The Loss of Smilebit

Strictly SEGA related discussion.
Post Reply
User avatar
Rayne
Level 12
Level 12
Posts: 656
Joined: Thu May 15, 2008 1:48 pm
Location: Scotland

The Loss of Smilebit

Post by Rayne »

Brilliant article on IGN about the different pains you get from losing development studios, naturally this one resounded with me:

Level 3: Loss, Like in a Country & Western Song

This is the one that really hurts. Not like, "Oh, that sucks, can I make that a venti -- that's the big cup, right?" but the kind of hurt that lingers for years, like when a girlfriend leaves you for another woman. The kind of hurt that makes you hate capitalism. After all, it's usually money (either a lack of it or corporate greed) that snuffs out a developer. Sometimes, developers deserve to go away. Sorry, 3DO, but no one misses crappy Army Men games. That isn't a loss that makes a fist in your gut every time you think of it.

Example: Smilebit
If you ever huffed and puffed and said, "Oh, there are no original ideas in gaming," it's probably because you didn't go out and buy ten copies of Jet Set Radio Future. Had you, then maybe SEGA wouldn't have squashed its best studio and dispersed it into the nether regions to crap out Sonic games.

Ah, but we'll get to the cruel fate of Smilebit soon enough. First, a history lesson. Why did these guys matter? They made games no one else would ever dream up. And, sadly, the poor sales of Smilebit's titles (nothing cracked 500,000, according to my culling through NPD data) proved that publishers were better off farting out carbon copies of games than to take risks on projects that probably frightened the average person. I'm convinced Gunvalkyrie caused at least five gamers to order exorcisms of their Xboxes.
Image
Exhibit A: Typing of the Dead. This one comes from the "Who would ever think to do that?" file. (That file gets rolled up and smoked like a big fat joint before design decisions are made -- that's just how Smilebit did its thing.) The game took House of the Dead -- you know, the light gun shooter you put about 4000 quarters into as a kid -- and replaced the plastic guns with a (wait for it) keyboard. I mean… what? A sequel was made, because the game cost about $15 to make.

Exhibit B: Panzer Dragoon Orta. The greatest on-rails shooter ever made, this Xbox 1 game is still beautiful. In fact, the next time I see another brown blobby mess of a game, I am going to make the developer play Panzer for 20 minutes so they can see that a game built on ancient technology (I believe the Mayans developed for Xbox 1) outshines their graphical turd.

The old complaint that games are "too short" is disproven with Panzer. Short? Very. You can beat it in two hours (unless you are a certain IGN competitor, who thought the game was way too hard -- not pointing fingers, but hey, if you suck at games, get out of the room already). It's a game with immeasurable replay value, loads of unlockables and that rare "arcade" quality that makes you want to keep plunking in quarters. Except, it's a console game, so the quarters aren't real and therefore your $50 investment makes you look like an economic genius. (Note to young readers: Games used to cost less, but then publishers realized we were idiots and would gladly pay more money to shoot stuff).

Exhibit C: Gunvalkyrie. Might be the hardest game on the original Xbox. But boy was it something special. You had to do these crazy dual-analog moves to boost in the air and then chain those together to properly dodge or get anywhere, really. It was a killer on your thumbs, but it was a good kind of pain. It also has one of the freakiest (and impossible) final bosses of all time. A giant baby head with metal razor wings. Innovation!
Image
Exhibit D: Jet Set Radio and JSRF. The slam dunk. There have really only been two games that realized inline skating was becoming popular. And Acclaim's Aggressive Inline was equally ignored by the average gamer. Jet Set Radio offered up big open areas to skate through (and plenty of stuff to grind on) with the idea that you were going to tag up the walls, cars, and cops of future Tokyo. The big deal with the first game: you used the thumbstick (Dreamcast only had one, baby!) to tag walls. The bigger the tag, the more complex the set of movements. Amazingly, Smilebit turned the franchise on its head with the sequel, removing the need to manually spray paint in order to create a more streamlined, faster-paced game with bigger, more exciting levels (dinosaur rollercoaster ride, anyone?). But Smilebit added the ability to create your own custom tags. Basically, the team took what was already a "never seen that before" concept, then created a new game designed to make you go, "Wait, never seen that either."

