A shame - I enjoyed Sega Rally, and (as a programmer) really appreciated the hard work that had clearly gone into the game's (proprietary?) engine.

On the plus side, as the article points out, there are loads of racing studios in the UK, so the staff won't have entirely lost out. Onwards/upwards and onto bigger/better things, I guess.

"On the plus side, as the article points out, there are loads of racing studios in the UK, so the staff won't have entirely lost out."

Hmm. Wasn't this the studio that pissed off a lot of developers in the North of England by its aggresive headhunting practices? So it might end up that a lot of the staff go back to their old employers.

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...

"The UK is filled with racing teams, such as Codemasters, Black Rock, Bizarre Creations, Eutechnyx, Evolution, Reflections, Sony Liverpool and Criterion.)..."

...and Blimey! Games.

Yes, and Blimey! Games. I knew I'd forgotten at least one... ;)

A great oppourtunity missed really, and a shame that such talent and money was clearly wasted by an ill thought out venture. A packed racing genre needed a very special addition to compete with Dirt/Burnout etc. Unfortunately we got a light weight McRae PS1 clone.

I don't agree with the previous poster, in the sense that I don't think the effort went to waste.

I, for one, think that SEGA Rally was a very solid title. It might not have pleased as many people as the marketing dept.thought, but it's still a superb game that perfectly captured the feeling of the series.

I also think the SEGA brand has lost a lot of momentum in the last years, marketing-wise. Put something called "Nintendo Rally" on the Wii with Mario on it and you'd sell 2M copies easily. Sad, but true.

Along with Juice Games in Warrington, even tho THQ have dropped the Juiced IP

Of course, Juice too! Gosh, it's only today I realised quite how many racing developers there are in the UK... :)

"A great oppourtunity missed really, and a shame that such talent and money was clearly wasted by an ill thought out venture. A packed racing genre needed a very special addition to compete with Dirt/Burnout etc. Unfortunately we got a light weight McRae PS1 clone."

I can't help but find that amusing... I'm just surprised you didn't throw Motorstorm in there too. Sega Rally did Motorstorm''s "gimmick" properly and provided a high speed arcade race fest, that didn't slow down when all the cars were on screen (unlike DiRT).

So does that mean for SR to have truly competed, it needed a flawed gimmick and slowdown? I guess you'll find GT5P more to your liking then, that has everything you need.

If a company like PD can waste 4 years+ and give us GT5P as a result, then it just makes SR's place in the next gen racer pack all the more justified. Especially compared to shovelware titles like Burnout. Unless you're going to clain that this years burnout isn't just NFS:Burnout Edition.

It's such a shame that Guy Wilday and his talented team produced one of the technically most accomplished and beautiful racing games ever, but didn't take enough time to get the controls spot on to the original SEGA Rally.

What their core target audience basically demanded from a remake, is the same brilliant controls/gameplay from the 1995 classic, along with the option to race on the original's tracks. Apart from that, anything else is just a bonus.

I was annoyed by the demo, but still purchased the game from the bargain bin later on, hoping to somehow get to grips with the sensitive controls.

I agree with the post by sonic fan, Rally simply wasn't a good enough title. It may have had 'real track deformation' but it lacked content, had poor handling and more importantly it just wasn't fun too play.

I've worked with Guy Wilday and his team before and the problem is likely to lie not in the quality of the production (because under Guy - that will be second to none). I suspect the problem to be one of timing. With the worlds markets in crisis - managers will find it difficult to address investor confidence. Restructuring means cutting the fat out of the system, at the risk of losing quality.

Having said that, there are certain "games savvy" investors out there who could help and might help - given that its Guy Wilday involved. He is the brand behind Colin Mac and Sega Rally, after all.

Not surprised. A lot of confidence from SOJ was invested into that studio, and they failed to deliver. A studio needs to be built on loyalty, if not, acquire an already established successful operation.Time to amend CVs I suppose, but that should be nothing new for anyone at that studio, including so-called head honchos. Kampai!

J-san. Its always easy for non-worldclass games producers to ridicule. If you ever worked in games before then you'd know there are many, many risks. Try managing some yourself and try losing your job through failure!

I don't remember loyalty as being a problem with Guys team before. Quite the contrary actually.
And i shouldn't think your comments about getting the CV's out are very helpful to those folks who are losing their jobs this week either.

I suspect you are not that well rounded to make such comments.

Sorry Stephen but the studio failed due to Guy's way of managing.
There wasn't much loyalty there due to his 'hire em, fire em' technique. Some great people left that studio during it's time, many of them pushed out.

Shazbot. If you lost your job - then i can honestly say that i feel your pain. I have been there too. Total shame!

To be frank i feel that a new era in games development beckons. I can see a day (not to far away) where consumers will expect all games to be free and this will of course lead to the total meltdown of the games publishing industry as we know it. Addons to games will of course not be free and players will purchase addons direct from tiny development teams (many of which will be remote from each other). There will of course be a tradeoff in terms of visual aesthetic and interactive quality, moving from 3D back to 2D, but this will be an acceptable price to pay, as 2D games improve gameplay beyond what we have seen thus far. I believe that the risks of todays video game models are far too high - and even greater give the empending market meltdown.

For now I guess we will have to put up with the wildwest shinanigins that is part of almost every game producers studio in the land.

Who'd be a games producer today - ay!

