Has Sonic become a joke?

[Splash the Otter]

24 minutes ago, Swing said:

I'm not sure if this will help, because a lot of people that I know do actually find enjoinment in bad Sonic games. A lot of people on the internet actually seem to hope for a bad Sonic game. Either to bash it or to make fun of it. My best friend and I actually had really many laughs with Sonic 06. Not because it was good, but because it was such an over the top, ridiculous bad game that we couldn't stop laughing. 

Are you suggesting that Sonic should be bad on purpose?

[Swing]

24 minutes ago, Polkadi said:

Gaijin is non-Japanese. Quite a few people in Japan have a thing against foreigners.

Nah, really? I mean why should Japanese people have something against foreigners? 

 

17 minutes ago, ElectroKyurem said:

Are you suggesting that Sonic should be bad on purpose?

No, but, let be honest. Do people really care about good Sonic games? Everybody really only talks about the bad games. People still talking about Sonic 06, Shadow the Hedgehog, the Storybook games and will also talk about Boom 10 years later. But no one really likes to talk about the few good Sonic games like Rush, the Advance series or even Sonic 1 and 2. Look at Unleashed. It was actually a pretty okay game. It had good music, amazing graphics, a cool atmosphere, new likable characters ad really fun Daytime stages, but everybody on earth only remembers the Werehog and say how bad this gameplay was. 

[Splash the Otter]

1 minute ago, Swing said:

No, but, let be honest. Do people really care about good Sonic games? Everybody really only talks about the bad games. People still talking about Sonic 06, Shadow the Hedgehog, the Storybook games and will also talk about Boom 10 years later. But no one really likes to talk about the few good Sonic games like Rush, the Advance series or even Sonic 1 and 2. Look at Unleashed. It was actually a pretty okay game. It had good music, amazing graphics, a cool atmosphere, new likable characters ad really fun Daytime stages, but everybody on earth only remembers the Werehog and say how bad this gameplay was. 

Accentuating the negative is human nature. When's the last time you heard about a plane landing safely? It happens all the time, but most people don't care.

[Jango]

47 minutes ago, Swing said:

Nah, really? I mean why should Japanese people have something against foreigners? 

??? Because the world is like this, sadly. 

 

Sonic can be taken seriously when it delivers games with quality. I suggest you to take a look back at some Mania previews, than after it, some Forces previews. While Mania was praised for its solid gameplay, visuals and soundtrack, all Forces got was mockery about the Avatar being a "Deviantart OCs become canon", a villain trying too hard to be "dark", unfocused gameplay... It left a lot of stuff open to be made fun of, just like it had waaaay before Forces: kissing a real life princess, becoming a werewolf, wielding a sword in King Arthur's time...

Sonic Team and SEGA brough this to themselves, but at the very least, the social media / marketing team know how to take advantage of this situation, which, granted, doesn't work for every fan. As for me, I laugh at the Twitter memes and jokes once in a while and I don't mind the mocking, I just want great games... laughing while at a good position is good, but otherwise it's just sad. 

 

[Monkey Destruction Switch]

I think this problem accentuates the negative side of Sonic's social media strategy. It's all well and good to embrace mockery of your past failures if you're actually in a good position currently. But Sonic isn't. I'm not against the Sonic social media overall, but they can only do so much good when the Sonic series is still not respected, and the humor style they've chosen may not really be helping.

@Swing I get the impression that you're kind of saying that maybe Sonic is only good as a meme or a joke or that maybe laughing at its failures is all it's good for or something. What a horrible waste of potential, honestly. Sonic is not a series that's conceptually rotten or which was never good, so it seems a shame to throw that all away, considering it was once one of the greats (a long time ago, unfortunately).

At the same time, in all honesty, I can't say I don't see your overall point. It's not for no reason that the series is a joke these days. My hope in the series is not high. They have failed again and again and AGAIN. The sad thing is, every time they get to a good place in their series, they throw it away a few years later. After the series hadn't had many major and popular entries in a few years, they came out with the Adventures, which were a huge hit at the time, and then Heroes, which was not the most beloved but at least sold a lot, only to go far further downhill with Shadow and 06, games that are considered abominations by most. Then when they managed to crawl out of that hole, starting with the mixed Unleashed and going on to the more universally popular Colors and Generations, they proceeded to create another very mixed game, Lost World, and then to go way further downhill with another game counted as downright horrible, Rise of Lyric. More recently, the goodwill they managed to capture with Mania was squandered mere months later with the average/mixed Forces. Unless something major changes, the Sonic series will never be respected again, nor will it deserve to be.

