Sonic dev says the video game industry can learn from Backrooms' success

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Published Jun 14, 2026, 2:27 PM EDT

While promoting Sonic Pico Park, Takashi Iizuka made a surprising comparison to the success of Backrooms

Sonic Pico Park characters jumping onto a platform

Sonic the Hedgehog series producer Takashi Iizuka believes that even the video game industry can learn from the recent success of lower-budget horror movies like Backrooms.

"It's a little bit a different type of media, but the movie industry is kind of going through similar issues that we in the game industry are going [through]," Iizuka said in an interview with GamesRadar. "But then you see movies like Backrooms and [Obsession], these much smaller creative efforts that are still becoming these great successful hits, so I do see a parallel in the movie industry to what's kind of happening in the game industry with the amount of investment and the actual entertainment that people are consuming and enjoying."

Iizuka's comments about Backrooms come from a discussion about Sonic Pico Park. For that game, Sega partnered with indie developer Tecopark to create a title that Polygon's Summer Game Fest preview called "a sweet treat for Sonic fans who need something light to hold them over until the blue blur’s next big adventure." Iizuka praised Tecopark for being able to quickly iterate on ideas in a way AAA development just can't due to lofty expectations and extended timelines.

Over the past month, Backrooms and Obsession have unexpectedly performed very well at the box office. While they were much lower-budget movies than blockbusters like The Mandalorian and Grogu or Masters of the Universe, they seem to be resonating with audiences a lot more while still being very profitable. They stand as proof that you don't have to throw hundreds of millions of dollars at a film in order for it to do well in theaters.

Iizuka clearly believes that the same mentality can be applied to the video game medium, and the industry seems to be proving him right. As Geoff Keighley pointed out at Summer Game Fest showcase earlier this month, 10 of the 14 new games on Steam to sell over one million copies so far in 2026 are from indie developers. Meanwhile, big-budget games like Marathon seem to be struggling to meet their publisher's lofty expectations, even when they're well received.

It seems that the companies that make movies and video games are starting to take notice that being bigger and more expensive doesn't always make what they create better or more successful. Hopefully, that results in more games like Sonic Pico Park and movies like Backrooms.

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