Realtime Worlds’ APB Subscription Plan Detailed
All Points Bulletin In-Game
Realtime Worlds’ founder, Dave Jones, speaks out about the subscription plan for APB as well as how practical it can be.
The subscription plan for APB is actually more like a phone’s pricing plan opposed to the general MMO’s type of pricing plan. Instead of paying for months, although you can, you will pay for hours of play time. This pricing plan was decided upon, according to E.J. Moreland, the design lead for Realtime Worlds, because most hardcore computer gamers are paying more for a game than they actually need to.
You may not actually realize this, but that is actually fact. Pick a game like World of Warcraft for example. You pay for 30 days at $20, paying for the month instead of individual hours at a time. For me, this was a pretty wasteful choice because I paid for 30 days and I only play for one hour, at most, per day. So I am essentially losing money because I do not play as much as some other hardcore gamers may. However, if I were paying by the hour, I would save money because of the modest amount of playtime I clock in per day.
With that said, Realtime Worlds will still include the option to pay for a months worth of unlimited play time for a price of only $10. However, the development team suspects that many people will pay for the 20 hours of gameplay for $7 instead.
The Realtime Worlds team looked at a plethora of pricing plans before deciding on a single one. They even played with the idea of allowing you to play the game for free, but charging for upgrades and customization. The founder of Realtime Worlds, Dave Jones, decided upon paying as you go, because it seemed fair.
Upon purchasing APB, you receive 50 hours of gameplay for free, then after that time period runs out, you have to choose whether or not you will pay by the month or pay for a grouped amount of hours. The initial 50 hour free period was chosen after doing research on gamer play habits for games such as Modern Warfare 2, Call of Duty 4 and World of Warcraft. There is an internal clock that determines the amount of hours of gameplay that you have left. This clock does not start until you are in one of the action zones of this massively multiplayer online game. The social districts, where all of the character interaction and customizations occur, are freely accessable.
The social districts of APB are expected to become a place where the gamers spend most of their time. There are even ideas to make the social districts of APB a standalone program, provided for free, for gamers whom are interested in the interaction and customization instead of the gunplay. Player housing may be created soon, to further flesh out these player districts and player choices. If one wants to, they could spend all of their time in social districts, creating clothing lines, car art or tattoos and selling them in game for APB in-game currency. Theoretically, you could literally become insanely rich before you even reach a highly competitive level, allowing you to become a mogul of sorts.
All Points Bulletin, APB, is shaping up to become a highly competitive and well thought out online game. The choice to break the video game user base in half, and allow for both a socially inclined and action packed video game experience, will surely allow for this game to prosper.
