EJ Moreland, Lead Designer of APB sat down with Christian Nutt over at Gamasutra for an in-depth interview on Realtime Worlds' upcoming cops-n-robbers MMOG.

There is a good bit of philosophical discussion about MMOGs in general in the interview, but Mr. Moreland also spoke about, at length, the viability of their particular game and how their strategy for marketing the game centers around finding a solid core audience, and expanding from there.

Mr. Moreland also spoke about how APB will approach character development without falling back on tried and true mechanics of levels and other typical development designs:

How do you maintain player interest without the carrot-on-the-stick of levels and similar systems? I mean, they maintain them in many games because they are a proven treadmill.

EJ: They're absolutely great. The whole DIKU-style of RPGs is genius in what it does, but there's only a certain group of people that really enjoy it. Now, that's not to say that they're [just the] 10 million people playing WoW, but it's finding what works for your game; finding out how your game works.

For us, we do have functional progression; we do have cosmetic progression; we do have things for players to achieve. It's always about putting things out there, that work for your game, that players want to continue to achieve.

Some games, like Counter-Strike, have no progression, but they still have achievement. You know, people created leagues, they created leader boards -- it really goes to what your game is. Our game is an action game. For us, most of it's going to be about players comparing each other, and seeing how we can weave achievement into that. So, as you achieve, you get things that make you more famous.

Again, the game is really about that celebrity. But there is also, like I said, functional progression. You don't get everything up front, you have to earn the types of cars, the weapons; all that stuff is progression in the game.

For an interesting read, check out the full interview over at Gamasutra.