Full Transcript of Boom Portion of Stephen Frost Interview Posted
After a long night of concerns and issues about the list of bullet points that were put up related to the news of the Stephen Frost interview with SEGA Nerds there has been one further development. A transcript of the Boom portion of the interview was posted by the crew there for those who don’t have the time or patience to catch the whole interview and/or only want to learn more about the Boom portion without any confusion or potential context problems:
SEGA Nerds: What was your reaction to the Sonic Boom fallout?
Frost: Sonic Boom was a weird thing because obviously there’s pros and cons of Sonic Boom. As a whole, and this is the thing, because some reason people still focus on just the game aspects of Sonic Boom, and that’s rightfully so because Sonic has always been the game sort of thing. But you also have to think about all the other things that we tried to do with Sonic and the goal of Sonic Boom as I’ve said over the last year or so is to reach a larger audience with Sonic, to make him relevant again.
There is a very loyal Sonic fanbase, it’s no doubt, but there’s also no arguing that every year it gets smaller and smaller, through whatever means. Even if you had super high budget, triple A games and everything else every year, the install base is going to go smaller. Call of Duty’s install base is going to shrink, and we see it for every triple A, major franchise, so the attempt with Sonic Boom was to appeal to an audience that is not familiar with Sonic or was fans of Sonic maybe previously but are not fans anymore for whatever reason.
I think from that standpoint, it was a big success … I can say from that standpoint. The audience for the cartoon is really well. The licensing because the toys are doing really well. I remember hearing or reading reports, especially during the early days, the Sonic Boom toys were selling out at Toys ‘R Us in 24 hours. It was doing that for a while, and it wasn’t just the fans, it was people who were looking for something new.
I think that the classic Sonic, the Genesis-era Sonic and the Sonic Adventure Sonic redesign, people have seen it so much, and if you think about it from a manufacturer or form a licensor, they can only do so much with any character, right? Pac-Man or whatever you can only do so much with the same character design or the same sort of premise or story over and over again.
So I expect, and it felt that way, that I think people were really excited that, ‘Yes, thank goodness, we have new characters, we have new vehicles, we have a new world.” We’re kind of starting fresh again, and it injects a breath of fresh air into their thinking process and their ability to go in a direction. They’ve been stuck in a certain way, like I don’t know how many chaos emeralds you can make, you don’t really see any vehicles. I saw this again, not just for Sonic but any sort of IP how sort of stagnant it becomes and how sort of limited it becomes as far as the different toys and licensing stuff. How many times are you going to see Sonic or any character on a T-shirt, like pointing to himself or going “number 1″ it’s the same sort of stuff.
From that perspective, and you’d have to talk to them in general, but I have a feeling that the licensing partners were really excited and thankful for SEGA trying something new with Sonic. And I know Archie did too. In talking with Archie just as a casual fan, they were super excited about being able to do another comic for Sonic, because obviously Sonic has been around for their comics, for Archie, they’re a big supporter, they’re a huge fan of Sonic, and it’s been great to work with them but I could tell right away that when they were able to do a new comic book, a Sonic Boom comic, they were, the writers and artists, were super excited. Everyone I talked to over there were super excited, again because it was a new direction, a new potential.
Since this was a Western driven Sonic for the most part, the potential of stories and places to go were really excited. The voice actors too, I mean, you can’t change the voice acting of Sonic that much but there’s little nuances, right, and I think that they appreciate again, and I’m putting words in their mouth, but I think they appreciated being able to try something a little bit different. In having another character in the form of Sticks to add to the arsenal and kind of play against, and for those who have been doing it for years, I think it’s a breath of fresh air.
The cartoon has been doing really well. I know of so many people who have not had an interest, who don’t play the games of Sonic in the past who now, just arbitrarily, watch the cartoons and have bought the toys because of the cartoons. I’m like, that’s a huge success.
I was walking down the street, I live relatively near a school, and I was walking by one time, and I was wearing a Sonic Boom a T-shirt or something and a walking guard said, “Oh hey, my daughter loves Sonic. She watches it every weekend.” I was like, “Oh really?” I was asking if she had been a Sonic fan for a long time, and it was like “No, maybe for a little while, maybe for half a year or something.” And I’m like, “Really?” She said, “She saw the cartoon and really loves Amy in the cartoon. She just loves Sonic now, so she keeps asking me to buy Sonic stuff at the store.”
So that’s what I say to people, that is one sort of classic case I walk across, but there’s many numerous cases of people who have come into the Sonic world for the first time because of either the new toys or the look of the characters, love it or not, or the cartoon.
And that’s why I consider that a big success. As an initiative, I personally think Sonic Boom was really cool. Could it have been better? Yes, but there are so many different people you have to work with. You think about the licensing partners, the cartoon partners and figuring out where the cartoon is going to go in the world and who you have to negotiate with is so much work. But the fact that it’s a new design for Sonic allowed us to get people excited and hopefully the cartoon will end up all around the world. If it does, I think it’s because of the new direction, because people feel it’s a breath of fresh air for the character, it’s not the same that it was in the past and that’s why they’re showing an interest now.
