What’s Working

• Tools

The biggest change I’ve seen in our game development lives in the last few years is the ubiquity of high quality game engine tools. It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of Unity and we’re currently using it to create our third game. Unlike our first two games, this time we’re planning to release on no less than 4 platforms simultaneously. Without the power of Unity this would simply not be feasible for a small indie company that’s still in startup mode. I’ve heard the promise of “write once, deploy anywhere” a number of times in the past but it seems like this is the first time it’s actually come true. Unreal and CryEngine are now free giving indie’s great access to high quality development tools.

Along with multi-platform support is the breadth of features found in these tools that means we can create small to medium sized games with multi-month development cycles with only a single programmer in the team.

• Distributed Development

Internet communication has reached a level where we can build an entire game together from the comfort of our respective homes. Leasing an office at this stage in our company would cost more than the rest of the games development combined. With the use of Skype, Dropbox and Acunote we can work seamlessly together sharing ideas and large files as if we were in the same office. There’s still a few issues that come up, but most of these are resolved with weekly face-to-face meetings. We’re still planning to get an office in the near future, however it’s not as pressing a concern as it has been in the past.

• Platforms

Something else that’s changed considerably since I left mainstream game development is the number of platforms we can target. It’s easy to take this for granted, particularly as they’ve grown at a fairly linear rate over the past few years. I’ve always been a firm believer in letting a game design pick the platform that suits it best, however not until recently has this been a feasible option for indie game developers. We can now choose between console, mobile, web and more traditional platforms and have the ability to target them with even the smallest budget. With the barrier to entry being measured in the hundreds of dollars even a hobbyist student can forgo drinking for a few weeks to fund their next game.

What’s Not Working

• Games still take too long to make

I’m continually frustrated with the time it takes to create games. Every game I’ve ever worked on has run overtime, often by over 50% of their original estimate. After speaking to other developers, thankfully this is not just something I struggle with. I’ve found there are two major milestones a game developer reaches in their career. The first is actually finishing a game, something I had trouble with when starting out (I still have countless half-finished projects laying around my old HDD). The second is finishing a game within the original estimate, something nearly every developer I know still struggles with no matter how many years they’ve been working.

I spend considerable time and effort trying to solve this problem and I feel as though each project we refine our process and things are slowly getting better. Despite my first point, I feel tools are the biggest opportunity for us to solve this issue. When I started out in game development I had a very negative view on tools development and felt it was not my job to create tools. I’ve since learnt this is a very closed minded view of game development. Team Bondi’s recent game (and closure) is a perfect example of this. I’ve heard a number of developers share anecdotes of the development where making simple changes (such as the placement of a trigger) would have a turn-around time measured in the tens of minutes. Small issues like this add up over time and cause games to blow out their time and budget.

• Australian Game Industry

I left Auran two weeks before it closed down back in 2007. Since then I’ve watched as many of my closest friends and ex-colleagues lose their jobs as the number of large studios dwindles. There are countless reasons for this downsizing but what’s important is the fact many of the smartest people I’ve worked have been forced to move overseas to find work in the game industry or worse, move into more mundane jobs to make ends meet. I am hopeful that the growing number of independent studios forming from the ashes will see success and we will have a second chance at building the Australian game industry while learning from our previous mistakes.

Auran Developments went into liquidation late last year. Many of us saw it coming for at least a few months, if not years. Below are my personal thoughts on why Auran went bust. I’m writing this to try and help other struggling software or game development stduios from ending up in the same way.

To get the legal stuff out of the way. When I mention “Auran” I’m talking about Auran Developments. That is the company who hired me, and the only one I ever really had any interaction with. Auran Games et al. are still running fine and have nothing to do with the following article.

Listen

The first main problem was that Auran wouldn’t listen to anyone. This was the core problem I see as its tentacles really reached out and touched every part of the company. I don’t know how many people would talk to me about how they’d made a suggestion months or years earlier only to have it ignored and then the exact problem they foresaw coming up. While it’s important that people high up are the ones making the decisions to direct the company, they also need to know where their weaknesses are and seek advice from the best people in each field.

When I started at Auran there were a LOT of extremely talented people that had thoughts on the direction the company should take. Unfortunately, most of their requests were ignored, and the majority of people simply left the company as they could see that the wrong decision was being made. By listening to people who are skilled in their particular field, they would have been able to keep these skilled people on, further increasing the company’s chances of success. The bottom line is that good people have good advice, and not listening has a twofold problem. The company fails because they don’t do the right thing AND they lose the good people giving out this advice.

Keep Good People

This leads into the second problem, the number of great employee’s I saw leaving was astounding. This also has a snowball effect because when great, senior, people leave everyone below them wonders if there’s something they don’t know about. For me, the first sign that something wasn’t quite right was when one of the star graphics programmers informed Auran he was going to leave if he wasn’t put on something interesting. This guy (while never admitting it himself) was basically Carmack 2.0. He is the kind of person that good companies would give almost anything to have on their team. However, at Auran, they just let him slip away even after giving them a direct option to resolve the problem. The other problem was when the three leads (programming, art and QA) all resigned within a couple of weeks of each other.

