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The CON/text
Should We Miss Sega?

On March 16 2001, Sega Corporation Chairman Isao Okawa died of heart failure at a Tokyo hospital. Even for long-time gamers the name may not be familiar, but Okawa was the founder of CSK, the conglomerate that bought Sega in 1984 while the gaming industry sought to emerge from the American video game crash. Okawa was deeply committed to the success of Sega, the Dreamcast console becoming his personal crusade in the then-battle to take back market dominance from Sony’s Playstation. The massive finances Sega required to launch the Dreamcast not only came from CSK, but also nearly half came from Okawa himself. Even after the demise of the Dreamcast and during Sega’s switch from console manufacturer to third party developer, Okawa donated shares of the company back to Sega to help create the cushion for the transition.

Though the primary concern for men of business is exponential growth, under Okawa’s leadership Sega became, and remains in many gamers minds the most striking example of a company committed to the risks of innovation. The consensus today is that this very spirit of creativity is what would ultimately stretch the company too thin and cause later disasters, and yet for all the market failures there were just as many memorable successes. Sega was a company always moving toward the future at a heightened pace, with innovation seen as the key to overcoming their competition. The true lament of his death is the loss of a figure that could hold a company together through such upheaval while maintaining creativity in an industry where management teams threaten to outnumber designers and artists.

Following Okawa’s death, CSK quickly sought to sell Sega, romancing companies such as Namco, Bandai, Electronic Arts, and Microsoft. But it was Sammy Corp that purchased the majority shares, allowing Hajime Satomi to become CEO of the new Sega-Sammy Holdings in October of 2004. And that event led to the subsequent reorganization of the company that helped destroy one of the most creative environments the game industry has ever known.

Jet Set Radio Future.

At the time I was content with titles such as Panzer Dragoon Orta, Gunvalkyrie, and Jet Set Radio Future. Those internally-developed games sold me an Xbox, and I never questioned whether I was playing titles freshly created under Sega’s new directive, or last generation Dreamcast products that had been augmented for a changed market. Sega even seemed poised to publish increasingly unique software from other developers with the Otogi series, Blood Will Tell, and the first Gungrave.

But now as E3 prepares to descend -not unlike the great flood -the safest bet of all is that we won’t be playing a Jet Set Radio title that allows us to wage online turf tagging wars through a cell-shaded city with the depth of Grand Theft Auto IV. Neither will gamers be treated to the sight of Panzer Dragoon in HD, or my own deepest desire, a newly rendered Ulala to help the funk set us free once again. Even a revision of legacy titles with HD upgrades, à la Bionic Commando Rearmed, would get me excited.

Instead we can expect Golden Axe: Beast Rider, a game that needed a gimmick to merit reviving its title and promises to meekly follow the path cleared by Kratos, almost assuredly with far less charm and finesse. Based solely on trailer speculation I’ll wager the title takes zero risks and delivers exactly what limited game-play gets summarized for the back of the box.

And that largely leaves Sonic still carrying the weight of internal development against the surge of disenfranchised gamers that once welcomed the blue hedgehog with open arms. People still hope and ask, could this be the title that redeems that franchise? And for all the hopes I might have, and all the reasons I could list, the answer is continually NO. Sega-Sammy has proven that they are immune to criticism from gamers and the media alike, and that ultimately the home console market is of lesser concern compared to their other interests. For Sega-Sammy, a title like Shadow the Hedgehog, a game that causes my eye to twitch sporadically, was a commercial success. And they’re absolutely right, of course. Shadow the Hedgehog sold over a million units, and before that Sonic Heroes over five million, illustrating that half-finished cross platform titles could outperform highly polished single console efforts. Is it any wonder why so many titles lean toward the DS despite stylish advantages on the PSP?

Chu Chu Rocket.

And what about Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood? Surely Bioware will deliver a great RPG experience. But even though they might, the real question is whether they should. It’s acceptable to say that merging any legacy franchise with Bioware’s magical RPG touch is likely to create a memorable game. But if the only way to breathe life into a franchise is by abandoning all its mechanics -all the elements that made the franchise great -why bother? Why not just make a great RPG, free from the constraints of gaming history and the inevitable limitations that past baggage brings?

But does it really matter what this new Sega-Sammy beast does? Lots of people like to talk about Sega’s legacy franchises. Indeed Sega has a vault full of IPs, with even a quarter of the list making for promising next generation titles. But what is the lifespan of an intellectual property in the gaming industry? With the still-relatively-young nature of the industry it’s hard to say with any certainty. Considering what companies like Sony and Microsoft invest into the creation of intellectual properties, it would seem that Sega is sitting on a gold mine. But are they really?

With those titles having sat idle for so long can the dust dig a game’s grave? Would the investment necessary in envisioning game-play, creating engines, and augmenting narratives to suit the next generation make it any less expensive than creating completely new games? The weight of that decision and the burden of proof rests with Sega-Sammy, and the most blasphemous statement I can end with is that until their agenda changes, gamers have no choice but to leave hope for such titles aside, which I realize would severely cripple the grammar-inept forums and cause a net-wide bullshit recession.

The real creative spirit of Sega has shifted to smaller studios, as many in the company knew was inevitable following Okawa’s death. Yuji Naka, creator of the original Sonic the Hedgehog and NiGHTS into Dreams, as well as rising star Tetsuya Mizuguchi, both parted ways with their long-time employer. But as a result the gaming public has already received multiple new titles from Mizuguchi’s Q Entertainment, with new properties such as Every Extend Extra and Lumines already demonstrating that the Sega of old lives on through a smaller, more-focussed developer. And we eagerly await the first work from Naka’s Prope Studio, itself staffed with several former members of Sonic Team, with Naka’s strongest statement being that he has no intention of revisiting any of the titles created during his time at Sega.

Even Sega has chosen to support new efforts through original IPs from Platinum Games as opposed to mining their own legacy titles. And maybe that isn’t the end of the world. In fact, maybe that’s okay. Maybe it’s time to acknowledge that people create games, not the studios that house them. Maybe for every growing studio that gets devoured for IP,s we can rely on new start-ups to emerge from those ashes to carry on through new ventures. And in an industry so jaded at the highest towers where successful franchises raise large companies, where companies seemingly exist solely to devour success as it rises, maybe that’s the best thing that could happen for gamers and developers alike.

Posted in Editorial, The CON/text |