-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Rolling Stone - Interview with Christian Whitehead on Sonic Mania
- Thread starter Falk
- Start date
Disclaimer that I worked on Sonic Mania, and disclaimer that a lot of what I'm about to post comes from my own personal perspective, and I represent neither SEGA nor PagodaWest/Christian/etc. as a team.
The following is actually a post I typed up in response to the OP of this thread but never got around to posting. It was written before the Rolling Stone interview was published so I kind of feel vindicated that a lot of my views are parallel to that of Christian. It has much to do with what people can and cannot learn from the existence of a project like Sonic Mania.
I've had a lot of thought about how gaming fans turning professional is a necessary facet of the industry very much prior to Sonic Mania itself, as it's how I broke into the industry doing commercial work after doing music for fan projects, and this is (pretty long) after being active in the Quake/Quake2 modding community - a community from which a LOT of current AAA talent in the west cultivated their skills before being recruited. I thought about making a thread on this topic/tangent but it never was the right time of framing.
First, let's address this right here:
[1] You'd be surprised how much input SEGA and Sonic Team had on the game, but I'm not at liberty to disclose details, so we'll leave it at that.
[2] This sentence strikes me as extremely reductive and incorrect, and would have been the main topic of my thread.
I think there's a general presumption, just from the fact that many/most of the people who worked on Sonic Mania had fan game/rom hacking background, that it's as simple as throwing money at a bunch of fans and getting something good. There are two key facets here that get lost in that reduction:
A) The talent and knowledge to design a game.
B) The accountability and reliability to pull it off to the end.
So
THE TALENT AND KNOWLEDGE TO DESIGN A GAME
Sonic's fan community, as has been pointed out,
has a lot of exceptionally driven people that have reverse-engineered the classic games in the franchise down to a science. This sticks out because Sonic itself had very, very complex physics for a game of its time largely down to the genius of Yuji Naka, so nailing that, on top of general video game design philosophies like proper pacing, good level design, good art that makes things clear, etc. was something of a golden goose and had a sense of accomplishment when it was nailed. Other people in the Sonic fan community have gone on to make extremely solid platformers unrelated to the franchise - Freedom Planet and Spark just to name two, along with PagodaWest's Major Magnet (more on that in a moment)
Christian Whitehead and Simon Thomley deserve all the credit they get just for this feat alone, and then some. It's not easy recreating not just the physics of the old game, but the overall feel and flow of "Sonic", which gives and takes control from the player in a seemingly contradictory fundamental game design directions.
What's also often lost in the reduction is Christian programmed both a game engine and SDK that allows projects like Mania to actually be made, iterated on, tested, deployed and patched. The game isn't just a bunch of assets duct-taped together by one programmer (which largely isn't scalable) - other people need to be able to use the toolset too.
Great post. I won't say there aren't any Christian Whiteheads for other franchises out there (there probably are) but he really, REALLY was the singular perfect person for the job as far as the classic Sonic experience went.
That aside, I'd like to focus on:
ACCOUNTABILITY AND RELIABILITY TO PULL IT OFF TO THE END
(while there's sort of a baseline and due process, there aren't any rigid mandates, so even what I say here generally have exceptions to the rule, because everyone's individual case is different.)
What gets lost a lot in these discussions are the transitional steps for the people who worked on Sonic Mania. A bunch of fans didn't go straight from making romhacks to making a brand new official game. No company is ever going to risk that kind of investment, both in finances/resources as well as branding, on a relatively unknown quantity, even if they've put out great fan works.
I'm going to go out on a bit of a tangent here. Short, reductive personal backstory: I attended music college and while working on my final year stuff did music for a couple of Sonic fan games because I really, really liked the franchise (heck, my final project in a video game scoring module was Sonic-related) Those things, along with a bunch of other work, was a pretty strong portfolio and I eventually started working on a bunch of games and game concerts in various capacities - engineering, composition, etc.
SPECIFICALLY because it appeared I was a fan-turned-professional, I often got correspondence asking me to listen to stuff or 'put in a good word' and the like, and let me say I've thought long and hard about what separates a hobbyist from a professional while responding.
