Sega has revealed that they’re offering four limited-time titles on PC from October 18 to October 19: Golden Axed, Streets of Kamurocho, Endless Zone, and Armor of Heroes.
Many are celebrating this, stating that Sega is ‘hitting all of the right notes’ in their recent push into the PC space after they realized, to much surprise coming from only them, that there is actually a massive user base on the PC after releasing Persona 4 Golden years after its original release.
A developer has noted his surprise that the title has somehow reared its head once more, and offered insight into what actually happened to what should have been the long-awaited sequel to Golden Axe before SEGA Studios Australia closed their doors in 2013.
We’ll preface the Twitter thread with this: the gaming industry as a whole can be an extremely toxic place to work, where suits chafe against developers which chafe against the player base; inhumane hours and low salaries are the norms, and mentions of developers being forced into crunches are faced with relative indifference from fans as the online era has resulted in a general loss of empathy and nuance.
Yet perhaps it’s best that we simply post the Twitter thread from developer Tim Dawson, and let everyone see what the internals of the gaming industry that we all love can often look like.
this project was my personal nexus of nightmare hours, inept management, industry realisations and heroics achieved with a small team under unreasonable conditions, so it's an odd feeling to see it surface eight years later without context, credits and with a joke title sequence pic.twitter.com/lBDVWegn3p
— Tim Dawson (@ironicaccount) October 15, 2020
we agreed because we were assured management wanted us to develop it 'our way' (ie another miracle please) but did mandate a darker, bloodier Golden Axe, with splatter and decapitations and two button combat
So we tried to combine all that with the spirit of the original game
— Tim Dawson (@ironicaccount) October 15, 2020
much less luckily we also had the lead designer who thought he was designing it, and sometimes @SanatanaMishra would have to physically block him from reaching my workstation or he'd start explaining insights he'd received playing the mobile port on the train on the way to work
— Tim Dawson (@ironicaccount) October 15, 2020
a week or so in, the lead campaigned for branching the prototype and making a Streets of Rage pitch concurrently because to him they were the same game
It took me sending a 2am email to the studio head and a "lets go for a coffee and a chat" the next morning to get that stopped
— Tim Dawson (@ironicaccount) October 15, 2020
grave faces
There was a pause
"where's the wow factor" someone asked
The lead designer once again complained it wasn't a God of War-like 3D brawler like he wanted
Someone said maybe it'd have been better to have made a prerendered video where the barbarian fought a monster
— Tim Dawson (@ironicaccount) October 15, 2020
I had been working 14 hour days but I went home on time that day
— Tim Dawson (@ironicaccount) October 15, 2020
So I did
Effects and polish was added. More sounds implemented. Combat timings sped up and input windows widened to make combos executive friendly
The finished build was revealed, and the same management team that negged me earlier lined up to tell me how good it was now
— Tim Dawson (@ironicaccount) October 15, 2020
from the Steam Page:
"Golden Axed may be janky, may be buggy, may be an artifact of its time, but it offers a unique glimpse into the prospect of a project that could have been"
go fuck yourself, parasites
— Tim Dawson (@ironicaccount) October 15, 2020
Shortly after the thread was posted, the cited segment where Golden Axed is noted as subpar has since been removed.
that's pretty funny!
I think some people thought I was overreacting to the phrasing, but it did feel weird to see my old code get described that way without being involved
— Tim Dawson (@ironicaccount) October 15, 2020
The nightmarish exchange between developers and suits offering bizarre timeframes that aren’t grounded in reality has been a common mantra we’ve seen over the years from developers that echo the sentiment of Tim Dawson in telling the corporations to get bent; a sign of burn-out that typically comes after outlandish development pacing from people that tend to struggle to understand what gaming actually revolves around.
It may be difficult to understand how best to apply this knowledge, that some developers feel trapped in a personal hellscape wedged firmly between demand and profit, yet the only entities that can provide the necessary supply.
Yet in light of Cyberpunk 2077 being announced as in a desperate crunch, where developers are working six days a week with similarly obscene hours that seem to match Tim Dawson’s story, yet are eclipsed by users in hype and anticipation of the title releasing.
With the ever-increasing relevance and popularity of video games, it continues to be an industry where aspiring developers want to work, and in turn, allows for cheap labor for large corporations. Whether there can be a solution to the issue that doesn’t involve unions is still the source of contention.