Yeah, he’s not doing too well. A little while ago he posted an update on his YouTube channel. It’s pretty detailed, but to sum it up from the best of my memory he’s been having trouble finding work and getting projects off the ground.
That's because they still have use for Tee Lopes and Hyper Potions for music composition. Same can't be said for the rest of Team Mania. If they won't greenlight a Mania sequel, what would they use them for? That's probably their point of view.
I dunno. As much as the radio silence from both Sega and the developers on a Mania followup isn't encouraging at all; I can't decisively say I feel the chances of Evening Star/TaxStealth and Friends/Team Mania/etc. making another game are slim to none. My reasoning for this is due to the scope and circumstances of Mania as it is, as well as the timeline of its release. Given what we know and what has been said, backed with some sources: * Mania "officially" had one year of development (I believe this includes the delay) * Production was mostly handled by a small team (core team of five people [two programmers and three graphic designers], more people were brought in because "production was taking too long", and another studio --Hyperkinetic-- stepped in to help out with Encore Pack/Plus). * Mania is mostly comprised of assets/game modes repurposed from the Genesis games--which, goes without saying, left the team a lot more to work with in terms of content instead of building an mostly new game from scratch. --- * Mania was pitched in 2015 ("before March 2016"), entered production * Mania was set for a spring 2017 release, delayed to and released in August that year * Mania received roughly one year (August 2017 - August 2018) of post-release support (patches of bugfixes and QoL updates, the Encore Pack/Plus DLC release); production on Mania ends * Taxman and company (Hunter, Fry, Flick) found a new studio in EveningStar in late 2018, publically reveal in early 2019 If you're going to have another Genesis Sonic game from ES/TS&F/TM/etc. that isn't another round of remixed levels, I think it goes without saying that you're going to need substantially more resources than what was made available with Mania. Longer development time and a larger development team to get things done within a specific timeline being the most obvious ones. I think an original (in terms of content) Genesis Sonic game with a decently-sized team would need at least two-three years of production. And that's assuming the devs are comfortable with doing another Sonic project after Mania, instead of doing something new or working on another franchise. Personally I'm of the notion that another Genesis Sonic game still has a chance of being real until the end of 2021, maybe mid-2022 at the latest; before giving up the dream. Which will be an agonizing wait, but I guess we'll more definitely than not have whatever mediocre mess Sonic Team is cooking up for the 30th anniversary next year to keep us amused.
These points are all well and good, but if your prediction is correct, then why is Stealth not a member of Evening Star? He's said countlessly that he wants to work on Sonic but has never received any further offers since Plus. If what you say is true, then either A) SEGA no longer want him and effectively fired him, which would would make no sense because he worked on Plus. B) the rest of Evening Star now hates him and asked not to have him, which clearly isn't true because they still interact with him on Twitter. There's also the case that a number of people who work at Evening Star are completely unaffiliated with SEGA. Dave Padilla, the CEO, has never worked with SEGA. He did work with Hyperkinetic Studios as cofounder and CEO, and that company worked on Plus, so I mean, maybe? But it seems like a stretch to me. He might just have encountered Team Mania by working on Plus with them and then pitched to them to make a new project together which is completely unaffiliated with SEGA. Elora Pautrat, who is a fantastic artist I might add, also worked with Evening Star for a while, and she has no affiliations with SEGA as far as I know. The most likely scenario using your own timeline is that once Plus was released in August 2018, the Mania devs realised they had nothing to work on with SEGA and wouldn't get further requests, so formed their own company in late 2018. Stealth decided to decline a offer to join the company with them, which I think he likely received since the other key Mania devs joined the team, because he wanted to work on his own project Vertebreaker (which would unfortunately become a failure). In his eyes, kickstarting his own project was probably no less risky than joining a completely new studio (even though I think he probably made a mistake there). This seems to me by far the most likely turn of events. I mean, I really do hope I'm wrong, but honestly, I think SEGA just let the team fall through their fingers.