In the scope of, say, game music covers, the hobbyist can cherry pick what they want to do. If Blinded By Light sticks out to someone as the greatest JRPG battle theme of all time, they can cover that, get a shit ton of views and followers (which isn't a bad thing, mind you), and that's that. The professional working on a game, on the other hand, does not have this type of luxury to pick and choose. If you're writing for a JRPG, you can't just do battle music. You need to tackle towns, locales, character themes, event music, the works. It doesn't matter how good your battle themes are if every village in the game sounds like a call to war or some such.
The hobbyist doesn't need to deal with changing scope, looming deadlines, supporting a vision that's not their own, taking criticism to heart, knowing which creative battles to pick and which to let go. I'm not saying these things are completely missing from hobby projects, especially in a group. I'm saying it's not essential to deal with them, since livelihood isn't at stake when something is merely a hobby you can walk away from at any given point of time.
So, step one, a calling card isn't effective if it's simply a bunch of art or music free-floating. If one manage to do this with a fully fledged project and see it through to completion, that's a much stronger case when a project manager is looking to recruit for a certain undertaking, since there's proof that everything required to see a project through on a creative level is there. In summary, the proof of accountability and reliability is just as important, if not more, than simply having a good portfolio.
If we brought that a step further, I would also say that fan games and romhacks, while a good demonstration of the creative side, does poorly as a demonstration of accountability and reliability, especially from a business and legal perspective. Any project needs to have a clear hierarchy. A lot of people on the team that worked on Mania aren't there solely because they 'get' the franchise. They're also there because they're reliable, understand game development as a business either from having shipped games, or from strong vouching:
- PagodaWest, as mentioned, shipped Major Magnet
- Christian Whitehead obviously had a strong calling card with the CD remaster, and with the inclusion of Simon on 1 and 2 remasters, showed that anyone he recruited for the project would be both reliable and essential.
- Tee Lopes worked on Major Magnet.
- Paul Veer worked on games like Nuclear Throne and official Sonic prints.
- Many others have officially worked with SEGA in the past in various capacities.
(I don't intentionally want to leave people on the team out, but I think the above alone gets the point across)
There's quite a bit of due process here. A business entity is essentially mandatory because a commercial game is a business undertaking, and you want all your potential liabilities covered because funding a game is not cheap - I'm not saying Sonic Mania is AAA, but it's still very, very much a commercial undertaking. No IP holder is going to give a bunch of money to a bunch of people with no recourse should said people just disappear off the face of the earth, or lose interest, or break NDA or share trade secrets, or fail to fill in tax paperwork, or decide to start being dicks for whatever reason*. Accountability, accountability, accountability.
*if someone is constantly screaming in public that a brand sucks (which is a clear problem with the Sonic community) that person is... likely simply not going to work with anything official in any capacity regardless of what he has or hasn't done. It's the height of delusion to think any company would want to work with such a person.
I think that there's a lot that the industry at large can learn from the development and mere existence of Sonic Mania. However, a lot of wrong messages can and are also being sent out which are poisonous to the real lessons. What did SEGA do right, in this case? Help foster an active fan work community. Reach out to the right people at the right time, and take things one step at a time. What didn't SEGA actually do? Throw money at a bunch of fans with no due process. I don't think Mania would have existed without all the intermediary steps of first the CD remaster, then 1, then 2 with a completely original zone, and so on and so forth.
If there's something I'd like to say in closing, recruiting fans really, REALLY isn't new, although it's probably groundbreaking for a Japanese IP, even if Sonic has been bigger in the west vs Japan for a long time now. CS, DotA, TF2, LoL, these are all franchises that either were mods at one point of time, or designed by people who were mod makers in the case of LoL/Guinsoo. Black Mesa started out as a hobbyist project. Tower Defense, MOBAs, survival FPS as entire genres generally all started as fan undertakings which latched on to a more widespread appeal. A lot of current AAA talent started out in the Doom/Quake/Unreal modding communities. Think about the opposite here for a second. If people who ended up working on games weren't fan of games (or specific franchises) and fans of tinkering with games and game creation to begin with, what even is the alternative? Great devs don't magically fall out of the sky. In other words, fans and professionals aren't mutually exclusive categorizations.
