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SEGA CHIMES IN, AND SO DO WE,
On Ben Andac’s Deleted Blog

This week, a blog post from 2007 became a hot topic within the video game blog world. The post contained some harsh criticism of Sega and was written by Ben Andac, who used to work for Sega Europe and Sony Computer Entertainment Europe as a “Game Evaluator” and “Admissions and Recruitment Executive.” The post in question, along with the original contents of Andac’s blog, has been deleted.

In an age of information overload and at a time when mainstream media outlets strive to present as much news as possible to fulfill the public’s insatiable appetite for more information, the current attention given to an almost two-year-old blog post initially comes across a little odd. After all, bloggers who get paid by the post and per ad click usually post news as soon as they get it, oftentimes without reading the very press releases they happen to be copying and pasting. Something that is this old, then, hardly would qualify as news. So what’s the deal?

The deal is that it’s scandalous. At least, it could be, from a certain point of view. After all, sites that have picked up the story are touting Andac’s blog as “The Blog Sega Doesn’t Want You To Read.” A Google search for the phrase returns over 100 results. Perhaps a better title could have been “The Blog Ben Andac Didn’t Want You To Read,” since presumably he’s the one who deleted the whole thing. Of course, that wouldn’t be nearly as attention getting.

In his post entitled “NiGHTS 2?” Andac gave his first-hand account of some of Sonic Team’s production process for NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams, the much-anticipated Wii exclusive follow-up to the 1996 hit NiGHTS into Dreams. According to Andac, the game was originally under development for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 but was later switched over to the Wii (evidently to cash in on that platform’s sudden success).

About the game, Andac wrote: “there is no genuine expectation from Sega’s bosses that this title will perform well and thus they will spare little development time, thought and marketing spend on it. Furthermore I know Sonic Team, by which I mean I know them in person, in a professional sense. I know how they work, and the (difficult) conditions they work under.”

While in that quote he argues that Sega didn’t seem to care about NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams, what has likely given the story more traction is his scathing assertion that, “there’s no doubt that Sonic Team have lost their quality touch.”

It’s a sentiment that had previously been echoed by other gamers in response to recent Sonic titles, and coming from someone who used to be close to Sonic Team, the message carries a certain weight as well as validation for the company’s critics. It’s also incidentally a form of fanboy fodder, and it has obviously done its job in that regard. Further cementing the popularity of Andac’s blog is the fact that he hinted at Sonic Unleashed well before its official announcement.

“They are worse than talentless: they are without passion,” Andac continued, still talking about the people he knew on a professional level. “[They are] bored, weary, closed-minded and out of touch with any sense of what makes games good anymore; not to mention what consumers want (and in the long-term what the company itself so desperately needs).”

It should go without saying, but there are many people who do not enjoy their jobs. Things like office politics and interdepartmental tension can add to job dissatisfaction, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a studio that doesn’t have some form of tension between its creative forces. We’ve all met someone who at times just can’t stop complaining about his/her job, and there are people who blog about their unhappiness with their work life. Blog posts of this nature tend to be vitriolic and one-sided. Coverage of Andac’s blog in gaming blogs has been similarly one-sided, especially in the comments to said coverage. This is the very nature of most gaming news, sadly. Someone shouts, “witch!” (or points out that someone else shouted it) and everyone else grabs torches and pitchforks. It’s a big spectacle and it gets attention. But is this kind of discussion necessary, or even productive?

We had previously criticized Sega’s relevance in today’s video game market but were later forced to eat crow by Valkyria Chronicles. When we came across this news of Andac’s blog, we noticed a very important voice was missing: Sega’s.

We asked them what they thought of all this. Denny Chiu, Public Relations Manager, Sega of America says:

Thanks for checking in on this story and offering SEGA a chance to chime in. We were surprised to see such an old story resurface that has so little bearing on what SEGA is doing today.

Being that it was Ben’s blog where he was able to express his personal opinions/thoughts and feelings and that he was privy to some sensitive information during his time of employment at SEGA, he may have expressed some opinions about Sonic Team, the Nights game in development at the time, and eluded to what ended up being Sonic Unleashed. But at the end of the day, it was Ben’s personal blog, we should view his writings as opinion, as most blogs express. Otherwise, blogs wouldn’t be blogs, they’d be editorial sites such as your own. Thanks again for checking in.

This response tells us a few things other than what was directly stated in it. First, and rather obviously but still between-the-lines, is that Andac’s blog post was his perception of the way things worked at Sega; in other words it’s not necessarily how things worked.

Second, Sega has changed since Andac initially wrote that blog post. Proof of this is in recent titles such as Valkyria Chronicles, whereas the upcoming releases of MadWorld and House of the Dead: Overkill look promising (though we’ll reserve judgment on those for when we’ve played them).

In the end, Sega probably doesn’t care if you’ve read Andac’s blog or not.

We have contacted Ben Andac but did not hear back from him at press time.

Posted in Editorial, Sega |