Sega boosts Sonic game production through collaboration with Huddle
In an effort to streamline project management and enhance collaboration, SEGA, the renowned video game company, has turned to Huddle, a UK-based cloud-hosted document collaboration provider. The decision was primarily driven by Huddle's user-friendly interface, which offered a significant advantage over other options under consideration.
Prior to Huddle, SEGA heavily relied on spreadsheets for project management, a tool that, while useful in certain contexts, was not always the best fit for the job. The Sonic Dash project, the latest addition to SEGA's hedgehog-based franchise, was no exception.
The deployment of Huddle brought about several benefits. Firstly, it established a central document repository for market research, conference notes, and team contact lists, fostering a more cohesive and organised work environment. This centralised storage made it easier for employees to access the information they needed, reducing the reliance on complex network drives, FTP sites, and emails.
One of the key advantages of Huddle is its ability to facilitate real-time engagement and better coordination among team members and stakeholders. Every document within Huddle includes its own comment stream, allowing users to @mention individuals or teams to keep discussions directly connected with the content. This feature, combined with the platform's strong security features like enterprise-grade authentication and multi-factor authentication, ensures that project files and communications remain protected.
Huddle also enabled multiple users, including clients and internal groups, to co-author documents simultaneously within a collocated digital workspace. This feature was instrumental in improving collaboration and co-authorship, especially in the dynamic environment of game development.
The use of Huddle resulted in an increase in coordination and collaboration within SEGA. Employees were made aware of what others were doing and could opt out of discussions if necessary, reducing email spam within the business. The platform also proved effective in getting information in one place and making it easily accessible, particularly for the Sonic Dash project, which was handled from SEGA's San Francisco office.
In addition to document collaboration, Huddle allowed SEGA to share marketing materials, such as artwork, both internally and with third parties. The platform provided employees with personal workspaces containing relevant documents, messages, to-do list items, and tasks, while an engagement workspace was set up for employees from both SEGA and Huddle to raise issues and share tips, aiding in the software's adoption.
In summary, the benefits of using Huddle in the Sonic Dash project included co-authoring and collaborative editing among distributed teams and clients, centralised, secure document storage and management, integrated communication with comment streams and @mentions, and audit trails and tracking of user activity. These features combined to improve project efficiency, security, and stakeholder involvement in cloud-based collaborative environments.
- SEGA, previously overly dependent on spreadsheets for project management, particularly during the Sonic Dash project, found a more suitable solution in Huddle, benefiting from its real-time engagement and collaboration features, as well as the centralized storage of market research, conference notes, and team contact lists.
- The seamless co-authoring of documents within Huddle, a feature instrumental in enhancing collaboration and co-authorship, especially in the dynamic game development environment at SEGA, further emphasized the platform's potential to streamline projects, making it an ideal alternative to smartphones and other gadgets often used for communication and work within the industry.
