PSM EXCLUSIVE

DEVELOPER INSIGHT:
"Sorcery was inspired by this studio's passion for Magic: The Gathering. The card game completely engaged the studio. When the outline of Sorcery was presented we thought here was an interesting idea to take some aspects of Magic and bring it into a console game. The game languished in development for at least a year and by the time we saw something that was ostensibly playable we were about one million dollars into it. Almost too much to write off back then, but it was so obviously a game that was not going to be completed or if it was would just suck I made the call to kill it. This and other misfires led to the creation of the PC studio designed to leverage that group's interest and expertise, and it paid off with Everquest. Sorcery should be left in the dustbin of Sony's PlayStation history."
-Kelly Flock, former President 989 Studios

"I agree with Kelly on Sorcery. When I was promoted to producer at the studio, the first game I was assigned to was Sorcery and, I confess, I was secretly appalled, as I knew the game was destined for failure. The original concept would have worked great in today’s on-line environment. The scope, which started out as a split screen, was to run around a large world, setting magical traps, using magic to detect and find your opponent, then finally tracking him down and combating him, kept getting whittled down further and further until it devolved into a magical arena fighting game, where opponents would stand across from each other in very small (fits on a single screen) arenas and dispatch each other with spells and counter spells. At this point, management thought that since it now looked like a typical fighting game, it should become a typical fighting game, with actual hand to hand combat – something that was NOT in the original design. We had deliberately left that out as we didn’t want to be in the same genre as Tekken, which we knew would kill us. Anyone who didn’t realize that the project was in trouble before that point knew it now. This, as you well know, was the death sentence for Sorcery."
-former producer 989 Studios.