2005 and Sumea

Hello and welcome to yet another of my end-of-year summaries concerning Sumea and the industry! And what a year it has been! We've had shockwave after shockwave this year, easily making 2005 one of the more memorable years of recent times for the industry. I will warn you now that this news item will be long, and you are free to scroll the mouse wheel down at any time. ;)

To start of with, I think I'll discuss what I've accomplished with Sumea in 2005. I'm scratching my head as to what I've done this year, but it seems that I've done a fair bit of updating, fixing and spit polish. If you're not interested in website shenanigans, I'd suggest you jump forward a few paragraphs !

I'll remember 2005 as the year the spammers attacked. Comment spam, referrer spam, email interjection attempts, you name it, they absolutely went nuts with it this year on Sumea. I guess with the popularity of blogs with user comments, spammers saw a huge opportunity to just unleash everything they could to take advantage of it all for the sake of page rankings on search engines. At one point, I was near to the point of removing user comments altogether due to the amount of spam received, but I eventually re-worked Sumea's comment system to catch what it could and allow what spam that didn't get caught to be marked by visitors to be manually removed later on. It worked so well that now we only get the odd one or two comment spam per week.

The comment areas on Sumea really have been a huge asset to the site. In some cases, it's been a great discussion area for all the topical issues in the industry, or a source for gamers on all the latest news and updates on a locally developed title. The Rugby League 2 and Gaelic Games Football game profiles on Sumea have been hugely popular with comments in the hundreds and views in the thousands.

There have been tonnes of other updates and fixes, including an overhaul of the Sumea profile pages where members can modify the way their profile/journal looks. You can check out Mcdrewski's journal to see what he's done with his (it looks great!). Members also have an easier time while uploading images to their journal news. I remember when uploading pictures was a huge four or five step process and required you to upload thumbnail versions yourself! I'm happy to say that it's finally all a one step process now and it is miles easier ;) Other updates include fixing the site to work cross browser, including a java client in the Sumea Flashback page so you can play Melbourne House's games on Sumea, - actually, I won't bore you with other update info, except to say that there've been plenty!

New sections on Sumea - yes, I'm working on these. Sumea concepts and Sumea maps. I'll write more about them next year when they're complete. They're functional now, but they'll be made even more awesome !

Now onto the industry stuff!

Unfortunately, the industry lost two people this year. We all expressed shock and offered our condolences when Adam Lancman, head of Atari Melbourne House and President of the Game Developers Association of Australia, and Simon Castles from Castle Music Productions, were sadly taken well before their time. Both gentlemen contributed enormously to the industry.

A big surprise this year came from local industry veteran John Passfield who left the development studio he helped co-found to pursue other opportunities in the gaming market. John created and was lead designer of Ty, The Tasmanian Tiger. John later made the move to Pandemic Studios!

This year has seen two local studios being bought out by publishers overseas. Blue Tongue became part of THQ Studios Australia, and Ratbag Games was purchased by Midway Games. In a huge blow to the South Australian game development industry and a shock to pretty much everyone, Midway decided to close up their newly purchased studio just before Christmas, leaving 70+ employees out of a job. The news wasn't left unnoticed in the games industry press and media, many of which frowned at what Midway had done.

Another local studio made national game industry news when their publisher cancelled development of their game. JoWood pulled the plug on StarGate-SG1 which was being developed at Sydney's Perception. There was a little back and forth with press releases on who owned what rights to the StarGate license but it seems Perception has managed to continue through this since the initial JoWood press release.

It hasn't all been doom and gloom though, with two studios making it on the international stage this year. Pandemic Studios Australia had so much success with Destroy All Humans! that it prompted their publisher, THQ, to look further original IP. There's also a cartoon series planned for Destroy All Humans! and I will be mighty disappointed if there is no probing in every episode. IR Gurus and ThatGame also received wide praise for Heroes of the Pacific and here's hoping it propels them to greater heights (Get it? Oh nevermind!).

The long running Australian Game Developers Conference came to an end this year as John De Margheriti, Chairman of the AIE and founder of development studio Micro Fort?, announced that The Academy of Interactive Entertainment will stop running the conference to allow the GDAA the freedom of no competition as it plans to organize a new conference next year. It will be interesting to see how the GDAA will address some of the concerns expressed on Sumea about entry prices and making the conference more accessible to everyone.

2005 was often been remarked as a turning point for the industry, and 2006 will prove to be an even more challenging time for many as they face the all too real next-gen development issues. There've been some rumblings of more studios in trouble, so here's hoping that things work out in the end. I was going to write a whole lot more here, but it's getting late and this news item is becoming too long so I'll just stop there, hey!

Thanks to our fantastic sponsors, Pandemic Studios, Kalescent Studios, Lava Injection Studios, and THQ Studios Australia for all their support. The sponsorship from this year is going to be injected into a Sumea related project I am working on next year which will hopefully work out great. I'll tell you more about it then, but I have some big plans. :D And thanks to all our visitors and regulars who make this site so great!

I hope you've all had a merry Christmas and trust that you'll celebrate the New Year with a huge bang. I'll be amongst 15,000 party goers at Bondi beach for Shore Thing with Fatboy Slim!!

And if you haven't voted in the 2005 Sumea Awards, do it now!! :) See you in 2006!

- Souri