Don't Review Sega's Games, Review SEGA Themselves

Well guys, I was at work doing stuff when I found this semi-interesting Kotaku article.  I doubt they came up with it themselves and just copied it from elsewhere (like I am right now).  NEVERTHELESS, it's about Glassdoor, a website in which past & present employees of companies leave anonymous review of their employers (you need some proof of employment before you can submit anything).  And that's what this Kotaku article does--it shows you the ratings for famous game development studios (according to anonymous people so take 'em with a grain of salt).  Hey I do this stuff for a career so these numbers actually have meaning to me.  If you want to look at the raw numbers, I sorted them out for you as such from best to worst.  Scores are an average out of 5.  Also included the number of votes so you can get an idea of the sample size:

Valve: 5.0   (2 reviews, looks like Valve can't even get 3 good reviews, HL3 DECONFIRMED)
Riot Games: 4.4   (30)
BioWare: 3.8   (27)
Microsoft: 3.5   (3659, very tricky because this includes ALL of Microsoft, not just Xbox/games)
EA (all studios): 3.3   (342)
Ubisoft: 3.3   (92)
Blizzard: 3.3   (69)
Nintendo of America: 3.3   (26)
Rockstar Games: 3.3   (6)
PopCap: 3.2   (8)
Zynga: 3.1   (85)
Square-Enix (in the West): 3.1   (9)
LucasArts: 3.0   (13)
CCP: 2.9   (28)
THQ: 2.9   (36)
Activision: 2.8   (40)
Sony Computer Entertainment America: 2.8   (64)
Gameloft: 2.7   (59)
Crytek: 2.6   (12)
Sony Online Entertainment: 2.5 (38)
Codemasters: 2.5 (12)
NCSoft: 2.3 (27)
Capcom Vancouver: 2.3   (3)
Treyarch: 2.2   (12)
Timegate: 1.9   (14)
Volition: 1.3   (4)

So you know what I did?  Seeing as I love to be disappointed (we're Sega fans, after all), I decided to look up Sega's Glassdoor page.  And here it is.  This is based on the incredibly fantastic Sega of America studio (which I talked about here) in San Francisco, CA and here's my fancy formatting to make this as easy as possible to read:

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Picture of Sayyyyyguuhhhhh of America:

Averages:

2.5 out of 5 (average)

Employees say it's “OK” (12 ratings)

20% of employees recommend this company to a friend

50% Approve of the CEO (4 ratings)

Mike "18-24 Dreamcast Ports" Hayes

CEO

Company Rating Distribution (of the 12 people):

Very Satisfied – 1
Satisfied – 3
Neutral / OK – 1
Dissatisfied – 3
Very Dissatisfied – 4


Additional Employee Ratings (out of 5):

Career Opportunities – 3
Compensation & Benefits – 3.5
Work/Life Balance – 4
Senior Leadership – 2
Culture & Values – 2

User Reviews, please mind the dates on which these were posted:

Very strict corporate enviornment (3 of 5)

Former Employee – posted May 17, 2012 

Pros – Great benefits, competative salary, good location.

Cons – Poor performance on new and existing game titles. Reputation as a hole has been dropping like a rock. Many people do not even know they still exist.

Advice to Senior Management – I think you should make the corporate enviornment a bit more fun and work hard play hard. The corporate atmosphere is more like a work hard only strict enviornment. It may be the cultural differences with Japanese culture vs American culture which contribute to this.


Going nowhere...slowly. (2 of 5)
Former Employee – posted today (Sep 6, 2012)

Pros – Benefits, Good colleagues and great team. Was great and very exciting at the time of the 2005 reset...but...

Cons – ...the reset ran out of steam and the products didn't sell. Some didn't sell because they weren't any good and that wasn't addressed by many people involved, but there were plenty of products that were good too. While the market does play a role in this I have to say that it's not fully to blame. Most problem products weren't righted and the organization in general just didn't collectively have its stuff together to change that. It wasn't for lack of good people or even processes, it largely appears that the output from such things was ignored or people even covered problems up fearing their own failures would see them out the door.

The big downside of working at Sega America is of course having to work with Sega of Japan and Sega Europe, in particular having to work under the management from SOE over the last several years...which let's face it, hasn't worked out and on reflection appears to have not been a good idea. Yes, I'm biased...but it's also true isn't it?

There are some great people within those overseas places yes, but there are also many failures, politicians and ineffective managers (managers, directors and VP's) too. SOJ typically falls in line with what you'd expect of any Japanese company, essentially an organization that looks down on anyone who is not Japanese. Racism. There, I said it.

As for SOE. The management (particularly that which has been managing or overseeing the entire Sega West business) has run the entire thing into the ground. A lot of those same people appear to have been doing nothing but empire building for themselves and instead of trying to make the business work have been securing themselves.

