The current gaming-themed season of Fortnite has been an opportunity for Epic <a href="https://comicvibe.com/5-best-video-games-like-max-payne/” title=”5 Best Video Games Like Max Payne”>Games to put assault rifles into the hands of a wide variety of iconic characters. While his rival Shadow isn’t a stranger to packing heat, Sonic the Hedgehog typically sports a far more family-friendly persona than the one you can currently find running and gunning in the hit battle royale. Sega has been justifying this deviant behavior by arguing that the Sonic in Fortniteis not the real Sonic but an android Sonic. A new interview in Japanese magazine Famitsu sheds some light on how Epic convinced Sega to allow Sonic in the game in the first place, as well as revealing how some Japanese players have reacted to Sonic’s Fortnite debut.
In a joint interview between Sega president and COO Shuji Utsumi (who recently shared his desire to broaden the horizons of the company’s IP) and Takayuki Kawasaki, managing director of Epic Games Japan, the pair explained how a mutual respect between the companies and a particular love of Sonic from Epic Games President Tim Sweeney helped facilitate the collaboration. They also discussed how Sonic was retrofitted to work within the battle royale’s existing design templates, a process that required numerous iterations before a result could be agreed upon.
“We had a few problems with the proportions of his head to the rest of his body,” Utsumi said. “We also felt that the concept was great, but we had a lot of internal debate about whether it was right to just put Sonic intoFortnite as-is. We didn’t want it to feel like Sonic was included just because we received a request for such a collaboration, and we were conscious of the need to find alignment between the worlds of Sonic and Fortnite if he was to be included.”
He continued, “We didn’t want to let down Fortnite fans, but we also wanted to meet the expectations of Sonic fans too. It also wasn’t just about making his in-game appearance as strong as possible. There was a lot of work to do outside the game. We prepared our own backstory about why he exists in this world in this form, and crafted a story that was convincing and illustrated that as a comic.”
Revealing stats on player engagement with the collaboration, Kawasaki said it’s been a hit. “The response from players has been really positive,” he said, pointing out that Fortnite‘s overall player numbers were higher this season than in the same period a year earlier. “In just the first weekend following the launch, players worldwide collected over 1.5 billion rings and defeated Dr Eggman over 14 million times.”
With even Utsumi impressed by the numbers, Kawasaki added, “I guess, since they’re fighting a villain like Eggman, players don’t hold back when it comes to bullying him!”
The whole thing was a learning experience for Sega, Utsumi said. For Kawasaki, the current state of Fortnite, strengthened by its gaming-infused update, reinforces the promise of the metaverse as proselytized by CEO Tim Sweeney.
“Tim started talking about the metaverse more than 10 years before Fortnite even launched,” Kawasaki said. “One anecdote that left a strong impression on me was when he said, if kids are playing with action figures in a sandbox, none of them would say anything [like] ‘I have a Luke Skywalker figure, but you have Batman, and since he’s from DC, we can’t play together.’ But in the digital world, even before discussing legal rights, that’s already the norm. He wanted to change that. Everyone’s reaction at the time was that they understood, but it was basically impossible to implement. Then, before I knew it, Sonic was wearing a Mega Buster, and Goku was firing the kamehameha.”
“It really feels like the world Tim dreamed of is becoming a reality,” Utsumi said. “However, as this becomes more and more common, we [at Sega] have to work hard to establish our own worldview. We had quite a few concerns on how we should position ourselves as a distinct and independent IP, and how we should adapt to fit inside a metaverse-like world. We discussed this a lot with Epic Games, and through those exchanges, we learned how important it was to answer the question of why Sonic would be there. It’s been a valuable learning experience for Sega.”
The interview offers an example of the types of conversations a lot of IP holders are probably having as they decide if, when, and how to license their prized characters to Epic’s growing metaverse. In the case of Sonic, the upside for both companies is clear. Epic gets an infusion of fresh player excitement from the addition of a new character, while Sega gets to put Sonic in front of a new generation of players who might never have otherwise given the Blue Blur’s existing single-player games a try. According to Utsumi and Kawasaki, the Sonic collaboration has been a mutual success story, sending Sonic players to Fortnite and making Fortnite players more curious about the world of Sonic.
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