Thunder Monkey
Banned
They thought it was worms.Ponn01 said:
In reality I dragged my nutsack across your carpet.
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Sonic Team and Sega - some insight from a disgruntled employee.
- Thread starter Mama Robotnik
- Start date
In reality I dragged my nutsack across your carpet.
Segata Sanshiro
Member
You are so damn weird.Thunder Monkey said:
But I still love you.
Thunder Monkey
Banned
It could have said forehead but I've humped more then my share today.Segata Sanshiro said:
GrotesqueBeauty said:
You honour, while you are, by and large, right, I'd like to raise this point:
This statement assumes that my client is lying.
*presents original post: http://web.archive.org/web/20070408161400/http://bossrush.blogspot.com/2007/03/nights-2.html *
But why would my client make such an elaborate and long lie, going as far as adding to the post in the comments section?
I think my client has supplied ample evidence to be "in the knows"... or that he is great at making stuff up, stuff like:
I want you to believe me that this man has indeed spoken truthfully and can therefore be taken as a reliable source of information.
*returns to attorney's seat*
GrotesqueBeauty
Banned
http://objection.mrdictionary.net/go.php?n=2903218FoxSpirit said:
D
Deleted member 30609
Unconfirmed Member
Don't say that! Then he'll think he's weird and will become one of those people who play too their weirdness. The best weird people are oblivious to their weirdness.Segata Sanshiro said:
There's an exact science at play here, respect it.
BlazeHedgehog
Member
GrotesqueBeauty said:
What do you mean, though? I'm the one who wrote the article there. As far as I'm concerned, it all checks out.
- You got this guy who says he has a "unique perspective" on the game industry. He purposely tries to remain anonymous, though.
- He makes a blog post where he perhaps says a little more than he should have.
- A month later, he torches all of his posts and abandons ship.
- Because his posts are gone, nobody notices that he basically told us about Sonic Unleashed over a year before it went public
- At some point, a Robots.txt file is set up to try and deny his blog from being archived, but the one post - the most important post, survives.
- Years pass, and for some reason, the guy posts his full name and updates his blogroll (most likely using his blogger account to comment elsewhere).
- Somebody digs up one of his old blog posts and notices the hint to Sonic Unleashed
- Since he later gave his real name (Ben Andac), verifying where he worked is a snap, and indeed, he worked for Sega Europe at one point.
- Upon my posting the article about the archived blog and what it said about Sonic Team, Ben Andac removes his bossrush.blogger.com blog completely and entirely.
I'd say having prior knowledge of Sonic Unleashed (his comment was way too specific to be a guess) more than confirms this guy's identity, and he has profiles on places like Mobygames, LinkedIn, etc. He was a Sega Employee and was in a position that would have given him the ability to speak to members of SonicTeam.
What's there to be skeptical about? The Paper Trail speaks for itself and you can follow it just as I did. There is no "I theorize he did this" - this is, as far as I can tell, the gospel straight from the horses mouth.
diffusionx
Gold Member
These shitty Sonic games sell, though, so Sonic Team will keep putting them out. The reason Eidos killed off Core's Tomb Raider work was not just because of the tired nature of the franchise - Eidos gladly kept the gravy train running while they were pumping out one game a year on the PSX. No, they gave the franchise to CD when Angel of Darkness arrived late, over budget, and in terrible condition. The game got awful reviews and sold terribly. Not even the hardcore Lara Croft fans bought into it.
Sonic, on the other hand, is a cheap series to make and has a large base of hardcore Sonic fanboys that will buy every Sonic game day one no matter how shitty they know it will be. Until that stops happening, Sonic Team will keep churning out these awful games.
Sonic, on the other hand, is a cheap series to make and has a large base of hardcore Sonic fanboys that will buy every Sonic game day one no matter how shitty they know it will be. Until that stops happening, Sonic Team will keep churning out these awful games.
SonicMegaDrive
Member
diffusionx said:
Exactly.
Accept mediocrity and you will continue to get mediocrity.
And Sonic fans accept a lot less than mediocrity, believe you me.
SonicMegaDrive
Member
Sadist said:
But But But
Too expensiiiiiiiiive
Ninja Kn1ght
Member
Wow, that's interesting about NiGHTS 2. It must really suck to find out that not only do you have to retool your game to run on much weaker hardware, but you only have a year to do it. Not to mention implementing features that take advantage of the Wii's interface.
Mama Robotnik
Member
Sega1991 said:
Did you write the original posts at GHZ, or the article at tssznews.com? Either way, its some awesome investigatory work, and thanks for your efforts! I agree that all the evidence adds up.
