Sad news this week, with the closure of Realtime Worlds. Over 200 staff have lost jobs, and a significant amount of money has been lost.
Where did it all go wrong? Realtime were the poster child of modern game development companies : ambitious, keen and expanding heavily into self-publishing. Based up in Dundee, Scotland they managed to acquire over $100 million in investment over approximately 4 years, and had just released All Points Bulletin.
While it’s a little too soon to draw any certain conclusions, the word drifting out is that the development of APB was hampered by a lack of focus and drive. Without a clear and concise vision of what the game was, development driftem aimlessly. Then, too little time was allocated to testing and QA – which meant that even with public beta-testing, the game just wasn’t polished enough.
Many large game companies suffer from development inertia. Being able to identify and correct design and implementation issues quickly is critical to the development of any game, especially an ambitious title such as APB. Without iterative feedback and design, a game can end up developing itself into a ‘corner’. It would seem that by the time RTW realised the mess APB was in, it was too late to correct the problem.
Final word goes out to all ex-RTW stafff – commiserations to you all. I’ve been through it several times, and it always hurts. Lets hope the damage to the UK games development industry isn’t too significant.
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