Better people were ousted unnecessarily in order to pave the way for such empire building. I'm happy for the recent change of guard at Sega West, but it hasn't really gone far enough and we needed more directors, leadership and decision making back at SOA if only to curb the lack of insightful direction, decision making and interfering from overseas. Why? Those involved just didn't understand the problems from afar, thus couldn't fix them.

Ultimately it's been difficult to get any products, business or other efforts off of the ground because of the stalemate and lack of decision making in place and we lost so many good people because of that. There's a lot of reason to not work there nowadays. It's a good gig to have if you don't have anything else going on of course, but that's as far as I'd recommend working there.

Advice to Senior Management – Make some decisions. Grow the business, but don't fear cancelling products that are not meeting expectations, it will at least allow you to double down on the winners. Put some local leadership in place to represent SOA and sever this ridiculous leash that SOE has. It hasn't worked out so change it.


Sonic (5 of 5)

Former Employee – posted Apr 18, 2012 

Pros – great people, fun industry, great brand.

Cons – limited communication, could use more colaboration.


was warned it is dysfunctional, turned out to be correct (2 of 5)

Former Employee – posted Mar 12, 2012 

Pros – fun atmosphere.  cool products.  good research department.  they encourage creativity

Cons – infighting among mid/upper management created underlying animosity between groups.  many decisions are made for internal political reasons rather than good business reasons.

Advice to Senior Management – try a 360 degree review process to weed out, or at lease identify, the weak mid/upper managers.  do something to get the groups to work together instead of working against one another.


Revolving door of terrible managers (1 of 5)

Current Employee – posted May 12, 2011 

Pros – Big brand name, iconic IP, nice office,

Cons – Business down 60% since 2007, Americans treated as 3rd class, Europeans treated as 2nd class. Politics rewarded over merit.

Advice to Senior Management – Top execs in Europe and Japan keep getting promoted while Americans get fired and treated badly. The wrong people are getting promoted


Okay place to work, but difficult to get decisions made (4 of 5)

Current Employee – posted Feb 22, 2011 

Pros – Start-up like mentality when i was there.  Ability to wear lots of different hats.

Cons – Management in Japan made it difficult to make decisions for the US market.


Generally good but needs revolution in quality (4 of 5)

Current Employee – posted Sep 04, 2008 

Pros – Co-workers are generally great folks at SEGA. It can be frustrating working for a Japanese company due to communication and culture issues, but the US office continues to show success in growing a Western-centric videogame development strategy.

Cons – No stock or profitsharing mean that there is really no hope of hitting a jackpot even if you make a hit game. There is no incentive to pitch original projects since SEGA will not give up any financial reward to an internal entrepreneur.

Advice to Senior Management – Get off the zero-sum business plan and spread more bets so projects can live and die on quality. Amazing games will reap rewards in the market and restore the tarnished SEGA brand.


Good benefits and people, but poor management and consistently bad development track record. (1 of 5)

Former Employee – posted Sep 23, 2008 

Pros – Sega has great properties. The benefits are very good. Some great people on staff. Lots of young employees in their 20s and 30s.

Cons – Poor track record of developing quality games. Game quality is consistently subpar. Little oversight of bad employees. Dysfunctional relationships with other business units creates lots of friction in daily work and long-term planning. Leadership is not consistent in its decision making regarding personnel with good employees fired and promoted and bad employees promoted and fired. Lack of healthy questioning of process and decisions.

Advice to Senior Management – Listen to the people at the bottom. They have an honest and more truthful assessment of the situation than those on top. Don't be afraid of doing the right thing. Support your people. They need guidance.


Great family at SEGA (4 of 5)
Current Employee – posted 5 weeks ago (about Aug 1, 2012)

Pros – People are really awesome and helpful.  Work hours can be super flexible.  Great friendly environment and work space.

Cons – Previous management from Europe was awful.  Lots of Europe vs US fighting.


Political- a collection of departments, the whole often adds up to less than the sum of the parts. (1 of 5)
Current Employee – posted Jun 20, 2011 

Pros – SEGA was one of the industry's greats and the brand still has some residual value- if nothing else it looks good on the resume to non-industry folk.  Opportunity to cover lost of ground quit quickly due to small size of company.  Nice office and decent location.

Cons – Generally poor product and poor attitude to product makes.  Having the US team report to the European office as a territory is just... weird.  A little slow on trends like DLC, mobile and casual gaming.  Horribly understaffed.

Good in the short term, but not as much in the long term (2 of 5)

Former Employee – posted Aug 21, 2010 

Pros – Good Work Environment.  Free Soda.  Working in the video game industry.

Cons – Very difficult to move up in the organization.  Lack of clear vision from top of the organization.  Difficult to move up.

Advice to Senior Management – Value all members of the organization from top to bottom.

Stay away. (1 of 5)

Former Employee – posted Mar 31, 2010

Pros  – The company has some of the best benefits anywhere (time off, medical, etc.) That is pretty much the only highlight.