Have been looking at the reaction around the dark corners of the internet, namely Sega's Official Board. The denial, the rage and the pain is strong there (especially from about page three onwards)...:
So trueDiablos said:Despite all of the stupid things Sega has done and will continue to do, they have at least partially redeemed themselves with one of the best games released in the past ten years or so:
I still can't believe they made this. In the back of my mind I still sometimes think it's by Square, tri-Ace, Atlus, etc. etc. But, no, it's from the team that was once AM1.
Night_Trekker
Member
Calcaneus said:
So then we get Shadow 2 with DD-cup Amy? No thanks.
Dreams-Visions
Member
fascinating.
PowerSmell
Member
So Sonic Team are bored to death despite adding non-Sonic mechanics to their games consistently? Additionally, those parts are described as the worst parts of the game, usually.
Davey Cakes
Member
The basic problem with this has NOTHING to do with the Wii. The technical limitations themselves have no connections to why NiGHTS: JoD was a mediocre/bad game. It's merely the shift of development that caused problems.
The secondary problem comes from Sonic Team's development itself. JoD's biggest criticisms stemmed from the same problems that we see in a lot of Sonic Team's games. That is, questionable design choices. Splitting a game into different parts, and only having one of those parts be worth a damn to the game itself. Unleashed was the same way, including two separate gameplay aspects, and having only one of them favorable to fans.
People who have brought up "cutting the fat" have the right idea here. Sega pretty much said that constructing a full game worth of the daytime levels in Unleashed would take too long, would take too much money, and would be "too hard." A lot of this is because Sonic Team's putting too much effort in the unnecessary detail included in these levels. If they had just maybe taken presentation and level design concepts from, say, a game like Super Monkey Ball, there wouldn't be nearly as much issue with creating a game full of pure Sonic levels, especially in HD. Just have strips of land, with obstacles, and include a dynamic background or something. Done. Hell, Sonic Team actually pulled something like this off with their Green Hill Zone in Sonic Adventure 2.
A similar action could've been taken with NiGHTS, even under the constraints that switching platforms created. Instead of injecting the game with some of the needless bullshit that we saw, which would've been incorporated into the X360/PS3 version anyway, why couldn't Sonic Team just "cut the fat" and release a pure, gameplay-driven NiGHTS game? If they really wanted to make good with the fans, they would've done this, priced the game cheaper, and then made a judgement on a potential sequel (either for Wii or for X360/PS3) from the sales, rather than give us what they did and judge the potential for a sequel based on that.
Only Sonic Team lets Sonic Team down, really.
The secondary problem comes from Sonic Team's development itself. JoD's biggest criticisms stemmed from the same problems that we see in a lot of Sonic Team's games. That is, questionable design choices. Splitting a game into different parts, and only having one of those parts be worth a damn to the game itself. Unleashed was the same way, including two separate gameplay aspects, and having only one of them favorable to fans.
People who have brought up "cutting the fat" have the right idea here. Sega pretty much said that constructing a full game worth of the daytime levels in Unleashed would take too long, would take too much money, and would be "too hard." A lot of this is because Sonic Team's putting too much effort in the unnecessary detail included in these levels. If they had just maybe taken presentation and level design concepts from, say, a game like Super Monkey Ball, there wouldn't be nearly as much issue with creating a game full of pure Sonic levels, especially in HD. Just have strips of land, with obstacles, and include a dynamic background or something. Done. Hell, Sonic Team actually pulled something like this off with their Green Hill Zone in Sonic Adventure 2.
A similar action could've been taken with NiGHTS, even under the constraints that switching platforms created. Instead of injecting the game with some of the needless bullshit that we saw, which would've been incorporated into the X360/PS3 version anyway, why couldn't Sonic Team just "cut the fat" and release a pure, gameplay-driven NiGHTS game? If they really wanted to make good with the fans, they would've done this, priced the game cheaper, and then made a judgement on a potential sequel (either for Wii or for X360/PS3) from the sales, rather than give us what they did and judge the potential for a sequel based on that.
Only Sonic Team lets Sonic Team down, really.
PowerSmell
Member
Calcaneus said:
But Itagaki is obsessed with AM2, not Sonic Team.
SonicMegaDrive
Member
Sadist said:
Fixed that for ya.
3 hours of bliss is always better than 3 hours of bless spread out thinly in a 40-hour game with 37 hours of shit gameplay, hub levels, collect-a-thon crap and lame cutscenes.
