This is my second post ever to/. As you can tell by my nickname, the last post I submitted was about "Propeller Arena," a cancelled Sega game.
In any case, I'd like to toss in my two cents about this whole deal. First of all, the fired employee who threatened a lawsuit in the first place is Steve Peck. I'll say it again, just so everyone knows. Steve Peck. That's the correct spelling.
Steve Peck is well known throughout the industry for his fanatic love of all things Sega. No kidding. He has a Sonic the Hedgehog tattoo. It's on his leg, if I remember right.
Now, I'm not trying to bash the guy, but he's quite an ass to work with. First off, he's by far the loudest mouth in any office I've worked in in the last 10 years. When he wanted someone's attention, he'd scream at the top of his lungs. He'd frequently do things like pass gas in other employees' cubes. While this may be amusing, the putrid ensuing stink wasn't. He'd also do this in front of new employees, thus showing them that it's okay to be a complete ass at work. He'd also incite pointless Mac vs PC arguments when he should have been working. What do you think your employer would do if they knew you were debating as opposed to working?
The main reason he was fired, and John Amirkhan told me this at the time of his firing, was because Peck decided he wasn't rich enough. Peck was falsifying his hours on his time sheets. Naturally, he was caught and fired. Steve, being the jerk he is, decided he couldn't let Sega management seperate him from his precious position as a game tester, so he threatened the lawsuit. In a blatantly knee-jerk reaction, Sega management proceeded to:
- Fire the test department management - Fire all of Steve's acquaintances - Fire pretty much everyone who was Fillippino
That was Sega's mistake. But this pretty much all stemmed from some total ass who couldn't tolerate the fact that the company he so adored wasn't going to pay him to sit around the office (or as the case may be, NOT sit around the office.)
I was working at Sega during the development of Propeller Arena.
At the time, the game was in its last stage of development. The game was debugged and on its way to being mass produced. The packaging had also been completed in the early days of September in 2001. It was simply days away from being released.
During the game, there was a powerup you could collect that would allow you to release a huge bomb. The explosion from the bomb created a large, mushroom cloud looking graphic. If your plane was destroyed in any way while carrying one of those bombs, the bomb would explode. The camera would zoom back to show a distant shot of the explosion. If your plane crashed into one of the buildings, it would do the same. The image was eerily similar to those we saw on 9/11.
To complicate the matter further, the packaging for Propeller Arena showed the City level on the cover. It also showed a plane crashing into one of the large buildings while carrying one of those big bombs.
With this in mind, Sega management decided to pull the game. I can't say I blame them at all. It was a shame that we all worked so hard on such a fun game but at the same time, the sinister acts that had occurred were on everyone's minds. Releasing such a game could easily reflect negatively on the company. It would have been real easy for a critic to say something like, "Sega is trying to capitalize on a national tragedy." So, the game was quietly put away.
Slashdot Mirror
This is my second post ever to /. As you can tell by my nickname, the last post I submitted was about "Propeller Arena," a cancelled Sega game.
In any case, I'd like to toss in my two cents about this whole deal. First of all, the fired employee who threatened a lawsuit in the first place is Steve Peck. I'll say it again, just so everyone knows. Steve Peck. That's the correct spelling.
Steve Peck is well known throughout the industry for his fanatic love of all things Sega. No kidding. He has a Sonic the Hedgehog tattoo. It's on his leg, if I remember right.
Now, I'm not trying to bash the guy, but he's quite an ass to work with. First off, he's by far the loudest mouth in any office I've worked in in the last 10 years. When he wanted someone's attention, he'd scream at the top of his lungs. He'd frequently do things like pass gas in other employees' cubes. While this may be amusing, the putrid ensuing stink wasn't. He'd also do this in front of new employees, thus showing them that it's okay to be a complete ass at work. He'd also incite pointless Mac vs PC arguments when he should have been working. What do you think your employer would do if they knew you were debating as opposed to working?
The main reason he was fired, and John Amirkhan told me this at the time of his firing, was because Peck decided he wasn't rich enough. Peck was falsifying his hours on his time sheets. Naturally, he was caught and fired. Steve, being the jerk he is, decided he couldn't let Sega management seperate him from his precious position as a game tester, so he threatened the lawsuit. In a blatantly knee-jerk reaction, Sega management proceeded to:
- Fire the test department management
- Fire all of Steve's acquaintances
- Fire pretty much everyone who was Fillippino
That was Sega's mistake. But this pretty much all stemmed from some total ass who couldn't tolerate the fact that the company he so adored wasn't going to pay him to sit around the office (or as the case may be, NOT sit around the office.)
I was working at Sega during the development of Propeller Arena.
At the time, the game was in its last stage of development. The game was debugged and on its way to being mass produced. The packaging had also been completed in the early days of September in 2001. It was simply days away from being released.
During the game, there was a powerup you could collect that would allow you to release a huge bomb. The explosion from the bomb created a large, mushroom cloud looking graphic. If your plane was destroyed in any way while carrying one of those bombs, the bomb would explode. The camera would zoom back to show a distant shot of the explosion. If your plane crashed into one of the buildings, it would do the same. The image was eerily similar to those we saw on 9/11.
To complicate the matter further, the packaging for Propeller Arena showed the City level on the cover. It also showed a plane crashing into one of the large buildings while carrying one of those big bombs.
With this in mind, Sega management decided to pull the game. I can't say I blame them at all. It was a shame that we all worked so hard on such a fun game but at the same time, the sinister acts that had occurred were on everyone's minds. Releasing such a game could easily reflect negatively on the company. It would have been real easy for a critic to say something like, "Sega is trying to capitalize on a national tragedy." So, the game was quietly put away.