Is it fair to compare Sonic Fan Games to the Sonic Team Made Games?

[Rabbitearsblog]

So, I've noticed that some fans tend to compare the fan made Sonic games towards the Sonic Team made games and I have to wonder if it's fair to do that?  Like, the thing about Sonic fan games is that the fans who made the games have enough time on their hands to make the games and they don't have to worry about things like upper management forcing them to put out a game before a deadline.  So at times, it makes the Sonic fan games seem better than the Sonic Team made games by comparison.

[LongcrierCat]

Sonic fans have time on their hands?

Last I checked they have day jobs, school, and busy lives outside of their Sonic fan work.

And they still manage to make games that rival Sega's in house development teams from Sega's poor mismanagement of the Sonic series.

So yes, I feel that it's completely fair to compare fan games to the official games especially now that we're having fanmade 3D Games that are rivaling all of the 3D output of Sonic across the last 25 years.

[Rabbitearsblog]

1 hour ago, LongcrierCat said:

Sonic fans have time on their hands?

Last I checked they have day jobs, school, and busy lives outside of their Sonic fan work.

And they still manage to make games that rival Sega's in house development teams from Sega's poor mismanagement of the Sonic series.

So yes, I feel that it's completely fair to compare fan games to the official games especially now that we're having fanmade 3D Games that are rivaling all of the 3D output of Sonic across the last 25 years.

I guess the good that can come out of this is that if SEGA is interested enough in the fan projects, then they might try to reach out to the fans to work on some of their games. That's what happened with Christian Whitehead and Sonic Mania and look at how that turned out.

Edited November 2, 2023 by Rabbitearsblog

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

When fan games show more polish and love than the people actually paid to make Sonic games, being compared to fan work is inevitable.

Like, people do this for a hobby and are working harder than the official studio. That’s not a good look.

So it’s pretty fair insofar as it gets the actual people behind the games to possibly pay attention to what they’re doing that isn’t gelling well with their target audience. Of course, given the division of this fandom, that has its ups and downs.

Edited November 2, 2023 by CrownSlayer’s Shadow

[MetalSkulkBane]

Sorry @Rabbitearsblogbut I'm with LongcrieCat, your argument is kinda insane.

Official games are made by professional who are paid money to do so and are given official resources directly from Sega. This shouldn't be a competition.

Yes, fangames have some advantages, but they should be dwarfed by negatives. At best you could say that fangame that took 5 years to make shouldn't be compared to official game made in 1. But if we're talking few month difference, tough cookies.

Sonic fancomics have all freedom Archie/IDW lacks and I few of them can compare.

[Rabbitearsblog]

38 minutes ago, MetalSkulkBane said:

Sorry @Rabbitearsblogbut I'm with LongcrieCat, your argument is kinda insane.

Official games are made by professional who are paid money to do so and are given official resources directly from Sega. This shouldn't be a competition.

Yes, fangames have some advantages, but they should be dwarfed by negatives. At best you could say that fangame that took 5 years to make shouldn't be compared to official game made in 1. But if we're talking few month difference, tough cookies.

Sonic fancomics have all freedom Archie/IDW lacks and I few of them can compare.

What's the insane part of my argument? And what are the negatives that dwarfed fangames?

[Salamander]

Usually, you would expect a comparison between official games and fangames to be in the official games' favour.  Suggesting that fangames have all the advantages in this comparison is really being quite insulting to the official development teams, for whom this is a job with time and a budget.  ...Insulting, but not necessarily unfair.  A franchise is in a bad way if the fangames are the best things about it.

[JezMM]

Like all things it should be nuanced.  You can't compare fangames to official games as a whole, as if both are labours of love or both are official products, as if both have the same target audience and reach.  Ideas and concepts can be discussed on an individual basis, whether they would be viable in an official product etc.  And it's important to remember that the vocal, visible portion of the fanbase you see online accounts for less than 10% of those who engage with the Sonic franchise.  Even the fangames that EVERYONE is playing do not have the reach or appeal you might think they do.

Just... yeah, there's no denying that the handful of people who put together 16-bit Triple Trouble overall made a more enjoyable and balanced package than Sonic Team's efforts for a lot of people's money, but there just has to be a level of maturity and understanding when discussing these things that nothing about published video game development is probably as simple as it seems to a layman.  I think it's possible to have productive discussions through comparison without going full-pelt "SEGA HIRE THIS MAN" about it or disregarding the difficulties of a professional working environment and the limitations of publishing a product for sale in an imperfect capitalist system.

[Rabbitearsblog]

29 minutes ago, JezMM said:

Like all things it should be nuanced.  You can't compare fangames to official games as a whole, as if both are labours of love or both are official products, as if both have the same target audience and reach.  Ideas and concepts can be discussed on an individual basis, whether they would be viable in an official product etc.  And it's important to remember that the vocal, visible portion of the fanbase you see online accounts for less than 10% of those who engage with the Sonic franchise.  Even the fangames that EVERYONE is playing do not have the reach or appeal you might think they do.

