Just finished a fortnight at SEGA so I thought I’d send my first blog post out to all ye loyal subscribers. To be honest, this is shaping up to be the kind of job I so badly wanted to do after I finished University, which was almost two years ago this month. After working as a copywriter for a couple of years, an old school friend, Kai, a web developer (who now seems to sort out my technical inabilities) recommended me for the Web Editor role here (comments about nepotism can follow later) I was pretty surprised when I got an interview, and then pretty amazed when I got the job!

To start with I was based in our Old Street office, and aside from the odd bout of office golf, I was primarily focused on learning the ropes through getting onto Football Manager Live and ‘borrowing’ the Medieval Total War expansion pack, then fiddling with that for a while - hard work I know, but you always need to further your product knowledge!

Things really got started with the announcement of Stormrise last week, for which I had to update the main SEGA website for. The release date is still some way off, so I didn’t have to do too much - just put a product page live with a news story. There are also some pretty cool screenshots and back stories to fill your imagination. It’s about time for a fully 3D RTS methinks, and at the moment this one looks a little like an apocalyptic Command and Conquer. As a hardened RTS player I do love that series, especially the Red Alert titles, but the lack of decent aerial combat has always annoyed me. It’s been a long time since Total Annihilation, where the sheer number of units available on land, sea and air was really special. I reckon further inroads should be made with Stormrise, especially with the infantry scaling the wrecked skyscrapers. A 3D RTS should really add an extra dimension of action, so I reckon this should make it work on a console (it’s about time there was a decent strategy game on console!)

Thinking of RTS, a big plus of me moving to SEGA is my love of Total War. I’ve got to get out of the SEGA bandwagon and say I’ve been a Civ addict for many years (not strictly an RTS I know), but Total War has been my other favourite in the history kind of game category. I really got into Rome, and spent some years with the Scipii and the Seleucids conquering the Old World, then came Medieval and I did the same with the English Crusaders. I put the video for Empire live on Friday, and frankly, it’s looking damn cool… yes admittedly, there isn’t any game play footage on this particular trailer, but then we got some screenshots from the E3 conference this week - take a look at the Empire: Total War page for all the media. Up until now, there’s just been a few naval battle shots. No doubt this is going to be a great feature of the new title, but I’m probably more excited by the full introduction of cannon and musket on the battlefield… The inaccuracy of rifling back then will mean that unit formation won’t become too complicated; I’ve dreamed of a WWII title coming out for Total War, but I reckon it might be impossible because of the nature of battles after about 1870 - you never know though… gaming is pretty progressive, American Civil War might be interesting too.

So, this week, I’ve been looking harder into planning our releases on the website, so I’ll be the man to contact about screenshots, videos, and basically anything else that gets published online. I’ve moved to the main SEGA Europe office at Brentford now too, so I can be in touch with this better. Anything, just give me a shout, especially if you’ve got a good blog - maybe I’ll drop you a link or two!