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

[Shiny Gems]

15 hours ago, Dummy Bear said:

I should make clear again that even though the developers have access to more money than fan game developers and more resources, keep in mind that fan game communities have more creative freedom.

Also keep in mind that the money being used to fund the product isn't THEIR money and they still have to answer to the head honcho at the end of the day. A lot of the fan game creators are their own bosses for the most part.

Yeah, but things would be different if they were in an actual workspace environment, whether they were their own company or if they were working for Sega. Doing these kinds of things freely, as done by oneself without having to answer to a boss, is not the same as with doing things for a company, no matter which one it is they work for.

Also, as I may have said before, fan games are usually cheaper to make, if they cost anything at all. With that, an official product being funded with lots of money is technically and usually more impressive than what fan games go through. That is another reason why I do not think it is fair to compare fan game projects to official game products.

Plus, most fans who play fan games seem to compare those games to official games mostly based on their gameplay, which is just the surface level of what to look at; this thus does not include things like how fan games and official games are made in comparison. Plus, some fan games end up making fans think they did something right over Sega and Sonic Team, but how the fan game makers did it is most likely what Sonic Team did NOT do to make official games.

[Sonicka]

You could compare them, sure. Quality might be better, worse... whatever. 

I don't know how fair it is is account for how the game turns out though.

For one thing, you are comparing what goes on behind the scenes - a product that's (often) been managed under one person in their own free time over (many, many) years, to a product that has been sifted through multiple levels of management, given deadlines from publishers, worked upon under actual paid / crunch conditions with the promise to meet said deadlines. The outcomes are always going to vary. 

And two, you're comparing talent. A fan games success ultimately shows off how skilled that developer is under their own tutor-ledge. You're pitching this against Sonic Team which is a constant revolving door of devs, all skilled in different areas and being managed to bring a single product together.

The beasts are verrry different.

That being said - it is hugely interesting to me that SEGA DID essentially hire some fangame / indie devs for Sonic Mania. The talent was obviously recognised for what could be brought to the table... but I do wonder if there are further reasons as to why they are no longer directly making "the next" sonic game beyond the differences in creative direction. 
 

9 hours ago, Starry Skydancer said:

On the topic of criticism, it's my understanding that criticising amateur projects without asking the creators is controversial since the project is not a product. There is a view that they made it for fun and they're not asking you to buy it, so you should ask before giving them criticism becuase you aren't entitled to do so- you're not a customer. I've never been quite sure what I think of that debate.

Nah, anything is open and entitled to criticism. If the product is available regardless of the intention, then as a player if you want to provide feedback you absolutely should. Criticism (if made and taken correctly) can be super useful. 

 

Edited November 5, 2023 by Sonicka

[Shiny Gems]

13 hours ago, Sonicka said:

You could compare them, sure. Quality might be better, worse... whatever. 

I don't know how fair it is is account for how the game turns out though.

For one thing, you are comparing what goes on behind the scenes - a product that's (often) been managed under one person in their own free time over (many, many) years, to a product that has been sifted through multiple levels of management, given deadlines from publishers, worked upon under actual paid / crunch conditions with the promise to meet said deadlines. The outcomes are always going to vary. 

And two, you're comparing talent. A fan games success ultimately shows off how skilled that developer is under their own tutor-ledge. You're pitching this against Sonic Team which is a constant revolving door of devs, all skilled in different areas and being managed to bring a single product together.

The beasts are verrry different.

That being said - it is hugely interesting to me that SEGA DID essentially hire some fangame / indie devs for Sonic Mania. The talent was obviously recognised for what could be brought to the table... but I do wonder if there are further reasons as to why they are no longer directly making "the next" sonic game beyond the differences in creative direction. 
 

Nah, anything is open and entitled to criticism. If the product is available regardless of the intention, then as a player if you want to provide feedback you absolutely should. Criticism (if made and taken correctly) can be super useful. 

 

Good points, Sonicka! That said, that includes the criticism part you said. Criticism is good, especially constructive criticism, and there is no need to ask permission to give criticism for anything, since anything is open and entitled to criticism as you said. Besides, how does anything get better without criticism, anyways?

[Shiny Gems]

I hope it is okay to post this, even though the last post on this topic was made by me a few days ago.

