I visited Sega yesterday.

You know what's funny, I've never saw the interior of SOA HQ and it's exactly how I imagined it was. Big with Sonic statues and overuse of the Sega logo everywhere. (not that any of that stuff's a bad thing.)

 

That statue of Sonic was neat. I wish I had one in my house or my front lawn, though it Would probably get stolen and sold on eBay =/

 

I remember we used to have a sonic statue very similar at my local Gamestation in Norwich.

Eventually the left arm disappeared, I asked a member of staff as to what happened. The response I got was so baffling. Apparently somebody broke the left arm off and stole it.

The more I think of it, the more it doesn't surprise me from where I'm from.

 

The real question is:

What happened when Ben and Ken were in the same room?

 

Jen should've gone too.

 

I want that clock but I'm too cheap to buy it on eBay. >_> While it's unfortunate they didn't give the Sonic 4 discussion more time, it's better than nothing and it sounds like nearly all of the most important points were made.

 

So that must've meant that '06 re-canonized itself. You fucking bastard.

 

That Brad guy sounds like such a jerk. I bet he could never finish a fan game. :specialed:

Seriously though, this sounds like it would've been fun. I'm not a big fan of Valkyria Chronicles or Phantasy Star, but the aspect of meeting up with people from the community sounds like it'd be a blast. I don't quite see what the problem is about the Sonic 4 discussion being a mere thirty minutes per se. Sure, it certainly seems to have rushed things, but you can only complain about a game for so long before you start repeating yourself. The idea that they probably had here was to focus on the key elements they believed screwed things up in the first place and expand on it. I would love to go to something like this or at least just a meet up or something similar.

It's understandable why one would be annoyed with the session, but it's still cool that they set something like that up.

 

I don't know why but them taking just the arm is mildly disturbing........ =/

Why just the arm?

They would have made a lot more money taking the whole thing...

 

I have no idea why someone would do that! The thing is they kept him on display for all to see with his 'battle wounds' and it just got laughable. Kind of ironic wouldn't you think?

 

Hi Retro,

I may be able to offer some additional insight into the event, and the intent of the feedback session, too. It's long, but responses below!

Three hours, but I do hope the intent of the event was made clear by the original blog that we put up when we first announced the event. The time for each game and the full schedule was also listed there too, so it shouldn't have come as too much of a surprise - apologies if this was unclear!

Whiteboards are way official, hehe. I wrote Physics first because I knew it would be a big topic of discussion, and wanted to gauge how much time we had for others by getting it up there first. I think it was actually proof that we're listening, and have been for some time, as opposed to being embarrassing!

I think the thing to note here is that you're one person in a room of almost fifty - and, unlike the internet, it's not a place where your opinion is automatically the most important, or can be openly expressed anytime you want to.

Being courteous is a skill that will pay itself off in spades. Often, in fact, being kind and pointing out a few points with a friendly attitude will get you taken more seriously than someone who interrupts everyone else and is trying to talk really loudly to get attention.

In short: the best attention is that which is earned by what you say, not how loudly you say it, or who you interrupt in order to make it heard.

I don't think the rest of the evening was 'other bullshit', but I guess it's all just a matter of perspective. If you haven't played Phantasy Star or Valkyria Chronicles, I can't recommend either enough - they're two of SEGA's highest quality franchises right now, and besides being good games, also have a lot of neat ties to other SEGA series, like Sonic.

I should perhaps clarify: the event was not intended to be a session for people to whine and scream about what they didn't like about Sonic 4, and especially not to do so immaturely. I think this was fine though, as almost everyone, including yourself, were polite for a great amount of the event and the discussion flowed very well.

We all have things that we're so passionate about that we could spend hours and hours speaking about what makes them good, and how to maintain that quality. I could tell as you were speaking that Sonic was one of those things for you - something that you care about so much that you almost wonder why you can't just get involved directly and help fix everything that you see as an imperfection.

There are many of us at SEGA who care so much about Sonic and the other franchises we work on that we're happy to go far and beyond the call of our jobs to do the best that we can. I've said it many times before, and will say it again now: it's a process that will be gradual, getting better over time. But we'll get there.

We were already running about 15 minutes over, and I'm not sure if you noticed, but there were four people near the back of the room who had to leave right before 9:00, when we were originally scheduled to end.

I was really hoping to include them in our swag raffle, and while they sadly had to leave because the discussion didn't end on time, this is part of the reason you may have noticed me trying to wrap things up. I'd have loved to let things run on until 10 PM if we had the time, personally, but we had many other people who weren't there just for Sonic 4, and who had their own schedules based around the night. It's important to be respectful of that.

You're welcome to return it to me, then, and I'll give it to someone who will appreciate it.

If you wanted to, you could have also just handed it to me after everyone left - I wouldn't be insulted, seriously. Certainly less so than seeing a post from someone complaining about something they got absolutely free, which was given originally purely out of good will.

I don't think the event was ridiculous at all. I think that it was an event full of positives - from introducing fans to other fans to letting you guys meet some of the people here at SEGA who work on the games that we all love. It's also important to note that this was, once again, not a "What did we do wrong?" session, but a feedback session for all that people liked, and all that they think could be improved. This is a key point that I think you may be seeing from the wrong angle in this case.

You're right about one thing though - that's a level of connection you certainly won't find from most other game companies, and especially not major bands. (For Japanese companies especially, it's very rare.) But I think it's a great step forward, in many ways, for the future of SEGA, and the future of our games. It's actually something I feel more companies should be actively doing.

Using your Mario comparison, I'm rather happy to write these words: when it comes to Community, SEGA does what Nintendon't. And that's something that fans across the world should be happy about.

They do, but if you make assumptions without knowing all the facts, it's sometimes easy to assume otherwise.

What you may not know is that much of the stuff you'll see around our desks is extra swag or merchandise from years past, some that was being thrown out due to space limitations (like when we moved offices a couple years back), and others that relate to the games we worked on. I actually have a Sonic plushie sitting next to my phone that I brought from home, which I got as a kid almost fifteen years ago.

We save one of almost every piece of merchandise that is created, and it all gets saved in a big room for historical purposes. Someday, we're hoping we can show you guys what this room looks like - similar to the SEGA game room that we posted about when we first moved, which has almost every SEGA game ever created inside.

Well, I'm still glad you came.

Hope you had a fun time and got to meet some new fellow SEGA fans, even if Valkyria or Phantasy Star weren't your thing. All in all, thanks for attending either way.

(Btw, Slingerland - awesome meeting you too!)

 

YOU KNOW IT. :brofist:

Also, here's my write-up. It's long as shit because I did it on the plane. You'll find that you've got all kinds of time on a plane.

Video coming soon.

 

I'm looking forward to seeing what comes of Episode II, one way or another.

Colors kinda puts me in high spirits for all things Sonic-related, really. Hell, it even makes me want to give Free Riders a chance! Yeah, I know, it's crazy.

Still, wish I could've been there. Sounds like an awesome little, uh, bicker-fest, or something.

 

It wasn't a bickerfest. It was a pretty chill meeting. Thanks for reading.

 

You can hardly blame him when the opening post makes it sound like it was a meeting of RAGING NERDS HURRRGH.

Though, reading by you, Moonshadow, and Ruby, it seems it was a fun event. Hope you guys get to do more of them.

 

I didn't mean that literally. I was just struggling for a word, and couldn't think of one.