I thought about making a thread on this topic/tangent but it never was the right time of framing.

I've had a lot of thought about how gaming fans turning professional is a necessary facet of the industry very much prior to Sonic Mania itself, as it's how I broke into the industry doing commercial work after doing music for fan projects, and this is (pretty long) after being active in the Quake/Quake2 modding community - a community from which a LOT of current AAA talent in the west cultivated their skills before being recruited. It has much to do with what people can and cannot learn from the existence of a project like Sonic Mania. It was written before the Rolling Stone interview was published so I kind of feel vindicated that a lot of my views are parallel to that of Christian. The following is actually a post I typed up in response to the OP of this thread but never got around to posting. At that point, I was just a random guy in Melbourne saying Hey, I can do Sonic for you. I think it was really surprising to them that someone would be able to rebuild one of their games, independently, with no resources from them.ĭisclaimer that I worked on Sonic Mania, and disclaimer that a lot of what I'm about to post comes from my own personal perspective, and I represent neither SEGA nor PagodaWest/Christian/etc. Most of that development time was establishing a relationship. And since I had the prototype, I just said, Take a look at this! It took them by surprise, I think. The catalyst for it was that Sega made a blog post asking fans what games they wanted to see on the iPhone.

I saw it as my chance to demonstrate my engine. I thought, well, Ive made hobbyist Sonic projects, so Ill make a demonstration of Sonic CD running on the iPhone. I figured that nobody had done it yet, because the power of the mobile devices at the time wasnt enough to even emulate CD. Traditionally, you think of Sonic games being developed by a big team, and it was unthinkable that an independent contractor could land a job like that. I noticed that Sonic 1 and 2 had released onto iPhone, and I did a bit of research, and discovered that they had contracted a programmer to do it in Texas. I was working as a freelancer doing motion graphics, so I had a lot of experience working for clients. I started making Sonic fangames when I was 16 years old, but it wasnt until I was done with uni that I really got serious about it.

When did you transition into a more professional role? The iOS port of Sonic CD seems like a clear point of demarcation.

Updated sonic mania mod manager