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Codemasters swoops for Sega Racing Studio
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feature highlights Q&A: Insomniac’s Mike Acton Following on from last month’s news piece looking at the Ratchet & Clank studio’s technology sharing initiative, we speak to engine director Mike Acton in a two-part Q&A discussing thirdgeneration PS3 games, how education is lacking when it comes to teaching students about game design, and why the studio thinks studios need to start sharing technoloy.
Codemasters’ Colin McRae (left) and Sega Racing Studio’s Sega Rally (right) – so the two are a perfect match
We charted a curious time for UK developers in the Midlands last month. Things began in early April, when we broke the news that Sega was planning to close its Racing Studio, which it had opened in 2005. Sources informed Develop of the matter, which was later publicly confirmed by Sega. “The decision is part of a review of Sega’s Western Development Studios to ensure that each studio is a profitable entity in its own right, and unfortunately the Sega Racing Studio’s fve year plan would not result in a successful return for the Sega business moving forward,” the company said in a statement. “Sega would like to stress that there will be no changes within their other internal development studios.”
Sega Racing Studio had released just one game in its lifecycle – a remake of Sega Rally – and was founded by former Colin McRae producer Guy Wilday, who moved to Sega from Codemasters. And speaking of which – it was Codemasters that then swooped in to buy the studio, offering over 40 of the Racing Studio staff new jobs as Codies employees. “In seizing this opportunity, we have created additional resources to escalate our plans in the racing segment,” said Rod Cousens, CEO of Codemasters. “We have enjoyed the full co-operation of our friends at Sega in making this happen. It is good business for Codemasters, an exciting prospect and there will be more to come as we are not content to stand still.”
Keeping up with Jones Another in-depth two-part Q&A with Realtime Worlds’ Dave Jones. We discuss the company’s recently announced $50m investment and his plans for the studios’ new MMO, All Points Bulletin, which boasts a raft of customisable content and innovative music features including a partnership with last.fm.
Steam Works We also spoke to Jason Holtman, head of business development at Valve and in charge of the firm’s digital distribution platform Steam. We discuss the services journey from launch to its current status as the ubiquitous download platform – and hear how he thinks the service has strengthened the PC games market.
www.developmag.com/interviews
comments Re: Sega Racing Studio closed
“It's always a shame when a studio closes down, but given the location and the specialism they'll have no problem finding more work. “Got to admit, though, that it looked to me like that studio would always live and die on its first title, given how much money Sega ploughed into it…” Posted by mangacarta, on April 8th “A great oppourtunity missed, really, and a shame that such talent and money was clearly
10 | MAY 2008
wasted by an ill thought out venture. A packed racing genre needed a very special addition to compete with Dirt/Burnout etc.” Posted by sonicfan, on April 8th
Re: Acton: 'The education system hasn't kept up with the real world'
“This is totally true for ‘computer games’ courses, which should be ahead of the curve and predict the near future trends in the games industry and teach appropriately. However,
Computer Science is a much broader topic, not aimed at a very specific industry. The only places low-level programming is really relevant anymore is games console tech programming and operating systems and driver coding. “Another solution is for the platform providers to provide a better software platform on top of their complicated architectures. Their engineers understand the brain-bendingly complicated architecture: why make hundreds of other developers around the world try to understand it too?” Posted by rikki, on April 22nd