I think in many ways it’s helped Sonic. Going back to the games, yeah could the games have been better? Yes. Any game I’ve worked on could be better. I have major faults with every game I’ve worked with, even ones that have rated highly and even ones that have rated lowly.
I come across people who love Shinobi, but I look at Shinobi and all I see are issues, and issues and issues and issues. But there are people who love it, and in the case of the Sonic Boom games, I see both. I see that we tried to do something different.
I think the challenge is that if you think about it like this, Sonic Team has been making Sonic games for 20 odd years, right? They understand Sonic and little things that make a Sonic game.
In a relatively short amount of time, we had to teach new teams what Sonic is all about. If I were to say, “You have to make a speed-based Sonic game. Do it.” They would have to start from ground zero, they would have to catch up to 24 years of experience in the length of a single development time, and that’s just to create a basic Sonic game.
Now imagine asking, “OK, you’ve got to reinvent Sonic. You’ve got to try something different. You still have to capture the speed, but you’ve got to be different enough that when people look at it, it’s a different sort of experience.”
It’s really tough and we had very ambitious goals. We really wanted to deliver on something that people were excited about that managed to capture the speed but also added new gameplay components because the thing we kept hearing in focus tests all the time was, “Oh, it’s all about speed all the time. I can’t play Sonic anymore because it’s too fast.” I’m like OK, let’s try to slow him down, but that of course pisses off people who like traditional Sonic games. So you try to find a middle ground – OK, let’s try to have speed but we also need this other stuff.
I think the failures of the game is it being overly ambitious initially and the fact that not only were we trying make just a really good basic Sonic game, but we were trying to add more to it. I think that our reach overextended our grasp in some ways.
Did I learn a lot from that? Yes, but some things that I think came across really positively were the co-op mode. I kept hearing back that people really liked that and the dual-screen mode and that’s something hopefully Sonic Team will consider doing in the future, that sort of co-op experience.
I think the biggest sort of mistakes were trying to cram too much into the game and because of that, you’re sort of scrambling to try to finish the game in a lot of ways. There’s a reason the Sonic games are high quality but they’re very basic in their design. There’s a simple core mechanic – you’ve got speed, running, platforming, homing attacks and all enemies are defeated the same way. Because of that and because Sonic Team have worked on it for so many years, they can fine tune that and build a world around it to use that stuff.
We’re trying to add in a bungee mechanic, combat, puzzles, vehicles and hopefully a more compelling story and a bunch of different environments and it’s just a lot. I think that’s the thing, and if there’s any lesson for me and something I’ll take forward with me is that being too ambitious can be bad.
In the past, I’ve always tried to be ambitious, I’ve always tried to push development teams to get out of their safety box because there’s two ways to do development – there’s teams that are really good about a schedule and they will always hit their release date but the product you get is solid but it’s never going to spark any criticism or positive feedback in any way. It’s not going to elicit emotion or any sort of thing. And then there’s other groups, either by their own way or their producer pushing them to get out of their comfort zone that you end up with a product, good or bad, that causes people to think about it because there’s some aspects of it that you don’t see or not. I’ve always been the sort of producers who’s tried to push teams beyond where they’re comfortable or possible.
I’ll give you some examples, so one of my first early games on the PSP, and it wasn’t the greatest game, but it was Crazy Taxi: Fare Wares. Some people hate that game, it’s Crazy Taxi 1 and 2 on PSP. What we wanted to do and what I tried to push the team to do which was extremely difficult was to have online modes. A game that was not designed by any means to have online modes, but I pushed the team, and we created some interesting online modes where people could play against each other in Crazy Taxi. Imagine taking that old source code and trying to do something with that.
In Universe at War, it was an RTS I did with Petroglyph, they’re great RTS guys, and I’m like, “OK, you’re a PC guy, we’re doing this for 360, let’s allow PC gamers to play against 360.” The only company able to do that before was Microsoft, and they did it on a server-side where both games talked to a server. We had to do it peer-to-peer, so a PC had to connect to a 360 and just interact with each other, which no one has ever done. No one has still ever done it, but we felt we could do it, so I tried to push the team to do that, and were able to do it.
So I’m always trying to push the team out of their comfort zone to do something that’s bigger, that will wow people or interest people. Sometimes, it works out and sometimes it doesn’t.
I think really what happened with Sonic Boom is that we tried to take a character that has evolved over 20 odd years into a very tight experience, and we didn’t ask them to just make a version of that, we asked them to make a version of that plus all this other stuff. I think that, in hindsight, was just a lot to ask of any development team. So I guess in learning, that is something I’ll keep in mind in the future, but I’ll continue to push teams because that’s where greatness comes out of.
