Having worked in the video game industry for closing in on a decade, I’ve heard a lot of common misconceptions from my friends and family regarding exactly what it is that I do as my job.  The most common one seems to be: “You just get to sit around and play video games all day, don’t you?”

The short answer is no, I don’t — not even close, unfortunately.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t get to play games at all; on the contrary, most of the time I’ll get to play one of our titles well before it hits retail shelves.  Today, as an example, I got to play Sonic Unleashed on the 360 for about 15 minutes.

The game is far from complete, but most of the game elements are in place, and in some cases it’s just a matter of polish and tweaking to get the gameplay to work correctly.  In other cases, there’s more development that needs to be done, but since the game’s not due to ship until late in the year, there’s still a ton of time to iron out the details, both large and small.

I got to see three different levels being played, and then got to try one of the levels myself.  Here are my initial impressions, keeping in mind that there are still aspects of the game that we won’t discuss until a later time:

Overall, even though it was one level, it was a blast and I would have played it a lot more if I’d had the opportunity.  The gameplay style of this particular level — a style that comprises a good portion of the overall game — is going to make a lot of old-school Sonic fans really happy.  The little blue guy gets going so fast sometimes that it’s truly difficult to keep up…!

That’s all I can really say at the moment, but I wanted to throw it out there to wet your whistle on a Friday afternoon.  Have a good weekend!

EDIT Saturday 4/26:

It’s a gorgeous day in the Bay Area so I don’t want to spend too much time on work stuff, but after seeing the flurry of comments here and on various boards and blogs, I wanted to clarify some things.

One: I know you guys have a ton of questions about the game, but please keep in mind that there are aspects of the title — ranging from environments to characters to gameplay — that haven’t been officially announced yet.  There’s a lot about the game that I still don’t know about myself.  So, don’t take it personally, but please understand that your questions will be answered in due time, and for various reasons I can’t address some of the things that are being asked.  (Not to mention that if I did answer every question, I wouldn’t have enough time to do all the other work on my plate…!)

Two: I only played one level.  I played for 15 minutes, mainly because I kept dying over and over.  Right now the controls are ultra-sensitive (this will be refined in the coming months) and not having played before, it was really easy for me to mis-time a jump or fall off the path to my doom.  But for the 15 minutes I played, I had a lot of fun.

Third and perhaps most important: Yes, I am a SEGA employee.  This means that of course there will be a bias in whatever I write about any of our games.  And yes, as someone else commented, early builds of games almost always get positive reviews, at least in the gaming press, to say nothing of reviews from employees of the company that makes the game…!

That said: You Sonic fans are a very loyal and rabid fanbase, and you deserve a great game.  Unleashed, right now, has the potential to be that game.  Thing is, it’s not going to ship for a half-year at least, which is a long time… and that means your hands-on stories from the gaming press won’t show up for quite a while.  But I work here, and I got my own hands-on yesterday, and I had a good time with it.  I figured giving you guys a few tidbits to tide you over, even if it’s from an official company source like myself, is better than just giving you complete radio silence until our next big PR announcement.

So — take it for what it is: one man’s impressions of an early build, nothing more.  I haven’t seen well over 90% of what the game has to offer, and when I do finally see the rest (and I get the go-ahead from our execs), I’ll tell you a lot more.  For right now, feel free to keep discussing what I wrote, and again, trust that your questions will be answered in due time, in most cases long before the game is due to ship.  But there’s still a long way to go, so please keep that in mind.

Happy gaming!

So let me start off by saying that working on our blogs has been a lot of fun. It gives us the chance to have a little more fun with everyone, and come up with some cool and/or different materials. So now, we’re pretty thrilled to be posting an Iron Man production team interview with questions from both the SEGA Community team, and the experts from Marvel.com on all things Super Hero related.

We were very fortunate to get the opportunity to reach out to our production team and grill them on some of the questions beating around in our heads. Big thanks to Andy Alamano, Associate Producer on the Iron Man video game, who was kind enough to sit down and discuss what makes the Iron Man game great.

Check out the first part of the interview at http://www.marvel.com/news/vgstories.3347.

————————————————————————————-

SEGA Community: How much freedom did you have when crafting the story for the game? Did you work with the movie or comic folks for input/info?

Andy Alamano: Working with Marvel’s rich comic history allowed us a lot of freedom to pick and choose elements from within the comic run. Marvel had a great deal of visibility every step of the way.

SEGA Community: The game looks beautiful, but if you could pick, what one detail do you think fans are really going to be blown away with?

Andy Alamano: I think the greats detail within the Iron Man game is Iron Man himself. Every suit included in the game has amazing detail. Each time you gain access to another armor set, you can’t help but just use the game camera to examine it.

SEGA Community: You guys have some of the film’s cast locked in for voice talent. How was it working with them on the game?

Andy Alamano: Everyone we worked with was very excited to reprise their roles from the film in the game. Robert Downey Jr. is so excited about the role that he actually took a lot of his time to go over our game script and help iterate on specific details to make sure our Tony was the same as the film’s.

SEGA Community: Any obstacles that were especially tricky in overcoming when developing the game? What did you find about Iron Man and his world that was difficult?

Andy Alamano: One of the biggest challenges was creating a world that was big enough for Iron Man. Because he moves so fast, we had to have a world where he could navigate quickly but not feel cramped. The end results are some massive landscapes that allow for total freedom of flight.

SEGA Community: During the development process we all know aspects of the game get removed, were there any features in particular that you wish made it into the final game?

Andy Alamano: I think Tony Stark outside the suit is a great character; it would have been awesome to have been able to include some Stark-esque “mini games” revolving around his lifestyle outside the suit…

SEGA Community: Are there differences between the different system versions?

Andy Alamano: Each version has unique aspects about it. The PS3 and 360 feature huge environments and include exclusive suits. The PS2 and PSP feature more tight quarters fighting and adventure elements. The Wii includes all sorts of Wii themed control abilities and the DS has a great classic top down shooter vibe.

SEGA Community: What are the major differences for the Nintendo DS and PSP versions? Are players encountering the story from a side scrolling perspective, or is the game fully 3d?

Andy Alamano: The game is fully 3D on every platform. The DS is more of an overhead shooter style but we still cover the same story concepts across all platforms the same.

SEGA Community: Do the Wii and Playstation 3 systems take advantage of the motion sensing technology from these consoles?

Andy Alamano: The Wii features full control of view via the Wii Remote. Also some attacks and other special features will require some Wii actions.

————————————————————————————-

Thanks to Andy Alamano for his time answering these questions! If you haven’t already done so, please read the rest of the interview over at Marvel.com.