f13.net

This comes as a surprise!

:oh_i_see:

48 hours? While not surprising that Fury is dying, was there any warning to the playerbase before then? Honestly guys, at least give your two weeks notice when leaving your.. playerbase? Is there a singular of playerbase?

What is with you people and your fucking green?!?

48 hours? While not surprising that Fury is dying, was there any warning to the playerbase before then? Honestly guys, at least give your two weeks notice when leaving your.. playerbase? Is there a singular of playerbase?

48 hours? While not surprising that Fury is dying, was there any warning to the playerbase before then? Honestly guys, at least give your two weeks notice when leaving your.. playerbase? Is there a singular of playerbase?

Why Adam Carpenter? I mean, I know his position on the project, but why him? Or is he who you blame this on?

Cause I worked under him and saw how bad of a game designer he is, how much he disrespected the team (including the design team), and how much of an egotistical ass he became.

I laugh everytime I see that he still hasn't gotten a job (and yes he's been looking).

Fury had a few interesting ideas to it. It's a pity they'll be forgotten as people either gather to laugh and point at the destruction or avert their eyes in case the failure somehow contaminates them.

Fury, we hardly knew ye.  The problem with PvP games nowadays is that only people who want to PvP play them.

Cause I worked under him and saw how bad of a game designer he is, how much he disrespected the team (including the design team), and how much of an egotistical ass he became.

I laugh everytime I see that he still hasn't gotten a job (and yes he's been looking).

But the execution was horrible, especially for new players. Even the tutorial was overly confusing yet under-informing.

That was quite a post for a staff member to make in the official game shutdown PR thread: 
http://forums.auran.com/fury/forum/showthread.php?p=82323#post82323

Ok. Now I'm interested. You obviously had some magical idea to make Fury work and be fun. Let's hear it.

Here are some of the things I fought for as a designer for the game:

• Get rid of the sanctuaries and put a pure GUI lobby in the game.  Besides the massive art time we could have saved it allows players to get into battles faster, find/talk to people in between games easier, and deal with any vendors/trainers they wanted to without having to spend 20 minutes running around trying to find all the vendors they need.  Not to mention it cuts down on loading times.  When this idea was presented (by me and a bunch of other people on the team) it got rejected due to Adam wanting it to feel more like a virtual world, when in the end all it did was frustrate players and make them waste time not playing the game.  I find it even more funny figuring that Exteel went the GUI lobby route and has lasted a lot longer world wide. 

It's always odd when people ignore the opinions of most of their co-workers, as if the what the co-workers think won't end up being basically the same as what the general public thinks.

Also blaming the failure of the game on people not working overtime is amateur-hour. If people aren't paid for overtime and their feedback is constantly ignored why the hell would they work overtime? Out of the kindness of their hearts?

"Passion" is such a red-herring. Some people have wives and girlfriends and kids and hobbies and other shit they are also passionate about. Not everybody is a socially stunted man-child with nothing better to do than work all the time.

If the only way your game can be good is if everyone works overtime then you've planned to fail. Don't blame employees for scheduling problems. And quite frankly it seems highly unlikely that more man hours would have made Fury significantly better.

I think it is you who has missed the point.

See what I did there?

Fury Closing Down
We have reached our time limit to find a solution that would help us keep the Fury servers open. Sadly, no solution has been found and so we have no alternative than to shut the servers down in 48 hours.

To all those players who have enjoyed Fury and played countless battles, I am sorry that we could not find a viable business model that would allow you to continue playing. To all those naysayers and doomsdayers, we know that deep down you wanted Fury to succeed. Have fun with your parting wishes

To the Auran team, who put their heart and soul into making Fury, thanks for your efforts. As I said many times before, we need to be much better than the competition to have a chance of succeeding. We gave it everything we had and history now judges that it still wasn’t good enough.

Whilst this marks the end of the Fury chapter, who knows what the future may bring. There were many gems hidden within Fury and many lessons learned. Hopefully one day the full potential can be realized in some other form.

So for now, so long and thanks for all the fish.

P.S. We informed all stores more than a month ago to remove stock from their shelves. If you have purchased a copy of Fury in the past month, we suggest you return it to the store.
P.P.S. This website will also close down in 48 hours.
__________________
Bossman

I remember when Micro Forte planned to release BigWorld titles on the Xbox.

Australia has no strong local development studios and very few international studios (Pandemic, Irrational / 2K Australia). Which means people can't get expertise in developing games in a professional capacity. Which leaves Australia with a supposedly talented amateur scene (not that I see much evidence of it, but I don't go looking much either).

To that extent, the collapse of Auran is a big loss.

I think the fundamental problem is that Auran did not go with their strength - trains.

They should have made a MMOG of train empire building with PvP.

</green>

If I have to look back on the failings and things to learn from Fury the #1 issue was the people and culture.

