I therefore look forward to reading this site’s review of The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius- Jet Fusion. An honest one since Splash originally designed it before he went all HO scale.

A few bigkidders have a copy, I believe.

Also, I don’t believe I read much about the Aussie games at E3. Seems that articles about HL2, Doom 3 and some Korean MMORPG’s seemed to dominate about 90% of local coverage.

As for Oz games at E3, I saw only a few, and one of them was Ty. The others were early builds and didn’t show much (from memory - if you’ve ever been to E3 you’ll understand why it’s hard to remember). The Australian presence on the floor was actually fairly small, and was more about making business connections than showing off games.

Noone is asking for companies to "fawn over local journos". That’s actually a pretty unfair (and intentionally argumentative) take on what I’ve said. I’d be happy for irregular website updates. How many Oz games come out a year? Certainly not enough to fill more than a few pages on a site like this with release information and reviews. But the companies making the games are doing new stuff every day, and missing out on loads of free press and the chance to create fan communities around themselves by simply talking about it.

The US companies are great at doing this - take a look at id software for a group of guys who have harnessed the web and the online community and taken it to a completely new level. Everything they did in the early years revolved around the web. They were the ones who turned .plan updates into things worth reading (fans devoured every word as soon as they were written). They released Doom as shareware. They continue to utilize .plans and online forums. The reason they do this is they understand it is the best way to get to their most loyal fan base, and there is an army of amateur and professional journalists chaffing at the bit to do all the PR work for them. All they have to do is *release some information and make it accessible*. The web will do the rest for them.

Answering emails is a good idea too. Not many people have the time, resources, or dedication to phone every developer regularly (as Rob did for a while). Emails happen at everyone’s convenience. I can’t understand why it is so hard to use them.

And that’s all I (and I think you’ll find a lot of other Australian games journalists) am asking for. And please understand, I’m not saying this for my sake because I want something for BigKid. We do this out of love and interest in seeing the Oz industry grow. Developers giving out regular information are helping themselves, not us (ie. the local press).

There are a few Oz companies who have been fairly good, on and off, and they have gotten most of the press as a result (Auran, Eyecon, Ratbag, Microforte etc.)

Really, the best thing to do to raise awareness of the local industry is for companies to make great games. But that’s another thread on its own :)

I’ve been working with US based media organisations for many years now, but haven’t really focussed on the Australian scene as such. Although, as someone working within the gaming industry as well as in the media, I should try and find a job closer to home heh. One thing that the US companies do have over the Australian ones, is the emphasis on Community. Most of them employ at least one person and some whole departments, just to cater to building up their reputation and fanbase.

There are hundreds of gaming news sites out there, but I have seen very few Australian ones. Ausgamers caters more to a certain genre of game, rather than the whole. BigKid gives great relevant industry information and on games as well, which I love. Can someone reccommend some Aussie sites for me to hit up?