Sonic Team troubles after Generations - is a Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games, mobile and Sonic Boom at fault?

[Dooble]

Sega had a winning formula with Sonic Generations, that they could have repeated a few more times. Have the same gameplay engine, just new levels and that would be a winning formula.

Instead they made Lost World, which is made by the people who did Sonic Colors. That makes sense so far. But why was the gap between Lost World and Forces, and how did Forces get so underwhelming. Why did Forces use the Lost World code, rather than Generations? It's really hard to see how and why it happened. It made sense in the past as to why Sonic games turned out the way they did...
Sonic Heroes had troubles because they had to make it multi platform while rushing it. And the constantly rushed games like 06 all make sense on why they turned out the way they did. Overambitious + short dev time + a desire to do something different every year and the result is clear.

But why Forces? There was much speculation about how the lighting engine took so much work, but that does not make much sense to me. There was no way that there was 4 years of full production on Sonic Forces itself. The first Hedgehog Engine was developed in 3 years at the same time as Sonic Unleashed, which was new, while a few other Sonic games were in development as well. Forces had 4 full years all by itself. Well kind of.

Maybe there was a push to make Sonic Boom a bigger thing than it was during 2014-2016, but the JP dev resources did not get less. Sure staff shifts around but the division that makes Sonic (GE1, CS2) never had less resources and staff.

The teams within Sega/Sonic Team divisions that worked on mainline Sonic games after reasearching where there is staff overlap...

06 > Unleashed > Generations > Mario & Sonic Sochi 2014 > further Olympic games > Forces
Storybook Games > Colors > Lost World > further Olympic games > Forces
And of course, ever since the first Mario & Sonic Olympic game there was staff dedicated that is working on them to this day...

It seems like that there was staff increase or they needed more time to get Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games working in HD, on the more resource intensive Hedgehog Engine. It was Wii staff previously that had no experience working on bigger spec consoles, so perhaps they HAD to pull in staff from Generations...
There was somehow a desire to keep the Mario & Sonic brand and the whole constellation going. Either from Nintendo, Sega and the Olympic Commitee, or all of them at once.

But not only that, the mobile game increase in Japan was taking full swing. The three most important people to Generations (HD version) were the director, (Hiroshi Miyamoto) lead designer and gameplay programmer (which means how Sonic controlled etc.). All three of them ended up working on mobile titles before Forces began development. The programmer still is at Sega, but switched focus to mobile games at Sega, while director & lead designer were recruited by an outside mobile company to work on a horse racing game for mobile.

So yeah. The combined factors of a desire to keep Mario & Sonic going on Wii U, the heavy push for Sonic Boom AND the Japanese industry switching to mobile are to blame for the Generations development team not staying together. So we are stuck with the crew that made Colors (itself having their roots in Secret Rings), making the best with that they have with Frontiers...

 

[L Thammy]

Along with Smash Bros, the Mario & Sonic series is probably the only reason Japanese consumers remembered who Sonic is for a good ten years, so I'd like to think that it's got that going for it.

 

[Caiusto]

Sonic Team is bad.

 

[Renteka-Bond]

But wait, wasn't Sonic Boom designed by an entirely different team (and also shafter because they were forced to be exclusive to the garbage Wii U, which hampered development specifically because the system couldn't handle Crytek)? Far as I'm concerned, SB was the best direction for the series at the time but was hampered by management, not the other way around.

 

[Dooble]

But wait, wasn't Sonic Boom designed by an entirely different team (and also shafter because they were forced to be exclusive to the garbage Wii U, which hampered development specifically because the system couldn't handle Crytek)? Far as I'm concerned, SB was the best direction for the series at the time but was hampered by management, not the other way around.

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It was, but there was Japanese executive power outside of Takashi Iizuka (Hiroyuki Miyazaki was Chief Content Officer of Sonic during the Boom era, he then worked on the Genesis Mini consoles) to make Sonic Boom an important branch on equal terms with regular Sonic.