The story that I come up with, that I remember was in God of War. The first God of War, which people hail as an amazing game, but most people don’t know that for a lot of people on the team, that was their very first job in the video game industry, and that was their last job in the video games industry. That game tore through a lot of people, and there were a lot of bodies by the wayside by the end of it. But you know what, it was an amazing game. It sparked a new IP, and there’s no one that argues that from a quality perspective that God of War isn’t an amazing series, it’s amazing. But it took a lot of casualties along the way, but that’s because Jaffe pushed people to the end to try to deliver on something high-end.
Fortunately, he had the resources of Sony and all this other stuff, but it’s a lot of people get close but don’t get over that hump of what is an amazing experience. I was trying to deliver on an experience that was, I love the Sonic fanbase, I wanted to deliver on an experience that makes people proud and happy, but I was also tasked with creating an experience that appeals to a larger audience that doesn’t necessarily play Sonic. In a lot of ways, those go against each other. I had err on the side to appeal to a newer audience and so it was tough.
SEGA Nerds: What would have helped you realize that vision? Would more time have helped?
Frost: Time, I don’t think would have helped because you’re on this path and you already got this game. It would have been more tighter or more polished and stuff but it’s still the experience. I think what would have benefited this game, and this is across many games, that if you could have gone back in time and during the early, conceptual stages and pre-production, focused on different things.
I would have reduced features probably, and I would have had the team focus on speed from the very get-go. We were concerned that speed was something that was the last thing that people sort of wanted because we kept hearing they were tired of speed and they wanted something else.
So I think, at least from my perspective, we put speed on the shelf for a little too long and we focused on other stuff like co-op and things like that. In hindsight, I would have made the team focus on speed at the beginning and nail the feeling of that and then let that permeate into all the other gameplay features that we’re building versus the other way around.
I think most people play the game and feel that speed feels kind of tacked on in some ways. I feel that too, and I think that’s because we weren’t focused on that as a key thing. Speed is always a Sonic thing. Sonic does speed well, and I’m like “We need to make sure that all these other things are done well.”
If I could go back in time, I would have gone back and changed the things we focused on and the number of things that we focused on back in the day. It would have been hard. This was a very ambitious project. It was the cartoon, a new toy line and many other things tied with it – we had to aim large, we had to aim big. I would have kept things a little tighter, I would have simplified a few things and gone from there.
There’s definitely a lot of lessons and learnings from it. But regardless, even if I could go back in time and changed what I was, at the end of the day, it might have been a better game, but I don’t think that people who are traditional Sonic fans still would have loved it. They wouldn’t be as enamored with it like they were with Generations or other games in recent history because it wouldn’t have been that game. It wasn’t the goal of that game, the goal of that game was to reach other people. I think in many ways it did. Could it have done better if everything was at a higher level of polish? Yes, but for what it is as a branch of Sonic and a new initiative by SEGA, I think it was wholeheartedly a success in many ways.
SEGA Nerds: Say you had the full reigns of the Sonic franchise, where do you think Sonic needs to go in the future? How do you see the franchise playing out?
Frost: The problem with Sonic is you have to build a lot of content. When speed is your number one thing, you have to build so much content and you have to spend so much time building content that a lot of things you don’t have the time and resources for.
Imagine any game, Mario or anything, if you were running as fast as Sonic. Mario has just a simple mechanic as Sonic but he moves so much slower, you have less level size and real estate to build and they can make sure that what they build is so tight. In Sonic’s case, you have to build, from a square one situation, you have to build so much content and then you have to worry that every inch of that is super high quality. It’s impossible do; I think it’s an insurmountable task to do that.
If I would have the option to create a new game, I would probably make a Sonic Adventure 3 type of game. I would choose a few characters with very key gameplay abilities and have levels dedicated to them so you can build Sonic levels and have them be perfect sort of Sonic levels, and I would try to come up with compelling experiences for the other three characters and have those levels specifically built for them. So that you could have your favorites for sure, but you wouldn’t have to build an environment that suits multiple characters.
I do think the multiple characters resonated well with people. I think people loved playing with multiple characters and having a solo Sonic game, I just don’t know how long that would last by himself. I don’t think there’s enough variety there to sustain it, so I think what you need to do is flesh out some of the other characters, really think about their abilities and make their abilities compelling and then build environments for them to go around and have fun in as well and make sort of epic adventure that way.
I think the future of Sonic needs to be in co-cop. I think that resonated well with people in Sonic Boom, so I think you need that. I think you need to have some of that community or online play that’s meaningful because I think that’s what sustains a lot of these games these days. It’s the interactions with friends to keep it going.