The team was transformed into SEGA Sports R&D Department (makers of Mario & Sonic Prove the Olympics are Obsolete) with some members moving to Amusement Vision (creators of the Yakuza series) and others absorbed into Sonic Team (makers of numerous "why the eff don't they make a great Sonic game already" titles). And some disappeared from SEGA altogether. I like to imagine someone at Smilebit tried to correct the mistakes of the past, detonated a nuclear device in the middle of a massive electromagnetic phenomenon and are currently trapped in the '60s. (That's a Lost reference. Get used to 'em. I love that show.)

End result: It does little good to beg, plead or hope for another Jet Set Radio or Panzer game, because the team has been smashed to pieces. Who exactly would make this game? Even Yakuza, which is a pretty good series, is no Jet Set or Panzer. Saying that Smilebit is somehow still around is like saying Little Red Riding Hood is still worth dating after being swallowed by the wolf. Once your girlfriend is in a wolf's digestive tract, it's over.

Losing Smilebit hurt me a lot. It was the final nail in my SEGA fanboy coffin. The kid who loved the Genesis and Dreamcast more than any other systems lost the last remaining SEGA joy he knew. (Yeah, I just went third-person on this piece!)

Smilebit died and so did a small part of gaming's soul.

So to those who were hurt by the death of a studio (maybe you even cried a little), know that others feel your pain. You hurt because you lost something important. Hell, gaming lost something important. I can't answer for you which studio closures reached which level on the grief scale for you, but if you're any kind of gamer, you've experienced all three.

Pour one out for Smilebit. Then pour one for me. It's quittin' time.
User avatar
Tru
Level 14
Level 14
Posts: 1389
Joined: Mon Jun 28, 2010 12:09 pm
Location: Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

Post by Tru »

That's a really good article and I agree, Smilebit were one of my favourite development studios and fans are always crying out for a new Jet Set Radio.

But, when Team Andromeda split up, we all assumed that was the death of Panzer Dragoon, only for some members to join Smilebit and make Orta. If there are still some Smilebit members around, as the article says, then there is always hope.
User avatar
INeedFruit
Show DJ
Show DJ
Posts: 356
Joined: Fri Jan 08, 2010 12:34 pm
Location: Devon, England

Post by INeedFruit »

Yup, always bad to see a creative group of people disbanding and sent to watch over already brunt out departments. Sega have Platinum Games for one more title...
Host of ClubSEGA - A show about the arcade scene and SEGA arcade games.
Wednesday at 8pm UK/WET - 9pm CEST- 3pm EST - 12pm PST
User avatar
Reknoc
Level 15
Level 15
Posts: 5153
Joined: Wed Dec 19, 2007 8:14 pm
Location: Nottingham, England

Post by Reknoc »

The death of a studio is always sad, but it's about the people really and they'll probably go on to find or form new studios with abit more freedom.
Image
User avatar
Killer French Bread
Level 15
Level 15
Posts: 1795
Joined: Tue May 27, 2008 10:35 am

Post by Killer French Bread »

I was a tad gutted when the studio that made Sega Rally on the 360 were disbanded. Apparently most of the staff were assimilated into Codemasters, so now they can help shovel out those boring, Americanised DiRt games. Lucky them.
Tic Tac, sir?
User avatar
SegaShinja
Level 2
Level 2
Posts: 23
Joined: Fri Feb 06, 2009 10:07 pm
Location: USA

Post by SegaShinja »

That and the loss of UGA has always bummed me out. It seems that Sega used to be better at bringing creative people together and have since turned to being more of a publishing giant. But at least I've always got the Dreamcast to keep me busy.
Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 4 guests