 

[RochHoch]

Don't overthink things. Sonic Team is just like that

 

[Ashes of Dreams]

No.

 

[TheBrightestSun]

It is crazy to think that no matter how Sonic Team is trying to kill Sonic, he still is alive.

 

[Sir Hound]

They're just not a very good development team. It's not that deep imo c

 

[GamerJM]

I think the explanation is that a lot of the staff that worked on Generations left Sonic Team.

 

[Dooble]

I think the explanation is that a lot of the staff that worked on Generations left Sonic Team.

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Alot of them worked on Forces anyway

The three key people of Gens and what they did afterwards
https://www.linkedin.com/in/masato-nakazawa-71802929/?originalSubdomain=jp (lead gameplay programmer)
https://app.famitsu.com/20161015_855198/ (lead designer)
https://aktsk.jp/recruit/career/planner/creator-1/ (director)

my conclusion on this is that they were swallowed by the mobile game industry.

why they considered that this was a more interresting career choice than Sonic...who knows. a lot of people like to think that devs get "forced" into mobile because they have no other choice. but it is not always like that.

 

[PolskiGamer17]

I imagine that Sonic Team is just tired of working on nothing but sonic games.

 

[Megapighead]

Sonic Team is bad.

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.

 

[cecilpaladin32]

It is crazy to think that no matter how Sonic Team is trying to kill Sonic, he still is alive.

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At this point, I don't think the following is a far stretch:

Sonic = Rasputin
Sonic Team = Those trying to kill Rasputin

 

[Dooble]

I imagine that Sonic Team is just tired of working on nothing but sonic games.

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they worked on these too

 

[BassForever]

I would argue Colors and Generations are more a sign of a broken clock being right twice a day then them losing their way after Generations. Those two games were the exception and not the norm for mainline 3D Sonic in the past 15ish years.

 

[fontguy]

why they considered that this was a more interresting career choice than Sonic...who knows.

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Sega is a publisher with a long history of mismanagement and forcing games out before they're finished.

I find it very easy to imagine them getting better treatment and pay elsewhere.

 

[Harry Potter Obama]

There was definitely some kind of fallout from Sonic Boom's reception, with Iizuka and Hoshino moving to America to oversee the franchise from there, but I'm not sure if it actually affected what they were working on.
As far as Sonic Team's actual development goes, I think the combination of working on the Hedgehog Engine 2 and developing/running Sonic Runners took up a lot of their time. It's also entirely possible that they worked on and scrapped some other ideas. Like a lot of dev teams, Sonic Team develops and tests out a lot of prototypes that may not make it into full fledged games.
The biggest reason we didn't get another game that was just like Generations gameplay-wise is that Sonic Team always wants to make something new. Even Forces was more like Generations than they wanted it to be:: originally it was going to be more centered around the Avatar, with Sonic's gameplay not showing up until they free him from the death egg.
From a fan standpoint it's really frustrating that they don't just make more of the stuff that I want to play, but I can absolutely understand it from a creative standpoint.

 

[Dooble]

Runners and Hedgehog Engine 2 is small potatoes compared to what they were pumping out in 2004-2011...Sonic Team put out one console game a year + co-developing and developing spin-offs (Riders)

Forces had everything going for it - no pressure to pump out multipe games a year all often vastly different, no blue prints for stuff they were working. For Forces the blue print was there with Generations.
Sonic Teams output was imo better when everything worked against them lol

 

[mrmickfran]

they worked on these too

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As well as Puyo Puyo Tetris

 

[Malajax]

Sonic Team is creatively bankrupt when it comes to Sonic games, and they don't get as much budget as they used to for proper Sonic games. If you want that to go with your theory, I'd suspect the Mario and Sonic games have massive budgets and resources compared to Sonic platformers.

Basically if it's not Yakuza or Atlus/Persona related, it's not getting the resources it needs to succeed.

 

[TonyBaduy]

I'd blame upper management for a lot of Sonic issues, they are also the reason why even Sonic remakes get the short stick.