So the one thing I have always wanted to build which I don’t know if SEGA is ever going to build is, even for mobile, a level builder for Sonic. Everyone asks for that, and it’s really just an art heavy sort of thing. You’d have to build lots and lots of assets but imagine just for a 3DS game if you had that and Street Pass. Say you went to ComicCon and you could get this rare piece you could use to build part of your track that is only available at ComicCon or things like that and people could trade pieces. You could have leaderboards where whatever course you built, I could try to challenge your leaderboard time. I think that would be a great idea.
What people feel is the perfect Sonic game is different for all Sonic fans, so here’s your chance to build the level and environment and have fun that way. That’s another thing SEGA could do in the future that would resonate well with fans for sure. But for the franchise in general, I think you need to really do multiplayer and add in online and community aspects so friends can play with each other and the community can come together over a game and interact together. I think that would hopefully sustain and keep the interest in the franchise alive.
SEGA Nerds: When Sonic Boom was released, it was pushed forward a week. What was the reason it was pushed forward? Was that to tie it with the show being launched? My theory has always been it was pushed forward to get it out of the way of Smash Bros.
I would say that a little of both. You remember this was a deal with Nintendo, and SEGA had titles that were coming out and Nintendo had titles that were coming out and then also the cartoon ended up launching in the beginning of that month. So it made sense from a practical standpoint to get. Ideally the game was supposed to come out sort of earlier and try to match up with the cartoon or try to get people to play the game and then watch the cartoon or vice versa.
I don’t think there’s one specific answer to that. I think it’s multiple things. If you said OK, the cartoon ended up coming out at the beginning of the month, you’ve got titles from Nintendo, but you know it was never a sweet spot because the same week Assassin’s Creed came out. Yes, it’s a different market but people are so focused on one game a week sort of thing. So I think Assassin’s Creed was the big game that week, so when you’re in November, when you’re in the holiday timeframe, there’s never a sweet week or time period.
I think when we made that decision that we even knew when Smash Bros. was coming out. I don’t think Nintendo had said, but I can’t be for sure. It’s not like because we were partners Nintendo shares with us their release dates.
Honestly, I don’t think I was even aware Smash Bros. was coming out that week when we decided to move it. I think we decided to move it before we even knew what was coming out that week, and it was more about other factors like the cartoon, other titles coming out from different publishers, and we were trying to adjust it accordingly.
We also had that weird situation where we had that the weeks split between the handheld version and the console version and we were trying to resolve that too.
This post was originally written by the author for TSSZ News.
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So, as far as I can gather, development of this game was a big mess all around. No clear end goal, no idea how to accomplish their goal, and stupidly taking advice from focus groups, or at least, tragically misunderstanding them. Over-ambition was also probably a part of it, but it’s by far not the big flaw here.
And furthermore Frost, while you’re exactly right about Sonic Boom being a good idea, you seem to forget that Boom as a whole failed to deliver on all the things that you said it would do at the start. It could have breathed new life in it and opened up for new stories, but the fact is is that Sonic Boom feels no different than regular no-Boom Sonic and doesn’t establish it’s world differently enough.
And please just answer all the complaints instead of saying it could have been better. We’re not only pissed off with the removal of speed, we’re also pissed off on how buggy, boring, and toothless the game was.
You know why the Sonic fan-base is really shrinking? Because the games have been pretty crappy over the years and consumers have lost confidence in the product. Before reaching out for the new guys, consider getting Sonic’s quality back on track first, because if you release another crappy Sonic game, even if you provide separate media that’s higher quality, you’re still only hurting Sonic’s reputation in the end.
And all of this talk about the development, about how Sonic Boom was new, still doesn’t change the fact that the product was crap.
And multiplayer can easily become a cancer in any game with single-player and can easily blind you to the REAL problems.
And SEGA ARE still MORONS!!!!! who should have gotten their crap together on such a big product as this.
Here’s all those old bullet points they said needed context.
– Suggestion that Sonic had to re-invent itself because the fanbase was getting smaller. Gives Call of Duty as an example/comparison.
– Boom was made to appeal to non Sonic fans. — This is stated multiple times.
– Suggestion that people/retailers are bored of Classic – Dreamcast era Sonic. States you can only do so much with these eras/characters. He does go on to suggest this is from a retailer standpoint.
– Claims multiple times that Boom (franchise) is a big success.
– Admits Boom (franchise) could have been better.
“Could the games have been better… yes, any game can be made better.”
– Suggestion that part of the reason why Boom (game) isn’t that good is because the team didn’t know what Sonic was about/lack of experience.
“In focus tests, we heard all the time, people were sick of speed, Sonic was too fast, they wanted to slow down.”
“People really liked the Co-Op” — Hopes Sonic Team will do that in the future.
“The biggest mistake in Boom (gaame) was adding too many features to it.
“It was too much to ask of the/any development team” — In terms of different characters, combat, features etc.
“I was tasked (by Sega) with creating an experience that appeals to an audience which doesn’t play Sonic.”