(P.S. I don't really know where to chuck this in, but on the whole facet of Sonic Mania being a commercial undertaking and not a fan game, Hunter Bridges does not get enough credit to how essential his role was in getting the game shipped)
The following is actually a post I typed up in response to the OP of this thread but never got around to posting. It was written before the Rolling Stone interview was published so I kind of feel vindicated that a lot of my views are parallel to that of Christian. It has much to do with what people can and cannot learn from the existence of a project like Sonic Mania.
I've had a lot of thought about how gaming fans turning professional is a necessary facet of the industry very much prior to Sonic Mania itself, as it's how I broke into the industry doing commercial work after doing music for fan projects, and this is (pretty long) after being active in the Quake/Quake2 modding community - a community from which a LOT of current AAA talent in the west cultivated their skills before being recruited. I thought about making a thread on this topic/tangent but it never was the right time of framing.
First, let's address this right here:
[1] You'd be surprised how much input SEGA and Sonic Team had on the game, but I'm not at liberty to disclose details, so we'll leave it at that.
[2] This sentence strikes me as extremely reductive and incorrect, and would have been the main topic of my thread.
I think there's a general presumption, just from the fact that many/most of the people who worked on Sonic Mania had fan game/rom hacking background, that it's as simple as throwing money at a bunch of fans and getting something good. There are two key facets here that get lost in that reduction:
A) The talent and knowledge to design a game.
B) The accountability and reliability to pull it off to the end.
So
THE TALENT AND KNOWLEDGE TO DESIGN A GAME
Sonic's fan community, as has been pointed out,
is bizarre but
Christian Whitehead and Simon Thomley deserve all the credit they get just for this feat alone, and then some. It's not easy recreating not just the physics of the old game, but the overall feel and flow of "Sonic", which gives and takes control from the player in a seemingly contradictory fundamental game design directions.
What's also often lost in the reduction is Christian programmed both a game engine and SDK that allows projects like Mania to actually be made, iterated on, tested, deployed and patched. The game isn't just a bunch of assets duct-taped together by one programmer (which largely isn't scalable) - other people need to be able to use the toolset too.
Great post. I won't say there aren't any Christian Whiteheads for other franchises out there (there probably are) but he really, REALLY was the singular perfect person for the job as far as the classic Sonic experience went.
That aside, I'd like to focus on:
ACCOUNTABILITY AND RELIABILITY TO PULL IT OFF TO THE END
(while there's sort of a baseline and due process, there aren't any rigid mandates, so even what I say here generally have exceptions to the rule, because everyone's individual case is different.)
What gets lost a lot in these discussions are the transitional steps for the people who worked on Sonic Mania. A bunch of fans didn't go straight from making romhacks to making a brand new official game. No company is ever going to risk that kind of investment, both in finances/resources as well as branding, on a relatively unknown quantity, even if they've put out great fan works.
I'm going to go out on a bit of a tangent here. Short, reductive personal backstory: I attended music college and while working on my final year stuff did music for a couple of Sonic fan games because I really, really liked the franchise (heck, my final project in a video game scoring module was Sonic-related) Those things, along with a bunch of other work, was a pretty strong portfolio and I eventually started working on a bunch of games and game concerts in various capacities - engineering, composition, etc.
SPECIFICALLY because it appeared I was a fan-turned-professional, I often got correspondence asking me to listen to stuff or 'put in a good word' and the like, and let me say I've thought long and hard about what separates a hobbyist from a professional while responding.
In the scope of, say, game music covers, the hobbyist can cherry pick what they want to do. If Blinded By Light sticks out to someone as the greatest JRPG battle theme of all time, they can cover that, get a shit ton of views and followers (which isn't a bad thing, mind you), and that's that. The professional working on a game, on the other hand, does not have this type of luxury to pick and choose. If you're writing for a JRPG, you can't just do battle music. You need to tackle towns, locales, character themes, event music, the works. It doesn't matter how good your battle themes are if every village in the game sounds like a call to war or some such.