 

[SNRUB]

I don't have anything to back this up but I honestly believe that Sonic Boom was an earnest attempt by Sega to see if a developer outside of their umbrella had what it takes to develop a major 3D Sonic title, but since it was such a dumpster fire of an endeavor, they went back to the old college try of having Sonic Team fart out mediocre projects.

 

[skobuffs]

They put a lot of resources into the Sonic and Mario at the Olympic Games series because they sell like hotcakes, moving 19 million units. The first Olympic Games outsold every other game in the series besides the original Sonic the Hedgehog! The second Olympic game outsold everything besides Sonic 1 and 2. The mobile games have moved over a billion units. Mainline Sonic on the other hand hasn't move 4 million units since the combined sales of Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and Sonic & Knuckles. Even the well regarded Sonic Generations and Sonic Mania only sold 1.85 million and 1 million respectively.

So yes, the Olympic series killed the mainline Sonic franchise, but it was just the final nail in the coffin. The mainline series had already been treading water since 1994, Olympics just came and pushed its head under water. It had some moderately successful titles, but not any hits. Once Olympic released and started moving huge numbers like the Genesis era, that series became the top priority on consoles.

 

[Man God]

Sonic Team spent the entire Saturn generation not making Sonic.

Also they are bad at making Sonic. Quite possibly the worst developer of Sonic

 

[Malajax]

I don't have anything to back this up but I honestly believe that Sonic Boom was an earnest attempt by Sega to see if a developer outside of their umbrella had what it takes to develop a major 3D Sonic title, but since it was such a dumpster fire of an endeavor, they went back to the old college try of having Sonic Team fart out mediocre projects.

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Yup. They didn't give it the time or resources to succeed, but blame the devs instead of looking at themselves as the publishers. While Sonic could desperately use a new perspective from an outside studio, Sega won't be giving anyone else a chance. Real shame.

Actually, there haven't been any non Sonic team games that weren't a Sumo Digital joint or Sonic Maniab since, huh?

 

[Man God]

Yup. They didn't give it the time or resources to succeed, but blame the devs instead of looking at themselves as fbs publishers. While Sonic could desperately use a new perspective from an outside studio, Sega won't be giving anyone else a chance. Real shame.

Actually, there haven't been any non Sonic team games that weren't a Sumo Digital joint or Sonic Maniab since, huh?

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I forget were there any 3DS Sonic games after Boom?

 

[scitek]

I think Generations turning out to be a solid game ended up being their downfall. Up to that point, they had strived for mediocrity, and exceeding that goal caused a rift in the team that could never be fixed.

 

[Malajax]

I forget were there any 3DS Sonic games after Boom?

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Just the 3ds Sonic Boom game to my recollection... Which was likely a flop as well

 

[SNRUB]

Yup. They didn't give it the time or resources to succeed, but blame the devs instead of looking at themselves as the publishers. While Sonic could desperately use a new perspective from an outside studio, Sega won't be giving anyone else a chance. Real shame.

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It still guts me to this day that Boom single-handedly fucked up any chance Big Red Button had at doing large scale projects. They certainly had the potential of tackling something of AAA caliber but were heckled left and right by corporate henpecking that tainted their reputation.

 

[Dooble]

As well as Puyo Puyo Tetris

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Puyo Puyo games are a given, like Mario & Sonic.

 

[Footos22]

Oh ffs the only fault is sonic team themselves. Incompetent. I hope frontiers proves me wrong.

 

[TheEchosOfTheCyborg]

Fully no with Sonic Boom Rise of Lyric and I'd argue the opposite, Big Red Button really got screwed over by Sonic Team and Sega's incompetence and poor marketing choices.

Like flip flopping on what they wanted and kept telling Big Red Button off for adding stuff Sega themselves wanted like more plot, a prequel etc. The terrible decision to have the game tie into the Sonic Boom cartoon which it had nothing to do with originally (and the show ignored and used Shattered Crystal as it's pilot anyway so what was the point). The sudden switch to a WiiU exclusive mid-development despite running on an engine the WiiU didn't support... It's like Sega tried so hard to kill any chance it had.

