Hello and welcome to my rather belated end of year waffle on Sumea and the games industry. I've been a bit preoccupied with the holiday festivities (which are still continuing btw!), so please excuse the lateness of things! I'll try to make this as brief as I can, but I mostly want to take this opportunity to give thanks to all our regular visitors and members, our sponsors, as well as acknowledge some of the achievements and milestones of the local games industry in the year that just past.
In 2006, we saw a few changes in the industry. The first shake up came in early 2006 with the closing of Sydney's Perception studio. If the outpouring of comments in the Sumea news item were of any indication, it seemed like the situation behind the scenes at Perception were quite alarming. A last ditch attempt at the sale of Perception was fruitless, and the company was no more.
Sadly, various other studios quietly disbanded as well, and there were also concerns for others such as the ever enduring Melbourne House studio. Atari CEO, Bruno Bonnell, expressed plans to offload their internal studios to any interested buyers as Atari ran into some troubled financial times. When Screenplay made a blog entry about the dire situation, the response it caused was quite extraordinary, to say the least. However, it came as very welcome although somewhat surprising news when Krome announced that they had taken over the studio. The acquisition by Krome had bolsted its numbers to near 300 employees, having also created Krome Adelaide with some of the ex-Rat Bag Games staff that were made redundant in 2005. It's been slated that Krome is the largest independent game developer in the world, and that is indeed quite some achievement.
Other changes around the industry include Lava Injection becoming Game Audio Australia. Bullant Studios also went through a name and branding change to formally become "Big Ant Studios". Across the tasman, big things are expected of the newly announced Wingnut Interactive, the game studio from renowned director, Peter Jackson, which will hopefully start a large momentum happening in the New Zealand games industry. That's not to say that other Kiwi developers have been resting on their laurels either, as Sidhe Interactive released the anticipated and quality Melbourne Cup Challenge game and Metia Interactive demo'd their highly interesting PSP title called Cube.
2006 will be remembered for the spurt of new gaming expos in Australia, perhaps signaling the growing popularity and cultural acceptance of games as an important pastime here. It can only be hoped that as attitudes and understanding of games mature, eventually we will receive our R+18 ratings category for games, pushing us in line with the rest of western civilization. GO3, the games expo taking place at Perth in March this year promises to be the biggest yet!
The expo / conference for our industry however was the inaugural Game Connect: Asia Pacific conference which replaced the long running Australian Games Developer Conference. It was held up in Brisbane for the first time and was an important step in making the event accessible for all those interested in the industry. If that was the main aim for the conference, then it was a resounding success since it was announced by the organizers that ticket sales were nearly completely sold out (source: GameNews.com.au). The conference closed with Evelyn Richardson, CEO and President of the Game Developers' Association of Australia (GDAA), announcing that she'll be moving on to new challenges after four years at the helm.
Of great importance was the survey that the GDAA initiated which was revealed at Game Connect, and it provided some interesting statistics on the Australian games industry, as well as highlighting some of the concerns and challenges developers will face in the future. The local games industry is 1,600 employee strong, a sixty-percent increase over the last three years, and it brings in annual revenues of $110 million. For the 12 largest companies in Australia, five are in Queensland, five in Victoria, one is in NSW, and one is in the Australian Capital Territory. 37 percent of the industry's full time employees are based in Queensland and 46 percent are based in Melbourne.
The largest concern for most developers in the survey was surprisingly not securing finance, but attracting experienced talent. 77 percent of games companies think attracting talented staff is the biggest hurdle to the industry's growth. The skills shortage has been a concern expressed in 2006, with various debates and discussion on Sumea about the situation.
It's been a great year for numerous developers. Pandemic Studios, Creative Assembly, Krome Studios are among the few with mammoth titles released in 2006, with many other developers worth keeping an eye out on in the new year. IR Gurus are working on Heatseaker, the sequel to their highly regarded "Heroes of the Pacific" title, and we finally got a glimpse of L.A Noire from Team Bondi. Most intriguing studio of all has to be Auran who are moving from the realm of Train simulation games to some very exciting projects like the highly impressive Fury, as well as a social / virtual world application akin to Second Life and There. Krome Studios are working on Hellboy as well as a few unnamed projects, and we're all very eager to see what they've been up to when they officially release some information on it. There have also been some incredible achievements from developers concentrating in the handheld market too. Tantalus achieved technically very impressive titles such as MX vs ATV : On the Edge and Payload, and Firemint with the equally impressive and polished Madden 07. I would have to give special mention Halfbrick Studios as well who had a bumper year with three solid GBA title releases, with Barnyard being my favourite! I'm sure I've left out many other game titles worth mentioning, so you'll have to pardon me for that!
Finally, I'd like to thank everyone who visits the site regularly, our creative members, forum posters, forum moderators, news editors, and by no means the least, our sponsors. Support for Sumea by the local games industry has been fantastic in 2006, and it's because of that support that we've been able to do some nice things that we'll hopefully offer more of in 2007. The prizes for the Sumea Modeller Challenge, website hosting costs, the Sumea news editor team, the equipment and the services to cover the Game Connect: Asia Pacific conference and the opening of the Hits of the 80's at ACMI, all these are only possible due to sponsorship. I'm sure some of you are thinking that I'm swimming in the sponsorship money from the logos that appear on the site, but I think I'll just let it slip that most of it goes directly back into what Sumea does. So a big thank you to: IR Gurus, Micro Forte, GO3, Kalescent Studios, Firemint, Tantalus, Pandemic Studios, Team Bondi, The Academy of Interactive Entertainment, Auran, Red Tribe, Game Audio Australia, THQ Studio Australia, Big World, and Qantm College.
So in mid 2007, Sumea turns five, celebrating five long years of loyal service to the local games industry. It's certainly a big milestone for the site, and I honestly had no idea how much of my time and effort Sumea would take up or that we'd be still around offering what we do. Sumea had a humble beginning as a tiny site that offered a page of news, a forum, a journal for 3D artists, and a small listing of local game developers. It was influenced by sites like Polycount and Bigkid, and the idea was to create a place for local creatives to show off their work and to clue people in on the industry, and has now become a site that is highly important to the industry itself. In the past five years, we've seen the industry grow in leaps and bounds, and the games themselves growing ever more sophisticated as well, where game model polygons were counted in their hundreds or thousands are now in their millions. The opportunities for games education is a whole lot more abundant than when Sumea first opened, and with Qantm College expanding their game education services in Melbourne and Sydney, the interest in game development is still thriving.
It's been an incredible journey and we have some big plans for 2007, but I'll have more on that for another time! :)