Cons – Typical Japanese company...micromanagement from afar, a disconnect between the Japanese staff/managers and everyone else. The company is quite cheap in terms of making investments.

Advice to Senior Management – Start treating employees better. Invest in the business. Do not give the impression that non-Japanese nationals are second class citizens.

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If you need any encouragement, there's Sega of Japan with 4 reviews with a 3.2 average.  There's hardly anything interesting written there so I'd say just discard this page altogether.  EDIT: There's also nothing on Sumo Digital so don't bother.

But there you go.  Twelve samples from people with varying English composition skills.  That's not a huge sample size but still, that's more than a handful of people.  Some of it is good but most of it isn't.  Sega is slightly below average compared to the companies on that big Kotaku list.  Also consider that the only 5/5 review happens to be the most useless so factor that into the average.

It's a bummer but I'm not too surprised.  Like I said, these reviews could be fabricated/embellished in some way so we don't know.  Some of the stuff seems blatantly obvious like the poor games, poor mismanagement, disconnect from Sega of Japan (hey, if SoA wants to make crap Marvel games, they ain't developing any more games in the near future).  I'm devoid of thoughts right now so you analyze it for me.

If you want to read more from some anonymous Sega employee, I say check out this guy's blog.  It's seldom updated but he mentions some very interesting stuff including the time in which they tried to "kill off" Sonic and the antics that ensued.  Can't leave comments since he disabled them.

Whatever, the more you know.  Hopefully this is not vindictive of how Sega of Japan/Europe operates because SoA has been garbage for years.  Daytona USA & blue skies seem so far away from here, FML.

Sega's Screws Are Coming Loose???

What's going on over there at Sega???

Oh Panzer Dragoon, Phantasy Star, Sonic 4, that Olympics game no one seems to care about, Jet Set Radio, Hatsune Miku, Shogun 2, and Binary Domain pimpage.

And SHENMUE 1 AND 2 HIGH-DEFINITION PORTS????

And according to the rumor (probably some bumbling idiot at Sega), the ports have been completed for more than a year now.  And Sega's just waiting to gauge the popularity of the series and the likelihood of Shenmue 3.

WHY DO YOU SIT ON THESE GAMES FOR SO LONG???  WHAT'S NEXT--THEY HAVE DAYTONA 2/SCUD RACE/OUTRUN 3 ALREADY MADE BUT THEY'RE TOO SCARED TO RELEASE IT???  SHOW SOME GUTS, SEGA!!!

I know, I know, game publishers don't just release all their games at one time but IIRC, there's been a drought of Dreamcast titles over the years (remember Mike Hayes' 18-24 DC ports prediction???).  It sure as hell wouldn't have hurt to release Shenmue 1, then 2 later, then ultimately 3!!!

Then again, if the fans had it their way, we would've gotten Shenmue 3 much earlier and this whole delay wouldn't be an issue.

Nice to have the good old Sega back.

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So.  Onto my next point.  And that is about RACING GAMES!  Please bear with me, I'm not going to turn this into a "Dear Sega, please hire me to make Daytona 3" post, but here's what I wanna know, Sega...:

When are you making any NEW racing games?

I know there's a few. There was Sega Rally Revo (2007), Sega Race TV (2008), OutRun Online Arcade (2009), Sonic Free Riders (2010), Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing (2010), Sega Rally Online Arcade (2011), Initial D Stage 6 (2011), and obviously Daytona USA (2011).  So that's great right?



Let's go thru the list:

*Sega Rally Revo - good Sega racer with loads of content, but handling is not as good as original, EDIT: made by Western Sega developer so that's okay
*Sega Race TV - arcades only, unique idea but not that great of a game
*OutRun Online Arcade - port of an already existing game, no longer available
*Sonic Free Riders - mega crap tied to the Kinect
*Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing - good but ALSO MADE BY SUMO DIGITAL
*Sega Rally Online Arcade - port of an already existing game (sort of) with less content
*Initial D Stage 6 - arcades only, just a expansion pack obviously
*Daytona USA - best thing Sega's done recently but it's just the original Daytona with better graphics and (dead) online play (already available on the Model2 emulator)
*Any other racing games out there I never heard of...SEGA PLEASE ADVERTISE THEM MORE AND MAYBE I WOULD ACTUALLY MENTION THEM

In all honestly, I think Sega is skimming the surface of the racing genre.  And I'm not talking "Daytona 3" but other stuff.  I want Scud Race, Daytona 2, Initial D, even f'n Sega Race TV to come home.  Maybe even a new Sega GT, Virtua Racing, Crazy Taxi, F-Zero, F355 Challenge.  Or even a new IP altogether!!

