Knowing when to quit

[big_smile]

Sonic may only be 15, but some of the blue blur’s more recent adventures seem to indicate that Sonic Team have skipped the teenage years and jumped straight to the senility of old age. Is it time for them to quit?

Should the series be handed to another development house or do they simply need a break? If you feel that the series should go into hibernation, then post suggestions as to how Sega will manage without its primary source of income.

To keep the poll straightforward, the individual studios haven’t been named, so if you have a specific team in mind to take over the reins, be sure to post with your suggestion.

[Popcorn]

The series should be continued by talented and capable hands.

[Light Speed]

How much of Sonic Team still consists of people from 2000? How many of the latest Sonic games have really been made by Sonic Team also? Was Riders or Shadow developed by them? I think they should just reorganize a team and put some sort of thought into what they are doing. However since the games are selling, I doubt anything will happen.

[Frieza2000]

I think the series still has another 2 or 3 good games in it, but I don't know the names of the people capable of creating them. Miyamoto has the integrity, creativity, and competent minions, but his style wouldn't fit well into Sonic as we know it.

[Hybrid]

I've gone with "other Japanese studio". I was tempted to just put Nintendo, but decided against it when I realised the "Nintendo should make every game ever because they rock" mentality is kind of lame, especially given the depth of talent other Japanese studios have.

The real problem here is that Sega (or at least Sonic Team) just don't seem to be capable of putting together a particularly good Sonic game any more. There is virtually no one left in the Team who was there right from the start, so boredom with the series is hardly an excuse; It really just comes down to the fact that they lack any form of talent (and this is why a three year break wouldn't solve the problem unless those three years were used to rebuild Sonic Team with competent game designers).

[Delphine]

The series should be continued by talented and capable hands.

What he said.

[Professor Machenstein]

I cannot choose a direct answer since there are more solutions than handing the series to other studios, but I'll just go with "other Japanese studio". It is not necessarily a matter of handing the series to another studio, but to other people in general. Sonic Team is not Sonic Team anymore; yes, it's the same studio, but not the same people. All of the original members left and the company veterans have lost their touch. So there are two choices. One, give the Sonic name to other Japanese studios. Two, hire new people to occupy Sonic Team; chances are they might find some people with talent, inspiration, even consideration for the people buying their games.

[Tsuyoshi-kun]

Was Riders or Shadow developed by them?

Riders was done by the same team that did the Space Channel 5 games and Rez. The company itself (Video Game Artists, was it?) became part of Sonic Team in 2004, around the same time a lot of Sega parties became together, split apart, etc. Their first project under Sonic Team was the PS2 Astro Boy game.

Back on-topic, I voted for a three year hold. If that don't work, give it to someone else. Even Traveller's Tales would interest me more at this point.

[Popcorn]

I think the series still has another 2 or 3 good games in it, but I don't know the names of the people capable of creating them. Miyamoto has the integrity, creativity, and competent minions, but his style wouldn't fit well into Sonic as we know it.

Actually, if I were to choose a development studio to make the next Sonic game, I'd suggest AV (the F-Zero GX/Monkey Ball guys). Their work possesses the holy trinity of speed, style and precision that Sonic needs, as well as a certain purity of vision that I'm increasingly convinced the series would benefit from.

[gr4yJ4Y]

I'd also take a vote in for Amusement Vision (or whatever developement team they've been merged into). Their games have a certain flair to them that I'd love to see put into a Sonic game. They have a good sense of speed that would work well.

[TailsMcCloud]

It should be continue by AV, but the games should be more like Sonic Adventure.

[Light Speed]

Wait, is AV a development team owned by Sega? How did they do F-Zero GX? I haven't played GX in ages, but I guess I kind of recall seeing their logo on startup.

[Segaholic2]

Yes, they're a Sega studio you idiot. They developed F-Zero for Nintendo.

[Popcorn]

You know, I've been wondering if the nature of game development has been all wrong from the beginning. I have very limited knowledge of how it works currently, and of course zero personal experience myself, but when you think about, it's kind of a weird process: you get a small team of guys making big, important decisions, and then a largely static fleet of other and hugely disparate talents and skills working to implement those decisions. Compared to other creative processes, Isn't that kind of unusual? Authors and musicians, for example, are largely autonomous people. A closer comparison would be the production of movies, where, of course, hundreds of people are employed, but there's still a difference: film crews are assembled by the movie's producers and directors, and disband once the work's finished. When you go to see a movie, you want to know who directed it or wrote it or stars in it, not whether or not Sonic Team made it.