“If I could do it again, I would remove features and speed would be the main focus from the start.”
“Speed was shelved because we were under the impression people didn’t want it.”
“Speed is always a Sonic thing, we didn’t focus on that.”
“The goal of Boom was to reach new people.”
“As a branch of Sonic, Boom is a success in many ways.”
– Suggests that due to how much content you need to make for a Sonic alone game, it’s too much work. You need additional characters to spread the burden of content.
“Multiple characters resonate well with people”
“Solo Sonic games, I don’t know how long that can last there isn’t enough variety to sustain it.”
“The future of Sonic games needs to be Co-Op, it worked really well in Sonic Boom, community and online play, that sustains it.”
Say’s he’d love to see a Sonic level design game.
“In general, you need to do multiplayer and add online multiplayer aspects, that will sustain and keep the franchise alive.”
Says that the reason for the change in release date was likely a number of reasons, cartoon air date, Nintendo release dates, Sega release dates.
– When the decision was made to change Boom’s release date, Sega did not know when Smash was coming out.
You’re welcomed.
I like his idea of a Sonic with a level-builder and having it be leaderboard and community focused.
Not so sure I feel where he’s coming from regarding the Sonic Boom game, though.
But hasn’t that BEEN a suggested thing? People have wanted that since Little Big Planet did it…maybe even further back.
Points wrong with Stephen Frost’s defence of Boom.
Paraphrased: CoD’s fanbase shrinks with every release, so we tried to appeal to people who hadn’t played Sonic or had lost interest to garner new fans.
CoD’s fanbase shrinks because they churn out the same thing every year, at least Sonic has mixed it up a little. Unfortunately, SEGA are that sensitive to the criticism they don’t stick with an idea for very long. That aside, they concept of appealing to people who didn’t play in the first place or just lost interested is illogical. They will not play a Sonic game if they don’t have the urge to: particularly if it as far away from what Sonic is known for as Boom is.
Paraphrased: The franchise itself is doing well.
That’s just skirting around the criticism. The franchise may be doing well, but the games were abysmal which is what the majority of criticism comes from. As for the franchise itself, you can’t call the fact that the cartoon and merchandise being successful in the USA ‘successful’. The cartoon is not aired anywhere else aside from France and as far as I know the only way to get the toys outside of America is to order them online. I’ve certainly never seen any in Britain where I lived.
You can only do so much with the same character design and the same sort of story premise over and over again.
I bet stuff like Enerjak Reborn and Bold New Moebius, hell even the incomplete Ixis Resurgence story from the Archie comics would make great games. Get a change of writers for the games and stop trying churn one out every two or three years and actually spend time on the quality instead of making a quick buck at the expense of a fanbase that’s already tearing itself apart.
Paraphrased: Sonic has been stuck a certain way. People see the new characters and vehicles and think ‘Thank goodness, new stuff’
We have plenty of characters already, the majority of them haven’t been used in years thanks to stuff like Sonic 06. It’s not the fact that it’s been ‘stuck a certain way’ that’s the problem. Ironically it’s the very thing Frost thinks is the answer: Sonic HAS NO IDENTITY as a gaming icon now because they’ve been trying to improve the franchise in a way that stops it being Sonic. He’s been through that much crap the last 15 years that you can’t pin down anything solid for him gameplay wise. I enjoyed the Adventure style levels and gameplay, but because of 06 that will never come back. I didn’t mind the Werehog, but come on! In Colours Sonic was the estranged uncle at parties with terrible jokes. Lost World kept going from really funny to really dark that it’s plot was laughable.
People like Sonic ‘a certain way’. Adding a new cast of characters to a franchise that severely underuses the ones it already has isn’t going to fix the problems it already has.
Paraphrased: The developers and licensing partners really liked the idea of taking Sonic in a new direction.
Well, yes, Sonic going in a new direction IS needed. But the biggest problem with that Mr Frost, is you didn’t listen to the fanbase. According to an article by the Hogfather on Sonic Stadium, some form of Boom as lingered since 2010 and redeveloping Sonic as an IP as far back as 2007. So if SEGA as a whole have been trying to reinvent Sonic for the past 8 years, surely they would have listened to the fans? And since Boom was announced in…2013 I think(?) nearly every fan with half brain said ‘why the fudge is this game a slow brawler?’. Developers and licensing partners are all well and good, but how many of those people are actually people between 20-30 that have grown up playing Sonic and have some idea of what the fans want? How many of them are more likely to be 50+ with a history of business? I mean, one of the Presidents of EA marketed food before he joined EA.
TL;DR- Listening to the fans should take priority, not listening to old men in grey suits.
Since this is a Western driven Sonic there’s so many exciting places to go
Really? Where are these new places?
Ancient civilization: existed in the Japanese canon since SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 1
Time travel: Sonic CD, Sonic 06, Sonic Generations
Ancient evil: Dark Gaia
Goofy new character: Chip
Chaos crystals: Chaos Emeralds
Will that do?