"Eric, you're overdoing it, Sega can only do so much."  Come on man...you look at the 80's and 90's and Sega was the King of Speed.  Spittin out OutRun, Daytona USA, Scud Race, Virtua Racing, Crazy Taxi, Initial D, yada yada yada.  Sega NEVER backed down.  All in, balls out, but look at 'em now.  They're scared.  They assume the racing genre is dead.  They play it safe like....oh, here's a Dreamcast port, here's a semi-decent Sonic game, here's a new Yakuza, here's a Hatsune Miku game for the Japanese kiddies, HERE'S A MUTHA-F***IN URINAL GAME!!!  WHAT NOW, BITCH???

I occasionally talk Sega to people at school.  It's unanimous among everyone that Sega has simply lost their identity.  They impress no one anymore.  They need to go back to the drawing board, they say.  And IMO, going back to the drawing board doesn't mean "here's an HD Dreamcast port, not STFU and go play it."  Sega doesn't go the extra mile anymore. EDIT: Lest you forget, Marvel parted ways with Sega so we're not getting any more crummy movie-based games so perhaps Sega should exert more energy into actual GOOD games...

EDIT: "Eric, put a smiley face on everything."  If you want a happy blog, go read SEGAbits, SegaShiro, Sonic Stadium, official Sega blogs, etc. where everything's all good.  I'm shooting from the hip here baby.  Not everything Sega does is perfectly great and someone's gotta say it.

This rant is crap, I know, but sometimes, you gotta kick someone's ass to get them to step up to the plate. God forbid I actually run out of Sega racer related material to talk about!!!  If it weren't for the fans (and Sumo Digital) making arcade emulators, fan games, art, etc. then there would hardly be anything to talk about.    Otherwise I would become the clean-up hitter on the gaming media and crap racing games.  Sure, it's great the new Daytona port got people talking about the game again BUT WE WANT MORE THAN THAT!!!  UNLEASH THE AM2 STUDIO FOR ONCE!!!  BRING BACK YU SUZUKI...yada yada yada, you already know what I'm driving at.

The fans have to save Sega, no doubt about it.  Clamoring for more ports on Twitter/Facebook/message boards is nice and all BUT GET ACTIVE AND DO/MAKE STUFF WHENEVER YOU CAN!!!

AMERICA (and the west in general), taking back racing games from the Japanese cause Japan sucks at making games now.  Sadly, with what???  Burnout, Need for Speed, Forza (well that one's actually good so it gets a pass), Flatout, Trackmania, Motorstorm, Fast & Furious, Split/Second...I mean, GOOD LORD CAN JAPAN STEP UP FOR ONCE AND SAVE US FROM THIS GARBAGE????????  Whatever. Yeah, this is a jackass post, but SOMEONE'S GOTTA SAY IT and if I don't, then who will????

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EDIT: A brief addendum and I'll say this about what Sega should do.  This reminds me of a real-world experience.  My father manages a small chain of fishing/tobacco stores along the Gulf Coast.  Don't give me any crap about cigarettes cause if people want to smoke then let 'em.  The government taxes the crap out of tobacco anyway so you sure are sticking it to us.

So anyway, when asked how he can compete against major retailers like Wal-Mart, he said "It's a more personal experience...if you need help with your fishing reels or your technique, we're there to help."

So here's what I think.  Sega is VERY FAR from outmuscling big players like Activision, Electronic Arts, Sony, Capcom, and Nintendo.  If Sega takes the bland route by releasing a couple of super hero/military/puzzle games, they'll squeak by and nothing else...

What can Sega do?  Do what Sega does best.  Make those wacky blue-sky games you can't get anywhere else.  Not the same lock-step march that every other publisher does.  Sega barely cashes in on their nostalgia.  Will Sega get a clue?  No, cause they stink.  You don't necessarily need a Dreamcast 2 to do this.  Get some new talent, some bold new producers cause Sega is blowing it as far as I'm concerned.  Make some good in-house games for once.  That's all, later.

Hail To The Chief, Nagoshi-San!!!

This has been news for days but I wanted to wait it out and tried to plan out my words.

Announced that the new personnel of the SEGA SAMMY Group, a director of Sega Minoru Hiroshi Nagoshi CCO（Chief Creative Officer）

I look like a girl in this pic, haw haw

In other words, Toshihiro Nagoshi (yes, THAT drunk playboy) is the CCO of Sega, the head of the creative department, responsible for all creative aspects handled by the company  from concept through production.  He also sets the tone for creative philosophy and the standards for the quality of its workmanship, and thus is the key person responsible for the effectiveness of all stuff produced by the company.  In other words, he tells the dev teams what games to make and how they will look.  Thanks Answers.com.

Link

*48 hours later after getting wasted*

Ok, where was I.  So Nagoshi, who is responsible for setting up his own studio for making tons of Yakuza games is in charge of Sega games.  Great, huh?

I think there's a glimmer of hope in all of this.  First of all, Nagoshi may be weird but at the very least he's making Sega money.  Yakuza, love it or hate it, is keeping Sega on the respirator.  Second, I had no idea who was the previous CCO so a familiar face is better than one that is not.  Oh, and we're only one "come to Jesus" moment away from getting a new Daytona, Scud Race, whatever.  All someone needs to do is knock some sense into him and we win.