The hobbyist doesn't need to deal with changing scope, looming deadlines, supporting a vision that's not their own, taking criticism to heart, knowing which creative battles to pick and which to let go. I'm not saying these things are completely missing from hobby projects, especially in a group. I'm saying it's not essential to deal with them, since livelihood isn't at stake when something is merely a hobby you can walk away from at any given point of time.
So, step one, a calling card isn't effective if it's simply a bunch of art or music free-floating. If one manage to do this with a fully fledged project and see it through to completion, that's a much stronger case when a project manager is looking to recruit for a certain undertaking, since there's proof that everything required to see a project through on a creative level is there. In summary, the proof of accountability and reliability is just as important, if not more, than simply having a good portfolio.
If we brought that a step further, I would also say that fan games and romhacks, while a good demonstration of the creative side, does poorly as a demonstration of accountability and reliability, especially from a business and legal perspective. Any project needs to have a clear hierarchy. A lot of people on the team that worked on Mania aren't there solely because they 'get' the franchise. They're also there because they're reliable, understand game development as a business either from having shipped games, or from strong vouching:
- PagodaWest, as mentioned, shipped Major Magnet
- Christian Whitehead obviously had a strong calling card with the CD remaster, and with the inclusion of Simon on 1 and 2 remasters, showed that anyone he recruited for the project would be both reliable and essential.
- Tee Lopes worked on Major Magnet.
- Paul Veer worked on games like Nuclear Throne and official Sonic prints.
- Many others have officially worked with SEGA in the past in various capacities.
(I don't intentionally want to leave people on the team out, but I think the above alone gets the point across)
There's quite a bit of due process here. A business entity is essentially mandatory because a commercial game is a business undertaking, and you want all your potential liabilities covered because funding a game is not cheap - I'm not saying Sonic Mania is AAA, but it's still very, very much a commercial undertaking. No IP holder is going to give a bunch of money to a bunch of people with no recourse should said people just disappear off the face of the earth, or lose interest, or break NDA or share trade secrets, or fail to fill in tax paperwork, or decide to start being dicks for whatever reason*. Accountability, accountability, accountability.
*if someone is constantly screaming in public that a brand sucks (which is a clear problem with the Sonic community) that person is... likely simply not going to work with anything official in any capacity regardless of what he has or hasn't done. It's the height of delusion to think any company would want to work with such a person.
I think that there's a lot that the industry at large can learn from the development and mere existence of Sonic Mania. However, a lot of wrong messages can and are also being sent out which are poisonous to the real lessons. What did SEGA do right, in this case? Help foster an active fan work community. Reach out to the right people at the right time, and take things one step at a time. What didn't SEGA actually do? Throw money at a bunch of fans with no due process. I don't think Mania would have existed without all the intermediary steps of first the CD remaster, then 1, then 2 with a completely original zone, and so on and so forth.
If there's something I'd like to say in closing, recruiting fans really, REALLY isn't new, although it's probably groundbreaking for a Japanese IP, even if Sonic has been bigger in the west vs Japan for a long time now. CS, DotA, TF2, LoL, these are all franchises that either were mods at one point of time, or designed by people who were mod makers in the case of LoL/Guinsoo. Black Mesa started out as a hobbyist project. Tower Defense, MOBAs, survival FPS as entire genres generally all started as fan undertakings which latched on to a more widespread appeal. A lot of current AAA talent started out in the Doom/Quake/Unreal modding communities. Think about the opposite here for a second. If people who ended up working on games weren't fan of games (or specific franchises) and fans of tinkering with games and game creation to begin with, what even is the alternative? Great devs don't magically fall out of the sky. In other words, fans and professionals aren't mutually exclusive categorizations.
(P.S. I don't really know where to chuck this in, but on the whole facet of Sonic Mania being a commercial undertaking and not a fan game, Hunter Bridges does not get enough credit to how essential his role was in getting the game shipped)
Surface of Me
I'm not an NPC. And neither are we.
This article doesnt seem to be about Chrischan.
sorry I didnt read your 2nd postthanks for making my point
I thought AM2R was pretty good, but I guess it still might not have met nintendo's standards, whatever those are.
doesnt matter now that theres a 3ds remake... but that was the best example, and wont be the last.
