Tagged News: tony hilliam

The Auran CEO, Tony 'Bossman' Hilliam, talks a little about Fury's future and what's in store for 2008. After recent layoffs and a slower start then expected, Auran seems to have many more changes to talk about.

Tony Hilliam:
...After analysing the latest player trends we have established the magic "3rd game syndrome". Players who reach their 3rd game are far more likely to stay with the game for a long period of time. Basically, they are the players that have "got it". We therefore need to create an environment where all players can have fun and learn the game without being demoralized by more experienced opponents...

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Fury launched in October and hoped to capture an audience through fast-action, PvP combat in a free-to-play/subscription hybrid model MMO. It has not gone quite to plan and last week the company was forced to layoff many of its developers. We caught up with Auran CEO Tony Hilliam and Lead Designer Adam Carpenter to find out how they got to this point and how they hope to turn it around.

WarCry: Layoffs cannot be spun as good news and shake player confidence. Why should someone who sees Fury in a store feel confident that the game they purchase will still exist in a few months?

Auran: The primary reason is that the smaller core team staff allocated to Fury means the project is now operating at the break even point in terms of salaries and overheads. The Director's decision to cut back on staff ensures that even without significant increases in player populations, the game can be maintained and improved.

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I got the chance to sit down and talk with Tony Hilliam CEO of Auran, and Adam Carpenter the Lead Designer of Fury at PAX recently. For those that don't know much about Fury, its genre is a bit hard to nail down. It has elements of an MMO, such as levels, persistent characters, acquiring items and money, with a very fast paced melee and magical battle that is much closer to a first person shooter.

WarCry: Can you explain how levels will work in Fury? Do you have them, and how does that fit in with the combat system?

Auran: We do have levels; however they work a bit differently than in most games. We have these abilities; there are over 300 in total that allow you to do different things. We don't have classes in the game, so everyone can be whatever they want. You basically choose your abilities you want to use right now, and head out. Any time in-between battles you can swap them out for others. So basically you can have different sets depending on what your group needs right now. The levels in the game are really just to introduce you to all these abilities. So you can start out with say 25 abilities to check out, instead of overwhelming you with 300. You can reach the top level within about 25 hours of game play, or 50 if you are really slow. So it's not that a certain level guy is so much higher than a lower level guy, it's just a way for us to introduce you to all the abilities over time without overwhelming you.

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