But is Nagoshi going to assign the right games to the right people?  As of right now, Yu Suzuki and Yuji Naka are AWOL.  If Nagoshi were to demand that any new racing game would be made, is he going to hand it to Amusement Vision and then call it a day???  GIVE IT TO AM2!!!  DON'T REPEAT WHAT YOU DID WITH THE SUB-PAR DREAMCAST VERSION!!!  If AM2 is not involved in a new racing game, then it will suck PERIOD.  Lone exception would be F-Zero since they did AV did a good job with the GC version.    But other than that, give AM2 props where its due.

But even all this talk about AM2 has me wondering...what's going on over there???  Remember, Yu Suzuki doesn't work there anymore.  Are they still intact?  It's been 8 years since they've made OutRun 2, 14 since Daytona 2, and 18 since Daytona 1.  That is a LONG TIME.  Organizations change over time.  Really, even if AM2 is still around, do you think they give a damn about Daytona, OutRun, or any new racing games?

Case in point, we need NEW LEADERS!!!  We need more people like Yu Suzuki, Yuji Naka, Makoto Osaki, and Tetsuya Mizuguchi (Sega Rally guy who I vaguely mentioned).  Instead, what do we get?  Wobbly white guys like Mike Hayes who think it's "boss" of them to publish a yearly superhero game like Captain America/Iron Man/Thor and the occasional Dreamcast port and then they're in business??  NO, THAT'S LAME!!!

Geez, Nagoshi, I give you a lot of crap on this blog but the reason why is because I CARE ABOUT SEGA.  Cause frankly, you're the only true solider on the frontlines left.  So whenever I get mad, it's for a good cause.  Us fans are TRYING TO HELP YOU, PLEASE LISTEN TO US!!!

DAYUM, the left pic looks like a Barbie doll!!  Scary stuff there.

I don't know what to say, man.  With every passing year, Sega and the AM2 crew get a year older.  And it gets harder and harder to convince old guys to go back to finish the work they started 15+ years ago.  Time is valuable and we can't spend it pissing away at EA on Madden sequels.  You get what I'm driving at here?

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And one more thing to point out.  Nagoshi did a brief interview with SegaBITS on Binary Domain.  And don't get me wrong--Binary Domain looks good but I don't know if it can hang with the big boys like Halo or Gears of War--we shall see.  But here's a clip from the interview:

Before SEGA teamed up with Nintendo for their Mario & Sonic Olympic games, your team at Amusement Vision helped develop the excellent F-Zero GX for GameCube. Have you been in talks to bring the F-Zero franchise back, or maybe doing another game in that style?

Nagoshi: I’d like that if I ever have the chance. Racing games are not so popular lately, so it would be fun if I could suggest some ideas from different angles. Whether I’ve consider it in details…now that’s a secret.

FLASHBACK to 2004 when Nagoshi gave this interview:

Speaking of which, any chance of a new Daytona anytime in the near future?

Nagoshi: We don’t have any public plans at the moment. But right now, driving games like Need for Speed and Burnout are big in the US, so we’ve had thoughts about a Daytona 3.

This makes me that as much as I (and maybe you) hate mainstream racers like Burnout or Need for Speed, we NEED these games to stick around for Sega to release more racing games.  Obviously, I have no say in whether or not other racing games are successful but that's a bitter pill to swallow.  Geez, if the best that game devs can do nowadays is miserable bombs games like Split/Second, Blur, and every NFS game imaginable, then we're screwed.  Save the game industry one racing game at a time.  Each one of us can't do much on our own, but if a lot of us work with the same mindset...then we can breach the castle walls and storm the Sega building!!!  This is a team effort, not just me on a stupid blog.

Nagoshi also said this in the 2012 interview:

Recently, SEGA re-released Daytona USA. Of all the games you’ve been involved with, which one would you most like to see re-released on current systems?

Nagoshi: Well, it’s surely an honorable thing to hear how people like my past titles, but to be honest it makes me feel a little melancholic at the same time. I’m sure those past titles are being re-released because they were good games, but I’m quite confident that I can make better games than what I could do in the past. So personally, there is no particular title that I’d want to see re-released. That’s just my personal thought, and I definitely appreciate all the fans that still love my past work!

Thanks Nagoshi, we still have faith in you.

EDIT: One more thing.  Sega, YOU NEED TO GET YU SUZUKI BACK ON BOARD.  Why?  Because he's old...and wise.  He's been around for decades.  Even if you throw out all the Shenmue 3 nonsense, we should trust his judgment, nuff said.  Who else at Sega should we trust??  Besides Sonic the Hedgehog, he BUILT SEGA.  So give him props, please.

