Some of us like to think that science is apolitical. We like to imagine that global, collaborating scientists choose to ignore the lines in our Apple or Google Maps that trace the boundaries of sovereign nations all in the name of research. And sometimes we are right.
It follows then that the inception of SEGA Sports' World Series Baseball on the SEGA Dreamcast is a story of in-house rivals sharing ideas across miles of oceans. This was possible partly because game design is its own science; its own language — not limited by geopolitical or even cultural constructs. Perhaps it is no wonder then that SEGA of America and SEGA of Japan shared SEGA Dreamcast technology that would become the foundation to iconic SEGA Sports game franchises.
Before the corruption of 2K Sports as we now know it, it was SEGA Sports. I spoke with former SEGA Sports producer David Perkinson (World Series Baseball, NFL 2K, Heavy Rain) to discuss how SEGA Sports was shaped in its defining Dreamcast era.
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| Credit: Sega Retro |
Steven Montani: How did you end up at SEGA?
David Perkinson: Yeah, that’s a good question! I graduated from college in the Spring of ’93. I went to school in Ohio, and my sister and her husband lived in San Francisco. My sister had been doing some work at the time with kind of a small, wannabe-publisher, and they had a few games they were working on. At the time, CES was the big gameshow pre-E3. At the time, CES was in Chicago, and I was in Ohio and they wanted somebody to work the booth. I did some work for this company, and I was not being asked for too much. I helped people play, rebooted systems, and handed out pamphlets. CES ended and they asked me if I wanted to come work for them in the Bay Area for the summer. So I did. I flew out there and I began working for them without any real defined terms. Neither party knew if it would be a long-term thing, short-term thing or whatever. I worked there a couple of months at the time, sending reviewable builds out to media people and general stuff around the office. I just graduated from college and my friends had graduated from college and it was going to be our last summer together so I decided I was going to head back home. I left that gig. And then committed myself to moving back to the Bay Area. My sister was there. I had an easy in. I drove from Ohio, got to the Bay Area on the Saturday of Labor Day weekend.I saw an ad in the paper that said: “growing software publisher needs testers.“ It did not say who it was. Since I just had done that, I decided to apply. Applied on Monday. Got the job on Tuesday. And then I was around SEGA in different incarnations, always working on SEGA stuff, for about ten years. I started out in [quality assurance], spent maybe about a year in QA, and then moved into production. I always had an affinity for the sports stuff, so I began working on the Genesis sports stuff. That transitioned into 32X and the Saturn, and then into Dreamcast, and ultimately into publishing SEGA Sports or ESPN video games even, developed by SEGA and Visual Concepts for other platforms.
My role kind of increased. I was assistant producer, associate producer, producer, and then doing all kinds of stuff. Like taking on projects from SEGA of Japan, working with developers in the United States on stuff from scratch. Almost all of it in the sports realm.
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| NFL's Greatest: San Francisco vs. Dallas 1978-1993 - one of the earliest games David worked on as a tester. |
Did you have a passion for sports beforehand, before entering the game industry? Or did it develop while you were there?
I played an embarrassing amount of Techmo Bowl in college. Blades of Steel, Double Dribble on Nintendo Entertainment System was kind of a fun one. It had that hook shot from the corner that was kind of a bug that the shot was never missed. I was always a huge sports fan growing up — it was a passion of mine and so I kind of fell into it naturally. When I got on sports games working in QA, I just had a good connection with them and built really good working connections with the production teams on the SEGA side, and developers on development side.
So that was an MBA of sorts in production, in game development, and in publishing during your time there…
Yeah! One of the great things about it was that the group of people working there — it was a really eclectic group of people, a lot of whom got their start at the same time as I did, who were still in there doing really cool stuff. They accomplished great things in games, or whether they moved into other areas of software development. We had writers, actors, musicians, just the gambit of creative people that worked there. We were kind of like-minded. I consider myself incredibly fortunate, right place at the right time.
That’s one part of it. The other part of it that made it so interesting and kind of challenging — every hardware generation, the rules completely changed. The expectations would change. The technology would change. The things you had to work on and think about and the tools used to develop the games and the complexity and the visual improvement — all of it was constantly evolving. You could always apply lessons before of making successful products, but there was a fair amount of improvisation in every hardware generation. You really had to think quickly and problem solve, and find a way to execute the best product given the constraints. Super-fun.
That is in line with some of the documentaries I’ve seen on SEGA. Where SEGA had been considered, maybe back in those days, like how we'd see modern indie studios — an eclectic personality to the entire studio. People were not afraid to take risks, explore avenues with their creativity and mess with different mediums mixing different disciplines.
Even outside of the sports stuff, you had all of types of creativity coming from SEGA of Japan. Just legendary designers making incredibly famous products. There was a fearlessness and spirit of innovation that led them to take risks. Even if the games did not blow out sales, those innovations would drive something else that would show up in some other product that could make that successful and shine. At SEGA of America, even outside of the sports world. I think of stuff like Ecco the Dolphin. Incredibly creative game.
I played an embarrassing amount of Techmo Bowl in college. Blades of Steel, Double Dribble on Nintendo Entertainment System was kind of a fun one. It had that hook shot from the corner that was kind of a bug that the shot was never missed. I was always a huge sports fan growing up — it was a passion of mine and so I kind of fell into it naturally. When I got on sports games working in QA, I just had a good connection with them and built really good working connections with the production teams on the SEGA side, and developers on development side.
So that was an MBA of sorts in production, in game development, and in publishing during your time there…
Yeah! One of the great things about it was that the group of people working there — it was a really eclectic group of people, a lot of whom got their start at the same time as I did, who were still in there doing really cool stuff. They accomplished great things in games, or whether they moved into other areas of software development. We had writers, actors, musicians, just the gambit of creative people that worked there. We were kind of like-minded. I consider myself incredibly fortunate, right place at the right time.
That’s one part of it. The other part of it that made it so interesting and kind of challenging — every hardware generation, the rules completely changed. The expectations would change. The technology would change. The things you had to work on and think about and the tools used to develop the games and the complexity and the visual improvement — all of it was constantly evolving. You could always apply lessons before of making successful products, but there was a fair amount of improvisation in every hardware generation. You really had to think quickly and problem solve, and find a way to execute the best product given the constraints. Super-fun.
That is in line with some of the documentaries I’ve seen on SEGA. Where SEGA had been considered, maybe back in those days, like how we'd see modern indie studios — an eclectic personality to the entire studio. People were not afraid to take risks, explore avenues with their creativity and mess with different mediums mixing different disciplines.
Even outside of the sports stuff, you had all of types of creativity coming from SEGA of Japan. Just legendary designers making incredibly famous products. There was a fearlessness and spirit of innovation that led them to take risks. Even if the games did not blow out sales, those innovations would drive something else that would show up in some other product that could make that successful and shine. At SEGA of America, even outside of the sports world. I think of stuff like Ecco the Dolphin. Incredibly creative game.