I'm not saying it's ideal, but I would be okay with giving modern Sonic a break and sticking to new titles from the Mania team for a while to just try to rebuild a bit of that positivity. Mania was such a breath of fresh air, and Sega needs so much more of that if they want to be, well, not a joke. I'm not a Classic-only fan (though it is my favorite era), and I don't think Mania was perfect, but something needs to be done to repair Sonic's reputation, and this is at least better than what Sonic Team has been trying and failing to do for so many years. Maybe instead of coming up with big gimmicks for every new game, just stick to what works for a while. Even if it ends up being stale (which won't necessarily happen I should add), that would be better than creating games that are lacking in much bigger ways. I don't know if this idea would actually be good, I'm just tired of never being able to trust Sonic games will be up to any quality standards and the series going further and further into "only good as a joke" territory. Maybe after years of solid quality 2D games, they'll finally be ready to make another 3D one...though in honesty at this point, I'm wondering whether it's a good idea for it to be made by Sonic Team after they have disappointed us so much.

[Korke]

Sonic is seen as a joke by ex-fans. The common public doesn't laugh, they just don't have any interest.

It doesn't help that all the people who could care about platforming has come to Nintendo for obvious reasons, leaving Sonic to almost nobody "new" to cater to. I had a real tough time convincing some groups of people I know to try Mania, to explain that Modern and Classic are different things - which leads me to believe that all this "modern sonic is bad we should stick to the classic brand" is a misconception because to the wide public, there is no such thing as a "classic brand".

[ShadowSJG]

Eh,  I prefer to think not.

[Diogenes]

47 minutes ago, Korke said:

I had a real tough time convincing some groups of people I know to try Mania, to explain that Modern and Classic are different things - which leads me to believe that all this "modern sonic is bad we should stick to the classic brand" is a misconception because to the wide public, there is no such thing as a "classic brand".

People may not be aware that there's a clear divide between the two, but I imagine people would still react more positively to "the Sonic I loved as a kid" vs "the Sonic that got weird and bad and made me stop playing", even if they were still wary of the series overall.

[Multikaris]

Sonic is the punchline to the joke that is the video game industry. How come this “run-of-the-mill and gimmicky” “fad” artifact of the 90s chugs on for so long? It’s wild tone shifts over the years and insane concepts actually generally have a following. It’s a paradox even, because when you make a blue cartoon hedgehog too light-hearted, it doesn’t sell well, but darker games tend to have a critical backlash, but sell better. And then there were some light-hearted entries that failed in every regard, so the only solution is to make the gameplay better, but now those who liked the darker concepts are a little envious. The stream of memes also helps, leading to the games absorbing the memes in a bid for sales that paid off.

[Mad Convoy]

I can back what @Korke is saying about how the general public usually doesn't see Sonic as a joke. Usually when I talk Sonic with people in the general public offline, they either tell me about their favorite games or seem pretty okay with it. And I live in Mario country-- there's no shortage of non-fans and naysayers running around to confirm what I'm saying.

Even on the internet, it tends not to so much be treated as a joke as it is a rite of passage to hold the "right" opinions about Sonic. I even saw this crap back when Colors and Gens came out-- contrary to what the rose tinted glasses want to say, both games absolutely had their harsh critics and naysayers back in the day, and while a small portion of them were admittedly really rude and unreasonable, most of them absolutely did not deserve the flogging and disrespect others would give them. And when people finally chilled enough to give their viewpoints a chance... well, at that point they're so embittered and frustrated at not being listened to for so long that an unfortunate portion of them they think its their turn to flog and disrespect people who disagree with them. Its not-- disrespectful and excessively harsh behavior is awful no matter who the target is. Hence the cycle repeats. And this is nothing the Sonic games alone could do. Inconsistent quality could play a part, sure, but there's a certain point where people on the internet need to be held accountable. Because I don't care how Forces killed your dog or anything like that. Sonic games and Sonic makers don't compel people to be assholes, people do.

What doesn't help is that its only very, very recently that various forms of Sonic media have stopped constantly playing to the "right" opinions for cheap views and publicity. Hell, some people do that already-- wanna know why the Game Grumps tear basically every Sonic game to shreds except Colors, Gens, and Mania? Because when those LPs were coming out, liking those games was the right opinion to have on the internet whereas it was the wrong opinion on the internet to like other Sonic games at the times the other LPs were coming out. Play to those and the end result is a Let's Player channel which either features deliberately or unintentional poor playing of video games and is generally sorta obnxious being viewed as a big authority, just because they're echoing what a lot of people on the internet are saying as their rite of passage which in turn attracts other people trying to pass their rite of passage. Of course, its not the entire Game Grumps fandom that like them for this-- there's people that geniunely find them hilarious, after all, and that's okay. But its hard to deny, at least my perspective, that as a factor.

