Auran CEO Tony Hilliam.

　　In a PC-gaming landscape obsessed with everything Warcraft, Lord of the Rings, or anything with massively multiplayer online game tacked on the end, it's becoming tough for new properties to get a look in. Australian developer Auran is aiming to break into the lucrative--and increasingly crowded--MMOG market with Fury, a purely player-versus-player-focused game set for release later in 2007. We caught up with Auran CEO Tony Hilliam on the eve of a Fury media day being held in Melbourne, Victoria, to discuss his game, the challenges facing local developers, and what his company's doing to reshape how its audience will play online games.

　　GameSpot AU: Why do you think Fury will succeed in an already oversaturated MMOG market?

　　Tony Hilliam: Because we're not a traditional MMOG. We're a very new take on the MMOG genre. I've just come back from our publishers in the US, and we've coined the term PVPMMO.

　　GS AU: Do you think that'll confuse the market?

　　TH: Well, by putting the PVP first, it says its PVP foremost, MMOG second. If they don't know what PVP means, they won't enjoy our game.

　　GS AU: What have you learned from the mistakes made by other MMOGs, and how has that impacted Fury's development?

　　TH: Focus. By being really tightly focused on our feature set, and not spreading ourselves too thinly and not trying to be all things to all people, we can find a niche and dominate it. We've totally focused on the player versus player experience. So we haven't had to make any compromises to try and squeeze in any [player-versus-environment] content at all. Everything is balanced for PVP. Every feature that we discuss, we're not going "hmm, now the PVE guys would like it, but the PVP guys wouldn't," or vice versa. So by focusing on a simple subset of features, we're going to really appeal to that audience extremely well.

　　GS AU: Fury is pure PVP; do you see that being a hurdle for keeping players interested in the long term?

　　TH: I guess Counter-Strike kind of proves that if you've got the gameplay mechanics right, then just a map refresh and the odd game-type update is all you need to keep players interested for many, many years. We've got a lot more to offer than just map types and game types. Ultimately, what drives players in a PVE game is "phat lewt," and what we have is "phat lewt." It's just that you earn it through PVP. So we do have that endless pursuit of "if I could just get something with slightly better stats, or that really cool-looking thing--then I better just have one more fight." We've been playing it for nearly two years now, and we're having more fun with it every time we play it. I don't really see it as an issue. I guess another way of answering it is that we say we're a PVP-focused game, but we've really taken the reward elements from PVE and put them into a PVP setting. No one has historically approached it from that view before. Because historically with a seamless world, PVP aspect, you're ripe for exploits. "Hey, let's go around a corner and kill you, and you can kill me." Our matchmaking system avoids the opportunity of exploiting. So we believe we've got the balance there of providing lots of little rewards on a regular basis, which is what PVE really does, with the long-term goal of building up your gear and strengths.

　　GS AU: What are your plans for content updates? Are we looking at six-monthly new maps and game types?

　　TH: It comes in three levels. There's the patching, fixing, and polishing. That's level one. Things you have to do to make the gameplay more enjoyable. They'll be fairly regular. That includes balance--abilities and that kind of stuff. The next level is maps, and we haven't determined the timeline of those. But we see that there'll be potentially (with some of these patches) new maps. The next level up from that is content and feature updates, where it's a significant download, with significant game features and/or significant content updates. So for example, a new game type with three or four new maps would be seen as a content feature update. One last bit, then, we've got expansion packs on top of that, which is annual... annual-ish. [Laughs]

　　GS AU: Are there plans to make the content updates free, or will they be a part of the subscription model?

　　TH: Ah-ha! The old business-model question. We're going to have an answer for you soon. We're announcing the business model, and just as innovative as the game is, the business model is quite innovative as well.

　　GS AU: A recent media invite for a Fury event said: "This is a fantastic title from the local video games' industry and presents the potential for a $100 million export return for the Australian economy." How did you guys come up with the $100M figure?

　　TH: I didn't, but let me do the maths for you. Basically, looking at over five years, if we get several hundred thousand subscribers with our business model the way we have it planned, we'll sell lots of copies, and that'll be the money.

　　GS AU: Do you think the Australian government is doing enough to encourage independent games development in this country?

　　TH: Governments have a really difficult role, and unfortunately they're not geared to back winners. They have to back the field, and so that's not the way the industry works. Our industry is all about making smash hits. Governments won't change that mindset, well not Australian governments--they can't be seen to be favouring someone, or everyone jumps up and down and says that's not fair.

　　GS AU: What do you think they could do to help Australia retain more local talent?

　　TH: I guess the biggest thing they could do is assist in the whole skills-shortage thing and providing the raw recruits. Again retaining talent, our big one has always been payroll tax. You pay for the privilege of employing people, and so you're investing a huge amount of money during the development phase, and then there's this big tax burden all the way through it. So I think it should wait until you're generating some revenues before you have to pay the tax bill.

　　GS AU: CDC China (one of your financial backers) also has ties with MGame from Korea; a company known for its sale of virtual assets. Will Fury support sale of virtual items for real-world cash?

　　TH: We'll be announcing our business model in the coming weeks, and our game is a hybrid of FPS and MMORPG genres. So we're looking at a business model that's a hybrid as well.

　　GS AU: Hypothetically, if you were to go down the virtual currency route, do you think using microtransactions disadvantages players who don't have a disposable income to spend on gaming?

　　TH: As a general answer to that question, rather than a Fury specific answer: The general answer is. In Korea, they have two models--they split it into casual and hardcore. It's all free, and you buy power. And in the hardcore games, buying power is seen as a no-no. If we were to have any microtransactions [in Fury], should that ever happen, it would almost certainly involve not purchasing power, but purchasing more aesthetic things--nothing that would make it unfair for players to compete.

　　What I can tell you is we've put a lot of research into business models and looked at what's worked and what hasn't worked and why things haven't worked. Looking at, for example, the Hellgate [London] announcements of a couple of weeks ago and why that was such a debacle. A lot of that is about setting expectations, and basically they weren't meeting the expectations of their player base. And so whatever business model anyone chooses, the key is setting the expectations, and that's one of the reasons we've been so, you know, we've never said no comment about it. We've said, it's not going to be the traditional MMORPG model.

　　Back to your first question, concerns about the saturated market--most MMOGs are aiming to be their audiences' only MMOG. One of the things with Fury is that whilst we see that there will be a bunch of people who it'll be their main MMOG, we feel as many, if not more, players where Fury will be their other game.

　　GS AU: Are you happy to play second fiddle, though?

　　TH: Absolutely. Because in the end, you can't create that barrier, basically subscription says this is my only game. There aren't many people who have more than one subscription.

　　GS AU: Tony Hilliam, thanks for your time.