Is it me, or did he kinda dodge around this and deflect the blame towards "greedy corporate capitalism"?
It's not just you. That reply comes off as passive while trying to make excuses for those decisions
--------------------------------------------------------------
Here’s the sad truth: in today’s game industry, “developers were crunched almost to the point of death” is not new, though. Nor is it particularly juicy.
First bold-faced lie. Crunch is a very nasty dirty word in the gaming industry and for good reasons. Not only is it bad for a developmental stance, as things like bug-testing and the like get passed for "just shipping the game out on time", but it puts HUGE amounts of stress on the developers, as they can not perform the necessary duties with so much pressure put on them by the publishers. It's very well documented at this point, and the fact that people like him can just hand-wave this and consider it something that's just accepted in "today's gaming industry" is part of the fucking problem. Crunch should NEVER be an option. If you give developers the proper time and tools they need to make the game, then you'll have a successful product when it finally makes it out the door.
I noticed that not once was Sonic X-treme even mentioned in this, so either Ryan has no fucking clue regarding the backstory behind that (which if that's the case, things like SonicRetro and Wha Happun have documented this in GREAT detail so he can fucking look it up easily) or he does but is purposefully omitting it because that would completely destroy his argument, because it absolutely applies to my first paragraph. SOA was NEVER given the proper tools they needed to develop Sonic X-Treme and when they finally did get a try of the Nights engine, Yuji Naka shat his fucking pants over it and held the company hostage.
Rise of Lyric was Sega’s equivalent of a licensed game – but instead of “Batman: The Movie: The Game” it was “Sonic: The TV Show: The Game.”
I'm pretty sure the game was planned before the TV Show. The whole point of Sonic Boom in the first place was to make a "western" version of Sonic & co. while Japan did their usual shit. The cartoon was just a marketing tool for the games, not the other way around.
when Nintendo came knocking at Sega’s door for an exclusivity deal, Sega jumped at the chance. Without consulting the people actually making the game, of course, because they were small potatoes compared to the big dollar signs the suits had in their eyes.
That doesn't excuse SEGA for, yet again, making "fly by the seat of your pants" decisions that they never, EVER, learn from. This is the same company that bought the Ailens license like it was a huge get when in reality no one gave two fucks about it.
Also it's pretty insulting to downplay Big Red Button like they were nothing. Nevermind the fact that one of the people on that team were also part of NaughtyDog, as stated before they were making a western sonic. That's a pretty big fucking deal and something that should have been handled more carefully with, but they didn't and they are most defenitely to blame for it, especially when you consider SEGA decided during development that they didn't want an american team handling the origins of sonic even though that was the whole fucking point.
But then whoops! Uh oh! The Wii U was stillborn! Mario & Sonic at the Sochi Olympics bombed! Sonic Lost World bombed! Sega suddenly had the coldest feet on earth! And when Big Red Button was like “Hey boss, this game isn’t turning out right, can we have some extra time and money to make it better?” Sega told them to take a hike. Behind closed doors they were undoubtedly talking about “acceptable losses” and sending the game out to die. All without ever considering the people actually making the thing itself.
>Behind closed doors they were undoubtedly talking about “acceptable losses” and sending the game out to die. All without ever considering the people actually making the thing itself.
It conserns me that after you typed this out, something in your mind didn't immediately go "... oh wait". Considering SEGA's behavior over the game, the entire company is a fucking contendor for an actual lolcow because it seems like almost everyone there is fucking inept at their fucking jobs. The fact that you can type this out and see nothing wrong with it makes me question your logic, and just makes you come off as a SEGA fanboy where they can do no wrong and everything is justified because reasons.
A video game company's job SHOULD be first and foremost to make great games. It makes no fucking sense, both from a logic standpoint and financially, that a company would keep going "ah fuck it" and actively LOOSE money by giving up on the projects and releasing them as is. It comes off as SEGA never being self-aware of their actions. Any sane compny would be embarassed as fuck if they had the landslides that SEGA has and would do 10x better on their next projects. One would think that after their hardware fiscos from the 32X on that maybe, JUST MAYBE, Sega would wake the fuck up and actually ATTEMPT to do better, especially with one of, if not the biggest, mascot of the company.
