While at eGames this past weekend, I was grabbed by Graham Edelsten, founder and Chief Financial Officer for Brisbane developers Auran, who wanted to fill me in on how things were going for their newest and biggest project, the FPS/MMO Fury.

As well as talking about the past, Graham looked to the future, mentioning a few new strategies currently being worked on that should boost enjoyment of the game, and maybe see us getting some servers a bit closer to home.

The obvious starting point, however, is finding out how thing have been going in the month or so since Fury was launched on the unsuspecting public. How did they respond to this hybrid combat-based MMO?

"To be truthful, I have to say... mixed reviews. We've had reviews where people love it, and we've had reviews where people hate it. But what I see, and particularly when I'm at a show like this one, where I've got eight computers and I've got a bottom on a seat every second of the day, and all these young people playing the game and telling us how much they love it. That to me is proof that we've written something that's pretty good!"

He was right - every time I glanced at the Auran stand, there were gamers glued to their screens, seeing just what the game was all about. This was something I'd noticed at the Auran stand last year as well - a bank of computers set up, all running an early version of the game, and for the three days of the event, I don't think I saw an empty chair once, except perhaps when UgLyPuNk and Ignant bullied their way onto the machines so they could try it out first-hand. It's been interesting since then, to see how the past 12 months have affected and shaped the game, and how it's grown and changed, even just through the lengthy beta testing.

Graham explained:

"When you're showing something a year or so before it's finished, you have a little block of the game frozen, where everything works - but of course when the game is finished, everything's got to work! We've had our share of headaches since release - because they're bugs that we don't know about, they're bugs that the players find. The beauty of this sort of game, because it's online, is that you can patch them, and you're working on them all the time. We're working on a major patch at the moment, which will come out on December 14th, which has got all sorts of tweaks and some realy good new stuff, three new maps and a section on PvE for those people who want to slide into the game."

...yes, you read that right. PvE, in Fury, which has always been pushed and promoted as 100% fast and furious PvP action. Rather than being a recent idea, this was a move that had always been planned, as Graham continued:

"We're not David and Goliath, we can't take on World of Warcraft. But we wanted to make an MMO, and we thought: well, we can't do a WoW clone, so we'll take a section of massively multiplayer games that people like - in Guild Wars, for example, there's a fair bit of PvP - and WoW now has their battlegrounds - and we'll just focus on that. And then later, when we've released it, we'll add missions where people can go and monster-bash, which is what we're starting to do. By building it from the ground up, we were able to build what I think is the best combat system out there, and that is being backed up by players. Mainly because it's really fast - MMOs aren't fast like a first-person shooter, but our combat is."

So that's an obvious tweak that's being worked on, but surely it's not the only one. As Graham mentioned, the beauty of an online game is that it's very easy to update things, to change code, and to tweak the way some things are implemented. If players aren't responding well to a certain element of the game, it's relatively simple to rework it and then release a patch containing the new code. I wondered whether any of these major changes have had to be made or planned since the game was launched a month ago.

"We found that the evenness of matches has been a bit difficult. We have matchmaking systems in our game, but you need a certain critical mass so the matchmaker's got plenty of players to choose from. Otherwise, the newbies could go against the top guys, and that's no fun, because they'd get beaten too easily. So that's the only issue really that we've had to address - and we are addressing it."

With that out of the way, Graham moved on to explain a carrot that they're looking at dangling in front of hungry gamers. Those of you who took part in the beta will remember the competition run by Auran, with a $2million prize pool. If you missed out on picking up any of the prizes, looks like you might be getting a second chance:

"We're thinking of reintroducing the Fury Challenge, say once every six weeks or so, so there is a competition - and they can win prizes, and they can get out and compete against other teams."

He's not just stopping with the Fury Challenge though, where gamers can compete from the safety and relative anonymity of their homes. Graham's looking bigger than that.

"A radio interviewer asked me 'How would you describe Fury', and I replied 'Football with swords!' - and that works, because the ideal matches are even matches. If I play a football team, and I get beaten by two or three points, I think 'I can beat you next time!', but if I get beaten by 200 points, I think 'Ah, to hell with it...'." That's what we want to achieve in Fury - and because somebody's always got to win, we want to see who can be the best team in the world. I envisage a global competition, so the best Koreans and the best Chinese and the best English team etcetera - they can all play against each other and win a prize. Put in on in Las Vegas or something! Cyber-sports are growing and growing and growing!"

Graham chuckles and runs a hand through his white hair:

"My friends think I'm nuts because they're all retired, and I'm still running around making games like a lunatic and I tell them it's just so exciting! I can't stop because, as I say to them, there'll be cyber-sports in the Olympics. It's just a matter of time.

"C'mon Aussies - get behind Fury! Our first cyber-sports game!"

...on the topic of Australians though, I brought up the touchy subject of the location of the servers for the game. At the last eGames, we chatted with various people representing the game who assured us that yes, there would finally be MMO servers Down Under, and that the Australian gaming public would not be ignored by this game, which proudly bears the Australian Made logo. A matter of months later, we were told that things had changed, and we'd now only be seeing local servers if a certain number of players was reached. For a game that prides itself on speed and being locally-developed, this was a massive blow, as many beta testers reported issues with lag, and difficulty playing against international opponents while bearing a massive ping.

"We'd love to have Australian servers. We need at least 80,000 players. So listen Australians - get out there, buy the game, get me 80,000 of you playing it, and you'll have your own servers, that's for sure.

It's Australia's first ever massively multiplayer online game, and it's a real David and Goliath, we're against Microsoft and Blizzard and Vivendi and all these giants, so if you're going to buy a game for Christmas, then build our player base, because the game gets better the more people that are playing. The better the experience for the player is with more players. So the Aussies can help out and buy our game for Christmas! We've reduced the price for Christmas, too - so it's 50% discount between now and Christmas, and then we might get enough players to have Aussie servers as well - everybody wins!"

You heard the man. If you're after a copy of Fury but you don't want to do that whole "leaving the house" thing, they've very kindly set up an online shop, where you can grab the game (and a bunch of others) for the discounted price of US$29.99. Given the current exchange rate - that's only around $35 Australian - and there's plenty of worse things you could spend that money on!