When Sega sent out its press release this morning announcing that acclaimed Canadian developer BioWare would be making a role-playing game based on Sonic the Hedgehog for the Nintendo DS, we, like many others, were taken aback. Not by the fact that a Japanese publisher was teaming up with a Western developer; after all, Sega has been the most aggressive of the major Japanese companies in signing up such studios as Monolith Productions (Condemned), Pseudo Interactive (Full Auto), Bizarre Creations (The Club) and Silicon Knights (for an as yet unnamed title) among others, in addition to acquiring Sports Interactive (Championship Manager), Creative Assembly (Medieval II: Total War) and Secret Level (America's Army: Rise of a Soldier.) Nor was it because BioWare, whose heritage lies in computer games and, more recently, console titles, would embrace a portable device, because the company did reveal its plans to get into the handheld space last fall.
No, the head scratching stemmed from this: why would BioWare, one of the world's best developers, voluntarily get involved with a franchise as troubled as Sonic the Hedgehog? To ponder it further only led from head-scratching to head-shaking when we thought of the numerous other franchises that Sega fans would much rather see in the hands of the good doctors/founders Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk--like Panzer Dragoon, Skies of Arcadia, Golden Axe, Shenmue, heck, even Jet Set Radio--than the increasingly problematic blue furball. Given that Muzyka and Zeschuk are two of the most thoughtful and deliberate game creators that we've met, we asked ourselves again: why?
The answer, we believe, can be found in BioWare's past; specifically, the company's careful and considered evolution from being primarily a developer-for-hire to the creator of its own original IP, soaking up as much knowledge as it could along the way, then fold that knowledge into brand new concepts. Baldur's Gate (1998) was based on the Dungeon's & Dragons Forgotten Realms license; today the company is hard at work on its own sword and sorcery RPG with Dragon Age. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (2003) took place in a previously unexplored chapter of Star Wars lore; now BioWare is making its own sci-fi epic in Mass Effect.
So given BioWare's stated interest in making games for handhelds platforms--which prior to the DS and PSP had primarily been the province of children and tweens--it's reasonable to speculate that BioWare is, in part, using the enduring youth appeal of Sonic the Hedgehog as a dry run for its own ambitions, to gain some valuable insight into developing games for younger audiences. Not in any Machiavellian way, but as a shrewd way to continue to extend the scope of its capabilities to reach, with a variety of games, as broad an audience as possible. BioWare's Sonic RPG will undoubtedly deliver a game that will exceed Sega's own recent efforts on the franchise; in the meantime, those of us inclined to turn our noses up at the BioWare-Sega collaboration should keep in mind that once the doctors get comfortable making kid-oriented games for handhelds, the odds are good that some promising originals--for portables, for children, and for both--will almost assuredly follow thereafter.
Loading Menu