And I know I get accused of being conspiratorial whenever I express my viewpoints on this, so let me explain. I don't think this is entirely conscious, which a conspiracy would imply. People are pack animals. A leftover from the hunter-gatherer days when they were under constant threat of predators and other attackers is that people instinctually seek people who are different within their groups and shun them, because its a remarkably common predator tactic to target the one that stands out first then go for whoever else they deem nearby. So people who don't want to be eaten or killed stick with the herd, so to the speak, and get anybody who could stand out, well, out or at least far enough from them that the attacker hopefully goes for the weird and different guy instead of the group as a whole. Problem is, well, we're not hunter-gatherers anymore. We have shelters to hide in and can make advanced tools to fend off most attackers. So this previously helpful trait is now more of a hinderance, causing people be needlessly exclusionary over the most arbitrary things and subconsciously coming up with things that will guarantee their acceptance. Offline, its harder to be a douchebag about these sorts of things because we have a bunch of inhibitory stuff that ordinarily keeps the worst aspects of this old instinct from interfering with our relationships-- looking people in the eye and speaking the words yourself does have a way of activating the "is this really necessary?" parts of your brain, not to mention that there isn't as strong of an impetus to respond quickly offline. But the internet has a habit of bypassing these processes, causing people to post all sorts of things that they'd never say or do in real life and necessitating all kinds of arbitrary crap they'd never necessitate in real life. The proliferation of social media websites like Facebook only exaberated this effect-- and oh yeah, Facebook came out in late 2006, coinciding with the year Sonic 06 came out and became controversial. So people had a whole new medium to rapidly spread news of the flaws of the game and tell people who like the game how wrong they are en masse, and no awareness of the long term consequences of doing so (because social media was relatively new at the time). This coincidence is probably what resulted in people having to say the right opinions about Sonic as a rite of passage of sorts.

But just because its not entirely conscious, doesn't mean you can't become aware of it over time and take measures to prevent it from negatively affecting your behavior. Unfortunately though, because its not entirely conscious, its easy to make excuses for this kind of crap that shift accountability off of people and onto companies or even games. Which is why people claim that Sonic games or Sonic developers/publishers "compel them/others to act this way" or that "the fandom wouldn't be like this if X happened or Sonic got good." Their subconscious hunter-gatherer instincts are telling them to get exclusionary, and those are what they interpret to be the source of it, even though their subconscious is the one pulling the strings the whole time while their consciousness comes up with ways to justify and rationalize their thoughts and actions.

40 minutes ago, Diogenes said:

People may not be aware that there's a clear divide between the two, but I imagine people would still react more positively to "the Sonic I loved as a kid" vs "the Sonic that got weird and bad and made me stop playing", even if they were still wary of the series overall.

I'd be careful with that, as it depends on the area, actually.

I live in Nintendo country, so for people here, "the Sonic I loved as a kid" would most likely be Heroes, Shadow, Rush, Unwiished, or Colors Wii/DS (sometimes SADX or SA2B, but those are inferior ports while the Gamecube versions of Heroes and Shadow were by far the best versions of the games, so most people don't have as fond memories of them as they do of Heroes or Shadow). Basically nobody old enough to have been a kid in the 90s had a Genesis because people here could afford an SNES, which was perceived as the technologically superior console at the time. Even if you didn't have a whole lot of money, you probably had some kind of Game Boy instead of a Genesis here. Sure people have no problem with Classic Sonic games, but they don't really care as much about Classic games as they do Modern games for the most part.

Hell, what about the areas where Sonic the Hedgehog animation ended up catching on more than the games? For people in those areas, Boom TV was oftentimes actually seen as the return of "the Sonic I loved as a kid" after a years-long hiatus, because for them, stuff like the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog were their introduction to Sonic, and Boom TV is a different, but still comedic take on Sonic like AoStH. And yet you'd never hear that on predominantly English-speaking websites.

I guess my point is that @Korke is right in that "keep Classic, trash Modern" isn't necessarily the best or only way to go. People in my area, if they were to get interested in Sonic, would be drawn in more by something reminiscent of Heroes or a Boost game than a game styled after Classic Sonic titles. People in the areas where Sonic is mostly known as an animation icon would probably be interested in a show (which hey, not inherantly bad-- AoStH did a ton to define Sonic when Sonic was still establishing itself, and there's nothing stopping a new cartoon from helping to reestablish Sonic during shaky times). And I'm sure there's plenty more examples out there to draw from.

[McGroose]

None of my friends give a shit when they walk in the room and see me playing Mania super loud on our giant TV. I've also met a couple of people who bought the Nintendo Switch and they mention how  they think Mania is a good game. Mania was probably the best thing this franchise needed reputation-wise. A good, simple game with nothing that arguably brought down the franchise before. I would argue that the transition to 3D, while still producing good quality games, still tried to narrow down the audience who would enjoy the games more than Mario's transition did. With each new game, the new gameplay ideas, ridiculous stories and objectively subjectively annoying voice acting really turned off a lot of people. So I'd say half of the problem is that the games have been sucking bad for the past decade and the other half is that the range of people who'd enjoy these games has narrowed down significantly over the years.

 

It doesn't help that modern Sonic sounds more like a douchebag now than ever. Roger is not a good Sonic... at all. They got everyone else right and screwed up the main character. I really hope they never replace pollock. My ideal Sonic voice crew would just be Mike Pollock for Eggman and the rest of the cast rely on detailed animations to express themselves.