BlazeHedgehog
Member
Mama Robotnik said:
The article.
diffusionx
Gold Member
SonicMegaDrive said:
That's true, but its a simple fact that world travels fast about a game's length, and people are on the internets saying "will rent, lolz" about 10 seconds after someone else says they beat game X in 6 hours. Look at Mirror's Edge. It's maybe the worst word-of-mouth a game can get. I'm not saying Sonic Team has done a good job of lengthening their Sonic games, I'm simply saying they have a point.
SonicMegaDrive
Member
Or they could always add replay value in speedruns and unlockables. Or bring back the chaos emerald thing. Make it easy to beat, but difficult to beat the right way.
But aside from that, I was gazing over people's coments over at the SOA forums, and even on this one - really, is all of this really such a revelation?
It has been obvious for years that Sonic Team's employees have been getting tired of making Sonic game after Sonic game. Y'know, there is a reason they keep trying different experiments with the gameplay.
The proof has been in the pudding for a long, long time. And because of this one guy's blog, people are like, "*Sniff*, Sega doesn't love me anymore...".
Sonic fans, Sega stopped loving you years ago.
You needed this for a confirmation of that?
Really?
But aside from that, I was gazing over people's coments over at the SOA forums, and even on this one - really, is all of this really such a revelation?
It has been obvious for years that Sonic Team's employees have been getting tired of making Sonic game after Sonic game. Y'know, there is a reason they keep trying different experiments with the gameplay.
The proof has been in the pudding for a long, long time. And because of this one guy's blog, people are like, "*Sniff*, Sega doesn't love me anymore...".
Sonic fans, Sega stopped loving you years ago.
You needed this for a confirmation of that?
Really?
DICE tried just that with Mirror's Edge. It's a fairly short game that is difficult to master and offers a lot of incentives to continue playing the game well beyond the "story mode". Yet, it was met with tons of criticism for its length and difficulty. People approached it as if a single playthrough was all the game had to offer and judged it based on that.SonicMegaDrive said:
SonicMegaDrive
Member
dark10x said:
Mark my words: Mirror's Edge 2 will sell better.
It didn't underperform because of these boneheads' reviews.
It underperformed because it's a new IP. Over time, people will slowly discover the game, and interest will rise.
It's all about how they decide to time the release of the sequel. (IE. Don't release it too soon, like Katamari)
BlackClouds
Member
SonicMegaDrive said:
Naw, I look at it as a pick your poison type of thing, as either way, the game would get dissed heavily. A perfect 3 hour Sonic game would get at least 2 points taken off in reviews for being too short for $60. The 40 hour version would have all that extra fluff to pad out the time, only that fluff is not allowed in a Sonic game and/or Sega's devs are not good at creating that fluff in their action games. Where's the middle ground? Who the fuck knows.
The review industry and the shitty console fanbase that'll listen to them is a huge contributer to this I think. Those are the people who must have every game be 40 hours long (on its first run through) to be worth it at full price (instead of a solid 3 hour game with tons of replayability). So many people don't even finish games even on GAF, and they wonder why. I know I don't even have time for games anymore.
twinturbo2
butthurt Heat fan
Not if they release it in arcades first and trumpet it as a stock car racer. NASCAR is still big in the US, you know...Zen said:
Diablohead
Member
I would say SEGA should leave sonic alone for a few years now for main games, give DS and PSP rights out to someone for a game or two maybe but yeah SEGA do need to just leave him alone untill they cam muster up some amazing game like Sonic deserves.
But that's not going to happen with all the time they spent (i'm guessing) on the hedgehog engine, they will want to use it a few times so we may be stuck with unleashed like games for a while yet.
But that's not going to happen with all the time they spent (i'm guessing) on the hedgehog engine, they will want to use it a few times so we may be stuck with unleashed like games for a while yet.
YES! how I would love to see the classic method of two endings, one with and one without all the chaos emeralds that are not a set story routine to collect like they have been in adventure 1,2, heroes etc. Shadow the hedgehog did something like the classic with the way you finish a level but i'd prefer the return to special stages personally.SonicMegaDrive said:
SonicMegaDrive
Member
BlackClouds said:
Yeah, like Dark10x pointed out, that was much the case with Mirror's Edge.
It's kind of damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Make the game 40 hours long, and barely anybody bothers to finish the game. Make the game too short, and people will say, 'Rental-Only'.
Once and for all, it should be decided that some people like long games, and some people like short games. The length of a game does not dictate the overall quality of a game, as long as the package comes complete with good replay value. And a game that is fun to play(meaning: Fun gameplay) will always have great replay value.
