Tag Archives: dave jones

Facebook is home to a growing number of games, but the social network company is going megaton on game development this year, starting with the announcement of ChronoBlade, an RPG with a whiff of Diablo about it. It’s being helmed by GTA creator Dave Jones, also of APB/Crackdown fame. See it in action below.

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GamersFirst has hired Realtime Worlds’ Dave Jones as an advisor All Points Bulletin.

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Yesterday, a rumor was circulating that Realtime Worlds founder Dave Jones had taken a job with Epic Games.

Today, the APB creative director has told Develop the rumor is untrue.

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Epic Games is a “potential buyer” for APB, the RTW MMO announced yesterday to be closing after just two months since it went on sale, according to a BBC report.

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RealTime Worlds’ Dave Jones has told Eurogamer that APB won’t appear on consoles unless the studio finds the right “publishing partner” to assist it.

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Realtime Worlds’ Dave Jones has said disappointing review scores for APB boil down to “misconceptions” and “huge expectations”.

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RealTime Worlds’ Dave Jones has revealed that all content that has been created from the APB beta will be wiped from the full edition. Say goodbye to those custom-made cars.

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Gamespot’s posted up an APB demo video from GDC showing off the game being demoed by Dave Jones himself. Get it after the break.

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It doesn’t sound as though a console version of APB is occupying anyone’s near future, with RTW’s Dave Jones telling EG at GDC this week that platform holder and design issues are keeping the MMO PC-only for now.

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RealTime Worlds’ Dave Jones has explained why its upcoming MMO APB has been so long in the making.

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Secretary of State for Scotland Jim Murphy has proposed tax breaks for the Scottish videogame industry.

These proposals have come to light after Murphy spoke with Realtime Worlds owner Dave Jones who has threatened to take his company to Ireland should there be further lack of support for developers.

“We have had a discussion about tax breaks and ways to support the industry,” said Murphy to The Evening Telegraph. “France have introduced tax breaks and we want to talk more about that and we will listen to any strong case being made; we want to do whatever we can to help.

“Dundee is the Scottish centre of excellence in this industry. I want to be very clear about that. The games industry has a big future and Dundee has a big future to play in that, in Scotland, in the UK and wider.”

Via Develop.

Mark Rein’s spent the last few days at Realtime World’s offices in Dundee, Scotland, playing what-Dave-Jones-did-next MMO, APB.

Want to know what it’s like? The Epic VP gave us an exclusive overview of what to expect at GDC Europe today. Hit the link.

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The FAQ over on the official APB website, mentions that the game will not carry a monthly fee like most MMOs.

So it may be going the microtransaction route or be pulling a page out of the Team Fortress 2 book – buy the game, play online for free – but we doubt that.

Dave Jones told us last month that the game will not have a normal subscription model, but that players will understand why they will have to pay for the investment.

“Basically, you have to buy the client. It’s a traditional game that you buy,” he said. “We’re not going the normal ‘you have to subscribe to play the game every month’ route. What we haven’t said is which route we are going, and in some respects we’re still looking.”

Hit the links for the rest.

Thanks, Evil Avatar.

Realtime Worlds has opened beta applications for APB: get your crime on right here.

The upcoming cops ‘n’ robbers MMO is slated for launch next spring. We got a good look at it at Develop this year, and had a long chat with company head Dave Jones on the game’s mechanics.

You probably want to be involved, to be honest. It looks amazing.

There’s date there on when the beta’s actually going to start.

MCV’s reporting that RTW MMO APB will release in March 2010.

Dev boss Dave Jones said at Develop earlier this month that the game was targeted for “spring”.

We’ve contacted EA for comment.

Dave Jones has told Videogamer that his main goal for APB, is for it to last for five to ten years.

