Ex Auran game designer and producer, David Gillespie, has chimed in on the whole Fury / Auran liquidation saga at his blog, expressing his sorrow for the studio he once worked two and a half years for. David, who was part of the team that pitched the original idea of Fury, described some of the culture and history behind Auran games, as well as the turbelant path of Fury...
I don’t know that I’ll ever go back to games, but if I did, I would seek out the culture that Auran created. Compassionate…
Angry-Gamer is hosting an article, written by Lead Designer Gully Foyle, in response to the very recent interview / post mortem that Fury Lead Designer and Auran Creative Director, Adam Carpenter, conducted with F13.net. Gully criticizes Adam for numerous reasons gathered from the tell-all article about Fury...
I'm a lead designer at a great developer. It's a role I take very seriously, and one of the most fundamental in game development. I read Adam Carpenter's interview at f13.net and it…
From Krome Studios
Krome Studios was saddened to hear about the demise of Auran - one of Australia’s quality game developers. This is especially difficult timing for staff so close to Christmas. Krome CEO Robert Walsh said he would be glad to hear from any Auran staff seeking new positions in the coming weeks.
Auran was home to an enormously talented and creative bunch of people and there will always be a place for that level of expertise in this industry,” he said.
“Krome would be happy to…
I have some news from very reliable sources that receivers have walked in and shut Auran down just hours ago. It's a dreadful end to one of Australia's pioneer game developers, founded back in January 1995. More news as we have it.
*updates
Someone has posted what looks like an official response from Auran CEO, Tony Hilliam, about the closure of Auran (also seen at Kotaku AU)...
Auran: the facts
The Directors of Auran Developments, the company that employs all the Auran staff, have today called…
You might know Tony Albrecht from The Great Debate, but what you may not know is that he was a programmer at Ratbag Games for 6 years, that is until Midway pulled the plug on the studio. Not a lot has been written about the reasons why Midway did this or what they gained or lost from the whole ordeal, but Tony has detailed how Midway's CEO, David Zucker, made a personal fortune of $8.5 million (US) from pumping and dumping Midway shares. Not bad while you're screwing over 70+ people's…
Press Release
Can women tell the difference between a mobile game and real life? The developers of Coolest Girl In School will find out today when their game is launched at www.coolestgirlinschool.com by texting the word coolest to 19PUNK86. Coolest Girl in School has drawn the battle lines between those who say the game will turn girls into their parents' worst nightmares, and those that say Coolest Girl allows players to laugh at the fickle nature of high school hierarchies, subvert…
This is an in game shot of the Aston Martin Vanquish I modeled for the XBOX 360 game Project Gotham Racing 4. I was working for Virtual Mechanix
(I made the car, not the background)
There's a fantastic post-mortem of Fury with Fury Lead Designer and Auran Creative Director, Adam Carpenter, over at F13.net. It's an insightful and honest look at the development behind Auran's MOAG, Fury, and you'll find Adam explaining why Auran chose the unreal 3 engine over version 2.5, the problems with the churn rate of players in alpha and beta testing, the delays Fury had and team morale, the million dollar Fury challenge, the "polar opposites" in opinion that game media had with the…
Shacknews have an interview with Sidhe Interactive managing director, Mario Wynands with a few questions on the new Xbox Live version of their racing platformer, Gripshift, as well as Gripshift 2 and a tiny little bit on Speed Racer...
(Mario) It should be a very interesting sort of a game. The trailer for the movie actually comes out this Thursday I think with Golden Compass. Should be interesting to see how people's reaction to that. The Wachowski brothers, as you can imagine, they're doing…
Tony Hilliam, talking to Kotaku, has announced a new business model for Fury, allowing players to play without a monthly subscription fee. This comes with the release of the Age of the Chosen update.
Players who are playing for free will be playing in Chosen mode, and will accumulate gold and essence at a reduced rate and also won't be able to trade items with other players. Players can pay to upgrade to Hero mode which can increase the gold and essence gather rate. They can also buy gold…
