Sega Studios San Francisco, formerly known as Secret Level, Inc., was an American video game developer based in San Francisco, California. It was founded in December 1999 by Jeremy Gordon, Otavio Good, and Josh Adams.
Before being purchased by Sega, Secret Level, Inc. was a small game development studio. The company ported and developed original game titles, and was also known for their tools and technology expertise. The company took on a wide variety of work for hire projects that focused on either art or programming. The company developed several commercial tools for authoring game UI and menus. They also had a long time relationship with Epic Games for bringing the Unreal Engine to several game consoles. During its lifetime the studio developed games for Dreamcast, PC, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, PSP, Xbox, and Xbox 360.
The company was originally divided into three separate legal entities; Secret Level Games, Secret Level Tools, and Secret Level Technology. This was a reflection of the company's business model for achieving developmental stability. Each group was to have its own income streams. The divisions were later merged a few years into the studio's operation.
Founder Jeremy Gordon was the Studio Director and CTO from 1999 to 2009.
Secret Level's first game release was Unreal Tournament for the Sega Dreamcast, a port of the PC game by Epic Games. The game had additional content created and work done to increase its appeal to a console audience. The reception was excellent and the game received an Editor's Choice Award from IGN.[2] The game also began a longtime relationship between Epic and Secret Level, with the latter supporting Unreal Engine technology on the PlayStation 2 and Gamecube for several years. Secret Level wrote the first Unreal export tools for Maya in 2002.
Secret Level Tools developed Strobe: Flash for Games SDK[3] as a UI solution for game developers in 2000. The product was used in several LucasArts titles[4] which began a relationship which led to the Starfighter game ports. The product was suspended in mid 2001.
The company was hired by LucasArts to port Star Wars: Starfighter to the Xbox in 2001. The game was titled Star Wars: Starfighter: Special Edition and featured new content, new playable ships, and added detail to the levels. This was followed up with Star Wars: Jedi Starfighter for Xbox which featured even more Secret Level generated content, including additional game modes, and a new Coruscant game level.
Secret Level's first original game was Magic: The Gathering - Battlegrounds released in November 2003 by Atari. The project brought the classic Wizards of the CoastMagic: The Gathering trading card game to the Xbox and PC in full 3D. It was designed with faithful translations of classic creatures, spells, and enchantments for real-time strategic duelling. The company used the game as an opportunity to grow its art department significantly.
The company signed up to do America's Army: Rise of a Soldier in early 2004 for Ubisoft. It was an Xbox version of the tactical first-person shooter America's Army, released by the U.S. Army in 2002 as a communications and recruiting tool. The new game added a story and levels to appeal more broadly to a console audience. The game also included a new single player mode based onMajorJason Amerine's experiences inAfghanistan in the year 2001. The company used the game as an opportunity to grow its game design department significantly. Secret Level was unable to get an acceptable frame rate for the PS2 version of the game and that release was canceled in late 2005.
The company took on a number of work for hire projects over the years (see below) which tasked either the art or engineering departments. During the period 2004-2006 there were over half a dozen small projects.
The company completed a port of Karaoke Revolution to the Xbox for Konami in late 2004. It was the first karaoke video game for the Xbox to include a vocal analyzer that measures the pitch and rhythm of a player's voice. It received IGN Editor's Choice Award.[6]
In September 2004, Secret Level moved from its long time San Francisco offices in the Flood Building at 870 Market Street, to larger ones at 123 Townsend Street, across from AT&T Park.
Secret Level became Ageia's first NovodeX solution development house in March 2005.[7] The art department produced demo material for the technology.
Founder Josh Adams left the company in mid 2005 to join Epic Games. The company released Sidecar in late 2005, an SDK and authoring environment for game UI and menus. Orange Design, who had used Strobe several years earlier on the Starfighter projects, worked with Secret Level to complete the UI for X-Men: The Official Movie Game. The game shipped in March 2006.
Secret Level began work on Golden Axe in summer 2005 for Sega and rapidly made progress with development of both the game and a new game engine. Sega was so impressed it decided to acquire the studio.
