Am I the only one who hates how Sonic Team embraces their Memes?

[MetalSkulkBane]

I don't think memes do harm per se... or let me put it in another way: Bad games will ALWAYS do more harm, so there is little point blaming memes of anything.

Doesn't change the fact I'm tired of them.

[Artsy-Aspie]

I do think that the differences in regions and philosophy also really seem to negatively affect the Sonic games, their PR and SEGA in general. I mean longtime disagreements between SEGA of Japan and the SEGA of the rest of the World seem to be one of the catalysts to the situation that Sonic is in right now. 
I doubt Sonic's Twitter feed would be as meme filled if SEGA of Japan was in control over it. 

[Your Vest Friend]

I don't think Sonic Team itself does. The Sanic thing seems like something decided elsewhere. 

[Milo]

20 minutes ago, Josh said:

 THey didn't directly call out Sonic Forces but they were kind of dancing around it up until release with the edgy and OC jokes. It's kind of jarring with how sincerely the game believes in the OC concept that the PR team is taking the piss and intentionally making and referencing "cringe" ones.

On that note, I still remember reading pre-release comments about Forces made by people who believed that Sonic Team were trying to make a parody or a satire of the game's bleaker tone, the edginess, and Infinite's presence as the game's new dark villain. I mean, in fairness, it wasn't an exactly wrong guess to take, when you had for recent reference the Boom subseries, the social media handles, and the Pontac/Warren approach to writing for recent ST titles since Colors. They all had some level of snark, self-awareness, and/or self-depreciation to their tone; they certainly weren't games that took themselves seriously (second half of Lost World notwithstanding).

There was no way the developers weren't playing this all up for laughs, the writers just had to be in on the joke this entire time!

And then people actually sat down and played the game...

...oh. 

[Eurisko]

Nah , I love how they've embraced it. I don't think its a case of -" Hey! we've released some sub-par games and we know it!" ( though they do nod to Sonic'06 a lot , which everyman and his dog has done at this juncture) but I i think its more a case where they have a series about a fictional blue hedgehog that talks and runs fast and he and his friends fight against a fat bald scientist with a comedy moustache  and his robot army. Now that sounds stupid. But at its very base is what Sonic is and SEGA  or Sonic Team or whoever has realised this and embraced it. Its not just the social team either just look at the Sonic Boom TV series , lots of self depreciating and fourth wall breaking witty jokes are abound there.                                                                                                                              

I actually hate when Sonic is taken way to seriously , its supposed to be fun. Its supposed to be cartoon , its not a melodramatic Sci-Fi epic and I never want it to be. So they can carry on with what they are doing - its awesome!

[Diogenes]

57 minutes ago, Josh said:

An awareness that it's shit just makes them look even worse, because there's active knowledge of the problems but an unwillingness to fix them.

I don't mind a bit of levity, but the seriess tendency to just make fun of itself now without really fixing anything is grating, personally. I'd rather them at least own what they're making or talk more about the good parts.

I can really only speak for myself on this, but to me, they're two separate things. The series' repeated mistakes and failures to properly address them are terrible regardless of whether anyone involved is poking fun at them. And most of the joking is coming from the PR team, who only have a limited influence on the series in the first place. It's not like stopping them from joking around is going to lead to those problems being fixed, so I may as well laugh along with them.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

16 minutes ago, Space☆Yeow said:

And then people actually sat down and played the game...

...oh. 

To be fair, those - especially Amy's "torture" line were Potac and Graff blunders IIRC.

[MetalSkulkBane]

I'm sorry quick question: was Forces really all that dark?

15 minutes ago, Space☆Yeow said:

Two lines, one made by dumb translation.

Other than that, I liked tone in Forces. If I can no longer have serious Adventure games, this is better than Colors/LostWolrd/RiseofLyric joker-per-second. A compromise that I can work with.

[Tornado]

Embracing a bad reputation and attempting to be in on a joke only works if it's part of a step towards actual improvement. Nothing Sonic Team has done since 2011 has indicated that they really care either way. A bunch of PR mocking the bad old days doesn't work if the current situation isn't terribly better; and I certainly don't want the series official reputation to devolve into a post-2006 Family Guy-style of "yeah, it's pretty shit, but we acknowledged it humorously so you can't use it against us!"

[Dr. Detective]

No, Forces wasn't dark. It was just confused. It didn't know how to balance its more darker elements with its more light-hearted ones to successfully pull off that fun but serious, Marvel movie tone.

