Auran Development
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| Private | |
| Industry | Video game industry |
| Founded | 1995 (Auran) 2005 (n3vrf41l) |
| Founder | Greg Lane (Auran) Graham Edelsten (N3V/Auran) Tony Hilliam (N3V) |
| Headquarters |
Helensvale, Queensland, Australia |
| Products |
Dark Reign: The Future of War Trainz Fury |
| Website | [1] |
N3V Games Pty Ltd. (formerly Auran Development and later n3vrf41l Publishing) is an Australian video game developer and publisher based in Helensvale, Queensland, Australia. Auran is now operated as a holding company, with operations and development ceded to N3V Games, a different closely held company, but the two are interlinked for Auran still operates the popular forums, data servers and other business interests. The operations of many of these are managed by N3V which makes it more confusing to unravel, but is not an uncommon arrangement in two entities with a different mix of owners and rights.
Auran was established by Greg Lane and Graham Edelsten in 1995, and released its first game, Dark Reign: The Future of War, in 1997. Dark Reign sold over 685,000 units and was rated in the top ten real-time strategy games by the US magazine Game Developer. The game received a 9.2 rating on GameSpot and was called "one of the most impressive games released this year in any genre."
By the Mid-2000s, Tony Hilliam had established a video game company 'N3VrF41L Games' while occasionally participating on the Auran forums as a Trainz fan. When Auran overextended backing the wrong product in early 2007, Hilliam bought in, and initially brought out several republished or rebundled packaged releases as new product titles to boost cash flow (Trainz Routes, Trainz Complete Collection and eventually the regionally focused Trainz Classics and Europe only releases.) Since 2007, the re-titled N3V Games has taken over primary day to day operation, development, and management of the Auran/N3V panoply of resources, websites, holdings, and software.
Success of Dark Reign spurred interest in the game engine from other games developers, and Auran began in-house development of a generalized version of the graphics engine for licensing to third-party companies based on its self-developed middleware game engine called the Auran JET® and in 1998 began development of a more specialized version for what became the game engine for the Trainz series of train simulator products—beta tested with Trainz 0.9 in 2000 amongst railfans, and with a major new release about every 2½ years.
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