Sega slaps one of their developers

So in all honesty I kind of avoid those really long interviews that involve CEO's and what not. But this came to my attention today. This is from an interview at GamaSutra with Simon Jeffery who is now the CEO of Sega of America. When asked about Secret Level (developer of Iron Man and Golden Axe) if they would ever be an AAA studio, he had this to say:

I think the design side of the studio... they don't have world-class designers, but they do have world-class technology and world-class art.

Keep in mind that Sega owns Secret Level!! It is this guy's job to be like, 'Iron Man sold the #'s we were looking to sell and Golden Axe is going to be a huge hit!" or some other PR nonsense.

Instead he compares them to another studio and talks shit about their designers. I've played Iron Man and trust me - design was not the single factor that made that game rank below the 50's on Gamerankings.

It's very easy to blame design as to why things went bad but I'm sure he didn't bother to check the tools pipeline to see how long it takes to re-iterate on stuff or how often the game kept crashing right before Alpha, and the other 9 billion small things that make developing a game harder then it should be.

I also love how this whole thing unfolds - he talks more about Secret Level by saying:

"We acquired them for a pretty small amount of money and built them out."

So they buy them for cheap knowing what they were strong and weak at and when Iron Man doesn't pan out he finds the easiest escape goat. Not only that but supposedly this 'design weak' studio is now in charge or re-booting one of their classic franchises. Not a great decision if thats how he felt in the first place.

All I know is that if I was a designer at Secret Level I would be looking for a new job immediately. Don't put up with that type of abuse.

There are a lot of world class CEO's in the video game industry and you Simon Jeffery are definitely not one of them.

Catching up with the world

I feel like I do a lot of these whole catching up posts which is really a sign that I need to update more. Yeah - I suck.

So E3 came and went and I'm sure everyone has an opinion as to why it sucked. Like Eric - I didn't go to E3 this year either which was a little odd. I did however attend way too many parties including the Rock Band party so I got to see the Who. I also got to meet Stephen Totilo in person for the first time which was a lot of fun. Got to meet N'gai which was a highlight for sure. Now that I think about it I didn't get to meet a lot of developers - only journalists. Not sure what that says but it seems like it could be important! Ok...maybe not.

I should have gone to Comic Con and I didn't. There are a lot of reasons why I should have gone - the most important being to see my friend Jeremy from Dark Horse but I can feel myself getting old and after being out til 4 a.m. every night during E3 I needed the whole week to rest and Comic Con was just too intimidating.

Evo is coming up this week - I am attending that though. A really good friend of mine, Tommy Ho - an animator on God of War 2 is getting married this weekend so I'll be running a little late getting to Evo so I couldn't enter Super Turbo but thems the breaks.

Speaking of God of War - I read the new issue of EGM this week. While not only being one of the best issues of EGM that I have read in a really long time - God of War gets name dropped like 900 times - 700 in the Diablo 3 article alone. So the new issue, which as Soul Calibur 4 on the cover, focuses on interviewing a lot of Jpnese developers and getting their opinions on the state of videogames and dives into how western developers have not only caught up but surpassed them in a lot of respects. It's cool to have them interview Kamiya (Lead on DMC1, RE2, Okami, blah blah) and when he answers with a controversial answer - you turn the page and there is an interview with Itagaki bringing up that controversial answer.

I really like when when developers talk about games other then their own. I understand from a PR standpoint it is a bad thing - any mention is free publicity for said game but thems also the breaks.

So back to the new EGM - there is a conversation with Rob Pardo from Blizzard who I have never met although I feel like I should have by now and he talks a lot about how they are taking cues from GoW to use on Diablo 3. I will fully admit to have never played Diablo 1 or 2 (I *hate* grinding in videogames) but it makes me want to play Diablo 3 haha. Hopefully that doesn't come across as arrogant because thats not my point. I want to play it to see what parts they thought were cool and were inspired from.

The best part of this issue hands down was the interview with Hideki Kamiya. As I mentioned earlier he was lead on Devil May Cry 1, Resident Evil 2, Viewtiful Joe, Okami, and is now spearheading a new game called Bayonetta that I'm dying to get my hands on. I bug Seth every chance but he's a hard nut to crack. They asked Kamiya what he thought about all of the bigger action games such as Shinobi, Ninja Gaiden, etc and he had this to say about God of War:

"My impression is that it's very carefully made, the details are all carefully made. So, Devil May Cry was a bit rough, but there's no roughness in God of War. I think that it's very well made. I feel a bit bad about talking like somebody who is evaluating the game, but I felt like they created the game very well for attracting new users. They give you a huge impact right in the beginning and just draw you into the game. I'm very impressed that they made the game like that. "

There are so many moments in this paragraph that make me gush like a little school girl but the most important one is him talking about how we made the game very well for attracting new users. This was such a huge push for all of us on the project and for it to be recognized by someone like Kamiya...makes me want to send him internet chocolates or something.

Other then that I have been very busy at work as Activision loves to put out 900 titles for the holiday season and all of those games are ending around now. I'm rather proud of the work that I did on Guitar Hero 4. After the project ships I'll try to talk about that a little bit more as it was an interesting experience. I've been very busy with Bond - working on it almost every single day for a while now. I didn't really touch any of the ingame stuff - just a small part but I'm proud of what was accomplished. For better or worse - everything that I worked on was already there in some form. I just showed up late and tried to help the team put it all together in a fun way and it seems to have worked out. Hopefully the people who buy the game will think so as well. There is one part in CoD that I *really* want to touch but I don't know if I will have the chance. I need to bug the people that be about that tomorrow actually.

I've been going back and watching all of Buffy again. I'm on the 5th season and I'm so envious of how much Joss Whedon had accomplished by then, let alone now with Dr. Horrible. In fact...I'm being called to go start Buffy. Talk to everyone later.