Tom Kalinske: Sega's Been Doing It Wrong for Past 20 Years!

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Originally Posted by fruitsofherwomb

Not to be 'that guy' but I don't see how anyone would know what Disney's license holders wanted in games and what they didn't want. I would assume they wanted the game to be successful, I would think them playing great and being fun had to do with that.

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What they "wanted" is one thing, but what they actually enforced with licensee developers is another.

"Playing great and being fun" is in the eye of the beholder, and I'm not sure the relevant parties at Disney would have a clue. From 1996, Disney operated a game publishing subsidiary to put out most of the games based on their properties. Not many would claim that the overall track record of Disney-related games improved. More recently, I remember reading an article about how Disney was confidently anticipating huge success for Epic Mickey 2, surpassing the original. When it didn't do so well, they were blindsided.

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Originally Posted by j_factor

What they "wanted" is one thing, but what they actually enforced with licensee developers is another.

"Playing great and being fun" is in the eye of the beholder, and I'm not sure the relevant parties at Disney would have a clue. From 1996, Disney operated a game publishing subsidiary to put out most of the games based on their properties. Not many would claim that the overall track record of Disney-related games improved. More recently, I remember reading an article about how Disney was confidently anticipating huge success for Epic Mickey 2, surpassing the original. When it didn't do so well, they were blindsided.

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I actually really like Epic Mickey 1, but after it got such a mixed reception, they shouldn't have expected that more of the same would sell better... but yeah, Disney Interactive isn't exactly a publisher I have ever thought actually was very good. Even when they release good games they rarely follow them up as they should, and they've shut down most of their decent studios.

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Originally Posted by j_factor

What they "wanted" is one thing, but what they actually enforced with licensee developers is another.

"Playing great and being fun" is in the eye of the beholder, and I'm not sure the relevant parties at Disney would have a clue. From 1996, Disney operated a game publishing subsidiary to put out most of the games based on their properties. Not many would claim that the overall track record of Disney-related games improved. More recently, I remember reading an article about how Disney was confidently anticipating huge success for Epic Mickey 2, surpassing the original. When it didn't do so well, they were blindsided.

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Again, your assuming things and piecing together infromation gathered from like... 20+ years... yet the same people aren't at Disney, things changed (like you said in 1996 they handled their own games). We aren't talking about that era here, Epic Mickey 2 has little to do with SEGA + Disney partnership from the early 90's. Everyone at SEGA and Disney's side has left/retired and have gotten new people...

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Originally Posted by fruitsofherwomb

Not to be 'that guy' but I don't see how anyone would know what Disney's license holders wanted in games and what they didn't want. I would assume they wanted the game to be successful, I would think them playing great and being fun had to do with that.

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Disney had a producer working with each of its licensed games (Stephan Butler in the case of COI and Fantasia). It was specifically their job to convey what Disney wanted in the games, and that mostly involved protecting the IP. SEGA, Capcom, or whichever company was making the game had a producer who worked in tandem with Disney's. It was their job to oversee development aspects (gameplay, level design, etc.). We can tell what SEGA and Disney wanted with these two games because we've spoken to their producers, but that may not be the same for each company. Capcom may have had a different philosophy about something like gameplay than SEGA, for example.

Which poses an interesting question: How much influence did say, Capcom USA's producers have on the NES Disney games? It'd be interesting to find out.

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Originally Posted by fruitsofherwomb

Again, your assuming things and piecing together infromation gathered from like... 20+ years... yet the same people aren't at Disney, things changed (like you said in 1996 they handled their own games). We aren't talking about that era here, Epic Mickey 2 has little to do with SEGA + Disney partnership from the early 90's. Everyone at SEGA and Disney's side has left/retired and have gotten new people...

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I honestly don't think I'm assuming anything and I have no idea what you're talking about. I didn't say Epic Mickey 2 had anything to do with the "SEGA + Disney partnership from the early 90's". That's not at all the point I was making.

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Originally Posted by fruitsofherwomb

Not to be 'that guy' but I don't see how anyone would know what Disney's license holders wanted in games and what they didn't want. I would assume they wanted the game to be successful, I would think them playing great and being fun had to do with that.

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Disney has always been hawkish about protecting the integrity of their intellectual property. I think Disney's involvement had less to do with "is the game good" and more to do with "does this game represent Disney properly."

I'm sure playing decently had something to do with that but it's impossible to say what their metric for "good enough" was.

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Originally Posted by Obviously

Disney has always been hawkish about protecting the integrity of their intellectual property. I think Disney's involvement had less to do with "is the game good" and more to do with "does this game represent Disney properly."

I'm sure playing decently had something to do with that but it's impossible to say what their metric for "good enough" was.

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Retrospiel's link to a Sega-16 interview sort of covered it. Disney didn't like the art direction that Blue Sky chose for the game, in that it did not match the scenery of the movie.

http://www.sega-16.com/2014/03/behin...sneys-aladdin/

Sega broke a monopoly and became the leader of the market for several years because SOJ made great software and hardware, SOA was great at marketing and branding and they sold millions and millions of hardware and software and SOE was very succesful in Europe not only with Megadrive but also with Master System. What I mean is that each part of the company played an important role to beat Nintendo. Tom Kalinske and his team made a fantastic job in the biggest videogame market which was the USA.

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Originally Posted by gamevet

Retrospiel's link to a Sega-16 interview sort of covered it. Disney didn't like the art direction that Blue Sky chose for the game, in that it did not match the scenery of the movie.

http://www.sega-16.com/2014/03/behin...sneys-aladdin/

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It'd have looked pretty much exactly as dull and luckluster as Ariel and TaleSpin.