LOS ANGELES — It's easy to imagine a massively multiplayer Grand Theft Auto where every cop and every criminal in the city is played by a human being. It's more difficult to imagine such a videogame being anything more than nonstop chaos.
Game designer David Jones, who helped create the quintessential criminal gaming experience with GTA and revolutionized the genre with sleeper hit Crackdown, plans to test the limits of multiplayer anarchy with upcoming game APB.
When APB launches on the PC early next year (with an Xbox 360 version to follow), its in-game city, San Paro, will be split into districts that accommodate up to 100 players. Gamers will opt to play as "enforcers" bent on cleaning up the streets or as criminals laying waste to peace and tranquility. They'll be matched against each other and sent on missions in a city filled with other players doing the same.
"Just like any single-player game, there are cars driving around, there are civilians walking around," says Jones, who founded Realtime Worlds after leaving GTA maker Rockstar North.
"But two seconds later, you might hear a car screeching around a corner, pursued by two enforcers screaming past you," he says. "You might hear shots to your left, see a car smashed into a storefront, squad cars inside, exchanging fire, people screaming and shouting at each other. You're entering into a game with loads of other players, and you have no idea what you're going to see or hear."
What do you do in the midst of all this chaos? Nothing. APB isn't a free-for-all bacchanalia of shots fired and car crashes. The city is a big multiplayer hub, and you'll be matched up to do battle with other players on a case-by-case basis. You might learn to be a better criminal in the process.
Wired.com spoke with Jones at the Electronic Entertainment Expo earlier this month to find out more about how his latest game works. If it's tough to wrap your head around at first, don't worry — Jones says that's kind of the idea.
"There's nothing to compare it to, but that's kind of what we try to do with games," says Jones.
For example, let's say you've decided to play as a criminal. You do what everyone does in the first few minutes of a GTA-style game: Steal a car. A mission opens up, and tells you that you can make some easy money by driving the car to the nearest chop shop.
But if anyone saw you get in the car, an all points bulletin will go out and the police will be alerted. One of the enforcers in the game will be dispatched to take you down before you get to the chop shop. If you make it, you win the mission; if not, the enforcer wins.
These missions cut both ways. As an enforcer, you might be given the task of guarding a truck full of gold bullion on its way to the bank. Criminals will find out about the transport and pursue you.
As a criminal, you don't just have to worry about the cops. Gangs can come into conflict as well, says Jones, "just like in real life."
Can you learn to be a better criminal in APB? Absolutely. All-points bulletins don't go out automatically, Jones points out. If you're stealthy and smart about how you go about missions, you can get away with murder without the cops ever knowing.
"Some players will just go and jack a car in the middle of the street, and the APB goes out immediately, because the (computer) character that owns the car phones in and says, 'This guy just jacked me,'" he says. "A smarter player will look for a parked car, break into it, hotwire it, and they can stick to the back streets so the APB won't go out."
That sense of tension — did anyone notice me? — can heighten the intensity of the gameplay, says E.J. Moreland, the game's lead designer: "That anticipation, that stealth game, is just as much fun."
You can be a covert cop, too. If you see a criminal hanging around looking like he's about to get up to no good, you can follow him discreetly. If you catch him in a criminal act and call it in, you'll receive the highest priority in the matchmaking process.
The missions aren't just one-on-one affairs. You can team up with friends, and the game will attempt to match you with similar-size groups. And if you start doing really well, more and more of the cops or robbers on the servers might start coming after you. If you're the greatest criminal the city has ever seen, you might have all 50 enforcers on your server attempting to take you down, says Jones.
But unless they're assigned to face off with you, no one else can interfere. To an extent, anyway. "If you're in a vehicle, you can potentially grief a little bit," says Jones. You could interfere with someone's mission by driving a car right into them, for example.
You can't open fire on anyone that the game's matchmaking system hasn't paired you up with. If players truly want to experience this, however, Jones says APB will have "chaos servers" where anything goes. But it's a "completely different game," he warns.
"You might go in with the best of intentions," he says, "but then you accidentally run over someone, and his friend shoots you, and 15 minutes after flipping on the servers, it's all-out warfare."
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