Just... yeah, there's no denying that the handful of people who put together 16-bit Triple Trouble overall made a more enjoyable and balanced package than Sonic Team's efforts for a lot of people's money, but there just has to be a level of maturity and understanding when discussing these things that nothing about published video game development is probably as simple as it seems to a layman.  I think it's possible to have productive discussions through comparison without going full-pelt "SEGA HIRE THIS MAN" about it or disregarding the difficulties of a professional working environment and the limitations of publishing a product for sale in an imperfect capitalist system.

I agree with all this!  There's a lot more to both fangames and the official games than what's on the surface of the conversations.  

[castell-neath]

Its a bit like in F1 where you have private teams competing against factory teams. On paper Ferrari, Mercedes etc should always win due to the huge resources, budget they have and the number of staff they have on hand. Then again Private teams Like Williams, Haas etc who do not have the same access to reources or finance etc do win the odd race, and in the past have even won world titles despite this. So yes, they should be compared and Sega SHOULD usually win...but as we know, this is not always the case.

Edited November 2, 2023 by castell-neath

[Bobnik]

I'm of 2 minds on this. I think comparing them is fine, but I don't think it's really fair to weaponize said fangames to attack the developers of official products, which usually happens out of a lack of understanding how game development in bigger companies works.

With fangames (and indie games in general) you are not restricted to a set deadline someone from some random conglomerate told you, you yourself set that deadline, which is a lot more flexible. You don't have to go through a chain of people to approve whatever small change someone wants to make in a completely different department. You have a complete creative freedom over your own project. You don't have to worry about pandering to the target audience, you carve your own niche instead. People are generally a lot more forgiving towards fan projects because of generally lower standards and expectations compared to an official product (unless you're making it out of spite, then I'm sorry, but it better be an immaculate supergame coughOmens coughUtopia). But you also don't get nearly as much resources as a professional developer would. You don't get paid for the man-hours you spend on working on your game since it's a hobby at the end of the day. You also don't have nearly as much time per day to work on said game since you do either have work or studies, and there's a pretty high chance you just get stuck at some point and burn out, or you lose passion for the project and just drop it entirely. There's a lot of pros and also a lot of cons to both and people need to understand that, it's just unfortunate that many people here and pretty much everywhere else don't.

Of course, one would then ask "Why not put the people making fangames on a payroll then" - doing this automatically means imposing the same cons and pros everyone else at a company has, be it SEGA or anyone else, and, well, at this point they're not making a fangame anymore, but an official product. The only question would remain if the fangame devs want to do that or not.

so tl;dr - it's fine to compare, just don't weaponize them.

Edited November 2, 2023 by Bobnik

[Indigo Rush]

Something worth considering for fangames is that in the vast majority of cases, the sheer quality we get from them is due to decades of collaborative R&D. Sonic Mania didn't happen in a boardroom vacuum, the Retro Engine had been refined for years before it was even used for Sonic CD 2011. The reverse-engineering phase of Sonic romhacks and fangames was a very lengthy process, and they didn't have the luxury of modern-day tools. We take for granted how programs and apps in this day and age can do a load of the heavy-lifting for fans.

Fangames also don't have the restriction of having a deadline. This is what kills Sonic games more often than not, and even if a petition for a delay can be granted, they still can't make serious changes to the core design, lest the end result be just as subpar. Without strict deadlines, the pressure on development is never as crunch-like, and nobodies job is at stake, because it isn't a job. It's a passion project.

Contrapoint: fangames aren't going to have loads of developers working together at the same magnitude. They can be collaborative projects, but fangames generally don't have a QA department. This is why, as good as most fangames can be, almost all of them feel "off" in some way or another. We tend to inherently turn a blind eye to those issues, because we know these are non-profit fangames. 

And therein lies the rub: we have that inherent bias for fangames; we just know that they don't have the same budget and quality checks an official product has, so it naturally highlights the positives of a fangame while it simultaneously highlights an official game's shortcomings.

Is this fair? Maybe. However it's very clear the difference in production values between a game like Sonic Mania and a game like Sonic Before/After the Sequel. 

[Shiny Gems]

It is not wrong to compare fan games to official games, and vice versa. However, fan games usually take longer to make due to their creators having other things in life to deal with, and while Sonic Team may not have made the best of games sometimes, they are still professional, compared to the fan game creators who are more on the amateur side; not that their fan games are bad, to say, they just don't do it for any company like Sega and their subdivision, Sonic Team. That said, the fan game creators do not necessarily have to go by strict deadlines and go with schedules, and they don't always, if most of the time, have the resources to make the games like Sonic Team and Sega do, so with that, a lot of things about those games may not be as top notch compared to Sonic Team's efforts. Now, a lot of the 2D fan games seem good, but in terms of 3D fan games, some of them; especially, but not limited to the classic based 3D fan games aren't all that. Think Green Hill Paradise or Sonic Utopia, for instance; the former has a lot of momentum physics in 3D, but it has not clear goal as to what to do, and feels more like a playground without objectives rather than an actual Sonic game, let alone Sonic level. For Sonic Utopia, it feels empty by a lot, and though it has classic momentum physics, thing is, it does have other issues, like possibly inducing vertigo to players when going through those corkscrews and similar structures.