I also wanted to say this; technically, fan games also take a longer amount of time to release. Not that it is a bad thing, as these fan game creators have lives, but the long wait, any possible delays, any shelving of the fan games and any potential cancellation of the games (maybe for the cancellation part); all while being longer than the wait for official games; can be done long enough to make those who are waiting for it have their patience tested; not in a bad way, but they wait too long for fan games given they don't have a deadline and the fan games made are not official and not an actual job for fan game makers, unlike the makers for official games. Making people wait too long can be bad for a fan game, and can potentially cause them to be uninterested in it in the end.

Take Duke Nukem Forever; I know, not the best example, but it took a long time for that game to be released, as it was in development for a long time. The fans for the Duke Nukem series had to wait an awfully long time for it. Same for a Sonic fan game called Sonic Frenzy Adventure, which also took years to finish, and it was a good looking game even to me, and even I lost interest in it  by the time it came out in recent years, and I believe it started development in the 2000s.

So, that is another disadvantage of fan games, as the longer they make people wait, even with good reasons, the less people may be interested in it over time. This is a reason why deadlines for games like official games can be a good thing, not that fan game creators have to do it, and not that deadlines are always done right and can lead to bad things happening if a game is not developed well before the deadline, but you know what i mean.

[Scritch the Cat]

On 11/1/2023 at 10:26 PM, Rabbitearsblog said:

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.

The factors you mention are not set in stone, nor are they the only ones that exist.  Why do you presume that fans necessarily have more time on their hands?  They don't have game release deadlines to meet, sure, but most of them have jobs and lives outside of developing Sonic fangames; they're working on them in their spare time and some of them don't have a lot of spare time.

As to the notion that fan game developers are "better" than the people at Sonic Team or whomever else SEGA tasks with making Sonic games, I'd say it's not so much frequently true as it has been blatantly true in some cases.  For better or worse, Sonic 06 still casts a shadow over this company's reputation for lack of technical abilities, or at least, their parent company's lack of ethics and willingness to sacrifice anything for a deadline, but the saddest thing is that it's not the only or even worse example.  That GBA port of Sonic 1 probably is.  It's inexcusable how awful Sonic 06 is, but at least it's understandable, given the game's combination of high ambition, crippling downsizing and strict deadlines.  When a game goes through such a perfect storm of shit, of course it's going to stink.  But it's hard to even understand how the GBA port of Sonic 1 can be as awful as it is, how a company can fail so utterly at even the bare essentials it managed 15 years earlier.  That a fangame developer made a better GBA port of Sonic 1 shortly after with little trouble, and was later commissioned for Sonic Mania, probably is another of the major events that still makes people snap to the judgment that fangame developers are more competent than Sonic Team.

However, I think what's more often true is that fangame developers just have different priorities than SEGA and Sonic Team usually do, and it so happens that a lot of Sonic fans are more fond of what fangame developrs are doing. 

Fangame creators don't necessarily have a lot of time or even talent, but they're Sonic fans making games for other Sonic fans.  They don't look at sales charts or what other game series are popular at the moment and develop their games with maximum profit in mind, and besides they're legally prohibited from making a profit from their games.  Fangame developers are often far more interested in nailing how the characters move; giving them consistent physics and make their movement fun to do in itself.  They also tend to try more for a "pure Sonic" experience, that is, one wherein you're almost always moving fast.  Making the above philosophy into a feature-length game is relatively unimportant to them, because making long games is often beyond the means of simple hobbyists anyway.

Sonic Team, it has been repeatedly shown, does not think like that.  Maintaining the very best paradigm for how characters move is not their priority, and they don't mind throwing in a bunch of stuff to slow you down.  If it's not forcing you to play as someone else who moves much slower, then it's negating your speed with boxy level design, forcing you to accomplish some mini-objective before the way through opens, forcing you to replay things to see the true ending, or most recently, removing Sonic's speed when he jumps in the pre-patch release of Sonic Frontiers.  For SEGA and Sonic Team, making Sonic games take longer to complete, so they can be comparable to other games with characters that move slower, is almost always the highest priority.

So really, it doesn't matter if fangame developers aren't "better" than Sonic Team.  Fangame developers think like the most technically-minded members of the fandom and operate on "necessity is the mother of invention", filling a niche Sonic Team chooses not to.  How "big" of a niche that is, we can debate, but it's not a trivial niche when it's the one that officially released Sonic games used to fill.