The PR team used to annoy me a tad but their streams every 2 weeks are actually a lot of fun. They're even good about having in-house story arcs. The Scooby Doo unmasking of the villain plaguing their Sonic Toaster plans turning out to be Tyson Hesse was charming.

Its best to keep in mind that these guys aren't the ones in charge and as such can't do much to fix our grievences anyway.

[Shadowlax]

20 minutes ago, Tornado said:

Embracing a bad reputation and attempting to be in on a joke only works if it's part of a step towards actual improvement. Nothing Sonic Team has done since 2011 has indicated that they really care either way. A bunch of PR mocking the bad old days doesn't work if the current situation isn't terribly better; and I certainly don't want the series official reputation to devolve into a post-2006 Family Guy-style of "yeah, it's pretty shit, but we acknowledged it humorously so you can't use it against us!"

This. This was also my issue with quite a bit of sonic boom writing. 

I think it was the Harlem Globe Trotters that had a rule, that couldn't style on folks untill they were a certain point lead ahead of the other team

That's how I feel about jokes of this nature, maybe we should avoid self deprecating meta humor for a bit untill we can get our shit together. 

[Milo]

32 minutes ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

To be fair, those - especially Amy's "torture" line were Potac and Graff blunders IIRC.

30 minutes ago, MetalSkulkBane said:

Two lines, one made by dumb translation.

Other than that, I liked tone in Forces. If I can no longer have serious Adventure games, this is better than Colors/LostWolrd/RiseofLyric joker-per-second. A compromise that I can work with.

Surely you two still understand the point I was trying to make, though; about Forces' approach to tone compared to the other rcent Sonic products I mentioned? I'm just using the most obvious examples that come to mind.

That's not to say an argument can be made on how "dark" Forces actually is and what lines were written by Sonic Team themselves or the translators, but those are different arguments from the topic I'm addressing.

[Shadowlax]

23 minutes ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

 

Its best to keep in mind that these guys aren't the ones in charge and as such can't do much to fix our grievences anyway.

True and I get that. Heck I feel sorry for them in this regard. But I cannot help how this feels. Its not a good look , it just looks like giving up. And thats unfortunate that them trying to do a good job , looks that way. But I don't blame them, I blame sonic team for that

[RedFox99]

29 minutes ago, Tornado said:

"yeah, it's pretty shit, but we acknowledged it humorously so you can't use it against us!"

Once again, a good summary of why I stopped liking Boom after a while. I remember asking Bill Freiberger once why Team sonic keep eating at Meh Burger if it's terrible and his reply was along the lines of "It's a cartoon." Granted, I could just be taken things too serious like I normally do. 

[JezMM]

It took me a while to warm up to the Sonic PR team's direction but I think it was just as much them finding their footing as it was my being too harsh on their attempts at humour.  While they can sometimes be hit and miss still, watching the streams or panels makes it clear so very quickly just what passionate fans they are for the series as well as their relentless efforts to just spread a little joy and cheer among the fanbase and beyond, and those "misses" are just cases where their senses of humour as individuals just doesn't match up to mine as an individual, it happens.

The overuse of Sanic definitely got a bit "eh" for me after a while, but if finally including him in an official Sonic product is the end of that saga I'm fairly satisfied.  While it's easy to criticise memey behaviour such as that, it's important to remember that it REALLY seems like the same people are responsible for the string-pulling and Sonic Team-nudging which lead to things like getting Tyson Hesse's fantastic involvement in Sonic Mania.

1 hour ago, RedFox99 said:

Once again, a good summary of why I stopped liking Boom after a while. I remember asking Bill Freiberger once why Team sonic keep eating at Meh Burger if it's terrible and his reply was along the lines of "It's a cartoon." Granted, I could just be taken things too serious like I normally do. 

Sorry but... yeah, what you said at the end there is what happened.  It's a sitcom, and a fairly unapologetically self-aware one at that.  The writers chose to make a show where they can get away with breaks from realistic behaviour if it lends itself to them being able to come up with more jokes.

[Roger_van_der_weide]

I'm fine with the memes as long as there's some straight real stuff as well.
My biggest gripe a year ago is that "punch yourself in the face" humor was litteraly the only thing we got out of Sonic, whether it was the PR, Sonic Boom and the official games. There was no escape, unlike "The dark age" of Sonic that still had Sonic Heroes, Sonic Advance and Sonic X being light fare.

Now Sonic Forces shows there's still room for straight Sonic, even if Forces itself kinda failed at it, I'm more at peace with the self deprication, even if I still don't really like it at all.

