Reflections on the End

The lead up to the end of Krome Studios was a stressful time for everyone involved. During the last year or so the Adelaide studio (my studio) felt particular strain for two reasons:

1.) Being the smallest of Krome's two satellite studios, the Adelaide team knew that it would be the first option should head office decide that severing limbs was unavoidable.

b.) Adelaide is a relatively small town, void of any high profile gaming companies. Krome (and previously Ratbag) had long stood as the solitary beacon of hope for anyone in this city who considered game development a valid means of paying their bills. Simply put, if Krome was to disappear, it would strike a death blow to the Adelaide games industry.

In spite of the constant, crushing weight of this soul-vexing dilemma, I couldn't help but notice that something about this whole situation made the concept art side of things quite exciting.

In fact, I dare say it actually made for some of the most enjoyable and varying artistic opportunities I have experienced.

When it looked like things were going bad, many people started thinking about original IP (Krome was known mainly for it's work on licenced titles, with a few exceptions). In my experience this wasn't something normally encouraged all that much, but when people began to smell trouble it wasn't long before the race was on to come up with the company-saving pitch for the best video game idea ever.

And who do you come to to make a pitch look all bright and shiny? That's right. The concept artists.

In my last year, I worked on many different pitches - some of which had quite a large number of people dedicated to producing them. I found these ideas to be fairly mainstream initially, but they certainly made for some fun and varying design pieces. Sadly, most of this art has disappeared, but here are a few remaining samples:









(See also 'Boon' Cotter's article on another of these projects)

As things dried up even more, Adelaide began to find itself feeling somewhat cut off from the other studios. Not wanting to remain idle with the threat of redundancy hanging over our heads, we began to talk amongst ourselves, throwing around some ideas for re-skin of a previously discarded project that we still felt had a lot of potential - enough potential to save our studio. I feel we actually came up with some of our most creative ideas during this time - It's a shame we never had the opportunity to develop these further. Here's a small taste of my contribution:






Even still, the situation worsened. In a flurry of last minute panic, twenty-something game developers crowded around the boardroom table, desperate to come up with an idea. Deep down I think we all knew this was the end, and in a strange way it almost felt like that by accepting that fact the pressure was slightly eased. We proceeded to hold what I found to be one of the most enjoyable, creative and hilarious whiteboard sessions we ever had. It took nearly all morning, but in the end, we came up with this:



We were closed down a couple of weeks later.