HAMMERED
Taken from Brisbane news-paper The Courier Mail, January 29.
HAMMERED...but a forcibly downsized Auran is still "alive and kicking", the company says.
It may have taken a direct hit, but Brisbane games studio Auran is far from defeated, according to co-founder Graham Edelsten.
The development arm of the company went into voluntary administration in December after its $15 million multi-player online game
FURY flopped.
But Mr. Edelsten says the company, while drastically smaller, is still alive and kicking.
"Various articles went around the world that said Aruan's gone and contracts we'd been working on for months collapsed because the publishers thought we couldn't do the work anymore," he says.
"Yes, we had to scale back and we had to put off a lot of people because the volume we expected for
FURY wasn't there. But only a section of Auran went - the smaller Auran companies are still functioning and are still developing games."
Now with a staff of 15 - down from 85 - the company is focusing on niche projects and getting a revised version of
FURY ready for the US Game Developers Conference in San Francisco in february.
"IT hasn't been easy but we certainly haven't given up on
FURY," Mr Edelsten says, adding that player numbers had grown since a free - to - play online model was launched last month.
The studio has also secured a contract for another of its titles,
SOLO, and is looking at selling the technology it used to create FURY to Chinese developers.
"The systems you have to build these games can be used again - if not for ourselves then for another publisher," Mr Edelsten says.
Game Developers Association of Australia president Tom Crago says Brisbane's game scene has been unaffected by Auran's setbacks.
"We have to be concious of the fact that this a hit-driven industry," he says. "IT was unfortunate that the studio had to close but the silver lining was that all those people (who lost their jobs) were able to move into other positions within the industry very easily."
Mr. Edelsten says Auran will stick to less ambitious projects, saying until the investment dollars match those of their overseas counterparts it is to risky to take on the giants.
"Independent studios are a dying breed because of the enormous costs involved to fund a game and that's a bit of a pity but that's the nature of the business and why investment is so hard to find,"he says.
Hope This explains a bit more of the puzzle.
Les.