Sega Loves You, Space Zombies, & User Agreements (Which Suck)

This is another Three-In-One blog post.  I don't really like doing this anymore, but who cares... I wanna convey my message to the people in one lump of a post so deal with it.  EDIT: I added more talking points about Mike Hayes!!!

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Virtua Fighter 5 coming to XBL and PS3!!!  Now this is good news.  I don't have a lot to say about this.  I'm thankful that Sega is willing to do this.  Now where's my Daytona game?  Ooooooo yeah, forgot about the Sonic CD port as well.  So Virtua Fighter 5 and Sonic CD are coming soon...Good things are happening all the time.  Now where's my Daytona game?

Oh, and how about this?  Sega West president Mike Hayes recently talked on the phone (a very professional means of interview) about what Sega has in store in the future.  “We constantly review the IP we’ve got in the locker because that’s one of Sega’s big advantages,” Hayes said.  Yeah, IPs are great, huh, Mike?  The kind that you sit on for decades, leaving the Sega fans to sit in a figurative coma for over a decade.  Then we get a half-ass port of, say, Jet Set Radio or Shenmue and congrats, LIFE IS GREAT AGAIN!!!  THANKS, MIKE!!!

And they say they go through everything and decide which IP's to use and how big they should be...it's nice to think that Mike is actually looking at new Shenmue or Daytona games, but after that little 18-24 Dreamcast ports remark, I really don't take anything he says for face value anymore.  Wait, has Sega released any more DC ports after Space Channel 5/Bass Fishing?  No, so we're still stalled at 4 (or about 10 if you count all the non-Sega DC ported games) so that just makes Mike look like a bigger dumbass.

This is Mike Hayes of SEGA.

But there's always hope for redemption, Mike!  Just pick up that little telephone, tell Nagoshi to make Daytona USA 3 and Yu Suzuki to make Shenmue 3.  There you go, buddeh...

Another thing--the fact that Sega announces these new games on a whim and not at any big gaming convention is tell-tale of their policy.  Don't expect them to sneak up on us with Shenmue 3, new Daytona, or any of that jazz so keep on the lookout and wait for those trademarks to appear.  Sega's not that sharp to "hide" anything, it seems.

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Did you hear?  There's one new Black Ops zombie map called Moon.  Now this ain't no space truckin'--you're stuck in the not-so-blue skies of the moon and I'm not even talking about Space Colony Ark.  This level is really trippy.  Really--it's unconventional in every sense of the word..

Where do I begin.  The beginning of the level takes place in "Area 51" (a cut-out of the Hangar 18 MP map) then you are forced to run to a teleporter which takes you to the moon.  You take your protein pills and put your helmet on....then the real fun begins.

When I was playing Solo, no sounds could be heard on the Moon.  No talking, no zombie moaning, no footsteps, just some faint breathing and muffled gunshots.  Yeah, imagine playing a game in total silence--it's psychedelic and creepy at the same time.   EDIT: No, the map isn't normally this silent.  My sound "glitched" up the first time so there was no voice/music.  But to augment the creepiness, a floating astronaut slowly pursues you (think George from Call of the Dead) who tries to steal your perks.  Oh, and there's low gravity too.  Just floating in a mindless void being attacked by these monstrosities--it's the stuff of Creepypasta... EDIT: (OMG, my game is haunted!!!  Some dead kid named Ben or Jimmy is trying to communicate to me through the game!!!  Despite how scary & unusual it was, I just couldn't turn off the game!!!  And then they consumed my soul or something.)

FYI, there's a way to teleport back to "Area 51" (where the Pack-a-Punch is) and you can hear again.  But since zombies swarm so quickly, you have to teleport back to the Moon just as soon as you arrived.

Oh, and you thought that was damn weird?  Well, remember the convoluted Easter eggs/plot progressions from previous maps such as Ascension?  Well, Moon has one.  And no surprise--the puzzle was solved within 48 hours of the map's release.  Being the last zombie map of the Black Ops series, it goes out with a bang.  Follow the Easter egg steps here if you want...

SPOILER: Remember Samantha the little girl with the zombie voice?  Complete some of the Easter egg steps and you see her in this map levitating in this strange black pyramid.  Complete the rest of the steps and Richtofen (the German playable character) swaps bodies with Samantha (omg guy in girl's body), giving him control over the zombies in order to complete his dreams of...uh, world domination (well that's what this Group 935 that Richtofen AKA Edward has been trying to do since Der Riese).  Oh, and he also launches three nukes at the Earth, sending it into a zombie-infested, radioactive wasteland.  This is the conclusion we've been waiting for.  Oh, every player gets all eight perks and a gamer picture.  GAME OVER, YEAH!!



Super cool story, bro.  No really, while I normally loathe game storylines, I really want to see what else Treyarch has in store here.  Wait for Black Ops 2 tho....