People have watched the cartoons and bought toys because of it. It’s a huge success.
See earlier point. I notice he didn’t mention RoL and SC. Again.
Paraphrased: If the cartoon ends up worldwide, it’s because of the new direction.
The new direction you say? Because most people say it reminds them of the old 90s cartoon, so that shoots your belief in the kneecaps don’t it? Again, this idea that the Sonic Boom franchise is a new direction…it MIGHT be if you actually placed everything worldwide in the first place! Most of the world’s opinions on Boom as a WHOLE game from a meh 3DS game and a steaming pile of crap that makes Sonic 06 look like frigging Sonic 3! Maybe, if your partners etc thought ahead, actually LOOKED at the game and compared it to the other games OR played the damn thing at all, they’d have had the foresight to give the world the cartoons, instead of just the USA while the rest of the world illegal downloads them.
TL;DR: Because the rest of the world doesn’t have it all yet, we can’t see this ‘new direction’ you keep talking about.
Could it have been better? Yes
Finally, we agree on something.
Paraphrased: The team was too inexperienced to make a speed based Sonic game.
Alright, I don’t want to say ‘it’s not that hard’. You’re making a video game, of course it will be hard. But I doubt that’s it that hard to make a speed based Sonic game. Like Frost said, there’s been 24 years of Sonic there’s plenty to take influence from. I mean, look at these mods and the Before the Sequel/After the Sequel games. Just a basic knowledge of game development would suffice.
People in the focus tests complained it was about speed all the time.
Pffft!!! Are you actually being serious?? You’re trying to say people making a SONIC THE HEDGEHOG GAME complained that it was all about SPEED??? Who the actual fudge were in these focus tests?? Sonic’s MEANT to be about speed, it’s basic principle is speed. It’s not even about pissing off traditionalists, it’s the fact that you took SPEED out of a game that is KNOWN for SPEED. Of course you’re gonna piss people off!
I think the failures of the game is it being overly ambitious and the fact we were trying to make a basic Sonic game but add more to it.
The first one, yes you were. The second excuse? No. Just. No.
Unleashed was a basic Sonic game with ‘more to it’ (the Werehog)
Colours was a basic Sonic game with ‘more to it’. Wisps.
Generations. A return to 2D classic gameplay.
Lost World. A parkour system that probably would work if it was refined.
Your second excuse is invalid.
Paraphrased: People liked the co-op
F*** off.
Paraphrased: We tried to add too much: power ups, a bungee mechanic, etc.
This one…I’m on the fence about, the SEGA/Nintendo deal didn’t help, I’m sure SEGA was hounding them about it and the walk outs/layoffs didn’t help matters. But the question remains. Why did they think it was a good idea to do all that if they weren’t experienced enough.
Paraphrased: Sonic’s speed based gameplay makes it hard to make something of brilliant looking quality. With other platformers like Mario you can spend more time making the build tight.
What sort of excuse is that? You’re trying to make it sound as though the bad quality of Boom, or modern Sonic in general, is down to speed. It’s core dynamic. The thing that makes Sonic bad is the thing that Sonic is known for. I just…I don’t even.
Look at Unleashed, one of the most thrilling and beautiful looking Sonic games ever. Super fast, but Sonic Team didn’t go ‘Oh, well it’s that fast that I won’t even bother texturing it properly or making sure you don’t END UP IN THE TEST LEVELS’ MR. FROST I’M LOOKING AT YOU.
Even the original five: 1, 2, 3, CD and Knuckles, were fast and beautiful to look at.
I think the future of Sonic lies in co-op. It’s what sustains a lot of games these days.
Why is this necessary? Most games sustained by multiplayer are FPS, not platformer.
Paraphrased: To sustain Sonic it needs multiplayer and community aspects.
While the level builder/community thing is a good idea, adding these to Sonic will not fix the core problems. The franchise is broken at its core and is run by a group of people who don’t know what they’re doing but will refuse to listen to the people that know what the fanbase wants. Literally, we are yelling at them to stop and take a break (have a KitKat) and FIX the problem instead of smashing it and gluing it back together time and again.
That just about covers my thoughts.
I suppose that, in a way, Frost did reinvent Sonic and will be known in the fanbase for doing although for all the wrong reasons.
I stopped reading this about 2/3 through, but that was more than I can say of the actual interview.
Sorry, I ended up ranting a smidge.
I agree with pretty much everything you said.
I already let my steam off regarding this issue elsewhere, so I’m able to enter a bit more cool headed here.
But you’ve pretty much summed up all of my thoughts.
If they really wanted to re-invent Sonic, THIS would have been the perfect opportunity to combine the gameplay of 3D Sonic with Monkey Ball to finally have a momentum-driven 3D Sonic game.