“That’s ultimately the goal. The method I looked at, the kind of ideas I looked at was more like Counter-Strike,” he said at Develop. “There is a game which kept people playing for years and years and years, but from a very, very different perspective – just a great, great, great core combat game. I want more of what Counter-Strike did coupled with the social stuff that Counter-Strike didn’t do. You couldn’t even have a clan in Counter-Strike for heaven’s sake. People used to improvise by adding it to the end of their names.

“They had to try and organize when to meet up, try and form groups, they effectively ran their own server then and invited players to it – all that stuff Counter-Strike players were doing, they had to try and do off their own back.

“We’ve taken all that and said, ‘make it from the beginning’. You get all the social stuff you get from World of Warcraft. The difference is in the core gameplay. APB is a hell of a lot of fun to play, because I do play it day upon day upon day upon day upon day. We have progression as well – it’s visual. We have leagues and stats and achievements. But at the end of the day, after playing World of Warcraft for a night I don’t sit back and go, wow! That was an amazing fight I was just in. It’s not really about an amazing fight. It’s about tactics and just getting through stuff.

“I want people in APB to come out after a couple of hours and say, wow we had some amazing fights with that squad and that clan, and that guy was dominating tonight.”

More through the link.

Realtime Worlds boss Dave Jones told VG247 that he’d be disappointed if action MMO, APB didn’t shift over a million units.

“I’ll be disappointed if we can’t sell a million plus,” he told us at Develop in Brighton last week.

One million copices would certainly go some way to recoup the $30m dollars that APB cost to make. A figure that Jones also revealed to VG247 in our video interview with him last week.

“The next thing then is how long they [the million] remain a part of the APB community in an ongoing basis. That’s a hard one to put a number on,” he said.

“I expect a little bit of a drop off from that potentially but really I want to grow this game. As we start to look at what people want, what they’re screaming out for more of – as they start to speak to their friends and say these are the kinds of things we want in it – ideally we want to grow that userbase,” he explained.

“So it folds back a bit initially because a lot of people just want to to try it. They might say, ‘this has 70 per cent of the things that I want but these are the things that would really make it for me.’ Then we’d have to go back and address some of that and do those things and start to effectively grow the database.”

Watch the full interview through the link.

APB is out “early 2010.”

Upcoming Realtime Worlds MMO APB has cost around $30 million so far, company boss Dave Jones told VG247 at Develop this week, and won’t be covered by a “normal” subscription model when it releases next spring.

“It’s not just a game any more,” said Jones. “We’ve got data centres, we’ve got all the hardware. But if you wrap it all up, it’s probably a good $30 million investment.”

The boss added that consumers will pay up front for a disc or download, but that the game’s subs model will be something not seen before in MMOs.

“Basically, you have to buy the client. It’s a traditional game that you buy,” he said.

“We’re not going the normal ‘you have to subscribe to play the game every month’ route. What we haven’t said is which route we are going, and in some respects we’re still looking.”

Jones said the eventually model will be “flexible,” “unique” and interesting, and will allow the player to “get” why they have to spend money to cover Realtime Worlds’ investment.

Watch the full interview with Dave here.

Crackdown may have been a huge hit with gamers, but apparently the game only broke even money-wise for the developers and Microsoft.

“With Crackdown we sold about 1.5 million copies, but even at that we pretty much only managed to break even,” Dave Jones told Gamasutra. “It was due to the amount of factors that were out of our control as the developer, influences such as GameStop’s amazing used-game sales.

“We know 1.5 million new copies were sold, but it’s likely there were 2.5 – 3 million sold when you include used.”

Wow. Sorry ’bout that.

Via IndustryGamers.

We were lucky enough to get nearly 20 minutes with Realtime Worlds boss and original GTA creator Dave Jones at Develop yesterday, the result of which you can see after the break.

We talked almost exclusively about APB, Jones telling us when the game will release, how much it’s cost to make and going into good detail on the mechanics of the MMO itself.

Jones also gave opinion on the state of the GTA franchise, calling Vice City the “pinnacle” of the IP.

There’s tons more stuff in there. Enjoy.

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