A lot can be learned from APB about how to not launch a game years in development, it folded in just over a month. Despite all the time that was spent working on the game, some very basic balance issues plagued its short life in retail.
“When they released it they didn’t have enough time to polish all the components and make it coherent,” explained Gamersfirst COO Bjorn Book-Larsson. “Shooting and driving weren’t really feeling that great and they had made what we think were some silly business decisions. The first gun you got only let you shoot 25 meters, while the people who had been in the game for a long time could shoot 100 meters. They could kill you at four times the range. The first wave of players that went into the game would slaughter everyone else. No one else had a chance. It was no longer a shooter based on specialized skills. It was literally a slaughter-fest. If you look at the reviewers who didn’t like it, generally they were showing up and getting killed.”
Communication breakdown were a large part of the reason certain major issues did not get addressed. “There were teams who were supposedly sitting idle while they knew about the game’s problems but didn’t have the green light to fix the bugs, said Book-Larsson. Nobody from the design team had told the other team that they could do it.”
Source: Eurogamer