Show SEGA of Japan that the west can pull off something never done before in the land of the rising sun.
…but nope, co-op brawling it is… because according to Mr.Frost, everyone asked for it. And the bajillion alternate gameplay styles they tried to implement.
I was going to write a very long comment, but you summed up everything I wanted to say. Fantastic. Well-said. :’)
“Paraphrased: Sonic’s speed based gameplay makes it hard to make something of brilliant looking quality. With other platformers like Mario you can spend more time making the build tight.
What sort of excuse is that? You’re trying to make it sound as though the bad quality of Boom, or modern Sonic in general, is down to speed. It’s core dynamic. The thing that makes Sonic bad is the thing that Sonic is known for. I just…I don’t even.”
Yeah, so Frost basically said that the speed is making it impossible to make a good, nice looking Sonic game. Despite his own game was pretty much the slowest Sonic and in existence AND the worst Sonic game in existence.
Even if we consider only the 3D Sonic games, I never noticed that the speed of those games would in any way hinder the level design or technical graphics. Even Sonic the Hedgehog 2006 looked beautiful. If you looked how detailed the environments were, both the environments along the path and the background… the speed never really hindered it. And games like SA and SA2 prove that the speed can be easily a part of level design. I never mentioned that those games would be less detailed or anything.
If anything, Frost prove that slowing the game down to the max will actually cause the very errors he wanted to evade. The game lacks details, content, feels empty, is boring and dull… And the slow speed only emphasizes it.
There is some true wording about the community… just take something like Sonic Generations and give it a Steam Workshop page. It would really benefit from it.
Man, this guy kept going on and on about vehicles. Why the hell would we ever need vehicles in a Sonic game? Vehicles are only meant for those spinoffs like Riders or ASR. Whenever we got vehicles in the main game, it was always just small minigames like in Lost World or Adventure.
And co-op? No dude. I understand multiplayer. Sonic has always had that multiplayer side but SEGA has never expanded on that. I still can’t figure out why SEGA doesn’t use the Adventures/Heroes/Colors VS mode and just make it online compatible instead of just Leaderboards. It’s more fun to actually compete against another player instead of just trying to beat their score all the time.
@Dominic
THIS. THIS THIS THIS THIS.
Basically everything I was thinking on his points.
Thanks xD
The Order: 1886 is a great example.
Since you brought up Pixar, I learned from reading Ryan’s blog, that in an interview about Sonic Unleashed, Sonic Team was inspired by Pixar and TF2 ( a game that I haven’t even played, but know its good) for animation. I’d like to see that more.
And no, you were not off topic, If anything I agree with practically everything you said.
I loved reading this for the business sides of the franchise. It’s unfortunately not only Frost who probably feels the franchise needes new breath. It may have came from SEGA, who wanted Sonic to evolve, versus de-evolve.
Quality of games is definitely a huge reason for the fail of the franchise. But Frost isnt wrong on the importance of adding in “fresh air” as well. It just has to be quality refreshing air.
I gotta say this:
Mr. Frost, you have NO talent. It doesn’t matter what excuse you give for Rise of Lyric, you guys simply sucked at game development. You made one of the worst games of all time, literally!
Even if everything went according to plan, the game would have still been terrible. I based this opinion entirely on the responses you’ve given in the interview. You and your team had no idea of what makes a good game. You don’t. You’ve probably played some good games but(much like any other medium) that doesn’t account for shit in actually making one. That takes talent which you don’t have.
Just needed to get that off my chest.
Sonic Boom in a nutshell…
I wonder what issues he referred to when he spoke about Shinobi. That was an excellent game (Shinobi 3D) that rightfully deserved the love it got. Throwing that game under the bus, just for the sake of Boom seems highly unprofessional of him, and only hurts SEGA and one of their best games.
So, before reading this interview, I could say with confidence that the sole biggest problem this franchise has is that they try experimentation a bit too much.
But now I get there’s an equally problematic issue; SEGA isn’t exactly sure who they should market Sonic towards.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t tell you the solution to these two problems. They’re complicated ones, especially since the release of Sonic Boom (game). I can only tell you that they’re big issues that need fixing before Sonic Team releases they’re next main series title.
Hmm! These are very thoughtful and reflective words. I didn’t think I’d say this, but I’d probably trust this guy with another game, despite the results of the first Sonic Boom. It seems as though he really learned a lot form the experience, and I’d like the ideas he has for moving forward. (Thought I wish I had a friend my age that would play a new Sonic Co-op with me! Bah.)
