Found on IGN, penned by Patrick Kolan. The link is courtesy of Tsumea.

From the piece:

Is it possible that, while we’ve been sitting on our couches delving into the latest and greatest games from the world’s biggest developers, the Australian games industry is on the brink of collapse? A slow, secret death that is not only affecting the lives of games industry employees, but completely undermining the long-term health of the Australian game design community?

I think “game design community” is a little specific – producers, programmers and artists are losing their jobs too – and the lack of comment from any of the companies mentioned (apart from the GDAA) makes it as hard-hitting as a wet cake. But it’s a start.

To be fair to Pat, when you’re working for a pulp site like IGN, finding a reason to scribe something that isn’t a game review or needlessly estatic preview can be difficult. If it isn’t R18+, the audience is apathetic at best.

All we need now is for a few more Aussie journos to take a closer look at the local industry. Why has no one interviewed Rob Murray over at Firemint about the iPhone OS 4.0 license agreement? And in the wake of the GFC, we have studios such as Halfbrick putting out quality morsels like Fruit Ninja. Surely it’s worth a bit of coverage? It broke into the USA app store’s Top 10 after all.

Honestly, the stories almost write themselves.

~ by Logan on May 13, 2010.

Posted in Gaming, Industry news, Media

Tags: auran, australia, firemint, fury, gdaa, gfc, ign, pandemic, patrick kolan, tsumea