Stealh might not have the best working relationship with Sega. When Mania came out he was publicly vocal against the addition of the denuvo drm, and while his intentions were good that's a corporate no no. Like most everyone else stayed quiet about that. Can't bite the hand that feeds. Plus it's possible he may just be hard to work with. I wouldn't know. Hate to say it, but it's not like there aren't other people out there who can code
That could have been Sega finishing up a contract obligation with him or something. Just because he worked on Plus and is available doesn't necessarily mean he'd be signed on for a sequel.
As far as I've read into past articles, SEGA seams to treat Classic Sonic as something special that's only "unbottled" for certain occasions. (Especially with Mighty and Ray.) Sonic Mania in itself was a tie-in game to compliment Forces' release, after all. We can honestly only speculate why SEGA isn't greenlighting a sequel, without understanding their complex multi-national corporate culture(s) and what their mindset is in regards to Classic Sonic's use. We have no evidence to go on, so it's not worth pondering too much unless we hear something official. Bouncing off hot takes != productive conversation that results in getting the answers we wanted. But, it doesn't take much thinking to assume one good reason why they haven't said anything: If there's no sequel in the works, then there's nothing to announce. De-confirming a sequel will only make people at-large angry, and they know that better than we do. It's hard to ignore the scale of Mania's success; the numbers don't lie. Besides, Taxman and friends seem more interested in doing their own thing now, and after Taxman cracked a joke about forgetting what being outside is like- could you blame them if that was one of their unstated reasons? Working in commercial game dev is highly unforgiving, it's nearly a universal constant. (And, as said above, the entire game was cranked out in hardly a year, despite being as monstrously large as Sonic 3 & Knuckles, and produced with a far smaller team than Sonic 3&K had. That smells of a lot of skipped showers and lost sleep.) Crunch is highly stressful. I went through it a lot in college, and I don't ever want that stress again; it was doubly harmful with the depression spells I was having at the time.
It's also prudent to keep in mind that Headcanon was a thing long before Mania came around. If Stealth got an offer to join Evening Star, he would've had to think about how it would affect his own studio (which might have a few people associated with it? I know he keeps referring to a Vertibreaker "team"). You're probably right that he wanted to work on Vertibreaker, assuming it was a concept he had in mind at the time and I can likewise confirm that he's stated many times on his livestreams that he's love to work on another Sonic game if offered. As an aside, people should check out his livestreams, they're pretty chill.
I was on Twitter trying to get more information on why Sonic Chaos 16-Bit wouldn't be at SAGE/if it was even still in production and the lead developer on that fangame is working on Pier Pressure, a SHUMP game by Headcannon, that's being primarily coded/visioned by Stealth. It comes out in September. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1386160/Pier_Pressure/ I'm pretty sure Evening Star is busy with their own projects as well right now too, I won't give up hope either but this is not looking good.
Glad Stealths working on a new project, I wish the best for him. SHUMPs aren't my kind of game personally but it looks alright.
I'm happy for him too and I plan on buying a copy, though mainly to support the developer of Sonic Chaos 16-Bit. Can't wait.
