At GDC this year Realtime Worlds, creators of Crackdown, discussed details of their upcoming game. The first thing to note is that it’s very much Crackdown in style, so the disappointment in not getting a sequel is being alleviated by what we are getting. It’s almost like Crackdown was a test to see if that style of game would work, and now All Points Bulletin is where the Realtime Worlds team is ready to go.

Joystiq has the full report from Dave Jones’ presentation. Jones makes a point to talk about the fact the MMO genre has a fantasy bent to it when perceived by people. It’s not just World of Warcraft, but just about every MMO out there. They give people the feeling that this type of game is for hardcore geeks, and not the every man player that most of us are. The other problem is that MMO’s tend to take on the form of RPG, when there’s so much more you can do.

All Points Bulletin looks more like the response to Sony’s The Agency than it does an alternative to WoW. The game takes the concept of social interaction inherent in an MMO and brings it to a sandbox style game. Players will have all the toys they could ever want to play with, and they won’t be grinding their way to get to them. There will be no PVE (player versus environment) action going on in APB. Instead character progression is done through customization. You start off with a t-shirt and have to wonder why the guy across the street has on a badass outfit…and why he’s pointing a rocket launcher at your face.