 

[Doctor_Thomas]

To a degree, I admire Sonic Team's refusal to stick with a format and continually try to change up what they're doing.

On the other hand, sometimes iteration is better than innovation.

I don't think there's anything really to blame for why the likes of Forces turned out the way it did other than the fact Sonic Team is very, very inconsistent anyway, if I'm being generous, and I don't think they ever really understood what made their own games good.

Frontiers has been made with the view that 3D Sonic games were not giving players enough freedom..... but, arguably, the 2 most popular 3D Sonic games (the Adventure games) offer next to no freedom in their levels. Like, I've seen those 3D Sonic fan games that are open world and they look utterly directionless for that reason and the things I've seen of Frontiers seem to take the view that's what people want.

 

[Tokyo_Funk]

Sonic Team seems to take 2 steps forward, not see when things work well then decide to shoot themselves in the foot, rather than maintain momentum. Lots of incredibly unaware or misinformed ideas on what the market likes.

 

[The Deleter]

Well for one, Sonic Lost World already had jank, so the fact that Forces was built on top of it (according to modders) already ensures some of that same jank carries over. Same with game design philosophy, as the lead level designer only worked on Sonic Lost World previously, and it shows with how the "sections" are segmented.

But on the other hand... what if I told you there's more to the story...

Iizuka: "It's with immense pride that we are finally able to bring "Sonic Forces" to our many fans worldwide. With that said, the road to fruition was anything but smooth. Major changes to the content were made while development was underway, and at times the project's whole future was even called into question.

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Iizuka's quote from Forces' OST notes

 

[nbnt]

No, it's because Sega and Sonic Team didn't give a fuck.

 

[Dooble]

Maybe I was wording this wrong.

Of course Sega and Sonic Team are to blame. I am just trying to rationalize how and why it happened. The whole "3 years of work on a lighting engine" narrative is too thin imo.

 

[BlazeHedgehog]

I would argue it's less that Sonic Team "doesn't give a fuck" and it's more to do with time and budget pressure.

Remember, Sonic Heroes and Shadow the Hedgehog were produced back to back in like two years. There's documented interviews where members of Sonic Team mention working to the point of physical exhaustion on those games. Some people had to take medical leave to recover from how brutal the crunch was. Takashi Iizuka, the current head of what was Sonic Team, worked in like four or five different departments to get Shadow the Hedgehog out the door. He wrote the story, he designed the levels, he directed the cutscenes, etc.

Not because he was too controlling or whatever, but more likely because the development of Shadow the Hedgehog was so tight and understaffed by Sega that he had to basically kill himself on that game or risk jeopardizing his job. And unsurprisingly, once Shadow the Hedgehog came out, Takashi Iizuka more or less stepped away from the Sonic franchise for five years. Sega chewed that man up and spit him out.

If Sonic Forces only had three level designers, I imagine it's not for a lack of trying. Sonic Forces was, as I recall, announced as "Project Sonic 2017" barely even 18 months before the game shipped. It wasn't given an official title until the game was less than a year away from launching, and Sega refused to show the game to the press at all until only a matter of months before it released. Sega originally swore up and down that Forces had been in development for four years, but the more common theory now is that Hedgehog Engine 2 (the technology underneath Forces) is what took four years and the game itself was slapped together at the last second.

A prototype game script for Sonic Forces was leaked at some point and it describes a game that is a little more ambitious in terms of visual design and cutscene direction. It would seem that the game was cut to pieces, simplified down and down, until they reached a point of "minimum viable shippable." That team and that game was undoubtedly put through the ringer, something Sega has seemingly always done. The evidence and the stories of this kind of thing are endless.