Edited November 11, 2023 by Scritch the Cat

[Rabbitearsblog]

3 hours ago, Scritch the Cat said:

The factors you mention are not set in stone, nor are they the only ones that exist.  Why do you presume that fans necessarily have more time on their hands?  They don't have game release deadlines to meet, sure, but most of them have jobs and lives outside of developing Sonic fangames; they're working on them in their spare time and some of them don't have a lot of spare time.

As to the notion that fan game developers are "better" than the people at Sonic Team or whomever else SEGA ta sks with making Sonic games, I'd say it's not so much frequently true as it has been blatantly true in some cases.  For better or worse, Sonic 06 still casts a shadow over this company's reputation for technical abilities, or at least, their parent company's lack of ethics and willingness to sacrifice anything for a deadline, but the saddest thing is that it's not the only or even worse example.  That GBA port of Sonic 1 probably is.  It's inexcusable how awful Sonic 06 is, but at least it's understandable, given the game's combination of high ambition, crippling downsizing and strict deadlines.  When a game goes through such a perfect storm of shit, of course it's going to stink.  But it's hard to even understand how the GBA port of Sonic 1 can be as awful as it is, how a company can fail so utterly at even the bare essentials it managed 15 years ago.  That a future fangame developer made a better GBA port of Sonic 1 shortly after with little trouble, and was later commissioned for Sonic Mania, probably is another of the major events that still makes people snap to the judgment that fangame developers are more competent than Sonic Team.

However, I think what's more usually true is that fangame developers just have different priorities than SEGA and Sonic Team usually do, and it so happens that a lot of Sonic fans are more fond of what fangame developrs are doing. 

Fangame creators don't necessarily have a lot of time or even talent, but they're Sonic fans making games for other Sonic fans.  They don't look at sales charts or what other game series are popular at the moment and develop their games with maximum profit in mind, and besides they're legally prohibited from making a profit from their games.  Fangame developers are often far more interested in nailing how the characters move; giving them consistent physics and make their movement fun to do in itself.  They also tend to try more for a "pure Sonic" experience, that is, one wherein you're almost always moving fast.  Making the above philosophy into a feature-length game is relatively unimportant to them, because making long games is often beyond the means of simply hobbyists anyway.

Sonic Team, it has been repeatedly shown, does not think like that.  Maintaining the very best paradigm for how characters move is not their priority, and they don't mind throwing in a bunch of stuff to slow you down.  If it's not forcing you to play as someone else who moves much slower, then it's negating your speed with boxy level design, forcing you to accomplish some mini-objective before the way through opens, forcing you to replay things to see the true ending, or most recently, removing Sonic's speed when he jumps in the pre-patch release of Sonic Frontiers.  For SEGA and Sonic Team, making Sonic games take longer to complete, so they can be comparable to other games with characters that move slower, is almost always the highest priority.

So really, it doesn't matter if fangame developers aren't "better" than Sonic Team.  Fangame developers think like the most technically-minded members of the fandom and operate on "necessity is the mother of invention", filling a niche Sonic Team chooses not to.  How "big" of a niche that is, we can debate, but it's not a trivial niche when it's the one that officially released Sonic games used to fill.

I agree that the people who make Sonic fangames tend to think differently from Sonic Team or SEGA.  For their fangames, they are not making fangames for profit (since, as you stated, they cannot make a profit based off of the Sonic the Hedgehog brand in terms of games) and they are just making the games mostly for other Sonic fans.  SEGA and Sonic Team, however, are making a profit off of the Sonic the Hedgehog brand and they are making the games for the general public, not only for the Sonic fans.  Personally, I think that SEGA and Sonic Team should stop looking at what the other games are doing and just focus on what makes Sonic work as a character.

Edited November 10, 2023 by Rabbitearsblog

[TheBreaker3321]

Unless you're Sabrina DiDuro or Lake Feperd, two individuals who took their own ideas relating to Sonic and morphed them into their own unique respective gigs, no.

[Rabbitearsblog]

4 hours ago, TheBreaker3321 said:

Unless you're Sabrina DiDuro or Lake Feperd, two individuals who took their own ideas relating to Sonic and morphed them into their own unique respective gigs, no.

