All our exporters have to deal with the exchange rate and many have to contend with so-called 'sweatshop' conditions in China and elesewhere. Having observed my 12 year old's experience with Fury, I suspect it failed primarily because of its own intrinsic shortcomings. This game was released before it was ready and before it had been adequately tested.

My son bought a full-price copy of Fury for $90 on launch in October 2007 and then had to pay a monthly subscription fee to play (around $15 IIRC). There was no free demo or trial version so it was hard for him to assess its worth against competitors like World of Warcraft beforehand. Immediately on installation he had to download many hundreds of megabytes of data before it would start and there were frequent additional 'mega patches' over the next few weeks. But the real problems according to him were technical inadequacies like poor sound and lack of 'balance' in the gameplay (a term understood apparently by avid gamers!). He found it particularly galling that players who were prepared to pay more could make themselves more powerful rather than having to earn that ability

"He found it particularly galling that players who were prepared to pay more could make themselves more powerful rather than having to earn that ability"
What a great way to make your community instantly hate each other.

"They’re been making astounding claims that 2 million Australians play online games and up to 40 per cent of these are females."

It all depends on your definition of online game. There's the simple web games such as those on yahoo, then there's the typical multi-player side of the $100 boxed game from the game shop, and then there's pay by the month MMORPG. All three have significantly different levels of popularity.

Claudiecat, I think your comments highlight why such hype is so prevalent. People don't by games because they ARE good, they buy them because they THINK they're good. It's much easier to convince people, particularly the less knowledgeable such as parents of gamers, with flashy hype than relying on word of mouth from a quality product. The major game producers have a strangle hold on the media that prevents any sort of objective reviewing.

I have problems with King's Toryism but not on this occassion. It's a total demolition job of the online games industry or rather, those engaged in hype. King went for the jugular.

I can't see much harm in online games but I also have my doubts about their popularity. I read lots of pro-games articles in The Oz and other papers (my son is looking for a job - he's an animator). I would have noticed a big games developer like Auran go down. Must have missed it.

The game spin really lies in their wonky use of stats. I remember reading one head honco say that more than 3 million Aussie kids between 17 and 24 were playing computer games. Er, that's EVERY single youth in that age bracket. Spin.

"3 million Aussie kids between 17 and 24 were playing computer games."
I'm no gamer, I'm interested in the above quote "is spin".
Fraud, lies is more the label I have in mind. Sad that some of our language is being taken down this path.
fluff4