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CRIME PLAYS
Lead Designer Stephen Hewitt Testifies To APB's Addictiveness
Hold onto your Glock; it's going to be murder out there on the backstreets and byways when All Points Bulletin (APB), the world's first massively multiplayer gang-banging simulation, drops in 2007.
The brainchild of David Jones, creator of the Grand Theft Auto franchise (we hear it's big with the kids, no?), this murderous MMO isn't just Asian publishing giant Webzen's flagship product for North America. It's also a (bitch) slap in the face to traditional online games, offering players the choice of becoming bloodthirsty crooks or upstanding law enforcement officials, then letting them shoot or drive their way across living, breathing urban battlegrounds. Introducing the concept of an endless turf war that rages 24/7, the title literally demands you double-fist your way through Hollywood-style firefights and other gritty scenes straight out of a movie or music video.
With its release date more than a year off, we couldn't be bothered waiting to start committing our first felonies. (Or begin playing good cop, bad cop, but that's another story - this is a PG-13 site, after all). Throwing caution to the wind and kidnapping lead designer Stephen Hewitt of developer Real Time Worlds, we forced him to talk at gunpoint about why the game's going to be so good that it's almost criminal:
LQGaming Services:: What makes Real Time Worlds, a bunch of guys from Scotland, so qualified to simulate life in the 'hood?
Stephen Hewitt : We hang in hoods all the time - the weather's really crappy here. We like rain gear. We spend most of our lives in hoods.
We also get all your TV and films, so probably know as much about the archetypes (if not the details) as anybody. And just as everybody here wears tartan all the time and eats nothing but haggis, we know that every street in America is actually bristling with weaponry, and is right in the middle of a massive gang war, even as we speak.
"Dave's already been there - he doesn't need to do another Grand Theft Auto. We're trying to push the action genre into the massively multiplayer space with a whole new game."
But whatactually, it's the archetypes we're interested in with APB - we're interested in the essence of 'gang-ness:' shared identity, ganging up, and playing in groups. As much as American gang culture will be the backbone of what we're attempting, at least thematically - because that's people will expect - we want APB to explore gangs as a more universal theme. So yes to hip-hop, but also yes to the Mafia, the Yakuza, Goths or Punks, if that's your bag. But no to a posse of kilt-wearing Govan lads in hoody tops carrying 'flick claymores' shouting the following:
"Yo, fit-like dawg?"
"Nae bad, ya bammer, jus' hangin wie me possie, like, ye ken."
"Can I chorey yer pimped ride for a bottle o' Ginger and a jammy piece?"
"Aye, but dinnie touch ma hoe."
"Aw yer awright there, Angus, like: I dinnie dae gardening."
Unless you really push the system.
Besides, clan warfare goes way back, and our team is incredibly multi-cultural.
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