Perhaps games would work better made like that-- directors hand-picking their staff depending on how suited they are to their requirements. As it is, development studios are by and large fixed. Maybe it'd be cooler to go, "Hey, this game has character design by Fumito Ueda and Marty O'Donnel's doing the soundtrack," rather than "Hey, it's by Valve." I don't know.

Isn't there some kind of experiment going on with Microsoft and the Final Fantasy guy like that? If I recall, the FF guy (whose name evidently escapes me) is leading a design studio that then works with other development teams to actually produce the games. They haven't released anything yet, but I really like some of the art:



*Edit: this entire post has been rewritten because previously it made no freaking sense.

[Shadow Hog]

Frankly, it'd be best if those old days (I'd estimate early 90s) where teams of relatively few people could create awesome end results. Look at all the great stuff that came out those days - the original few Sonic games didn't require the billion-people efforts they do today. Unfortunately, that sort of thing tends to be a mere hobby these days, and the results can be mixed. For every Cave Story, there's a whole bunch of not-fun crap.

Good news is, fangaming's getting to be somewhat competent lately. While most of the engines I've played feel somewhat off (Sonic accelerating too slow, jumping too low, movement isn't fluid here or there, etc.), they largely have nailed the trig-based movements of the original games. All you need to do is get Sega to outsource creation of one 2D game to one of those groups, the ones who not only have talent but are very passionate about their hobby, and it might actually be fun to play.

Just... don't give them too much creative control. I know Sega's latest characters are rather bland, but the last thing you want are recolors to become official characters. It's already happened with Shadow, and Silver (more or less) too, but the fan characters are much, much more shameless. They can do good programming, but maybe not so good design...

the FF guy (whose name evidently escapes me)

Hironobu Sakaguchi.

[Popcorn]

Frankly, it'd be best if those old days (I'd estimate early 90s) where teams of relatively few people could create awesome end results. Look at all the great stuff that came out those days - the original few Sonic games didn't require the billion-people efforts they do today.

That's something I agree with. I think a big part of what's hurting the industry today is the cost of development-- I think I read recently that it currently costs more to make a big budget video game like Halo or MGS than the average blockbuster movie like Spider-Man or whatever. Either way, the amount of money involved is getting outrageous. (It's for this reason that I wonder why Duke Nukem Forever can still afford to be in development.)

Eventually, technology will progress to the point where it can't improve in areas to any significant degree. Once you can make a computer-generated, truly photo-realistic lampshade on a home console , the only frontier left to conquer will be allowing developers to have a billion photo-realistic lampshades. After those boundaries are crossed, the technology will just get cheaper. Eventually, even if takes twenty or two hundred years, you'll be able to make any game you can imagine in your own bedroom. That is, as long as you're talented enough, but eventually you'll be able to buy technology more talented than you are to make your games for you.

[Shadow Hog]

Yeah, that's probably the biggest problem nowadays. Thankfully, that's what Xbox Live Arcade's for (and the PS3/Wii equivalents), although on the PC it's a bit harder, since there's no single unified method. Still, if it doesn't do well in shops and they (the shops) pull it down because of that fact, selling it online would still get your game out there. Thus, you wouldn't need to be a big-name, big-budget title to convince big-name publishers who're out to get a buck to get your game out there, and thus we can have more garage-programmers.

Incidentally, I've had some interesting ideas to toss around in the Sonic formula myself, but since I've yet to actually get the engine up to snuff, and admittedly am not very good with level art (or indeed, anything particularly large-scale), not much has been coming out, even when armed with stuff like Multimedia Fusion 2 (albeit just the demo, right now). I could elaborate if needed, but truthfully, we need just a standard-ish Sonic game right now instead of more gimmicks. You know, not too fast (Sonic may have been set apart by his speed, but the old games sure weren't dominated by it like they are today), not too hard, plenty of places for exploration while still being streamlined enough to allow for constant progression... all the things Sonic games lack nowadays, pretty much.

[Omni Hunter]

Yeah, I agree, but we're still at that growing stage, it's not like developers are making a game and then making another product to the same standard of that game. Technology, ideas and the consumers are demanding that games get "better" continually so more time, people and money goes into improving.
The negative effects of a large team can include lack of communication (like in a kitchen) which may also effect the product in a negative way.

But yes, I miss the days of small teams, maybe it's that simplicity what we loved back then and yearn for now.

[FlashTHD]

I jumped the gun and voted that Sonic Team should keep going with the series. Dunno if I should have done that, since I don't know what the new Sonic Team is capable of yet. I'll wait to pass judgement as I usually do until I play Sonic Next.

But yes, I miss the days of small teams, maybe it's that simplicity what we loved back then and yearn for now.