Sega buyout
On April 3, 2006, Secret Level, Inc. was acquired by Sega,[8] for $15 million.[9] Sega had recently started acquiring other studios in an effort to build more western appeal, and this was its first North American purchase. VP Operations Angus Chassels left Secret Level after the buyout to pursue other opportunities. Chassels is currently the first full-time Entrepreneur in Residence at the University of Colorado.[10]
After the acquisition, Secret Level was grown to a large, nearly 200 person studio and became Sega Studios San Francisco. The company developed Iron Man, Iron Man 2, and Golden Axe: Beast Rider for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. This required that the studio grow quickly, nearly doubling its size in less than a year. This certainly affected the quality of the final products as hiring, particularly of key positions, was slower than needed.
Founders Jeremy Gordon and Otavio Good both left the company in 2009. David Dienstbier and Darren Stubbington, both of Acclaim Studios Austin and its Turok franchise, were added to the management staff in 2007.
Golden Axe: Beast Rider was released for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in October 2008. It received a 3.2/10 rating from IGN with a closing comment, "This is a game worth avoiding like the plague, even if the classic remains deep and warm within your heart."[11]
A postmortem of Golden Axe: Beast Rider by project producer Michael Boccieri, which appeared in the February 2009 issue of Game Developer Magazine,[12] discussed the project's troubled development cycle.
Fate of Sega Studios San Francisco
With the critical and commercial failure of both games, Sega reorganized the studio under Constantine Hantzopoulos[13] in 2009. The studio no longer had the autonomy it did previously. Sega hoped with the restructuring that Iron Man 2 and the sequel to Beast Rider would deliver on what the original games had intended.
On April 2, 2010, Sega announced that Sega Studios San Francisco would be closed with the release of Iron Man 2. Sega did not say anything about the sequel to Beast Rider,[14] which lead several websites to believe the game was not up to expectations.
Sega West president Mike Hayes was interviewed by 1UP.com and in the interview he discussed the studio's closure.[15]
The company was approached by Electronic Arts in mid 2004 to port the game Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath to the PlayStation 2. After extensive evaluation it was ultimately determined not to be feasible without dramatic cuts to quality and so was canceled.
The company was approached by Sony in early 2005 to explore a game pitch based on the book Robota, by Doug Chiang. Artwork and a level was produced using the Unreal 3 Engine, but the project was canceled.
In 2005 the company was hired to provide architectural visualizations of a high profile penthouse in the San Francisco Four Seasons residences using the Unreal Engine.
The company was hired in 2005 by Stottler Henke Associates to create content and levels for a United States Navy training simulator, called Informant. The project was done using Lithtech's Jupiter Engine.
The company was hired to port the game X-Men: The Official Movie Game to the PSP. It was ultimately determined to be impractical.
Technology
Strobe
Strobe was a Macromedia Flash 5 renderer that used hardware acceleration to allow Flash animation playback on game consoles. It was primarily designed to allow the use of Flash for game menu authoring. The product was started in early 2000, and by mid 2001 core engineering was complete on the PS2 and Xbox, both platforms capable of 60fps playback. Unfortunately, the product was put on hold in June 2001 pending the finalization of licensing terms with Macromedia, who ultimately decided not to proceed into the games space. The product was used in the PS2 and Xbox versions of Star Wars: Starfighter.[4][16]
Unreal Engine
Secret Level was responsible for bringing the Unreal Engine 1 technology to the Dreamcast, and UE2 to the PlayStation 2 and the Gamecube. The company also provided product support directly to developers using the technology, and was a part of the Unreal Developer Network (UDN) . Numerous titles shipped using it, including; XIII and Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell. The last "official" build the PS2 and Gamecube saw was UE2 build 927 dated April 2002, after which developers had to incorporate newer features themselves.