Be Transparent

The other main problem was the lack of transparency and communication. It’s vital, for any software project that crucial information flows down to “the trenches”. There’s nothing worse than reading in a magazine or website that the company is in trouble, or that it’s just received another round of funding from investors. Many companies have this problem, where you need to be on the grape vine to find out information that directly affects your job and your life. This was compounded at the end when people were literally sitting around waiting to find out if they were fired or not.

The transparency part comes from sharing the vision and direction of the company with all staff members. Most of us had to simply guess what would be happening in the coming months. Part of this problem comes from having the wrong people too high up in the chain of command. As soon as you have less qualified people above more qualified there’s going to be both conflict and misdirection with the company.

The B team

I was part of a second team at Auran (not Fury). Let’s call it the “B Team”. This team worked really well together, produced a great product in a short time and was ready to move onto producing more great products. What’s the logical step Auran should have taken? Good companies know that good people are hard to find (and even harder to replace). Good teams though, they are like the holy grail of software development. If you have a good team, you do anything you can to hold onto it, foster it and mainly, make a crap load of money from it.

Not so at Auran. We were broken up, forced to work on crappy projects that we would rather resign than work on (as was the case in my situation). A number of people pleaded with Auran to keep us together and to make money from us. That’s all we wanted to do, work together in a great team making money for Auran. It seemed this direction was not the same as Auran’s.

Don’t Keep All Your Eggs In One Basket

The next big issue was focussing on one single product. I’m not going to get into whether Fury was a good game or not. Either way, it is too much to risk an entire company on a single game. I heard this almost daily from people around the company, but no one would listen. Generally, when an age old proverb is written about something, it’s a good sign that you should heed its advice.

The games industry is a hit driven industry which means there’s a great chance you won’t succeed off a single product. Sure, there’s a chance you could make it to the big time, but there’s a far higher chance all your employees could be jobless just before Christmas.

Software Development, It’s Hard!

Finally it just comes down to software development. Software Development is really hard. Personally, I love it; I’ve found what I want to do for the rest of my life. I’ve also come to the conclusion that I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to do it perfectly, and never succeed. There’s no “silver bullet” and you certainly can’t treat it like running a regular non-tech company. While software development is relatively young, compared to the other schools of engineering, it’s also full of great techniques. Unfortunately, most of these weren’t employed at Auran. Good games development practices weren’t employed either. I’m a strong believer of making a game fun, then working out how to finish off the “extra bits”.

Conclusion

So that’s what I see that Auran did wrong. I don’t blame any individual people and I don’t think that anything can be gained from doing so. I loved a lot of my time working at Auran; it was the dream company I’d wanted to work at since Dark Reign came out when I was in high school. I did a lot of soul searching when I decided to resign, and it made me really depressed to think of what could have been.

If I had to put down one single moment when I knew it was over, it was a lunch time in September sitting in one of the back rooms with Shauno, the artist on my team. I was flicking through the booklets of Dark Reign with every newspaper clipping relating to it. I remembered back to when I read those very newspapers/magazines 10 years earlier and what I had dreamed working at Auran would be like. I compared it to what was happening at the time, and the decision was pretty much made for me. I’d like to thank everyone I worked with at Auran, and I hope that others can learn from the mistakes made and we can see the Australian games industry flourish in the coming years.

The picture for this blog was done by Shauno again. It’s actually based off the original picture he drew for my farewell card when I resigned.

I’m really sorry to hear this, and my thoughts go out to all the guys, particularly so close to Christmas.

Update:
As some people are reporting, there is a chance that the guys will get paid out, but if so it won’t happen for at least a few months once the liquidation is sorted. The fact is that none of them are getting a dime for the time being (and most likely not before Christmas).

For more info visit GEERS website.

Update 2:
I’ve been given the website of a refugee group for all the ex-employee’s with info on how the liquidation etc is going. Email me directly if you are an ex-employee and want this info.

Update 3:
I’ve been contacted by a number of game companies that are offering positions for anyone affected by the liquidation.  If you are looking for work, again please contact me directly and I’ll get you in contact with their reps.

Update 4:
I’ve been asked to reiterate that the only company involved in this liquidation is Auran Developments.  MyVirtualHome (who have nothing to do with Auran anymore) are unaffected.

Gamasutra

Kotaku

Official Site

In case anyone is worried, I have brought my ‘holiday game design book’ (a new note book I buy for each holiday to note every new game design idea I have while relaxing away from a computer) and a copy of ‘The Mythical Man-Month’ by Brooks.  So I’m sure I’ll have some insightful (or rant-like) comments to make on the book and will share any amazing game ideas I come up with.  Good night and God bless.