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/

Hyper Magazine - Collections Interview

A couple of months ago I told you I was interviewed for the Collections column for Hyper Magazine. Well the issue (#173) is now on the stands.

I don't have a copy yet myself, but a friend at work has a subscription and he brought in his copy for me to read. Erin writes that my career in the game industry has only lasted 15 years so far which isn't true as I started at Unicorn software in 1985 (maybe even in 84) which would make it 23 years. Even if you don't count educational software, bad educational software at that, I started at Westwood in 1988 that would be an even 20.

Anyway I have to get back to work. I do want to point out though that the wireless Internet in the hotel room as gone from poor (losing connection for 30 seconds ever 10 minutes) to almost unusable (2 minute connection followed by... well at last check down since sometime last night.

Edit: fixed the cover picture as I appeared to have linked it from their site instead of uploading it from my hard drive. It had updated to the new issue cover. Whoops.

Interzone in Perth

So here I am in Perth. I started at Interzone today. The details about our current project haven’t been released yet so I can’t give out any more details about it. Connie stayed behind in Brisbane to deal with the majority of packing, the movers and all that. She will be coming over next week on the 11th.

How did my first day go? Well it turns out today is the day that we are moving offices. Not far, just across the parking lot to another building in the same complex. My day was basically getting my computer set up, reading a bunch of design documents and wiki pages, putting up a Watchmen Windows background, having lunch and then helping move a bunch of crap in the burning Australian summer heat. Well at least Perth’s heat isn’t like Brisbane heat with the God awful humidity. I hate humidity. Perth heat is more like Vegas heat, still sucks but at least you don’t have to peal your cloths off with a butter knife at the end of the day.

I finally figured out my iPod radio adapter doesn’t work in the rental car’s cigarette lighter. It was hard to tell at first because after sitting in the hot car for over a year the digital display that shows what station it is broadcasting on has fried. The display is now always blank. So you have to step through the stations slowly while it is hooked up to find the iPod’s broadcast. I finally noticed that the battery on the iPod wasn’t charging. Luckily I also brought the last Harry Potter book on CD so I am finally getting to listen to that while driving around looking for an apartment or house to rent.

Speaking of which, I’m not having much luck with finding a place. It isn’t like the states where you just grab a For Rent magazine and cruise by the various apartment complexes over the weekend. No here you have to contact which ever real estate agent has the listing, find out what day the 15-30 minute window they are showing the apartment is on, fill out an application and then hope the owner picks yours. Every apartment is individually owned by somebody or a investment company. There aren’t any evil giant corporations that own entire apartment complexes. (As we all know all corporations are evil and 9 out of 10 corporate CEO have murdered at least one person. Really, Hollywood wouldn’t lie to us.) Even the brand new giant skyscraper apartment complexes have each unit individually owned. Anyway on top of all that I don’t really know the city so I don’t know where the good and bad neighborhoods are.

Oh well, at least I got the internet connection working in my room.