New Sega Game Taking Place in Illinois?

CARBONDALE, IL -- Aliens have landed in Carbondale and they are killing anything that moves. Your natural instinct is to flee, but a severe mid-winter blizzard has cut off all hopes of escape.

Quick! Grab a gun, a sledgehammer, a scythe, any weapon you can get your hands on. Your only hope for survival is to stand your ground and fight -- in the mall, the old Carbondale high school, city hall, even the sewer system if you have to.

This is a fight to the death and it's going to be bloody.

The battle isn't real, though. It's one of the biggest video game releases of 2004 being developed by Sega. Thousands of people, maybe even millions, will be fighting to save Carbondale from alien beasties next year.

"Initially Sega said 'We want to place this game in a small town,'" said Cord Smith, product manager for Sega of America. "Initially they said an East Coast town, but they just wanted something that wasn't the West Coast. (The Japanese game designers) are familiar with San Francisco and California culture, but to them, that's not America. America is what's between the two coasts."

Smith knew right where to bring the game's Japanese development team. He grew up in Du Quoin and earned a master's degree in fiction from Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Smith is also virtually the only Midwesterner working at Sega's San Francisco office.

"In the office people make fun of me because I'm one of the only ones who's from the middle of America," Smith said. "Carbondale is this mythical place that we all kind of laugh about, because I love it. I told them, 'Based on all these locations (you're looking for), I can't think of a better place for you to go.'"

The other people at Sega agreed. Smith is now spending nine days leading a team of eight game designers from Tokyo around key Carbondale locations, including University Mall, the old high school central campus, the police station, city hall, water treatment plant, local homes and apartments, and yes, even the sewer system.

"They're soaking all this in, with the biggest smiles on their faces," Smith said. "They keep saying this is kind of what they imagined, but they're blown away that everyone has a yard, everything's beautiful, everything's so lush and green."

The game's designer, Shinichi Ogasawara, says bringing the design team all the way from Tokyo to see the Midwest for themselves is the best way to create a realistic small-town environment.

"Usually we are living in Japan and what we know about America is mainly from L.A. or San Francisco and the West Coast," Ogasawara said through an interpreter. "When we came here I think we're seeing the real Midwest life of the U.S. It's quite different from what we're used to, but I think this will add much to our game."

The team is shooting digital videotape and still photographs that will be used to provide the textures of the games' three-dimensional environment. Some team members photographed close-ups of anything that could be interactive, such as light switches and the weights used by Carbondale firefighters. Other team members photographed walls, ceilings, floors and artwork hanging on walls.

"It's more of a challenge than people really expect," Smith said. "This is a Japanese development team -- they live in Tokyo. It's a challenge for them to see even the most mundane details. What does a normal U.S. bathroom look like? What does a family room look like? How do people watch TV? How do people decorate?"

After documenting Carbondale from every conceivable angle, the development team will return to Japan to continue working on the game for about another year. Sega has already set the game for release in November 2004, with a big advertising push for the Christmas shopping season.

"It will be promoted as one of Sega's top titles," Smith said. "You know how the holiday seasons are with video games. It's noisy and there's a lot of competition. But this is the type of game, because it's being built from the ground up for the U.S. market, it will be one of the biggest Sega titles of next year."

- The Southern Illinoisan