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All Points Bulletin to Run Ads Through Voice Chat
by Brian Leahy, Jun 28, 2010 11:20am PDTRealtime Worlds' All Points Bulletin (APB) will be released tomorrow with pre-order customers already causing chaos in the crime-filled massively-multiplayer shooter and/or socializing game. The game has a unique payment structure, which allows players to buy blocks of hours to play in the game's 'Action Districts' -- where all the shooting happens -- or simply purchase a monthly subscription.
An early purchaser noticed an interesting option (via Massively) in their account settings: the option for "VOIP Premium", which "removes ads from the voip for 30, 90, and 180 days."
As the forums began to work themselves up into a rabid fury, a community manager for the game clarified the program. Vivox, the company that provides the voice chat technology for APB, will serve advertisements over the VOIP system. Ads will be played at least three hours apart and only upon entering districts so gameplay isn't interrupted.
In a recent telephone roundtable before E3, lead designer EJ Moreland initially said that the game would not carry microtransactions, but later clarified to Shacknews that Realtime Worlds "will be developing and offering a wide variety of [in-game] points-based services to expand and augment APB after release." The option to remove these ads is most certainly in exchange for real currency, although points earned through gameplay may be used as well.
Comments
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Honestly I am having a lot of fun with the game, although I see it going free to play within a year as well due to the low subscriber base.
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What I wanted: The "have fun, no matter what" spirit of Crackdown with more people.
What I got: Shit.
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Even Global Agenda figured out that subscriptions don't work for games like this. And that game even has PvE content unlike this. This game is nothing more than a glorified GTA clone. Realtime Worlds should have stuck with the Crackdown series. This thing is going to bankrupt them.
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GTA was the hottest shit on the scene when Realtime went off on its own. Realtime probably said to themselves and others, "Millions of video gamers, and console gamers at that, love GTA more than anything else. Surely they would pay a monthly subscription for an online GTA experience plus our character customization and gameplay innovations."
Only later, as time went on and the wave of MMO failures hit to provide an industry reality check for MMO ambitions, did it because apparent that there's shockingly little to do in a GTA MMO. They realized that a monthly sub wasn't going to fly in this market and now they are trying to survive by being more creative with their fee structure.
anyhoo, seems like a game world where ads on billboards/bus stops/whatever would fit in alright, why didnt they go with something like that? or is that in there too :o
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I hope this will clear this up now, you guys seem to have a hard time figuring this one out.
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I very rarely moan about the profit side of the business of gaming, but this is one of those times. Just. Make. A. Good. Game.
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