Pangaea
Pangaea was a joint effort between Lucasarts and Secret Level to design a new Lucasarts game engine and toolset capable of rendering large scale environments. It was to be used for a massively multiplayer online role-playing game called Proteus, a successor to Star Wars Galaxies. Development of Pangaea was halted in 2004 after Lucasarts reorganized under Jim Ward. Some of the ideas later informed the design of the studio's internal Riders engine used on Golden Axe: Beast Rider and Iron Man.
Sidecar
Sidecar was a standalone UI authoring tool and SDK. Sidecar was used on several projects both internally and externally, among them, X-Men: The Official Movie Game, by Z-Axis.
Quake III Arena is a 1999 multiplayer-focused first-person shooter developed by id Software. The third installment of the Quake series, Arena differs from previous games by excluding a story-based single-player mode and focusing primarily on multiplayer gameplay. The single-player mode is played against computer-controlled bots. It features music composed by Sonic Mayhem and Front Line Assembly founder Bill Leeb.
The Dreamcast is a home video game console released by Sega on November 27, 1998, in Japan; September 9, 1999, in North America; and October 14, 1999, in Europe. It was the first sixth-generation video game console, preceding Sony's PlayStation 2, Nintendo's GameCube, and Microsoft's Xbox. The Dreamcast was Sega's final console; its 2001 discontinuation ended the company's eighteen years in the console market.
Rez is a musical rail shooter developed by United Game Artists and published by Sega for the Dreamcast and PlayStation 2. It was released in Japan in 2001, followed by releases to the United States and Europe in 2002. The game was ported to Xbox 360 as Rez HD by Q Entertainment and HexaDrive in 2008. A virtual reality-compatible expanded version dubbed Rez Infinite was co-developed and released through 2016 to 2023 by Enhance Games, Resonair and Monstars for PlayStation 4, Windows, Android, Oculus Quest and PlayStation 5.
Crazy Taxi is a racing video game developed and published by Sega. It is the first game in the Crazy Taxi series. The game was first released in arcades in 1999 and then was ported to the Dreamcast in 2000. Gameplay is based on picking up taxi customers and driving to their destination as quickly as possible. Reception to Crazy Taxi has been mostly positive. It was ported to other platforms numerous times, including the PlayStation 2 and GameCube by Acclaim in 2001, and then Windows in 2002.
Unreal Engine (UE) is a series of 3D computer graphics game engines developed by Epic Games, first showcased in the 1998 first-person shooter video game Unreal. Initially developed for PC first-person shooters, it has since been used in a variety of genres of games and has been adopted by other industries, most notably the film and television industry. Unreal Engine is written in C++ and features a high degree of portability, supporting a wide range of desktop, mobile, console, and virtual reality platforms.
Altered Beast is a 1988 beat 'em up arcade video game developed and published by Sega. The game is set in Ancient Greece and follows a player character chosen by Zeus to rescue his daughter Athena from the demonic ruler of the underworld, Neff. Through the use of power-ups, the player character can assume the form of different magical beasts. It was ported to several home video game consoles and home computers. It was the pack-in game for the Mega Drive when that system launched in 1988.
Neversoft Entertainment, Inc. was an American video game developer based in Woodland Hills, California. The studio was founded by Joel Jewett, Mick West and Chris Ward in July 1994 and was acquired by Activision in October 1999. Initially, the studio worked with Playmates Toys, where they worked on the game Skeleton Warriors, which was based on a animated television series of the same name. Throughout 1996, the studio grew, and worked on projects with Crystal Dynamics and Sony Computer Entertainment, but due to internal conflicts, they were cancelled.
Silicon Knights was a Canadian video game developer. Founded in 1992 by Denis Dyack, the company was headquartered in St. Catharines, Ontario. They started developing for computers such as the Atari ST and IBM PC compatibles. After 1996, they moved to console titles.
Golden Axe is a side-scrolling hack-and-slash video game released by Sega for arcades in 1989, running on the Sega System 16B arcade hardware. Makoto Uchida was the lead designer of the game, and was also responsible for the creation of the previous year's Altered Beast. The game casts players as one of three warriors who must free the fantastical land of Yuria from the tyrannical rule of Death Adder, who wields the titular Golden Axe.