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And for some other news news that really stinks.  You know Electronic Arts?  The scourge we forgot about purely because of Activision's antics?  Well, if you download their new game distribution software, Origin, you're giving EA the right to monitor your hard drive (including what websites you view) including the right to sell that information.  Please bear in mind there's NO way to circumvent this if you want to play games like Battlefield 3--you must download this service.

You know what, Electronic Arts?  You're despicable.  I didn't have intentions of buying Battlefield before this, but I must certainly do not now.  BOYCOTT THEM!!!  This includes Burnout and Need for Speed which are both published by EA...so it's a one-two knockout punch.  Suck my white ass, EA.  EDIT: Damn, just screwed my employment opportunities...eh, who wants to be a lapdog for them anyway.

Now, doesn't anything think all User Agreements are a crock of s***?  Yeah, sure, laws apply to software, but who reads these 20+ page documents anyway?  You usually assume the obvious--don't copy, distribute, or profit from software, yada yada yada (come on, you don't read it either so don't blame me)...  But then they can sneak whatever they want in there, like what EA did here.  And if you DO read the whole agreement, so what?  Odds are you zoned out due to boredom and forgot what you just read a day later.  Not like the hundreds of pages of terms you've read in your lifetime are going into your long-term memory.  Come on, how much paperwork and red tape do human beings have to go through anyway?

"Read every one of these pages from front to back and regurgitate it all from memory by tomorrow..."

"F***!!!!  I HATE THIS CRAP!!!" >:(

Man, screw paperwork.  All I want to do is play my video games without infecting my computer with spyware or getting thrown in prison.  DEAL WITH IT.

Sonic's Making A Comeback...Shenmue, Not So Much

SEGAbits is a good website that I should read more often.  Anyway, this is worth mentioning.  Sega held an event called "Sonic Boom" at a club right up the road from E3.  Sonic fans gathered to wear funny hats, play Sonic Generations demos, drink Sonic-related beverages and cupcakes, meet Yuji Naka and Takashi Iizuka, and check out the Crush 40 concert.  This is some guy's account from SEGAbits.  Also, here's some screenshots from the Sega America blog.

To tell you the truth, as stupid as this event seemed, it sounded like a good time...  I'm starting to feel good for Sonic fans again.  Go get 'em, guys.  EDIT: Might wanna read part 2 of Sonic Boom here.

Also, Sonic on the cover of Nintendo Power.  SEGAbits, mind if I steal your bandwidth?  Thanks!

There's something weird about seeing old-school Sonic on the (rather plain) cover of Nintendo Power...but it just means that SONIC'S MAKING A COMEBACK, BABY!!!  Move over Mario, move over Link, move over Samus, move over Pikachu...

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Alllllrriiiggghhhtttt...enough with that, here's more SEGAbits for you.  This is an article.  Mike Hayes, the President and CEO of Sega West (Europe & America), was talking about Shenmue at a CVG interview (nice of the man to spend time with the people...). 

“Trust me,” he continued, “We hear loud and clear about Shenmue, and we’re not going to close our ears to it."



“To be fair to us we’ve done Sonic 4, Afterburner, Golden Axe and Shinobi on 3DS. We do listen. It’s not like we’ve got our fingers in our ears, we take that very seriously and value the small but vocal people. Sonic 4 was the perfect example that we’re listening to those guys. Generations is too – and that will show when people get to see it for themselves.”

Me and a lot of other people always cheer on Sega in hopes that it'll influence them.  And it is GOOD that we have a CEO who will point out Game X, Game Y, Game Z and say, "Look, we're trying."  Good!  Talk is cheap, but better to have talk than to be blissfully ignorant to the fans!

EDIT: Just realized this is the same Mike Hayes that said we'd get 18-24 Dreamcast ports by 2012.  So that's not good although that was a long time ago so MAYBE we'll overlook this.

Then this is what the article writer goes on to say:

But rebooting a series is only half the battle Mike, it’s all well and good to say ‘hey look we gave you Golden Axe and Sonic 4’ but the simple fact is that if you are going to reboot a series it has, I repeat has to be done with care… If you’re going to just hand out your classics to unproven, bulls*** American developers that usually work on license titles (like the Shinobi reboot) then I’m not sure any Sega fan will be thanking you for that!

Well, not very flattering of (some) American devs, but he's right.  You only get ONE chance (maybe two, like OutRun 2 or Sega Rally) at a remake/port.  For instance, a developer can't come out with, say, a new Jet Set Radio game which sucks (or at least has moderate yet inexcusable flaws) and then say, "Oops, we screwed up, let's remake the game from scratch again."  You might be able to release patches or DLC to salvage it but devs just can't mull over the same idea for too long without losing everyone's interest (and thus profits).

I’m more than happy to see Shenmue continue like most old Sega IPs. In fact I would be extremely excited, it is my favourite series of all time! But if it was farmed out to some developer I’ve never heard of, heck if it came from ANY developer besides AM2 then Mike, frankly I don’t want it…

Does anyone trust anything besides AM2?  Anyway, I highly doubt they'll trust Shenmue 3 with anyone other than Yu Suzuki and AM2.  I don't think Sega will go that low and give it to some chump studio...