So, while the fan games and official games are comparable, I do not think it is necessarily right to say that the fan game creators always do a better job than Sonic Team, with the fan game creators having a lack of resources compared to Sonic Team, not going by deadlines and a schedule and all that.I don't think the work and how the games are done by fan games and Sonic Team separately are really comparable. By the way, I read somewhere that the creator of the fan games, Sonic: Before the Sequel and Sonic: After the Sequel was known for insulting Sonic Team, all as if his fan games were better. This is the same creator of Spark: The Electric Jester, by the way. I'd say that is a way to not compare Sonic fan games to official Sonic games.

[Knight Terror]

17 hours ago, JezMM said:

Like all things it should be nuanced.  You can't compare fangames to official games as a whole, as if both are labours of love or both are official products, as if both have the same target audience and reach.  Ideas and concepts can be discussed on an individual basis, whether they would be viable in an official product etc.  And it's important to remember that the vocal, visible portion of the fanbase you see online accounts for less than 10% of those who engage with the Sonic franchise.  Even the fangames that EVERYONE is playing do not have the reach or appeal you might think they do.

Just... yeah, there's no denying that the handful of people who put together 16-bit Triple Trouble overall made a more enjoyable and balanced package than Sonic Team's efforts for a lot of people's money, but there just has to be a level of maturity and understanding when discussing these things that nothing about published video game development is probably as simple as it seems to a layman.  I think it's possible to have productive discussions through comparison without going full-pelt "SEGA HIRE THIS MAN" about it or disregarding the difficulties of a professional working environment and the limitations of publishing a product for sale in an imperfect capitalist system.

Well spoken!

12 hours ago, Thankful Gems said:

y the way, I read somewhere that the creator of the fan games, Sonic: Before the Sequel and Sonic: After the Sequel was known for insulting Sonic Team, all as if his fan games were better. This is the same creator of Spark: The Electric Jester, by the way. I'd say that is a way to not compare Sonic fan games to official Sonic games.

What?!

[Shiny Gems]

6 minutes ago, Knight Terror said:

Well spoken!

What?!

That is something I read. Wouldn't be surprised though. I think his username is LakeFeperd.

[Knight Terror]

1 minute ago, Thankful Gems said:

That is something I read. Wouldn't be surprised though. I think his username is LakeFeperd.

Yes, that's his name. This sounds a touch similar to the phisnom/fnaf thing (minus the stupid drama.)

[Shiny Gems]

1 minute ago, Knight Terror said:

Yes, that's his name. This sounds a touch similar to the phisnom/fnaf thing (minus the stupid drama.)

Ah, I see. I am not sure completely on what that is, so please do explain it to me.

[Rabbitearsblog]

4 minutes ago, Thankful Gems said:

That is something I read. Wouldn't be surprised though. I think his username is LakeFeperd.

What happened with LakeFeperd?

[Shiny Gems]

4 minutes ago, Rabbitearsblog said:

What happened with LakeFeperd?

This might best be explained here.

 

[Knight Terror]

24 minutes ago, Thankful Gems said:

Ah, I see. I am not sure completely on what that is, so please do explain it to me.

So Scott cawthon (the creator of fnaf) created the fnaf fanverse initiative (basically officially licensing fangames) and phisnom was to make a fnaf 1 remake called fnaf+. Well phisnom while talented, has a massive ego and thinks to know everything about horror, and thinks he knows what made fnaf 1 scary (not really.) Then he took three years to "develop" a game that will never release.

Edited November 3, 2023 by Knight Terror

[Rabbitearsblog]

13 minutes ago, Thankful Gems said:

This might best be explained here.

 

Ooohhhh,...well, that isn't good....  This reminds me of the whole thing with Sonic Omens.

[Knight Terror]

1 minute ago, Rabbitearsblog said:

Ooohhhh,...well, that isn't good....  This reminds me of the whole thing with Sonic Omens.

We do not speak it's name

[Shiny Gems]

3 minutes ago, Rabbitearsblog said:

Ooohhhh,...well, that isn't good....  This reminds me of the whole thing with Sonic Omens.

You can say that again!

4 minutes ago, Knight Terror said:

So Scott cawthon (the creator of fnaf) created the fnaf fanverse initiative (basically officially licensing fangames) and phisnom was to make a fnaf 1 remake called fnaf+. Well phisnom while talented, has a massive ego and thinks to everything about horror, and thinks he knows what made fnaf 1 scary (not reall.) Then he took three years to "develop" a game that will never release.

Wow, that sounds intense. Talk about massive egos! I have a feeling he was not even developing a game at all.

[Knight Terror]

Just now, Thankful Gems said:

You can say that again!

Wow, that sounds intense. Talk about massive egos! I have a feeling he was not even developing a game at all.

You and everyone else.

[Rabbitearsblog]

2 minutes ago, Thankful Gems said:

You can say that again!

Wow, that sounds intense. Talk about massive egos! I have a feeling he was not even developing a game at all.

It's a shame that some fans who developed these Sonic fan games would go out of their way to insult Sonic Team and declare their games are much better.  Sure, the games that Sonic Team put out are not perfect, but they don't deserve to be insulted like that.