Am i the only one thinking that the sonic games doesn’t need a new start or trying something new? who really wanted a slo-mo beat’em all? … Sonic games have been great in 2D, the best time for the franchise to my point of view. I sometime think there should still be new 2D classic sonic games made (even with 16-bit graphics and gameplay ^^). Time goes by, then 3D arrived, and 3D sonic games too. There again were good sonic games, From Adventures 1 & 2 to unleashed, generations, colours etc. They were not perfect, but were good. most of the flaws were technical issues, like cameras. I think the 2d sonic games perfectly suited the genesis/megadrive era, it ws doing the best it could at its time, fun, speed, action, nice looking etc… problem with modern sonic games is they haven’t been fiting as well to the recent hardwares. 3D sonic games need to keep the bases from the adventure era, maybe add some from the unleashed /generations era, and even try to take the “sort-of open world “from sonic boom (which was a good idea, just terribly wrongly executed). I mean the next sonic game doesn’t need to create something totally new, it needs to take the best parts of existing models, mixing it, polishing it, tightening it.
No more sonic boom weird things, changing the chara design, the enemies, etc. Mario always kept it “classic” in a way, and always succedded in great games, sonic should be capable to do the same! sega just need to take time to think about a good , solid sonic game, not rushed, not awkward, not totally revolutionnary. they should really have made a new 3d tv show based on the real chara design, real badniks (who would have made AWESOME toys!), real background (green hills & co need to come alive!). I fear the boom franchise just killed sonic franchise for the next 10/15 years… hope i’m wrong.
SEGA, you are not allowed to fuck up sonic 25th anniversary, OK?
about time they open their eyes look at the bigger picture..SEGA should have never contract with Nintendo..and too late for anymore promised coming from Nintendo future, nobody knows what Nintendo plan next..but all i know SEGA need to think about where are the fans at, majority at SONY side and other half at Microsoft..so thinking about the bigger fish where is the money is at..SONIC BOOM was promising but with console like WiiU is not like the shiny PS3 what Ratchet and Clank done very well to begin with..its SONY masterpiece and good thing SEGA didn’t push any money on that product since they don’t want to waste that money on a console has no future..SEGA and SONY is teaming up on MOVIE released then SONIC TEAM has big plans for final PS4 game release might be connected with the movie or not but fans are hoping this might be it or the franchise is dead at hands of sony…i have very creative mind of how to make the franchise greater and go forward in the new direction..my approach is have a twist on the plot that is connected with Rivals and Rush…let say mecha sonic v3 is the puppet master and Dr. NEGA is a puppet controlled by machine well let say that something happen long ago from his past that seems Dr. NEGA is still alive somewhere in the machine…the rest is up to your imagination
This interview is terrible. It proves how little Frost, BRB and even SEGA know about Sonic.
How is it possible that the IP of Sonic the Hedgehog franchise is held by people who are so completely clueless about everything. They are even proud to confess it. And they don’t seem to mind it.
After reading this whole thing, it looks like that SEGA really knows that Sonic is in a bad shape – but again, SEGA is clueless about the reasons why it is so. If Frost views are even remotely similar with the views of current SEGA executives, it means that they literally still only divide Sonic into 2D (Classic) and 3D (modern). And they think that because of Sonic 4, people are bored of Classic Sonic and because of Sonic Lost World, people are bored of modern Sonic.
They just don’t admit that the content of the current Sonic games is awful. They attribute it to some allegedly natural decline in interest about the franchise for lack of new stuff in it. Despite the new stuff was being introduced to it in every game and people kept hating it. They just completely forgot about the reason why Sonic ever worked in the first place and they only think that Sonic is just fundamentally flawed because of the current decline in sales.
I have never seen so much denial condensed into one interview.
If he made all those outrageous statements before Boom was released, I think it would even kill the hype for those people who are it’s biggest defenders today.
Making it look like Sonic games were never good or that they were stagnating because of things we liked about them? Thinking that only by changing everything we can like those games again? Nobody EVER tried to make a good Adventure game since SA2 and nobody ever tried to make another Adventure game after 06. That’s almost 10 years. How is it possible that we are allegedly already sick of all those Adventure Sonic games? How are we sick of Classic Sonic games even? Sonic 4 was a cheap clone of the Classics, not a real Classic game in any kind of way.
And saying that people in the focus group were sick of speed? Who the heck were the people in the focus group? Seniors? Making a Sonic game and choosing people for the focus group to be people who hate speed? Ooooh…
And then Frost killed it by saying that every game is not perfect as a counter argument if Sonic Boom is a bad game… So yeah – you could call Sonic Boom a bad game, but every game has it’s flaws like… I dunno – Shadow of Mordor for example. So that means that Sonic Boom can have “flaws” too. I haven’t heard a more stupid way to evade evaluation of any game ever.
And then he says that all of his other games he ever made were similarly flawed.
He is done in the industry.
Who is gonna employ him now, eh?
I can picture it now:
Employer: “OK mister Frost. We would like to give you a chance, even though you made the infamous Sonic Boom game…”
Frost: “Hold on! That was a great game! It was a great success and I can guarantee you that every game you will get from me will reach Sonic Boom’s quality!”