apparently written about the events and situations that led to the studio's announced redundancies, adding that it "failed" to capitalise on the potential of its big-budget MMO, APB and that the company is on the verge of collapse.
Rumours had been flying around concerning RTW's redundancies last week, but a post on Rock Paper Shotgun quoting studio manager Colin Macdonald confirmed the layoffs, while a commenter named "ExRTW" explained that the situation at the Dundee developer is perhaps more grim than previously thought.
"RTW tried something bold, and fucked it up," the anonymous poster said referring the juggling of APB and in-the-air project MyWorld. "It tried to make what amounted to two MMOs at once, as well as self-publish.
"I have to hand it to Dave [Jones, RTW CEO]. He’s ballsy. But in the end, we couldn’t do it, and I think the whole company will go under sooner rather than later. It’s a shame, too, as Dundee can’t absorb the level of game dev redundancies that are about to hit, which means the Dundee scene gets that little bit smaller. But that’s the price of failure, and we certainly failed. No excuses, really."
The poster detailed the troubles that occured during APB's development - the lack of 'quality' in its core mechanics, no time for content production, announcing the game too early, failure to engage users and press on the PR side efficiently, and (most importantly for 'ExRTW') the misguided business model.
"The problem was that management looked at the revenue they wanted to generate and priced accordingly, failing to realise (or care) that there are literally a dozen top quality, subscription free team based shooters," the writer continued. "The game would have been immeasurably better received it had simply been a boxed product, with paid-for in-game items, IMO. This may not have been possible, given what was spent on the game and the running costs, but the market is tough. You can’t simply charge what you feel like earning and hope the paying public will agree with your judgement of value."
MyWorld's future was said to be 'unclear,' but ExRTW suggests that the people who originally wrote the code have also been laid off. "The code isn't worth a damn" without the people behind the project from the start, he writes, also lamenting APB's rather pathetic performance after launch - struggling at the bottom of the PC-only charts.
Where does the blame lie? Primarily, at Real Time World's senior management, according to the commenter, but "I think a huge part of the blame lies with Dave Jones, though I can’t emphasize enough how nice a man he is personally; ultimately APB has torpedoed the company, and it failed largely under his creative leadership."
Rumours had been flying around concerning RTW's redundancies last week, but a post on Rock Paper Shotgun quoting studio manager Colin Macdonald confirmed the layoffs, while a commenter named "ExRTW" explained that the situation at the Dundee developer is perhaps more grim than previously thought.
"RTW tried something bold, and fucked it up," the anonymous poster said referring the juggling of APB and in-the-air project MyWorld. "It tried to make what amounted to two MMOs at once, as well as self-publish.
"I have to hand it to Dave [Jones, RTW CEO]. He’s ballsy. But in the end, we couldn’t do it, and I think the whole company will go under sooner rather than later. It’s a shame, too, as Dundee can’t absorb the level of game dev redundancies that are about to hit, which means the Dundee scene gets that little bit smaller. But that’s the price of failure, and we certainly failed. No excuses, really."
The poster detailed the troubles that occured during APB's development - the lack of 'quality' in its core mechanics, no time for content production, announcing the game too early, failure to engage users and press on the PR side efficiently, and (most importantly for 'ExRTW') the misguided business model.
"The problem was that management looked at the revenue they wanted to generate and priced accordingly, failing to realise (or care) that there are literally a dozen top quality, subscription free team based shooters," the writer continued. "The game would have been immeasurably better received it had simply been a boxed product, with paid-for in-game items, IMO. This may not have been possible, given what was spent on the game and the running costs, but the market is tough. You can’t simply charge what you feel like earning and hope the paying public will agree with your judgement of value."
MyWorld's future was said to be 'unclear,' but ExRTW suggests that the people who originally wrote the code have also been laid off. "The code isn't worth a damn" without the people behind the project from the start, he writes, also lamenting APB's rather pathetic performance after launch - struggling at the bottom of the PC-only charts.
Where does the blame lie? Primarily, at Real Time World's senior management, according to the commenter, but "I think a huge part of the blame lies with Dave Jones, though I can’t emphasize enough how nice a man he is personally; ultimately APB has torpedoed the company, and it failed largely under his creative leadership."
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Comments
bertybassett 18 Aug 2010 09:39
1/1
I've stayed in the travel lodge next door to their studios and even looked on their web site for a techy job and thought long and hard about a move up to Dundee from the South of England. Good job I did not go with the idea.