No Fun at Interzone Games

Seems that things are hitting the fan with regards to Interzone Games back in Perth. The following news article went up on Kotaku yesterday. My heart goes out to all the great guys (and girls) in Perth who are stilled owed money and are still having to deal with all this a year after I resigned.

Kotaku Australia Link: "WA Dev Interzone Games Close To Liquidation"

I am getting some of the news as it is happening, but as its after midnight I can't keep up with it. I just wanted to put a quick post with the Autralian Kotaku link.

UPDATE 02/10/2010:
Here are two more links that went up last night:

Tsumea "Interzone Games (Perth studio) close to liquidation"

Giant Bomb: "A warning from a designer at Interzone Games"

UPDATE 02/11/2010:
Small news blurb in the West Australian newspaper today:

Workers have picketed the Bentley office of a state-backed computer game company which is being investigated by the Fair Work Ombudsman and pursued by the Australian Taxation Office.

Full Article: West Australian

The WA Business News put up this article today with a promise of a further in-depth article in next week's edition.
Front Page of the Western Australian Business News


UPDATE 02/120/2010:
Here is the news clip that ran yesterday:


Recap on Gamasutra

Article on Tsumea

And for those of you that asked, I was the Lead Designer/Creative Director at Interzone Perth from Feb 2008 till I resigned due to lack of pay in Feb 2009 when I was forced to return to the United States.

UPDATE 0280/2010:
I haven't been posting the daily blow by blows of the downward spiral of Interzone but there has been a few more stories posted. The Perth guys have documented much more than I have over at The Magic Pantry including video they took when the servers and IP were removed from Australia. You can find all the info here:

http://kranzky.rockethands.com/2010/02/13/interzone-the-downward-spiral/

Back to the Past

There has been talk of a Back to the Future remake circulating around the internets. I personally wanted to be counted among those that thinks this is a horrible idea. But, there has always been one thing about the trilogy that has bugged me.

Well, first I hate that the third movie was them back in the wild west instead of them jumping back through the first and second movie, like they jumped back into the first movie in the second. I was really expecting a clever three layered time travel extravaganza, since they shot the second and third movies back to back. That is what is cool about time travel movies!

And that is the problem, they really didn't take advantage of the fact they are doing time travel stuff! Case and point: the big problem in the third movie is that they are stuck in 1885 because the DeLorean has run out of gas and the flying circuits have been destroyed. Thats why they have to do the whole thing with putting the car on the train tracks to get it up to 88 miles per hour which nearly gets them killed. Why didn't they just go back to where Doc Brown hid the DeLorean in the mine and stick a note in there that read, "Marty, bring some extra gas. Love Doc Brown." There, problem solved.