There are a lot of video games being made in Australia right now. A lot. In fact, it’s safe to say that — right this moment — the Australian games industry feels as though it’s thriving. This exhaustive list of game studios currently operating in Australia is a sign of that growth.
Made by GamesAid ambassador and entrepreneur Benjamin Gifford, I can’t tell if this list is 100% comprehensive, but it’s mightily impressive. He’s tried to create a visual list of every game studio in Australia and — spoiler — it’s a long list.
It’s a testament to how the narrative has changed. When I started at Kotaku Australia the local situation felt grim. Major studios were dropping like flies and there was a massive exodus of local talent moving overseas. Now? There have been a great number of local success stories and the industry is building on that.
It’s a good place to be. Well done for surviving. I can’t wait to see what Australia creates next. BLOODY OATH.
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17 responses to “This Is A Pretty Comprehensive List Of All Game Studios In Australia”
Good to see! It also makes me miss some of the ones that have come and gone… Ratbag, Auron, Team Bondi, Beam / Melbourne House…. One of the girls in my office used to work at Ratbag, time for reminiscing again
Finally, I can create my elaborate deathmatches between similarly named studios!
Who wins? League of Geeks or League of Monkeys? Endgame Studios or Quest’s End Games? Dancing Dinosaur Games, or the slightly differently text offset Dancing Dinosaur Games?
Winners are:
League of Geeks (Wooooo, Armello!)
Quest’s End (simply for working on L.A. Noire and many more titles)
‘slightly differently text offset Dancing Dinosaur Games’ (Because they’re offset)
Dancing Dinosaur Games, League or Monkeys? Lol.
Never gonna happen.
A little padded, at a glance.
Firelight Technologies make FMOD, which is indeed used in many, many games but they’re not actually a game studio.
Euclideon don’t claim to make games, and don’t actually make anything to my knowledge.
Konami Australia also don’t make video games as such, they make poker machine games.
I would say that Electronic Arts and Firemonkeys are pretty similar as well.
I agree that the list is a bit padded (with several businesses, that although maybe are on the games industry fringe, don’t actually make games). At the same time there’s probably at least 40-60 other studios that are missing that I know of, perhaps more.
mmm where is Team Bondi, I know it was meant to of wound up in like 2012
but I’m sure they had been kicking around their new game last year or the year before (W**** of the orient)
Anyone know what happened to them?
Last I heard they had been looking for a publisher
Team Bondi is officially gone. Some of the team that remained at the time of closure were picked up by George Miller’s KMM studio to work on their next project.
Which also shut down if I remember correctly.
you censored whore? its not even a swear word.
my internet at work is extremely monitored and it would look for works like that and report me to my department head overseas
I think the only devs here I’ve played a game from are Krome Studios, Nnooo and Take Two. Hopefully with the rise in universities and collages offering games / electronic media courses we’ll see more studios grow.
But how many are actually turning a profit and not relying on government welfare handouts?
Lol. Can anyone actually imagine these studios at e3.
“Ladies and gentleman, we present the best three game developers of 2015… Blowfish Games! Brawsome! Iron Helmet Games!”
I’m not familiar with Blowfish, but Brawsome have had a couple of successful adventure game titles and were, last I heard, working with Corey and Lori Cole (of Quest for Glory fame) on their kickstarted game Rogue to Redemption. Iron Helmet do the hardest of hardcore strategy games, Neptune’s Pride being their best known.
They’re not all putting out games in their tens of millions like Kliktock with Crossy Road, but there are still plenty that have found their own bit of success.
I own games form all three studios 🙂
Oh, and I saw Blowfish at GDC
Just because they aren’t turning a profit at the moment, doesn’t make them NOT a ‘real’ game studio. So why does it matter.
Like any other business – let’s say a restaurant, they can be in business for 2-3 years without turning a profit, but you wouldn’t say they’re not a restaurant, and you wouldn’t be asking either.
You most certainly would be looking at potential profitability if they wanted government subsidies.
Restaurants don’t get subsidies — they don’t need them because there are plenty of proprietors willing to roll the dice and hope they hit it big. Just like games studios.
There will always be plenty of artists/devs willing to work at night on games they love. They don’t provide any meaningful employment numbers though, that comes from ‘real’ studios (you know, the ones with actual business plans, the ones willing to sully their artistic fingers and license IP).
Sad to see our tiny Tassie game studio (Giant Margarita) didn’t make the list 🙁 Our first game “Save the Teenies” was released in December: http://youtu.be/BKGGaXsjR2c
Should we just photoshop ourselves in you think?! 😉
Shop ours in too while you are at it 🙂 Redmoon Interactive ….
I may just be blind because I’m looking at it from a low-res monitor (or just in general), but Torus Games seems to be missing from the list.
Nor Straight Right.
Two companies who I worked at that have shipped games not on the list, but there’s a hundred other developers I’ve never heard of, le sigh.
Missing Twiitch (melbourne) and Sega AU is well dead!
It’s not accurate to call that list “comprehensive” or “exhaustive”
It excludes many other australian studios and game developers such as:
-Torus
-FrogShack
-PubGames
-Macromatic
-Cognitive Forge
-Paperweight Games
As well as countless others…
To be fair the list is still being updated.
A quick search on Google for “list of Australian Game Developers” turns up tsumea’s already comprehensive list of developers many of who have been excluded.