Who are Sabrina DiDuro and Lake Feperd?

[TheBreaker3321]

3 hours ago, Rabbitearsblog said:

Who are Sabrina DiDuro and Lake Feperd?

Sabrina is the creator of Freedom Planet.
Feperd is the creator of Spark the Electric Jester.

I think it's not fair to say that these two games are better than Sonic because they have merely helped perfect both the 2D and 3D formulas.

[Rabbitearsblog]

3 hours ago, TheBreaker3321 said:

Sabrina is the creator of Freedom Planet.
Feperd is the creator of Spark the Electric Jester.

I think it's not fair to say that these two games are better than Sonic because they have merely helped perfect both the 2D and 3D formulas.

Oh!  I was wondering who created those games!

[Hypersonic55]

On 11/2/2023 at 9:26 AM, 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.

This is the kind of logical mindset I love to see when discussing such issues.

[Scritch the Cat]

On 11/2/2023 at 2:26 AM, 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.

Come to that, as much as some people can't stop harping on Sonic 06, due to some presumed cultural grandfather clause, in the more modern era where patches have rendered Miyamoto's quote about a bad game being bad forever feasibly untrue, which seems to give some developers license to slack off, seeing utterly broken big-name crap like Pokemon Scarlet and Violet get released and still sell millions makes me wonder if Sonic 06 would be such a punching bag had it been released today.  Presumably people would still make fun of the SonElise stuff, but they still make fun of lots of Sonic stuff, and who knows if the technical flubs would live on in such infamy as they had back then?

That said, let's not act as if the entire video game industry can be equally characterized by the lackluster handling of a few once-mighty franchises from the 90s.  Say you don't think it's fair to compare Sonic Frontiers to Sonic Utopia or Project 06?  Well, it sure as shit is fair to compare it to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and lots of gamers and game journalists probably haven't played many Sonic fangames but lots of them have played Breath of the Wild, and also past open-world adventure games that inspired it, so it doesn't really matter if you think it's fair to compare them; they're going to either way...and let's be real, Sonic Frontiers falls short.  It's fine if you still enjoy it more due to a personal preference for Sonic gameplay, but it inarguably has a lot less thought put into its level design, worldbuilding and visual flair...and it's not like Sonic Frontiers did as well as it could and should have with Sonic gameplay, either.

Yes, shit happens in game development, including Sonic games.  Maybe even especially Sonic games, considering the development of Sonic X-Treme nearly killed people and the development of Sonic Heroes wrecked Iizuka's health, too.  Yes, we don't often have full insight into what sort of shit is happening.  But whatever it is, either it's not happening equally to all developers or some are just better at rolling with whatever punches may be.  So if the point some people are making is that lackluster games being due to bad working environments and unfair bosses is somehow more forgivable than them being due to inept staff, I strongly disagree.  In an event that we discover a game's development literally almost killed its developers, our reaction shouldn't be "So stop complaining about lackluster games and accept them as the best you're going to get"; it should be "So stop complaining about lackluster games, start complaining about blatant human rights violations, and consider that buying the resulting games might just encourage those to continue."

It feels like there's a subset of reactionary Sonic fans who are so jaded with critics making bad-faith attacks on the series that they just reflexively settle for whatever the series does.  I say nuts to that.  I'll take it game by game, and I'll buy a game if I hear good things from a lot of people I trust, and I won't join stupid gangbangs about how Sonic was never good, but when there's a there, there, us not knowing exactly what caused that there shouldn't stop us from calling it out.

Edited November 16, 2023 by Scritch the Cat

[Palas]

21 hours ago, Scritch the Cat said:

Say you don't think it's fair to compare Sonic Frontiers to Sonic Utopia or Project 06?  Well, it sure as shit is fair to compare it to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

...Is it?

I don't think material realities of production are equal across all the game industry. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild could never not have sold better, been better received or better marketed to Sonic Frontiers for a number of reasons. The fact is that Sonic, as a brand, simply hasn't been in the same level as Zelda for most of its run by now. Zelda is made to be a system definer in a production cycle that is basically tailored for it to work. The fact that they in't rush a supposedly great but ultimately doomed product for the WiiU is all we need to know here. Sonic Team could have all the money, time and personnel in the world to make Sonic Frontiers: it would never reach the same level of quality as BotW because -- and we've been through this before, you and I -- Zelda gets to dictate what "quality" is; Sonic doesn't. Not anymore.

