Last week saw a dramatic event in the Australian video games industry. Long-standing veteran Auran Development closed its doors, ending more than 10 years as a developer in the industry.

To put that into context when Auran first stepped into the spotlight with Dark Reign the Playstation was still next-gen. Final Fantasy VII came out two months after it. Resident Evil didn't have a number after it, as fans patiently waited for the second installment. Online play wasn't real big. In fact, online wasn't real big.

My point is that the last 10 years has seen a lot of changes in the industry, and it would appear there have been too many changes.

It's worth pointing out, by the way, that Auran as a company still exists. While Auran Development is gone now, Auran Games (the publishing arm) is still going along happily.

It's sad to see a death of this size in the industry, and especially for us it's sad because we had a good relationship with Auran. Yug worked there for a whil...

Last week saw a dramatic event in the Australian video games industry. Long-standing veteran Auran Development closed its doors, ending more than 10 years as a developer in the industry.

To put that into context when Auran first stepped into the spotlight with Dark Reign the Playstation was still next-gen. Final Fantasy VII came out two months after it. Resident Evil didn't have a number after it, as fans patiently waited for the second installment. Online play wasn't real big. In fact, online wasn't real big.

My point is that the last 10 years has seen a lot of changes in the industry, and it would appear there have been too many changes.

It's worth pointing out, by the way, that Auran as a company still exists. While Auran Development is gone now, Auran Games (the publishing arm) is still going along happily.

It's sad to see a death of this size in the industry, and especially for us it's sad because we had a good relationship with Auran. Yug worked there for a while, and they've even been paid advertisers on the site in the past.

So the loss of a significant player in the Australian Games Industry is a sad thing. But the saddest, of course, is the job loss for all of Auran's employees. Staff came in expecting a normal day of work, only to be told to pack up their stuff and go home. They're fired only two weeks out from Christmas. They haven't been paid for the last week's work and no entitlements or redundancy have been paid. Liquidators have been called in and Auran's assets are now being sold off.

As per bankruptcy law, Auran Staff will be the first people paid out by this liquidation, so there's a good chance they'll get back what they're owed. Auran management have stated that staff will receive what they're owed. But have been a little vague about when, and if it follows the standard post-liquidation process it will be a very very long time, months, or even a year.

Naturally, as the axe fell, so did the blame. In general, the blame has mostly landed on Fury.

It's hard to know what to say about Fury. The game has at this point failed quite spectacularly. Badly enough to bring its developers down with it. We haven't reviewed Fury. I honestly thought we deliberately decided not to review it because we didn't want to have to give it a bad review. (Judge all you like, some people on the dev team are personal friends of ours, and those things mean more to us than a bit of content.) It turns out that's not right though. In actual fact none of us had a PC capable of running it.

This is probably a good example of at least one reason Fury failed. The minimum requirements are vastly higher than they needed to have been, by comparison to something like World of Warcraft, which has been out long enough to still have low specs. Hell it's one of the few "current" games that my computer can run. If 90% of gamers can't play your game that really does cut down on your profitability a slight bit.

There are many other reasons, of course. The term "development cycle" has been tragically literal in Fury's case, with the game being built and rebuilt over and over. It's been a very long process, and very slow. That translates to very expensive.

Regrettably a lot of the blame has become quite personal. Some ex-Auran staff are really very bitter about Fury and Auran's failures, and lay the blame at the feet of specific people in the company's management, most particularly Adam Carpenter, Lead Designer on Fury, and Tony Hilliam, Auran's CEO.

Tony is featured in the comic above, and the main criticisms of him include the appalling timing of the closure, with no money for Christmas, and no warning. Also there's the clearly rubbish press release he sent out in response to rumours of Auran's difficulties. Finally, though, many people from inside the company report that Tony and Adam ran Fury development as a pet project, with regular and arbitrary content and design changes, and naziesque control over all aspects of content, development, art, etc, ignoring suggestions that would have made Fury good and delaying development continually with their own personal changes..

We interviewed Adam when we did our studio tour of Auran and found him to be very likeable and engaging. Things with Adam have gotten very bitter though, and there has been pointing and recriminations at Adam even before Auran died.

Some of it is just the fairly natural bitterness and finger pointing at the highest position, the man directly ultimately responsible for a failed project. But most of it's not.

Adam did an interview with website F13 last week, a few days before Auran went down. The interview is surprisingly open and honest, at least from his point of view, putting the blame for Fury's failure onto the developers who weren't dedicated or skilled enough, or who didn't properly "share the vision". Some parts of it are really quite bitter, and frankly unprofessional. Bear in mind this is not people he used to work with. At the time it was people he still worked with. At best it's disloyal and vindictive. Not to mention, stupid.

F13: Do you think folks tended to just hide their head in the sand due to Auran being more robust than just this title, hoping to just get by?

Adam: Who knows. I don't interact with them on the kind of social level needed to have this kind of conversation.

Wow. Just... wow. That's not open and honest, it's plain rude. It's essentially saying you're just too important to talk to the people making your game. It's saying that you don't like them. Who in any company would ever say that? You might think it... Hell, if I worked in any management position the only time I'd even speak to the plebs below me would be when I needed to piss on someone, but I'd never actually say that.

I could say a lot (and I will) but it's best said in this response from Gully Foyle. Essentially he is stating that everything bad that can be said about Fury is Adam's fault. As Lead Designer if the game sucks... it's his fault. But more than that, any of the things that Adam blamed, such as unenthusiastic staff, or lack of vision, are also his fault. That's his job. Not just having the vision, but sharing it. Being enthusiastic and making his staff enthusiastic.

Another thing Gully doesn't really mention much but a lot of people (including me) take issue with is the dismissive reference to 9-5ers. Those people that only come in as a job and put in their time and go home, not showing the dedication to put in that extra.

Guess what? That's their job. They come in, they work, they go home. That's an entirely reasonable expectation. If you need more than that, you have to lead them into having the enthusiasm to stay, the dedication. You have to get them excited enough to want to put in that extra, and keep them happy enough as a team to enjoy each other's company long enough to get the job done. But really... you shouldn't need them to. A well managed job is one that runs on time and on budget, not one that runs horribly late and then spends 6 months in crunch time, hurting the morale of a skilled team who are putting in all they can to make you a turkey.

Things aren't all doom and gloom. Many of Auran's employees saw the writing on the wall and had already gotten themselves work for one of the other local Brisbane dev companies. Those companies (Krome, THQ, Pandemic, FuzzyEyes, The Creative Assembly, etc) are always struggling to find skilled staff and are taking this as the windfall it is. Yug made the good point the other night that if there's anyone who gets hurt by this it's the students. Just coming out of uni design courses and instead of competing for positions with other students they're now swamped by people with a greater range of skills and several years commercial experience. The buzz we hear is that all the dev companies are opening their arms and welcoming this sudden crop of experienced, skilled designers.

Something tells me, though, that there are no positions available for a lead designer.