The Creative Assembly Limited is a British video game developer based in Horsham, founded in 1987 by Tim Ansell. In its early years, the company worked on porting games to MS-DOS from Amiga and ZX Spectrum platforms, later working with Electronic Arts to produce a variety of games under the EA Sports brand. In 1999, the company had sufficient resources to attempt a new and original project, proceeding to develop the strategy computer game Shogun: Total War which was a critical and commercial hit, and is regarded as a benchmark strategy game. Subsequent titles in the Total War series built on the success of Shogun: Total War, increasing the company's critical and commercial success.
Crazy Taxi is a series of racing games developed by Hitmaker and published by Sega. It was first available as an arcade video game in 1999, then released for the Dreamcast console in 2000. It is the third best-selling Dreamcast game in the United States, selling over a million copies. The game was later ported to the PlayStation 2, GameCube, and IBM PC compatibles with sequels also appearing on the Xbox, Game Boy Advance, and PlayStation Portable systems.
Over one hundred video games based on the Star Wars franchise have been released, dating back to some of the earliest home consoles. Some are based directly on films while others rely heavily on the Star Wars Expanded Universe.
Sonic the Hedgehog is a 2006 platform game developed by Sonic Team and published by Sega. It was produced in commemoration of the Sonic series' 15th anniversary and intended as a reboot for the seventh-generation video game consoles. Players control Sonic, Shadow, and the new character Silver, who battle Solaris, an ancient evil pursued by Doctor Eggman. Each playable character has his own campaign and abilities, and must complete levels, explore hub worlds and fight bosses to advance the story. In multiplayer modes, players can work cooperatively to collect Chaos Emeralds or race to the end of a level.
Sega AM Research & Development No. 1 is a development department within Japanese video game developer Sega that also previously existed as Wow Entertainment and Sega Wow Inc. AM1 spent most of its early existence under the leadership of Rikiya Nakagawa and developed a number of arcade games for Sega.
Project Gotham Racing (PGR) is a series of racing video games developed by Bizarre Creations and published by Microsoft Studios and Sega (Dreamcast). The series appeared on the Dreamcast, Xbox and Xbox 360 consoles, and consists of Metropolis Street Racer (Dreamcast), Project Gotham Racing (Xbox), Project Gotham Racing 2 (Xbox), Project Gotham Racing 3, and Project Gotham Racing 4.
Golden Axe is a series of side-scrolling beat 'em up arcade video games developed by Sega. The series takes place in a medieval fantasy world where several heroes have the task of recovering the legendary Golden Axe, the mainstay element of the series.
Tantalus Media is an Australian video game developer based in Melbourne. It was founded in 1994 by programmers Andrew Bailey and Trevor Nuridin. Since its inception, Tantalus has developed almost 100 games and has won multiple game awards. In March 2021, Keywords Studios acquired 85% of Tantalus Media for US$46.8 million.
Golden Axe: Beast Rider is an action-adventure hack and slash video game available on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. It was published by Sega, and developed by Secret Level. It is the first 3D entry in the Golden Axe franchise. The game was released in North America on October 14, 2008, in Europe on October 17, and in Australia on October 23.
Dreamcast Collection is a video game compilation developed and published by Sega for the Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows, with each game included being a remastered version of its original release. A PlayStation 3 version was planned but was scrapped for unknown reasons. The original compilation included four of the best-selling video games for the Dreamcast. Although each of the games by themselves all received positive reviews, the original compilation received mostly mixed to negative reviews and was heavily criticized for the compilation's game selection. The 2016 version was met with a larger positive reception, particularly for the inclusion and remaster of Jet Set Radio.
In the video game industry, a console war describes the competition between two or more video game console manufacturers in trying to achieve better consumer sales through more advanced console technology, an improved selection of video games, and general marketing around their consoles. While console manufacturers are generally always trying to out-perform other manufacturers in sales, these console wars engage in more direct tactics to compare their offerings directly against their competitors or to disparage the competition in contrast to their own, and thus the marketing efforts have tended to escalate in back-and-forth pushes.
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