What do you think of Stealth’s latest twitter thread regarding the state of Sonic Origins, the lack of a Mania follow up, and his issues with corporate/industry gaming companies?
I mean it's a lot of what I already assumed and it's something I've been trying to explain in some of my videos.
When you become a big corporation, that means a lot of red tape. That means budget reports, scheduling, everything has to be kept within the lines and documented for company records and for tax records. Nothing can exist outside of the boundaries of what is written in ink.
I explained this on one of my Sonic Origins videos, and I kind of explained it I think in my Top 10 Unleashed Tips videos:
The reason emulators and fan-made remasters can be absolutely perfect and super feature-rich is because a fan can choose to do that work purely out of passion, and they will sometimes do it forever. Totally for free.
MAME, for instance, largely the most robust emulator on earth, has been in constant active development since 1997. No corporation would (or could!) ever fund anything like that.
Fans do it because they want to, because they want to get it right, and they will take as much time as that takes to happen. It could be weeks, it could be years. And you either accomplish that goal, keep working on it, or get bored and move on. Go look at the Dolphin changelog and see how many current bugfixes are things they've been trying to squash for 3 years, 5 years, 10+ years.
What does that look like if you're doing this officially for Sega?
You gather together a pitch, which describes what you want to do. You have to figure out a budget, staff list, pay rates, and a target release window. You make your pitch to some managers, and they decide whether or not what you want to do is worth doing.
It's worth mentioning you cannot just pitch your dream unrestricted. Otherwise everybody would be pitching "give me a billion dollars to make GTA7." You have to be mindful. You have to be frugal. You have to figure out the minimum viable product while still containing the vision of your dream. And you can't look too desperate or too cheap, either, because then you're insulting the company, and/or suggesting your project isn't worth very much. You have to thread the needle of what looks just right for your project.
So you get lucky enough and get greenlit, and they tell you your budget. It is either what you asked for, or it is less. It is probably less. You hire the people you specified. You start work, moving towards the deadline (we'll say two years for a smaller project).
All of this is on the books now. You are under contract. Contracts are binding. You can't really change anything without meetings and paperwork and the threat of those managers cutting your cord. You have to do what you said you would do, exactly in the way you said you would do it, and no less.
You have milestone meetings every three months. Maybe even every month. Those managers want to check in and see how things are going to make sure you haven't deviated from the plan. Chances are, you've run into some problems, and it is your job to solve those problems so the train arrives at the station on time.
Then your project gets publicly announced. There's no turning back now. It's set in stone. Disruptions will not be tolerated. You have a release date. Generally speaking, you are not allowed to change it. You cannot delay the train for anything. It has to arrive at the station exactly when it's due. There is no wiggle room.
Whatever you cannot finish by the deadline will never be finished. That's the reality. And there will be things you cannot finish by the deadline. You have to prioritize what matters. There are always problems, there are always compromises, but you still gotta arrive at the station.
As work is wrapping up, the project then has to go through certification. This does not just happen one time. Publishers usually have multiple types of certification they run a project through, and the platform holder (Playstation, Steam, etc.) have their own certification process. They're looking to make sure your subtitles are the right size, that it's not accessing the HDD too much, that the menus use the right button icons, that there are no extreme epilepsy triggers, etc.
Once everything is done and the game is certified "good enough", it becomes a gold master and you send it to manufacturing. There may be budget for a couple patches, but that's janitorial duty. The budget for patches is never going to be huge.
When the patch budget is gone and if there's no DLC, then the books are closed. The game is done. Nobody can touch it anymore. Even if you say, "I'll keep updating it for free", further development means more paperwork, more meetings, more certification, because somebody needs to be paid to keep an eye on things. The brand must be managed. Someone has to be paid for that. There is no such thing as "free" when you're dealing with a corporation. There is only "Not too cheap, but not too expensive."
So yeah. Of course fans are going to give us something like Sonic 1 Forever, Sonic 2 Absolute, Sonic 3 AIR, and the Sonic Origins Ultrafix. No deadlines, no budgets, you just go as far as your passion will take you.
But you get a corporation involved and suddenly there's going to be hard limits on what can be done, and sometimes (especially with Sonic games), that's going to be a real nasty problem.
