Ken Pontac, Warren Graff Out at Sega of America?

Two of the key writers behind the dialogue of several recent 3D Sonic titles may no longer work for Sega of America – one of them having been out of the loop for some time.

Both writers’ LinkedIn pages claim they are no longer with the company. Pontac lists his end date as sometime in 2018, while Graff lists his as October 2019. TSSZ has elected not to link those profiles here.

If accurate, that would make the writers’ final projects Sonic Forces for Pontac, and Team Sonic Racing for Graff. What’s most interesting about the potential departures is that they were not at the same time — it appears only Graff worked on TSR, where it’s typically been both writers contributing to a script, going back to Sonic Colors in 2010. That may be due to Pontac’s work on State of Decay 2, which released in May 2018.

If these are indeed departures, it’s unclear what the circumstances are behind them, and it may signal more significant changes for the Sonic brand in the works at Sega of America.

The discovery, interesting enough, was made this weekend on a whim by Mathan Sivanesan on social media:

But TSSZ’s Noah Copeland points out as part of the conversation that both writers may be contracted employees, going long lengths of time without being properly employed by SoA, and it so happens that with nothing known about the next Sonic except that it’s in development, it’s possible the duo are just currently in limbo, and those LinkedIn dates are just their last contributions:

Still, the lack of a writing credit to or apparent contribution by Pontac on TSR does raise some suspicion. Factors like the success of the Sonic movie or the tone of the next Sonic game may have compelled Sega to move on. It is also worth noting Pontac, who will turn 63 this year, is nearing retirement age.

Nothing is confirmed at the moment – we will update if we hear anything one way or the other.

This post was originally written for TSSZ News.
LMC Note: Social media posts mentioned within the text have since been deleted.