A dream you'd be advised to bury here and now. Small dev teams like that are never going to happen again, at least with this series. As I recall, the credits to Sonic 2 and 3 were fairly lengthy too.

[Wooduck51]

Retro studios (The ones who have done the Metroid prime games) once said they had started development on a third person action/adventure game but then Nintendo offered them the Prime job and they stopped development. The point of this is to say that I like the work Retro does, and if given the chance to see if they can do something else than first person shooters I might say that they could give it a try.

Or what Popcorn said.

[Light Speed]

I heard they actually had like 5 games under development when Prime was being worked on, but after Shiggy freaked out among other things including restructuring the company they ditched the other games. I figured they'd finish them after, but all they've really done since then is Prime sequels.

[Ngangbius]

A part of me would like to see Intelligent Systems create a Sonic game. Though I maybe saying that because they are one of the best developing teams in the industry and I'm a fan of their work.

Then there is also the idea that Naughty Dog should create a Sonic game, if not the fact that Yashura would be on board and it would have some nice in-game animation at least. Though it would be a Sony-exclusive title for obvious reasons.

More plausible however, I would like to see the combined efforts of the former AV + Smilebit teams to handle the franchise since they seem to have more talent than the usual suspects of the current Sonic Team.

[Kishi]

When you go to see a movie, you want to know who directed it or wrote it or stars in it, not whether or not Sonic Team made it.

I think the perception of the industry has been gradually moving in that direction for some time now; look at the popularity of individuals such as Fumito Ueda, Tetsuya Mizuguchi, Keita Takahashi, and so on. People are attracted to their work regardless of which big company is publishing it.

I think a big part of what's hurting the industry today is the cost of development-- I think I read recently that it currently costs more to make a big budget video game like Halo or MGS than the average blockbuster movie like Spider-Man or whatever. Either way, the amount of money involved is getting outrageous.

This is another reason to love Nintendo. At least since the GameCube, they've made a priority of keeping development costs low so developers can feel free to take risks and innovate in their game design without having to worry so much about making their money back.

And they're taking it even further with the Virtual Console; in addition to providing old games to download, it will also be a place for devs to put out inexpensively-made demos for hypothetical games which could then be expanded into full-fledged titles depending on the response they receive. A tiny company that's new to the industry could also use it to get easy publicity for their projects, which could earn them financial backing from a larger company.

[Omni Hunter]

I jumped the gun and voted that Sonic Team should keep going with the series. Dunno if I should have done that, since I don't know what the new Sonic Team is capable of yet. I'll wait to pass judgement as I usually do until I play Sonic Next.

But yes, I miss the days of small teams, maybe it's that simplicity what we loved back then and yearn for now.

A dream you'd be advised to bury here and now. Small dev teams like that are never going to happen again, at least with this series. As I recall, the credits to Sonic 2 and 3 were fairly lengthy too.

I know, that's what I referenced in the first two thirds of my post, teams will continue to get larger to meet with demands (although sometimes they don't even come close to meeting them).
So consider the dream well and truly buried years ago, as this was merely speculation.
But yes, it's a hard decision to make, I still haven't voted yet.

[TailsMcCloud]

You know, I've been wondering if the nature of game development has been all wrong from the beginning. I have very limited knowledge of how it works currently, and of course zero personal experience myself, but when you think about, it's kind of a weird process: you get a small team of guys making big, important decisions, and then a largely static fleet of other and hugely disparate talents and skills working to implement those decisions. Compared to other creative processes, Isn't that kind of unusual? Authors and musicians, for example, are largely autonomous people. A closer comparison would be the production of movies, where, of course, hundreds of people are employed, but there's still a difference: film crews are assembled by the movie's producers and directors, and disband once the work's finished. When you go to see a movie, you want to know who directed it or wrote it or stars in it, not whether or not Sonic Team made it.

Perhaps games would work better made like that-- directors hand-picking their staff depending on how suited they are to their requirements. As it is, development studios are by and large fixed. Maybe it'd be cooler to go, "Hey, this game has character design by Fumito Ueda and Marty O'Donnel's doing the soundtrack," rather than "Hey, it's by Valve." I don't know.

Isn't there some kind of experiment going on with Microsoft and the Final Fantasy guy like that? If I recall, the FF guy (whose name evidently escapes me) is leading a design studio that then works with other development teams to actually produce the games. They haven't released anything yet, but I really like some of the art:


*Edit: this entire post has been rewritten because previously it made no freaking sense.

Correct me if I'm wrong but, that wouldn't be good because the game would be directed. designed, and programmed by different people every time. So you might love the first, but the second the characters would look different then the first because the designers where different.