So this tweet picked up a lot of traction on Twitter today. Buttons Montgomery [@/HBJohnXuandou]: "Hey talk about the part where you basically only paid the team enough to develop the game and then didn't give them a cut of the sales so the team that handed you the highest rated Sonic game in 15 years made practically 0 dollars on it. I wanna hear about that part." This was in reply to the official Sega account retweeting a 2018 developer diary video about Mania's production, as part of a Sonic week-themed of their #Sega60 anniversary campaign. The primary source for this is Stealth's November 2019 video about Vertebreaker's unsuccessful Kickstarter campaign (Nintendo Enthusiast article), where he dispelled any assumptions of him having enough money to back the game from Mania's success. "I know this doesn't apply to everybody, but there are a lot of people who don't understand contract work. I've seen plenty of snide comments about how I should have, and this is a quote, 'millions of dollars' after working on Sonic Mania. That's probably based largely on the number of copies sold, but the thing is, I don't get any of that money. What I got paid was for development milestones, which aren't regularly occurring payments, but are fixed amounts that are only paid out when overall development reaches a certain point. When the game was finished, that was my last payment." It is worth emphasizing that this isn't actually a new revelation or story, as Stealth's Vertebreaker video is a little older than one year ago, so this has been public knowledge for some time. I've also seen comments about how for the industry, this is par for the course and not an unusual approach, regardless how questionable it may be. However, this particular tweet has giving the reported circumstances more coverage and awareness than it previously had (at least on social media). I presume for those wondering if a Mania sequel will happen at all (as seen with where discussion for this thread last left off), this will definitely be of some interest for quite a few, myself included. --- Personal thoughts. Assuming all of this is gospel truth...rather disappointing. Given their highly-regarded work on the classic Sonic remasters, I would had imagined Stealth and Taxman, alongside the rest of the team (assuming they all got the same agreement) would have had enough internal clout within Sega to get a contract that did include some royalties. But I guess that's on me for being extremely naïve. Sonic Team's skepticism/surprise on Mania performing as well as it did sounds like a pretty accurate reflection on Sega's outlook/expectations on the game as a whole. I think it's safe to say that I'm kinda done on waiting for a Mania followup to be announced. I think it's definitely over, and I'll be surprised if I'm proven wrong.
It seems kind of shitty when you gloss over it in broad terms like aforementioned tweet does. And SEGA could have offered bonuses based on the performance of the game; "if the game sells X units in Y months with an aggregate critic score of Z, there'll be a bonus payment of whatever". A big company like SEGA really ought to be doing that sort of thing when they're outsourcing a project, especially something as high-profile as Sonic being outsourced to a small team of indies. It just seems like a good thing to do? Incentivise a good product, thank the team for a job well done. But as much as I think SEGA somewhat "owes" the Mania team for their services beyond creating just any old game... This is just the nature of contract work. Payment for reaching development milestones only and nothing more than what is normal and fair. Noting actually indicates that SEGA were shitty with regards to how the Mania developers were paid. What concerns me more is the fact that Mania released over three years ago now and SEGA have said nothing of a follow-up game. Many of the people behind Mania are now at Evening Star Studios. Chaotix-homage aside, there's no indication that the team will have anything to do with Sonic again in the foreseeable future. I hope that's just because the team are pursuing other avenues of their own accord and not because of any soured-relationships with SEGA. I'm just so used to thinking of gaming companies working development teams to the bone, under-paying them, having unreasonable demands or choosing to screw them over in some other way that I'm just a bit doubtful... Mania was met with the kind of critical acclaim that Sonic rarely sees, and obviously did well-enough for SEGA to invest in post-lauch DLC (a rarity for Sonic), 6 animated shorts and an eventual physical release. Itwould be baffling if SEGA didn't want a follow-up game from the same group of people. Three years without a peep of a follow-up is disappointing and surprising.
My opinion on this is that SEGA's use of Team Mania is typical for contract work, but that doesn't make it any less bad. Using employees for massive personal profit and then dropping them is fairly scummy no matter which industry you are in. It's also often financially irresponsible too. If SEGA hired Team Mania and put them to task on a Sonic sub-series there's no doubt in my mind that it would pay off. So this is a problem of cynical capitalism, but that doesn't make it any less bad.
I kinda feel like, because Sega clearly had low expectations for Mania while expecting Forces to be the big game for the year, if they'd asked for royalties they may have actually gotten them. Remember, Fox let George Lucas have 100% of the royalties for Star Wars toys because everyone expected the movie to tank. Not a defense of Sega, just a random musing.
Or, we could be overlooking a very obvious outcome here... Sega will just take the Mania engine, dump Team Mania since Sega's full of stubborn Japanese devs who don't like working with a western studio on a regular basis... And hand it to Dimps.
Honestly as long as whoever is the level designer knows what they're doing, fine, do that. I doubt it'd be sourced to Dimps though. The last game they were given was Sonic 4, and Ep 2 came out in 2012 with Ep 3 being shit canned. They don't really seem to have a working relationship with them anymore.