Professional reviewers should all take note of this. The game experience does not end just because the credits are rolling. Or at least, that's not how a good game should be designed.
diffusionx
Gold Member
SonicMegaDrive said:
This is the truth, but the problem is that pro reviewers are morons, and a lot of gamers listen to them anyway. I seriously remember Game Informer dissing a shmup for being super short - of course it wasn't Ikaruga, because GI at its cold blackened heart is just a vacuous hype peddler, but still we can see how entrenched this is.
Sonic Team has to work in the industry, so they still have to deal with this. I doubt anyone, including themselves when they lay awake at night, think their solution to this conundrum is ideal. It's entirely possible that a bold, beautiful, old-school Sonic game, will have these people, the same people that have been asking for a "Back to basics" Sonic game for 5+ years, ignoring the shortness, but it's not like Sonic Team have given this theory a chance in the marketplace.
Diablohead
Member
The werehog stages are nice once you power up sonic a bit, but they could have done with a few less stupid pit jumping segments and maybe keeping a little more speed so it's not such a huge jump from running at 700+ kph down to crawling speed with combat, that's my thought anyway.
Catalix
And on the sixth day the LORD David Bowie created man and woman in His image. And he saw that it was good. On the seventh day the LORD created videogames so that He might take the bloody day off for once.
You're not the "Amy's cunt" guy, are you? If so, you'd get your wish :lolCalcaneus said:
Davey Cakes
Member
Sonic Team pretty much did this with Sonic & the Secret Rings. Well, minus the chaos emeralds. I spent thirteen hours on that game just unlocking the challenges. Achieving gold or even silver medals in all of those said challenges would extend the game even further.SonicMegaDrive said:
SSR was pretty darn faithful to the "pure Sonic" ideal that fans today seem to want. The game merely has some flaws here and there. But hey, at least the entire game follows one favorable gameplay concept instead of following two gameplay concepts with only one of them being favorable.
FallenAngelV
Member
Bubububuwhat?abstract alien said:
Anyways, Unleashed was fairly decent (best non-handheld Sonic game since SA2 in my opinion), NiGHTS Wii was fairly decent. Neither were anywhere near as good as they could've been if ST didn't insist on shoehorning unnecessary stuff into the gameplay, but hey.
Panajev2001a
GAF's Pleasant Genius
SonicMegaDrive said:
If you can S-class ALL Sonic day stages in those 3 hours you are a really incredible gamer
.
SonicMegaDrive
Member
Panajev2001a said:If you can S-class ALL Sonic day stages in those 3 hours you are a really incredible gamer
No no no
S-Classing the stages is part of the replay value.
The 3 hour marathon would be merely 'beating' the game
Panajev2001a
GAF's Pleasant Genius
SonicMegaDrive said:No no no
S-Classing the stages is part of the replay value.
The 3 hour marathon would be merely 'beating' the game
And "beating" Sonic Unleashed is really beating Sonic Unleashed
?Is it S-classing it beating it or is just reaching the end of the game's story beating it
?I think something drastic needs to happen with sonic and fast. The game sells still by merit of its name, but even that has lost its sheen. My cousin has bought every game from dreamcast on, until unleashed. He bought sonic next gen and didn't even bother to finish it due to how many times glitches ruined it for him.
Aaron Strife
Banned
I don't get why Sega can't outsource the next Sonic game to a less tired team like Dimps or Treasure.
What would be the harm? Sonic Team is an external studio anyway so it wouldn't be any different. Have Treasure make a Sonic game with like twelve levels, and have Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles be the playable characters. That's what Unleashed was rumored to be, anyway.
What would be the harm? Sonic Team is an external studio anyway so it wouldn't be any different. Have Treasure make a Sonic game with like twelve levels, and have Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles be the playable characters. That's what Unleashed was rumored to be, anyway.
BlazeHedgehog
Member
Aaron Strife said:
I dunno about Dimps. They do good with the Sonic Rush games, but their work on Sonic Unleashed Wii apparently wasn't very good.
Aaron Strife
Banned
I've heard people prefer some Dimps levels and some Sonic Team levels.Sega1991 said:
The main problem with the Wii version seems to be its heavier leaning towards the Werehog stages. I'm willing to bet that Sega expected the Wii version to sell better, and since the Werehog is the main thing that sells the game (in their own warped reality), the better selling version has more Werehog content.
I'm sure they would do fine if left to their own ambitions. Werehog, after all, was a Sonic Team concept.