Auran was split into 2 factions.

The gamers and the posers, the MMO gamers were a handful of people. The PVP segment of these gamers were even a smaller percentage, which is truly sad when trying to develop a hardcore pvp game.

Over 75% of the overtime leading up to release was done by the people that cared ... the gamers, the posers went home at 5pm. We didn't get paid for overtime but who cares when you are passionate about something you will put in the time to make sure its done right. Sadly 75% of the staff had their heads in the sand and were not mentally prepared for an MMO launch.

I see people have tried to lay the blame for Fury's failure on these people, accusing them of coming to work on a game and treating it like a nine-to-five job. But I also see this: They came to work on a game, but got a nine-to-five job instead.

The gaming industry would be in much better shape if people treated it and acted like it was just a regular 9-5 job, cause it FUCKING IS. 

Management in a world all their own, separated completely from the reality of the day to day activities that happen beyond that world?

Sounds like every corporate environment everywhere, honestly.

Shorter: Show business for geeks.

--Dave

Without this support, it can still be a rough environment for games development companies in Australia. One developer that found this out the hard way was Auran, whose studio closure last year sent shockwaves throughout the industry. Counted as one of Australia's biggest development studios at the time, Brisbane-based Auran was just two months into the release of its original IP--massively multiplayer online game Fury--when it announced that it would be going into voluntary administration and laying off all employees. Eight months later, Fury's servers were shut down. Auran CEO Tony Hilliam says the message to learn from Auran's example is loud and clear.

"The biggest lesson I learnt from this is don't bite off more than you can chew, and don't start something you can't finish," Hilliam said. "For the industry as a whole, the lesson is that unless you have the budget, the skills, the marketing dollars and a gap in the market to aim at, then don't try and take on the big boys. Find your niche or stick to work for hire."

This is good advice from a man who knows what can happen when a studio gets too eager about creating original IP. At the time of its release, Fury was one of the most ambitious games to come out of an Australian games studio, and was the first game to feature the coveted 'Australian Made' logo on the box. The game, which received lukewarm review scores globally, reportedly cost close to A$15 million to make. Undoubtedly, there was a lot riding on it for Auran.

"We tried to create a product that would be 'best in class' in an area that no one else had succeeded--the perfect player-versus-player game," Hilliam said. "There was definitely a combination of factors why Fury failed: budget, business model, design flaws, competitive market, and pressures to release before we were ready, and even the psyche of the player base we were targeting. That's quite a list."

Although Auran Developments no longer exists, Hilliam continues to work at Auran Games, developing the long-running Trainz franchise which is still operational. He says the first few months were the toughest to deal with.

"I actually spent the first few months trying hard not to have a total mental breakdown. It was a very hard blow to see years of effort turn to dust, but over time I realised that we had done all we could to make it work."

Fury is a sad example of an original Aussie IP failing.

Hilliam agrees that Auran could have done with more government financial support when making Fury, something that could help local development studios from suffering the same fate as Auran. "Money was a big problem. Ultimately we released the game before it was polished enough to stand up in today's competitive environment. A government HECS scheme [similar to that of university students] would be a good initiative for the industry, where we could pay the income tax back out of our revenues."

The Federal Government only stepped in to support Auran when it was too late, paying the outstanding staff entitlements when Auran Developments shut down. If the same money had been present some six months prior, the studio might have managed to pull through.

"The industry needs money, there's no doubt about that. Whether it comes from government directly or indirectly by encouraging investment, it is definitely needed for the industry to survive."

Exactly. The rock star mentality of the game industry continues to disgust me. Too many people thinking their shit doesn't stink who are God's gift to coders, not nearly enough people who understand how to plan for shit or deal with people like human beings. Not that the web business or IT is much different in that regard. Too many people in charge of technology production think that because the geeks are smart and can work on computers, they can work LIKE computers for hours on end. Fuck that noise. A 60-hour work week is no more productive than a 40-hour work week, it just lasts longer and takes more out of the people working it. If you HAVE to have overtime on a consistent basis, you are fucking doing it wrong. I've worked at my current job doing web sites for over 9 years and can probably count on fingers and toes the number of times I've had to work overtime. Most of those times were because of poor planning on someone's part, i.e. waiting until the last minute to do shit.

Game companies that think working less than 60-hour work weeks is because of lack of passion are fucking clueless shitheels who need to be goatfucked.

A 60-hour work week is no more productive than a 40-hour work week, it just lasts longer and takes more out of the people working it. If you HAVE to have overtime on a consistent basis, you are fucking doing it wrong.

BioWare manages crunch based on big expensive studies that proved more than two weeks of 60-hour crunch actually leaves your team less productive than a 40-hour week. We alternate one week of crunch and one week off.

Or a Thomas the Tank Engine MMO. Grind to 50? I think I can, I think I can.