Well as an experienced devloper having seen both well run and badly run studios, SEGA fell into the latter. The days of old school blame culture in management dosen't work, and if it's a failing project with a lack of leadership, only team working can pull a project around. The days of millions squandered and work scrapped through no planning and off the cuff decisions, I thought were consigned to history. Alas with SRS they were not. Just burning staff out with 6 month crunch periods to make amends for lost time never work. Who'd be a games producer today? Plenty, they just don't work in games!

Robotnik calls it - SRS was notorious for poaching staff and burning them out. Word was that Rally had to hit its Q3 release in order to balance the books. So it seems sheer management idiocy (at the highest level in Sega/Sammy not at the studio itself) pretty much set the studio up for a fall. And when you take into account the way it was run from founding to release (it was released the same day as Halo 3!), it was clear Sega Racing Studio never really stood a chance.

Robotnik: I hadn't worked in games before i worked in games and i thought i knew all the angles to put everything right. And hindsight is always a wonderful thing. I've seen producers who couldn't manage a p* up in a brewery rewarded by a market that coudn't get enough of a dodgy title and then i've seen the most organised producers, with a AAA title - totally screw things up - because the market decided at that time - it wanted something entirely different. It is an extraordinary diffucult (fickle) business to get right and it is rarely the obvious things that make the difference - between success and failure.

This is good news this team sucked.

Not sad for them really. If you are going to produce a boat racing game, the boat better -feel- like a boat. If the boat drove like a car then would how good the waves look really doesn't matter. Would the clouds, and the birds, and the sounds matter if it turned on a dime, drove flat like there was 0% wake etc?
-This is sega rally. A racing games that has the looks, but not the feeling of a rally car. Go try Richard Burns rally if you want to try driving an actual car on dirt. Then you will see just how bad Sega did with the -feel- part of it. Until then, you can't really comment. Because unless you've really driven a rally car, then maybe this would feel more real. But shame really, lets make a racing game that simulates dirt; but let's not make it feel like a good car and that it has the limited traction/feel of dirt....
Then the PC port they did, there were no controls for steering with a wheel, FFB effects, replays were really bad, and limited views (bonnet, chase) etc when driving.

Yes, there were no modes of realism either, just load up and race. No arcade, semi-pro, etc, just 1 physics model. And 1 thing about a game, is that it's #1 goal should be what it is built off of. If they had built the physics right of the car, and realism levels, I know they would have captured much much more attention. But pretty graphics don't make up for a poor driving model. If what someone said above is true, that it was forced out at 3/4 done, then they must have saved the last 1/4 to work on the physics, or that's what I thought anyways. It should be the other way around. The car should feel like a real car, now lets add the graphics, eye candy, etc...

Thanks too those who've posted positive words, I am one of the devs that work at SRS - we are still Sega employees for the coming few weeks and despite reports all is not lost yet. Guy and his team were a pleasure to work for and did a cracking job - best of all we created a great title that is FUN to play - remember that essential quality? The current team is one of the best in the industry and to say we sucked is very offensive.

For the record SRS certainly never burnt out their staff, I have worked for a rival racing studio who treat their staff like that and with false promises, but certainly SRS never did and always delivered to keep staff happy (a free PS3 was just one of many gifts!) - we rarely worked OT and if we did we were paid for it.

I am proud of my time with SRS and I hope to work again with some and preferably all of the team in the future.

Hi BigTrak. Thanks for setting the record straight from an SRS staffer's point of view - and glad to hear that all might not be lost; keep us posted if there's any news on that front (or hit the 'Email the authour' link above to contact us direct).

If there was one producer i'd back - it would be Guy.

If there's one person I'd back to bring about the demise of any studio he's in charge of, it's Guy Wilday.

Shazbot. I very much look forward to seeing your own contribution as a games producer.

Oh well.. mediocrity must die... the money better spent on better teams.

Yes, Mr Anonymous, the same juvenile attitiude leads to studios being run by zombies.

Is your company turning Employees into Human Robots?

http://intrench.blogspot.com/2008/04/is-your-company-turning-employees-into.html

I enjoyed playing Sega Rally Revo, but the gameplay quite repetitive. Gve them another tries, I want to see Sega Rally Revo 2 somedays.

Some of you noobs are missing the point. The original sega rally was released when arcades were still popular. When arcades had better graphics than home consoles and PCs. When I first started buying master system games in 88 everyone wanted arcade conversions. Games were not as commercial as they are now. It was for geeks. Sega Rally is not a simulation. It is an arcade game and a very good one. I remember when arcade conversions took a few hours to complete if you were lucky. Sega rally is long for an arcade game in my opinion. I bought this game because it is not a simulation, to remind me of the original. It suceeds in doing that. If you don't like the original sega rally, you are a fool for buying this.

re BigTrak #24

As a developer at SRS for 16 months, I can say you're lying beyond belief. The place was run like a facsist dicatorship and burnt through the staff in an unbelievable way. No senior , or even mid level, management apart from 2 (running the sorry show) survived for long. Crunch time started in time for E3 2006 and continued until launch. Evening, weekend, bank holidays. It's true they payed overtime, and pretty much the whole studio was getting payed 5 weeks every 4. No producer survived more that 2 months, and the team, although all fantastic people, was the most demoralised and depressed people I've ever worked with. As a games developer of many many years, I can honestly say I've never worked in a studio this bad. Pushing staff out of their jobs, lying constantly to the team, and treating everyone like interchangable parts is not the way to run a studio, and the fault lies squaring on 2 peoples shoulders.

I've never seen a studio start up with such good benifits, such a good title to work on and the prestige associated burn through so many people so quickly.