Jonnyram said:
It's hard to tell how far you go with sarcasm sometimes, but I hope you're not actually defending Naka too seriously. After all, if it weren't for him, Mizuguchi would still be at Sega. For that alone, I hate Naka.
Defending him from what? I already said I think he did a horrible job as an executive producer responsible for running most of Sega's developmental resources,
and I agreed that he allowed the Sonic franchise to be completely ruined under his stewardship.That doesn't change that people ridiculously blow things out of proportion with him, buying into all sorts of lame internet legends, vilifying him for some things where he was actually in the right, and acting like he's never actually done or contributed anything at all, or that he has no genuine talent as a developer.
The Sonic Xtreme thing is a prime example of this. So is some of the idiocy over Naka leaving Sega and going over to SoA. I have no doubt in my mind that Naka's had plenty of clashes with other creative leads at Sega (such as Oshima), but the fact remains that when he went to STI, a bunch of people followed him; when he left Sonic Team to create Prope, a bunch of Sonic Team members followed him again. "Diva" or not, it seems some people like working under him.
And by the way, I don't know that Miz would still be at Sega if not for Naka, either. My understanding was always that Miz left Sega because of Sammy shutting down Sega's satellite teams leading to a lot of losses of creative freedom. Whatever clashes Miz and Naka had, that was certainly more significant, and that decision didn't come from Naka. Aside from that, a lot of people left Sega, often with good reason. Yukio Futatsugi and Manabu Kusunoki left Sega, and to the best of my knowledge, they never had any dealings with Naka. Hell, Hayao Nakayama was the company's CEO, and he's gone, too. Sega's got Rieko Kodama slaving away on brain training shit, so I'm not going to be shocked to death if she ends up leaving, too. The company has a long history of hideously misusing its talent.