But that's all well and good, it's common sense, etc.  Legendary game series deserve top-notch care...

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And going through these stories makes me feel good.  I'm going to say this and it may shock a few of you: I'm a little more optimistic about Sega these days thanks to both the company and the fans.  Well, they're not perfect (Binary Domain, Dreamcast ports, etc.)  , but they're not screwing around as much these days.  We're fortunate cause we have home ports of Crazy Taxi, Sega Rally 3, and OutRun 2.  We've also got Daytona 1 & 2 plus Scud Race on emulators.  We got Sega & Sonic All-Stars Racing.  Sonic games are getting better.  Massive amounts of new Daytona 2 media.  You know what I'm talking about.  WE CAN DO IT, SEGA!!!

How Would A New Daytona USA Fare? Prelude

This topic ignited a few days back when I was making my usual Daytona 2 image/media rounds on Google, trying to find anything new.  Fortunately, since the Supermodel emulator popped up, we've been saturated with new game pics.  These are some of my pics.

But that's not the point because I found an interesting article back in 2007.  We're talking about Sega Rally Revo and how it was coming out.  Check out this long article on Neogaf.  Track deformation, tons of cars, good eye candy, etc.  You'd think ex-employees of Codemasters, Criterion, Rare and Rockstar North could bang out that dream Sega Rally game but it fizzled rather quickly, mostly because they screwed up the physics, etc.  Averaged about a 7/10 rating and you can find it on the super discount racks these days.

But in that article there's a little goodie dropped in there to please the fans.  Here's one line from this article:

Perhaps we’ll give some false hope to die-hard fans with our next comment, but what the hell: when asked by other members of the press whether or not the next project of this company will be Daytona USA, we were met with a “maybe”. Mark Fisher also replied with a “who knows!”, when asked if there’ll ever be an arcade version of this new SEGA Rally.

This quote became the subject of debate on this Team Xbox forum topic.  I'm fairly certain there are other threads out there like this one, but I can't find them all.  Use this as a microcosm of people's opinions.  Some people want just Daytona USA Xbox Live play, some want more than that (Scud Race, Daytona 2), but some don't want the game at all because Sega would screw it up.  It's worth mentioning that AM2's original staff probably doesn't work anymore (Nagoshi NEVER expresses any interest in Sega racers, Osaki is invisible, Suzuki is going around teasing that Shenmue sequel, etc.) so we don't know if Sega is competent even if they have the energy/motivation to work on it (that's where the Sega fanbase comes in to pick up the slack...hopefully).

There is one thing everyone was unanimous in saying--that Sega wouldn't make it.  We've heard the word "maybe" before.  We heard it from Toshihiro Nagoshi back in 2004.  We've also heard it from Yu Suzuki in 2011 about the new Shenmue.  And all these promises that the new Sonic games will be good.  I mean, really, does anyone take Sega seriously anymore?

EDIT: An aside here, folks.  Wait a second, another promise that comes to mind is all these new Dreamcast XBLA ports that were supposed to be released by Summer 2011.  See article from June 2010.

Earlier today at E3, we asked Sega West president Mike Hayes how many Dreamcast titles he expected to have on the service by this time next year.  His reply will warm the heart of Dreamcast lovers everywhere.  "We hope to have somewhere between 18 to 24. Around that."

And it's May 2011 and all we got were four DC games from the Sega Classics Collection (five if you count Soul Calibur, but that's Namco's game).  EDIT: Forgot a few more like Ikaruga and Rez, thanks Alex.  I know he said "hope" but still, "hope" ain't good enough.  In retrospect, what a BIG letdown.  Promise at minimum 18 games but only deliver FOUR....err,eight I guess??  Wow, don't set such high benchmarks if you have no chance of meeting them.  Even if we do extend this deadline by a couple of years, I don't see Sega spitting out fourteen more ports at this rate.  But I'm just going to go with the assumption that Mike Hayes was grabbin his stupid peelz and thus fired off a random integer from the hip not knowing if Sega could reach the mark.

But anyway...now that it's 2011, I think everyone's hopes of that new Daytona are practically dead.  From 2011 then on, it's been a big tease.  Hey, we already talked about assorted messages from fans back in the 00's.  Sega Racing Classic was supposedly a grand return to Daytona's roots, but it was just a remake.

As for today, we are getting something new--Sega Rally Online Arcade!  Only has five tracks, thirteen cars, and is a small project at best.  Basically a reworked version of Revo.  Yes, it will be fun, but if you think this game will be "loaded," I doubt it.  This site is saying May 18 but I'm not 100% sure it's true.

Since this is a complicated topic, I'm going to start another post in order to get my thoughts straight.

Click here for Part 2.