You have to remember that after Generations, Sonic Team wanted to "close the book" on boost-centric games and try something new. That gave us Sonic Lost World, a game that bombed super hard because it was stuck on the Wii U. I remember hearing (speculative) sales figures of "under 100k sold" at launch. This put Sega into a panic, and they basically sent the Sonic Boom games out to die. Sega had an exclusivity deal with Nintendo at this time, and it seems like they immediately regretted it, because they figured out a way to get Nintendo to let them out of it early (the deal was for three Wii U games, and Sega only made two; they retroactively claimed that Mario & Sonic Sochi was one of the three).

Sonic Forces was meant to be their easy slam dunk. An apology game for Lost World and Sonic Boom. But then that game got dragged down by budget, time and staffing issues, too, it seems.

So it goes, over and over and over again.

 

[Uncle at Nintendo]

It is crazy to think that no matter how Sonic Team is trying to kill Sonic, he still is alive.

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Honestly it truly is a testament to Sonic's character design that he's still a very popular character despite so many shit games.

 

[LinkStrikesBack]

Even the well regarded Sonic Generations and Sonic Mania only sold 1.85 million and 1 million respectively.

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Sonic generations and mania definitely sold more than that, but Sega basically stops giving updates on sales performance very early in games life, and while they'll have been at slashed prices, those games kept getting mentions in Sega financial reports as games that kept selling.

 

[Don Fluffles]

As well as Puyo Puyo Tetris

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Not just Puyo Puyo Tetris, but the entire Puyo series since Sega acquired the IP. There's a good reason why you see more sequels to this than any non-Tetris puzzle franchise.

I blame Sega for their handling of the Sonic IP. I recall an earlier thread on just how unpredictable the execs in Sega Japan were.

 

[BlueStarEXSF]

Well for one, Sonic Lost World already had jank, so the fact that Forces was built on top of it (according to modders) already ensures some of that same jank carries over. Same with game design philosophy, as the lead level designer only worked on Sonic Lost World previously, and it shows with how the "sections" are segmented.

But on the other hand... what if I told you there's more to the story...



Iizuka's quote from Forces' OST notes

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Forces absolutely went through development hell. I'm really tired of people saying Sonic Team is incompetent. If people actually played their games, they'd realize that most of their shortcomings aren't born of incompetence but instead SEGA pushing those games out before they could be properly finished.

 

[Foffy]

The reason Yakuza may be seen so positively and Sonic being seen potentially negatively have the same conditions around them. Deadlines and having to get things done quickly. Yakuza is able to reuse the same city since 2005 in some form. They reuse everything they can get away with, from animations to music. Sonic is kind of upending the previous game because it has to be all new, all fresh, completely new ideas and radically different foundations. These are, obviously, not given the resources to genuinely flourish in a way other companies, most notably Nintendo, do with their own platforming games.

Sonic Heroes was a game made under such difficult conditions that series producer, Takashi Izuka, lost 22 pounds. Think about that again for a moment: Sonic Heroes, a sort of by-the-numbers Adventure era Sonic game, a multiplatform game as was commonplace at the time, was made under such dire conditions the series producer lost 22 fucking pounds working on it. And this is before, as another user said, Izuka nearly manned the ship himself for Shadow the Hedgehog. Stress and difficult deadlines and overhead are entirely what's been sandbagging Sonic here. Atlus and the Megami Tensei games can get very long development cycles, but for whatever reason, Sega doesn't afford that to arguably their most popular IP. Think of how long it took to make Persona 5. Can you name a single Sonic game given that level of time in the oven? All you're coming up with for the sake of comparison are fangames.

Sonic Boom, explicitly, emphasizes this. It was made on an engine and planned for platforms that weren't the Wii U, but Sega didn't give a shit and told them to downgrade it for the platform with a strict holiday deadline. It turned out to be a mess. Historically speaking, Sega doesn't delay Sonic games to make sure they're the best they can be, but only when they're sure the game is too problematic for the consume to by, given they've done it on multiple occasions.

People who call out Sonic Team as being "bad" need to really see who is not giving them the resources to flourish. Whereas most major companies would delay a project if it didn't look ready, Sega has consistently shown a "eh, fuck it, who cares" kind of attitude to such a large IP for them, and many people just point their fingers at the developer and not the publisher telling them to make a house out of shoestring and a weeks notice.