OrbitalBeard
Member
Wow, Falk....thanks for the insight. Really appreciated.
balladofwindfishes
Member
Oil Ocean?
I can't believe they let them recreate the mechanics of Puyo for a single boss as a crazy reference to a spin off game that was never even released in Japan
Dead Man Typing
Member
Burning Rangers shout out at the end. I was humming some tunes from that game to myself earlier today. I'd love to play that again.
Nice interview. I'm so happy for Christian, Sega and fans like me. The game is exactly what I needed it to be. I can't wait to see what comes next.
Nice interview. I'm so happy for Christian, Sega and fans like me. The game is exactly what I needed it to be. I can't wait to see what comes next.
RomanceDawn
Member
Wow that is some insight Falk!
I wonder if what you all did with Mania will impact the future of 3D Sonic? In what way I couldn't imagine. I mean I know what I want but I wonder what the higher ups at Sega are going to gather from all this.
I wonder if what you all did with Mania will impact the future of 3D Sonic? In what way I couldn't imagine. I mean I know what I want but I wonder what the higher ups at Sega are going to gather from all this.
That's some fantastic insight Falk, thanks. This game is so fascinating to me as a project (on top of the game itself being incredible), so getting to know more from someone with personal experience is awesome.
I think a lot of fans, myself included, have been reductive about Sega's involvement at times, but really I think the only wrong thing they've done with the project is the Denuvo fiasco. They really deserve some credit too for allowing and helping this to happen after all.
I think a lot of fans, myself included, have been reductive about Sega's involvement at times, but really I think the only wrong thing they've done with the project is the Denuvo fiasco. They really deserve some credit too for allowing and helping this to happen after all.
Piston Hyundai
Member
they're probably waiting for Forces to shit the bed critically before they really do anything
Kojima writes a column
I Wanna Be The Guy
U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!
Nah it must be Metallic Madness. I know that was only zone that made me straight up groan when it first loaded up. They wasted a spot on THAT?! But it was actually a pretty good level in Mania.
Laughing Banana
Weeping Pickle
"Save the franchise" is a bit much, isn't it? No matter how good Sonic Mania is, it's still more of an exception than the rule in terms of quality Sonic games.
It's more of an emergency resuscitation, if anything. Let's see whether Sonic Forces will continue the treatment or instead deliver a deathblow to Sonic.
It's more of an emergency resuscitation, if anything. Let's see whether Sonic Forces will continue the treatment or instead deliver a deathblow to Sonic.
Really good read! All of you go click on that and bask your eyeballs in it.
I sorta stumbled on that too. Either Oil Ocean or Lava Reef, maybe?
Ahh yeah probably this.
I sorta stumbled on that too. Either Oil Ocean or Lava Reef, maybe?
Ahh yeah probably this.
balladofwindfishes
Member
Yea, probably. Oil Ocean wasn't really a bad stage, just a forgettable one. I have barely any experience with Sonic CD.
katsubento
Member
Great posts Falk! Really nice to hear what happens/goes on in making things like this.
Skel1ingt0n
I can't *believe* these lazy developers keep making file sizes so damn large. Btw, how does technology work?
Awesome insight! Thank you, OP, and thank you, Falk.
As someone with little adoration for the classic Sonic games (at least comparatively to many), I firmly believe Mania is a monumental achievement. I've been signing it's praises since release - I would, without hesitation, call it one of this generation's Top Five games, period.
As someone with little adoration for the classic Sonic games (at least comparatively to many), I firmly believe Mania is a monumental achievement. I've been signing it's praises since release - I would, without hesitation, call it one of this generation's Top Five games, period.
Star Orpheus
Member
Why do I feel more people will be angry if Forces does well then if it bombed.
kimahri know taxman save sonic, but POWER STONE NOT SAVED YET
ScientificPizza
Banned
hahahahathanks for making my point
Quintin DM
Member
I was expecting a Chris-Chan thread.
allenpergallon
Member
That was a really interesting read. The notion of genuine reliability is something that definitely seems to fly under the radar a bit when concerning bringing in promising talent willy-nilly (the Sonic Utopia reactions felt a certain shade of this).
