Thursday, March 08, 2007

CDC Games Invests in Auran

This story has been going around the business news wires:
BEIJING, China --(Business Wire)-- CDC Games, a business unit of CDC Corporation (NASDAQ: CHINA) and pioneer of the "free-to-play, pay-for-merchandise" model for online games in China, announced today it has signed a definitive agreement to invest in Auran, a leading developer of online games in Australia.
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What I love is this bit that always gets included in Auran press releases:
About Auran
Established in 1995, Auran is one of Australia's oldest and largest game studios and has won numerous technology awards. Boasting a team of internationally experienced developers, Auran's staff have worked on a titles including: Asheron's Call 1 & 2, Star Wars Galaxies, Ultima Online, Mythica, Middle Earth Online, Need for Speed Underground, Magic and Mayhem and many more.
See that "Star Wars Galaxies"? They have that in there because of me even though I really didn't work on Star Wars Galaxies. I was a CSR for Star Wars Galaxies for about 8 months back at launch between EA's closing of Westwood and starting at Auran. I was trying to get onto the Everquest dev team and my friend Shawn Lord at SOE recommended that I could easily get my foot in the door through the CSR department. He said that is where most of the Everquest designers had come from at that point. Anyway, I have brought up several times that the Star Wars Galaxies listing should be replaced by one of the other billion games I've worked on but there it is again. Come on, wouldn't you be more impressed by something like Command & Conquer than Star Wars Galaxies anyway? Lets face it, Star Wars Galaxies sucked.

Actually I just got an "Eye of the Beholder" fan mail yesterday from a girl named Irene. Thats right, a girl! I showed her where I hid my name in the artwork. :-)

3 comments:

BugHunter said...

...wouldn't you be more impressed by something like Command & Conquer than Star Wars Galaxies anyway? Lets face it, Star Wars Galaxies sucked.

You know it! The first time I read that paragraph somewhere, I thought exactly that. "They could drop a title like C&C and they didn't, but they mention SWG like it's a good thing? Someone in PR needs help."

ps. Newsletter showed up today, and it looks correct in my email. They must have fixed it for us freemail losers.

Anonymous said...

Hi Joseph!
Not a girl anymore ... female is more appropriate.Is gaming typically male?

Thank you for telling me more about your time in creating a part of Eye of the Beholder.That game is so precious to me.

Joseph B. Hewitt IV said...

whoops sorry female. Female... that sounds better than girl anyway. See my army of fans is growing! Soon we shall be legion! (I just like saying that part about 'shall be legion' because it sounds so cool)

Now why didn't I get a newsletter email? I signed up for it!