 

[HerotheChosen]

I think you're overthinking it, Sonic Team is just bad. Anytime they do something good they discard it for the next game. Unleashed, Colors, Lost World, Generations all had good ideas but the team just can't put together a good game and any good parts about them just get left behind for the next game.

 

[Lmwanderer]

I think you're overthinking it, Sonic Team is just bad. Anytime they do something good they discard it for the next game. Unleashed, Colors, Lost World, Generations all had good ideas but the team just can't put together a good game and any good parts about them just get left behind for the next game.

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That's because that's usually not how Sonic Team makes games. Like the OP was stating its because teams get jumbled and people shifted around. The colors team went straight to working on Lost World. Way back the Sonic Adventure team split in half, one half doing bugfixes for the international version while a core dedicated team went to the US and created Sonic Adventure 2 with more of a skeleton crew. Sonic 06 had the team broken up. A B-team to work on the Wii port which became Sonic and the Secret Rings, with half of the main team (thereabouts) leaving with Yuji Naka to form Prope so to keep the executiven mandated release window kept cutting back more and more. Unleashed may have been the one time they had all hands on deck and the production values show. The spinoff for that was Dimps so it didnt hurt their production line at all. Of course, WearHog but yeah.

Sega has had a lot of internal departments split and merge behind the scenes. Forces in interviews was touted as being a lot of fresh new programmers brought in which was also possibly because of turnover. BlazeHedgehog and BlueStarEXSF are definitely right about them having to scale the project back. Somehow they ended up with only a year to create the game and a lot went into retooling the game engine first. I don't think we even know much about how things worked out like that other than nebulous "Execs set a deadline".

Even with one or two old Sonic Team Alumni coming back in less critical rolls. The level Designers who were touted as some of the best in Unleashed for daytime stages left after they had finished with Generations. Lost world tried to design a more parkour oriented title and with better level design on a more powerful system i'd like to see an example. Which I in part figure that Frontiers might be.

Its 1/3 Turnover, 1/3 Inexperience, and 1/3 ineffective implementation of team building more or less. I agree with Foffy that they haven't been given the tools to succeed.

Also agree about Sonic Boom as well. I think more of its older state as Sonic Synergy had leaked footage which showed it was definitely a level above the final product and had to be carved up to work on the Wii U. It was a double whammy, strict release dates on top of a contractual obligation when Sega made a Nintendo exclusivity deal. At least the cartoon was enjoyable.

 

[RockmanBN]

Sonic Team is bad.

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yes but unironically

 

[fiendcode]

I thought the Mario & Sonic and Olympics team was absorbed directly from the AM group (Family Entertainment)? It wasn't the core Sonic platformer team? Sort of like how Riders was done by ex-UGA and also not the platform team?

 

[Dooble]

I thought the Mario & Sonic and Olympics team was absorbed directly from the AM group (Family Entertainment)? It wasn't the core Sonic platformer team? Sort of like how Riders was done by ex-UGA and also not the platform team?

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Both Riders and M&S games teams were sorta merged with the usual ST people. M&S games were initially made by the same people who always made sports games at Sega (Osamu Ohashi). But mid-way during development there was a slight increase of people that worked on Sonic Team (Shun Nakamura). Riders had people that worked on Sonic Adventure DX and UGA people.

As one mentioned before Takashi Iizuka (and Kazuyuki Hoshino) moved away from Sonic, and after NiGHTS: JoD they worked on the Winter Olympic game in 2009, and by that time the they were fully mixed in with the regular ST folk. Sonic Origins was mostly developed by the people that did Tokyo Olympics 2020.

 

[grand]

Boom was unrelated to Sonic Team and had no effect on them. And Forces was bad but sold well so it's not like their development time went to nothing.

Also, Sonic Team is actually a part of Asia & Japan Studio Div. 2 and also worked on the Sakura Wars, Puyo Puyo & Valkyrie Chronicles franchises. So their output is higher than you are portraying it as.