We've had various insights into where Auran went wrong last year, from Auran CEO, Tony Hilliam, and Lead Designer, Adam Carpenter, as well as various comments on Sumea, and now Doolwind has added his thoughts at his blog.
As an Auran Developments employee, Doolwind saw many problems first hand before he resigned, with complaints including Auran not listening to its employees, not retaining the great talent and teams that were on board, and putting too many eggs in one basket. From Doolwind's game coding journal (found via Kotaku AU)...
...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.
1. Anonymous Mon, 14 Jan
seems like doowlind took the high ground and actually gave constructive criticism unlike most of the other people seeing fit to comment on the problem. adam carpnter should take a note out of his book on how to give advice without bashing people
Interesting read. Sounds like the internal culture hadn't changed much over the years - I was hoping it had. Most of the problems you described were happening back in the early days and were a major reason so many left the company. I was hoping they had improved their practices since they released a couple of mainstream games. Guess not. It's a shame, it would have been great for them to have turned it around internally.