It's easy to be constantly frustrated with Sega, but to see the long term results of their scoping and smaller collaborations leading up to Mania really is a treat. Assuming the PC debacle hasn't caused any serious rift between the dev team and Sega I very much look forward to any future work from the team-up.
It's easy to be constantly frustrated with Sega, but to see the long term results of their scoping and smaller collaborations leading up to Mania really is a treat. Assuming the PC debacle hasn't caused any serious rift between the dev team and Sega I very much look forward to any future work from the team-up.
ayyy Sonic 3 remastered/Game Gear title remakes
Ninja Scooter
Member
I was expecting a story about Barack Obama
Forces is gonna get a comfy 75 on metacritic and be remembered as the game that came out after Mania.
People who already played Mania then try playing as Classic Sonic in Forces understand this.
Spring-Loaded
Member
it's called SoRR
The Xtortionist
Member
Absolute kudos to Taxman and everyone else involved with Mania. It's my favorite Sonic game ever from top to bottom. I'd love to see another attempt with a greater, or hell, a total focus on original content, because the new stuff (along with the more liberal takes on CD's zones) were hands down my favorite content in the game. I'd love to play a new game in this style every once in a while. Just a fantastic effort.
And thanks to you for convincing me to try Mania despite my past reservations (more like misunderstandings) about 2D Sonic. I "get it" now and I adore this game -- one of my favorite 2D platformers alongside DKC2 and Tropical Freeze.
It certainly was for me. Oil Ocean marks the exact point where I lose interest in Sonic 2 but its a lot of fun in Mania.
Granted Im weird and love how Metallic Madness is Scrap Brain on steroids and never in a million years expected it to show back up so that stage reappearing was a major highlight in my first playthrough
Net_Wrecker
Member
Like Sping-Loaded said, Streets of Rage Remake already happened, and is the best SoR game ever made. All Sega needs to do is replace the assets can get them sued, throw in some online co-op, and put it out there.
Then make a proper Streets of Rage 4.
But this is a Sanic thread so I'll stop there.
The Xtortionist
Member
Interesting that Taxman said the original tileset for Lava Reef wasn't usable for Mania. Is that why the level has different backgrounds? The new environments are stunning. The reveal of Act 2 especially, with that music *swoon*
I think you're missing the point in the article.
Sonic CD started as a pitch, and then everything along the way, in CD, 1, and 2 were closely vetted and developed in conjunction with SEGA. From new features to new content, everything followed a proper hierarchy and accountability. There were things that CW wanted to do that didn't make the cut (this is public info - see reports of the axed Egg Gauntlet zone in Sonic 2 remaster)
It's not like CW rocked up with a complete remake of a game and then said 'hey hey check it out'.
I'm not saying that either of those two projects might have seen a different outcome had the interested parties reached out to the IP owners with a solid 'let's work together on this' pitch, since I'm obviously not a SEGA (or Nintendo) spokesperson. In fact, another fan project, Street Figher vs Megaman, did go through similar hoops and got official Capcom endorsement, even if it fell short of 'canon status' or 'commercial product'.
What I'm saying is the situation and the way these things were developed were extremely different in nature from how Mania came about, and that's what I'm trying to convey with the first post, and what people might be able to learn from it.
Net_Wrecker
Member
My post was totally just taking another opportunity to shill for Streets of Rage Remake, which I've done more than a few times, rather than a serious respone of of "Why hasn't SEGA just done this thing already?" This is why I acknowledge that there are pieces of SoRR that would cause legal issues if, for instance, SEGA simply bought the fan game and threw it up on digital storefronts. I do realize that there are many more steps than this concerning the creation of a game like Sonic Mania, particularly when having to create the tools/pipeline for new content/mechanics, and the possibility of returning for a sequel later on.
But still, y'know. Streets of Rage Remake is a thing. So, like, SEGA... c'mon brehs.
Sonic Mania really was a fun experience that I'm not done with yet. They really were able to capture the feel of what it's like to play a sonic game and I think a lot of that goes down to their impeccable level design. The section of the interview where he goes into the pacing of a level and the different paths really hits why I think he and team were able to perfect the feel so much.
Great interview and a great post there, Falk.
Great interview and a great post there, Falk.
Similar threads
- Poll