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 game, and, of course, the drama that the Angry-gamer news about the Auran staff reductions had caused...
(Adam) As far as the Angry Gamer posting, that pissed me off to no end. It didn’t bother me that the site posted it. It was more that someone at Auran went running off to the net as soon as possible. The reason why that pisses me off is best illustrated by Tony Hilliam’s response when I showed him the link.
Tony’s main concern was that it might cause Tantalus to back out and not want to hire any of the Auran’s staff that are being let go. Tony doesn’t have any obligation to try and find employment for them. He’s doing it because he cares about his staff. Now Tantalus was totally fine with the Angry Gamer posting, but wouldn’t it have been a hell of a thing if they did get pissed off and it was the action of some random Auran employee which cost 20 or so other Auran staff any job at all.
1. Anonymous Wed, 12 Dec
Fantastic:
# S: (adj) fantastic, wild (fanciful and unrealistic; foolish) "a fantastic idea of his own importance"
# S: (adj) fantastic, fantastical (existing in fancy only) "fantastic figures with bulbous heads the circumference of a bushel"- Nathaniel Hawthorne
great word :)
I find it interesting where Adam is talking about the 9 to 5:30 workers. Ideally in the real world, you'd be working those hours with realistic schedules etc. As gamers get older there are commitments to family, your enjoy your work but you can't have your whole life centred around it. I have worked for a studio now that reduces the overtime worked, and I think that is a greater way to improve moral rather than expecting everyone to putting in additional effort on a constant basis.
I definately think Fury suffered from bad marketing, it got labeled into the MMO and MMORPG category too quickly, when in reality its not that type of game. Made loyal MMORPG instantly dislike the game.
Keep passing that buck.
I found Adam's comments about the 9-5ers a little odd. I think we can all agree that regular overtime is unhealthy. Expecting anyone to compromise their health and personal life over a runaway development schedule is ridiculous, quite frankly.
Whatever problems Fury suffered, I think the 'problem' of staff insisting on their right to a well managed & reasonable workload would have been way down the list.
Why work beyond 9-5 on a game when its design, and technology had changed so dramatically over the production course. Why work overtime on a game that clearly wasn't being received well by the majority of the public from the first showing. And finally why work overtime for a company that simply is going to "scale-back" and hand my job off to outsourcing at the end of the day.
Blaming staff because they weren't "passionate" enough to work past their paid hours is a last ditch defense mechanism by poor management. They didn't fail you, you failed them.
Absolutely!
I don't understand why companies think that their employees should supplement the companies running costs with their own time because they can't design/manage a project properly. It's little wonder companies don't feel motivated to improve their own performance in these areas with all the free labor available when they stuff up the project.
Here's an idea; companies should pay over time out of the producers/CEO's salaries & bonuses. Watch how well run the projects will be then!
Whoever signs the contract and commits to the work needs to know what they are signing up for - (in the ideal world). At the end of the day that's what dictates the commitment and the requirement and when it's wrong then it impacts everyone.
It just seems hes blaming everyone except himself, considering hes the lead designer, oh and the creative director, you would think its HIS JOB to make people understand his vision, and carry it out accordingly, and not slag the whole team when it fails because of his shortcommings.
I was thinking the same thing. There area few instances of 'we didn't really know what the game was' in there. Sounds like a lack of direction to me.
That's quite a bit of buck passing he's got going on there. Face it: you designed a game that stinks, and no-one wants to play it. Furthermore, blaiming people that expect realistic schedules in order to maintain work-life balance shows a really childish approach on your part. The fact that management has apparantly failed to pull your head in is ever worse, and shows this problem is systemic throughout Auran. People can build bridges and buildings on 8-9 hour work schedules, why can't you do the same with a game?
Ridonkulous, sir.
So, the way I'm reading this is that he did everything right and everyone else did everything wrong? That's a bit rich coming from the Lead Designer/Creative Director! I expect that if the game did well it would have been all thanks to him? But if it does badly, boo hoo, it's everyone else's fault?
No wonder there were people that treated it like a 9-5 job - who would want to work themselves to bone at the whim of people like this? And for that matter, all that talk of 'passion' aside, I have to say that out of the four projects I've worked on, two had most of the team go home at 5:30 everyday, and the other two were death marches that involved months of overtime. Ironically, it was the teams that went home on time that produced the better games. Isn't it a well-established fact by now that you get worse work out of disenchanted and overtired people? Overtime cannot make up for bad management, ever.
It's such a dangerous attitude to take; that just because it's the games industry people should have passion and work themselves to the bone. Sure, most people do it willingly out of love for the medium... for a couple of years. But you know what happens then? They burn out. That's why it's so darn hard to find good, experienced senior staff in our industry.
