Was the Dreamcast’s avant-grade library of games partly due to panic surrounding its commercial failing?

[LG18]

We know that with the PS2 just around the corner, SEGA had to double down on great software. Given the often experimental and unique titles we’ve come to love from the system, do you think SEGA actively promoted this? Were developers given more freedoms to take risks given the companies rocky situation?

I’ve heard this speculated a lot, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone confirm SEGA’s ethos on game development at the time given their situation.

[dark]

No I don't think the game experimentation was directly related to their financial situation. I think it had been sega's business model for a good chunk of the 1990s. I've read some interviews with the Japanese sega game developers from the dreamcast era. Basically, many of them were very young, like in their 20s and 30s, they didn't know the details around sega's financial position, and the news that the company was going to stop supporting the dreamcast came as a surprise. It was also said that they felt they had some of the best jobs in the world because they were given lots of creative control to try to come up with new game concepts and experiences. For instance, the idea to make Jet Grind Radio was not something that came down from the board room or 50+ yr old executives, it was instead totally spearheaded by the young developers who just thought it would be cool to combine elements of youth culture into a creative game. I'm sure executives had to sign off on game concepts at some level, but it seemed to me that the creative and off the wall game ideas were coming from the bottom up (the young game developers passionately wanting to do a concept) rather than from the top down (executives telling the game developers to intentionally create weird games).

I do think sega was trying to push out as many games as possible as quickly as possible in order to build up the console's library and make it more attractive. This probably resulted in sega relaxing its quality controls a little bit, which could have added to the weirdness of some games. I think that's also why we got so many no-frills arcade ports which could be beaten in 20 minutes and often had no significant unlockables or extra content - sega could more quickly port over its naomi arcade games, so there wasn't as big a divide between what its arcade business was doing for game development and what its console game business was doing compared to the megadrive or saturn eras.

[LG18]

No I don't think the game experimentation was directly related to their financial situation. I think it had been sega's business model for a good chunk of the 1990s. I've read some interviews with the Japanese sega game developers from the dreamcast era. Basically, many of them were very young, like in their 20s and 30s, they didn't know the details around sega's financial position, and the news that the company was going to stop supporting the dreamcast came as a surprise. It was also said that they felt they had some of the best jobs in the world because they were given lots of creative control to try to come up with new game concepts and experiences. For instance, the idea to make Jet Grind Radio was not something that came down from the board room or 50+ yr old executives, it was instead totally spearheaded by the young developers who just thought it would be cool to combine elements of youth culture into a creative game. I'm sure executives had to sign off on game concepts at some level, but it seemed to me that the creative and off the wall game ideas were coming from the bottom up (the young game developers passionately wanting to do a concept) rather than from the top down (executives telling the game developers to intentionally create weird games).

I do think sega was trying to push out as many games as possible as quickly as possible in order to build up the console's library and make it more attractive. This probably resulted in sega relaxing its quality controls a little bit, which could have added to the weirdness of some games. I think that's also why we got so many no-frills arcade ports which could be beaten in 20 minutes and often had no significant unlockables or extra content - sega could more quickly port over its naomi arcade games, so there wasn't as big a divide between what its arcade business was doing for game development and what its console game business was doing compared to the megadrive or saturn eras.

Thanks for the response, that makes a lot of sense. Do you remember any of these interviews specifically? I’d be interested to read about the developers talking about this. Many thanks!

[dark]

Reflecting on it, I think the interviews I was thinking of are from the video interviews of several dreamcast game developers done for the 20th anniversary.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eD7JYqty8aE

[dark]

Check out part 2 as well. Around 13 and a half minutes in, the sega employee mentions that sega was flush with cash in the 90s with the success of its early 90s games like Virtua Fighter and Virtua Racing (which themselves were somewhat experimental and groundbreaking at the time), which led to Sega's R&D department encouraging sega's other game developers to experiment and do creative games, and this ultimately came to a peak in the late 90s when working on dreamcast titles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzXSZTk-J8A

[dubcity]

I thought Panzer Dragoon Saga and Burning Rangers were Sega's most creative and craziest ideas. Then Jet Grind Radio, Space Channel 5 and Shenmue came along. Even crazy ass Seaman.