So you brought the example of Sonic 1 for the GBA. True, they didn't do a good job of it. But was a good job ever requested of them? I don't mean it in a "they did what they could" kind of way. I mean it in a very cynical "they had no idea it would gather the attention it id, it was a hard job to do in between development cycles so they did it half-assed for a quick buck". I can't imagine developer talents being really used or pushed in the work regimen of a big company. Just look at Origins! No one would question Stealth's ability as a programmer, but the work regimen made it so that it's a much less polished product than Mania. Almost on purpose.

As much as Sonic Team claims they want Sonic to surpass Mario, the cold reality of financial reports and predictions would tell us otherwise: they are very unlikely to care if Sonic is as "good" as any other game that isn't a very direct competitor for their target demographic in the same launch window. It doesn't even need to sell tens of millions of units like these games do. The scope is all very neatly packed by a whole department of market analysis, most likely.

So the question of "is it fair to compare Sonic Team titles with fangames" sounds weird to me. I'm sure everyone is doing their best according to their production realities. But if not even the realities within the industry can really be compared, is there even anything to say about fan game and Sonic Team? If Iizuka was a modder or a fangame developer, would his games be any different? Absolutely -- I can't question his talent, his experience or his work ethic. If games have any qualities we don't like, and even if these qualities are by his design, and even if these choices weren't the best out of the available ones, it still has nothing to do with the choices fan developers have, can have or are inclined to have. They're entirely different realms.

Ultimately, this is the big question we should be asking is the current industry model and environment the healthiest and most productive ones for games in general, and Sonic in particular? It's really all about the model. There is no reason to believe the people in Sonic Team aren't talented or qualified. Even the execs at SEGA and other companies, whose work probably is what brings the quality of the games down, are probably good at what they do. Comparing products makes little sense.

The system is just horrible.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

On 11/16/2023 at 2:22 PM, Palas said:

...Is it?

If I were to be more cynical, I'd say yes it actually is fair to say that you can compare the two, if only because Frontiers basically tries to follow after the trend BotW set.

And in that comparison, you see Frontiers falls short--I love what Frontiers tried to do, but we can all agree that it doesn't really hold up to BotW for much of the reasons you practically spelled out.

[Palas]

47 minutes ago, CrownSlayer’s Shadow said:

If I were to be more cynical, I'd say yes it actually is fair to say that you can compare the two, if only because Frontiers basically tries to follow after the trend BotW set.

And in that comparison, you see Frontiers falls short--I love what Frontiers tried to do, but we can all agree that it doesn't really hold up to BotW for much of the reasons you practically spelled out.

I mean, sure, you can compare them as "BotW-like games" or as experiences you can have, or as about an amount of money you can spend. But if we're accounting for the reasons why one is a genre founder and the other can cynically be called a trend chaser... the foregone conclusion becomes a much deeper problem to explore, and the comparison sort of stops making sense.

[Scritch the Cat]

On 11/16/2023 at 12:22 PM, Palas said:

...Is it?

I don't think material realities of production are equal across all the game industry. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild could never not have sold better, been better received or better marketed to Sonic Frontiers for a number of reasons. The fact is that Sonic, as a brand, simply hasn't been in the same level as Zelda for most of its run by now. Zelda is made to be a system definer in a production cycle that is basically tailored for it to work. The fact that they in't rush a supposedly great but ultimately doomed product for the WiiU is all we need to know here. Sonic Team could have all the money, time and personnel in the world to make Sonic Frontiers: it would never reach the same level of quality as BotW because -- and we've been through this before, you and I -- Zelda gets to dictate what "quality" is; Sonic doesn't. Not anymore.

So you brought the example of Sonic 1 for the GBA. True, they didn't do a good job of it. But was a good job ever requested of them? I don't mean it in a "they did what they could" kind of way. I mean it in a very cynical "they had no idea it would gather the attention it id, it was a hard job to do in between development cycles so they did it half-assed for a quick buck". I can't imagine developer talents being really used or pushed in the work regimen of a big company. Just look at Origins! No one would question Stealth's ability as a programmer, but the work regimen made it so that it's a much less polished product than Mania. Almost on purpose.