I already felt pretty sympathetic over all the drama going on at Auran, happening to folks that just wanted to make an original game that didn't do well and are now essentially losing their job to outsourcing. But now I feel even worse for them when reading that slap in the face. A 'thank you for your effort but I guess it didn't pan out, sorry' would have cost nothing. It just sounds like this guy is trying to save his own job by slagging on everyone else. No exactly fitting behaviour for anyone in a lead position. If you want the glory, you also have the take the fall.
The idea that your team has a responsibility to put in extra hours, because you can't schedule / budget your project correctly, is ludicrous.
The idea that you can then go and blame your team for your own failings, after wasting millions in investment, and years' of their work? That's simply deluded.
Welcome to the games industry!
Rumour has it that all staff have been made to clear their desks, and Auran has gone into liquidation.
If you were an insider it wouldn't be "rumour."
I'm calling bullshit until someone on the inside confirms. Certainly, liquidation is garbage...
Frikkin' trolls
Meh, my comment above...
Looks like I'll eat crow.
Liquidation though??? Doesn't Tony have all that Neverfail water money?
What money is that exactly?
Wasn't tony from the family that made all that money from neverfail springwater, hence the name of the publishing arm? I was pretty sure that's how things at Auran were kept running for a long time.
Liquidation is fact. Desks are cleared, people have gone home and are now on Sumea looking for jobs. :-(
I wonder how long until a second company springs up (Auran Developments is just a shell within the Auran Group), which will run 'core' Fury and Trainz teams.
Everyone got royally shafted at Auran - but I don't think anyone was surprised by this. The Executive Producer Tony Hilliam was designing the game on the fly with Adam Carpenter, the Creative Director - usually with no consultation with design or other leads or the production schedule. EVERY release of Fury was around 3-6 months before it was ready, as design changes were made a week before release. No focus testing was done, no one listened to staff complaining that the game was unfun, that it was unfriendly for new players and that it needed lots more work before release. Only when Adam/Tony thought of any issue themselves did things get done - which was usually a long time after the first staff member noticed it and made a suggestion. The list of 'on hold' suggestions and feature requests for Fury would make a very good PvP game.
Marketing was completely separate and clueless from Development and the whole project felt amateurish - strange from one of the longest running games companies in Australia (11 years). Upper management is clearly at fault here - project direction changed way too often, morale had been low for months, crunch time lasted 6 months, we had built at least 5 gaems, throwing out large amounts of work every time Tony/Adam decided that they needed a different game made. I have never seen a game made with such a fluid plan - there never seems to have been anything set in concrete, or even remotedly stable.
I'm sick of typing about this now - I'm off to find a job. Was actually just trying to confirm the liquidation.
Nothing to say really, other than best of luck to all those affected.
I was on the Fury team for a long time (fortunately got out before this all happened).
I can only agree with the comments above. Fury failed in spite of the best efforts of most of the development team - purely thanks to the egos of Tony and Adam.
Everything that the numerous bad reviews complained about was brought up by the team. And *well* before release. Suggestions were ignored out of hand, unless they came from Adam.
Reading Adam's interview on F13 was just sickening. To hear him blame Fury's failure on the supposed lack of passion by his team would be laughable, if it weren't so desperate.
While I think this outcome has been inevitable for a long time now, it's still awful news for a bunch of really great people.
I think it's also worth pointing out that Tony Hilliam, Graham Edelsten and Adam Carpenter kept the whole team working on the new patch this week, knowing full well that nobody would be getting paid for this work (at least until liquidation is finalized.. eventually). This kind of callous disregard for the team who sweated to make this game sums up my experiences with Auran perfectly.
All my very best to the guys who just got their final shafting from Graham, Tony, Adam and the gang. You all deserve so much better, and I'm sure you'll find jobs where you're better appreciated soon.
Well done Adam, you just ruined your career. Enjoy unloading those bottles of N3v3rf@1L from the trucks...
"If prospective employees don't play the genre of the game you're making, don't hire them."
What a stupid point to try and make, you hire people to build assets moron, if your game play can't be meaningfully explained in under a few minutes to anyone on your team then it's you who should not be hired because you''ve failed to grasp the basic fundamentals of design......accessibility.
I know many talent people working in the games industry who hardly play games yet are some of the best artists I've ever seen, would you turn down a Pixar animator becasue he or she has never played an MMO or a writer because they only did screenplays for JJ Abrahms? No because a good design and leadership will allow anyone to understand a decent vision.
You my friend sound like you possess neither of those qualities.
"I know many talent people working in the games industry who hardly play games yet are some of the best artists I've ever seen",
Agreed, what a complete load of crap. That the Lead Designer buys into the 'fanboy only' dev team myth speaks volumes.
The best teams I've worked in have always had a healthy mix.
Auran hired this guy. They made him lead. They are to blame for this and for him. They hired him because he was not what he should have been. The real deal is often quite scary to developers with a vested interest in not having a real designer at the helms ;).