Stromlo, the real deal
The following is a transcript of a communiction with an ex-employee of the now defunct Stromlo Entertainment. The source preferred to remain anonymous but was in a position of some authority at the company. The information below lists some of the reasons for the collapse of Stromlo and information regarding the future of the close to completion, 3D flying shooter, Splinter:
Basically the company had some issues with its financial backers and they pulled out. Also EA felt that the title was similar to Forsaken which didn’t really do that well in North America so they decided to drop the title. They explicitly stated that the technology and delivery dates were not the issue and that it was just the case that they wanted to sell at least 80,000 to 150,000 units in North America and didn’t think the market wanted that type of title.
I must admit I am a little disappointed with the support we got from EA during development over the last 12 months of the project, as they spoke to us maybe 5 times during that period. I feel that this contributed to the financial issues.
Also one of the major backers (a privatised government funding organisation, I will let you work that one out), bought another games company located in Canberra and really made a mess of our company because of that. I think that might sound like sour grapes but during the process of company administration that we went through they made it impossible to finalise the process of trying to get out of liquidation and continue trading.
Some other US publishers expressed interest in Splinter earlier this year but at the time were heavily tied up both with E3 and also trying to get their own products to market before Christmas. I’m not sure if this was just a line or whether they truly meant what they said.
The game itself was about 6 weeks away from beta with about 6-8 weeks of testing after that, very close, but unfortunately not close enough.
As for the rest of the Stromlo crew, four of the team have moved onto other games companies such as Blue Tongue and Auran. Some of the other guys have moved onto other types of work outside the gaming industry.
The owners of the company are still talking to publishers so some of us are looking at coming back if possible but I doubt this will happen.
I would prefer not to be quoted for any information you write, but you are most welcome to use any of the information I have given you. If you have any more questions give me a yell.
I think that the privatised government funding organisation mentioned above was AME. Australian Multimedia Enterprises was set up by a previous goverment as an incubation program for multimedia projects including games. At the time $40 million dollars worth of funding was allocated to the department. I’m not sure if this is public knowledge or not but I was told recently that when the current government came into power they pocketed the remaining funds of around $20 million dollars and sold the department to a private company.
It doesn’t seem like the privatization of AME has worked out very well so far.
posted by rob · at 10:58 am · filed under Site News