As much as Sonic Team claims they want Sonic to surpass Mario, the cold reality of financial reports and predictions would tell us otherwise: they are very unlikely to care if Sonic is as "good" as any other game that isn't a very direct competitor for their target demographic in the same launch window. It doesn't even need to sell tens of millions of units like these games do. The scope is all very neatly packed by a whole department of market analysis, most likely.

So the question of "is it fair to compare Sonic Team titles with fangames" sounds weird to me. I'm sure everyone is doing their best according to their production realities. But if not even the realities within the industry can really be compared, is there even anything to say about fan game and Sonic Team? If Iizuka was a modder or a fangame developer, would his games be any different? Absolutely -- I can't question his talent, his experience or his work ethic. If games have any qualities we don't like, and even if these qualities are by his design, and even if these choices weren't the best out of the available ones, it still has nothing to do with the choices fan developers have, can have or are inclined to have. They're entirely different realms.

Ultimately, this is the big question we should be asking is the current industry model and environment the healthiest and most productive ones for games in general, and Sonic in particular? It's really all about the model. There is no reason to believe the people in Sonic Team aren't talented or qualified. Even the execs at SEGA and other companies, whose work probably is what brings the quality of the games down, are probably good at what they do. Comparing products makes little sense.

The system is just horrible.

The system is pretty horrible, yeah, and I would even concede Sonic Team isn't nearly the worst of the lot.  That title belongs more to EA and many F2P mobile developers.  Still, again, just because the system clearly enables all sorts of horrible behavior doesn't mean everyone is doing it equally.  Even on the same console, there's still a wide gap in the quality and work ethic displayed by most First Party Nintendo titles, and what Pokemon has been doing.

Also, if we can agree the system enables all sorts of awful precedents, then why not compare fangames favorably to it?  Why not add the completely voluntary nature of that scene as another reason to prefer it?

[Scritch the Cat]

6 hours ago, Palas said:

I mean, sure, you can compare them as "BotW-like games" or as experiences you can have, or as about an amount of money you can spend. But if we're accounting for the reasons why one is a genre founder and the other can cynically be called a trend chaser... the foregone conclusion becomes a much deeper problem to explore, and the comparison sort of stops making sense.

I see reason to point out that while yes, Zelda has been a very influential franchise in the Adventure genre overall, it is only recently that it went (or by some reckoning, returned) to an open-world format.  For over a decade before that, it was other companies and franchises exploring that sort of game design...including, incidentally, SEGA, with the Shen Mu and Yakuza series.  Different developers, yes, but it's the same parent company and at a time when most people are still laying most blame for Sonic's shortcomings on that parent company, I am not convinced you can absolve Sonic Team of all blame here.  Moreover, Sonic Team has shown itself in the past to be able to create worlds that look more interesting and lived-in.  Even "they didn't have time to create the graphical assets" can't be used as a way to excuse the lack of flare and visual direction for Frontiers' islands, because they clearly have those assets there in Cyberspace.

I'm actually not sure what we're arguing about anymore.  How is anyone supposed to assess what sort of game quality comparison is "fair" if every attempt to rationalize SEGA's/Sonic Team's shortcomings is some variant of "Life isn't fair"?  If life isn't fair, then why feel obligated to consider any of the circumstances that produce unequal results?  If the closest anyone can come to a defense for a developer's shortcomings is to shift the blame onto some other entity that can't be helped, then even if it's accurate, why should that make me feel any better about a game?  Hearing that things are unlikely to improve given the circumstances seems more like the ultimate reason to give up on a developer and just go with another I like better.

Ultimately, it's not SEGA or Nintendo who get to dictate what a good game is.  It's the consumers.  And I am not about to change my opinion of what a good Sonic game is just because life isn't fair and every developer has its own dragons to slay.  Inequality of outcome sucks, but what sucks even more is when everyone loses an ideal to strive for so everyone achieves less.  So when I think someone else's games are more ideal than this company's, I am going to say so to at least hope to light a fire under this company's feet.  If they can't reach that ideal, well, it sucks to be them, but it doesn't suck to be me when someone else has reached it.

Edit: Sorry for the double post.  I figured I made this in enough time to get them auto-merged, but I guess not.  To the mods: Is there a way to delete posts?  Because if so I'll merge this one into the last and then delete this one.

Edited November 18, 2023 by Scritch the Cat

[LongcrierCat]

Okay. I love this post. But I got one thing to say, Scritch.

Sonic Frontiers is a much more preferable time for someone who doesn't like their time wasted than Breath of the Wild.

I admit. I'm not the biggest Zelda fan, didn't play most of the 3D games, mostly played the 2D games, but when it went the way of the number one overrated fantasy open world game Skyrim, I didn't get what the hype was about.

At all.

It's not the best game ever and it's worthy of Stephanie Sterling's 7/10.

I much preferred Sonic Frontiers for its respect of my time and giving me something fun I legitimately think Sonic does bettter than any Open World game series that isn't Spider-Man by giving me an Open Zone Skate Park that's legitimately fun just to move in and finally did something of major value with Lost World's otherwise would have been wasted Parkour Engine of gameplay.

Now Sonic Team needs a stronger team structure, some focus in the art direction and level planning, and now we've got something in Sonic that will always demolish your average Mario Platformer.

I do mean it when I say... Sonic Frontiers is good. Something I haven't been able to say for most Triple A Open World games in the last several years.

But onto why I really like this post.

On 11/15/2023 at 2:31 PM, Scritch the Cat said:

Yes, shit happens in game development, including Sonic games.  Maybe even especially Sonic games, considering the development of Sonic X-Treme nearly killed people and the development of Sonic Heroes wrecked Iizuka's health, too.  Yes, we don't often have full insight into what sort of shit is happening.  But whatever it is, either it's not happening equally to all developers or some are just better at rolling with whatever punches may be.  So if the point some people are making is that lackluster games being due to bad working environments and unfair bosses is somehow more forgivable than them being due to inept staff, I strongly disagree.  In an event that we discover a game's development literally almost killed its developers, our reaction shouldn't be "So stop complaining about lackluster games and accept them as the best you're going to get"; it should be "So stop complaining about lackluster games, start complaining about blatant human rights violations, and consider that buying the resulting games might just encourage those to continue."

 

So, yes. Actually, it's a great time to bring up the Complaining about Blatant Human Rights Violations given how Sega has continued to insist on destroying its employees spiritually and financially with its continued Union Busting of AEGIS and how that quality of employmentship has resulted in a 2D Sonic game that while good isn't 60 dollars good. But then again, is any 2D Game really worth 60 dollars if they wanted this to sell millions?

I think it's worth an investigation into Sega's business practices now that they continue to go to war with the union that has been completely approved unanimously democratically and working within Sega. Sega is not anyone in this fanbase's friend. And the sooner an investigation into their abuse of their staff the better.

I want to see Haruki Satomi's Nepo Baby NFT Shilling Cryptobro Ass eat it.

I legitimately think SAMMY buying out Sega in 2004 was the downfall of SEGA. Not the Dreamcast. Tho, if you want me to give a legit idea of when Sega's Corporate Ideals proved to be a complete egotistical war with anyone who dared to have a better idea than the CEO I'll point to how Sega was literally offered the Playstation after Nintendo signed a deal with Phillips for the CD-I and Sega was all over it.

But not Sega of Japan. They chose to make another enemy.

A common pattern of theirs really.

And I mean, is it any wonder that Haruki Satomi gets to inherit his dad's - Hajime Satomi - fortune of screwing over a company Retro Gamers know was completely on the level with Nintendo, especially if you're here for more than just Sonic and know about Sega's intense Arcade Presence and how they are arguably the most prominent Arcade Developer in Retro Gaming especially if you had an excellent local Arcade before they went the way of Blockbuster. I mean his dad was the founder of SAMMY and then his daddy sent him off to lead in the Mobile Game Development in 2015 then come in recently in the last few years to take up the Family Business.

(Sides, we all get onto Konami's ass for the Pachinko Shit, why not double up on that with Sega's own Pachinko Interests in tearing down the terrible upper management?)

Ah. Wouldn't you love to peddle some Live Service Scams and call them Super Games and fund your Super Game with a budget of 4 overpriced budget Hollywood Movies? (200 million is the average budget of an MCU movie for those not doing number crunching)

Man, Business Men are totally smart and not stupid, conniving, backstabbing, abusive egotists at all~

Edited November 20, 2023 by LongcrierCat