As others said, self deprication is only good when it's part of a growing process. If you still keep failling, then it's just cheap.
And the fact it's only old fare that's the target of the jokes instead of curent issues doesn't help either. I don't care that "they're aware" of how decades old games made for a diffrent system by a diffrent development team following a diffrent philosophy screwed things up, how about acknowledging the mistakes you're making NOW?
Yeah yeah, fishing with Big was boring, whatever. Will we get 3d gameplay that's actually in 3d or what? Is Sonic Team aware that Mania's usage of Classic Sonic was better, and why? Will someone give Pontaff a lecure about how "Flow" works in storytelling? Make jokes or references to that, THEN I'll be more reassured and hopeful for future games. I don't care that Sonic kissed a princess a decade ago.

And as for the "The PR can't help it, they're just having fun".
Well, I wouldn't be surprised if there's an increasingly larger part of the fanbase getting tired of the self mutilation aproach and becomes more and more thirsty for energetic adventurous Sonic. Keep pushing one direction too far for too long and the scales will tip in the other direction.
Making memes and jokes was indeed an aproach that was welcome in 2008, but the question is how long it'll be. Even for the sake of preserving the meme comedy aproach, offering a more healthy balance can prolong the current direction before people become more and more restless for a more extreme make over. The PR has to be on top of this all. Poor guys, the Sonic fanbase isn't easy to keep a hold on.

But indeed, we had Forces, our "balance". But man, does that game feel like an odd duck with none of the PR promotion around it feeling approperate to that game, other then whenever they silently released video's and music.
Altough to the PR's credit, that cartoon of Eggman promotiing his robotiziation machine was a million times better then anything Forces's story had to offer. Amazing what humor can do when it includes elements of danger and adventure in the punchline rather then just Sonic and Eggman being best friends doing nothing.

[Monkey Destruction Switch]

I haven't paid that much attention to the Sonic social media lately, I don't use social media much in general and I also got a little tired of the Sonic social media. At first it was fun and exciting to have such a humorous focus and all the memes, but once the novelty wore off it wasn't that interesting to me. Yeah, we get it, memes...I like memes in general, but they can become dull or feel try-hard if not used well, and some memes I just find inherently weak, such as Sanic. Still, it's not an inherently bad idea. Just maybe a bit more variety or something would be nice. That being said, I haven't been looking at it lately, so maybe they have improved in that regard for all I know.

That being said, I do have a problem with the self-deprecating bent, as it's used by the Sonic social media. It would be a very different situation if the series was actually in a good place of consistent quality right now - I would have no problem with making fun of past mistakes if such was the case. But after Forces came out and was widely considered disappointing or just average, it just leaves a bad taste in the mouth. You're mocking yourselves for creating lousy products, then turning around and selling us more lousy products? It's not a good look, at all. Selling a product that you know and perhaps even tacitly admit is bad is very off-putting. Even at least pretending to have some pride in what your company is putting out comes across as better to me.

Yes, of course the ones running the social media aren't the same people actually making the games. As a result, I'm inclined to direct my displeasure more towards the people who actually make the games themselves. The thing is, this particular humor style would be completely fine if the new games were actually good! And I can't really say I'm that unhappy with the social media style in and of itself; it's just that Sega's failure to actually make the series better effectively turns what could be something funny and potentially good or at least okay for the brand (acknowledging and making fun of mistakes in the fairly distant past, and in doing so tacitly promising that the future will be brighter) into something that feels uncomfortable and maybe a little desperate. Like, you can only do that stuff if you're actually going to not make the same mistakes in the future.

[Mad Convoy]

Honestly, I really don't think its that bad. I live in Mario country and really the only people who laugh at Sonic were people who were doing that for years. The rest who have familiarity with Sonic are just quietly enjoying Sonic Mania, or maybe Forces, or probably one of the other Boost games out there (or Sonic Heroes), or just don't really care too much. The internet tends to inflate how many people seem to be laughing at and hating on Sonic, certainly, but I don't see anything that wasn't happening beforehand. If anything, I'd say the climate has gotten better because there's increasingly less clickbait that just blindly hates on Sonic for views and drama. People are getting better at actually analyzing Sonic when they claim to be analyzing Sonic. And just laughing at Sonic a lot doesn't necessarily indicate disrespect either. I personally laugh a ton at Sonic-- its what I do with the things I love and respect, because amusing myself helps me cope with my anxiety and I care about the things I love enough to think about them a lot and know enough to have good, original material to work with. Video games (and franchises based off of them) are supposed to be fun, and I'd probably gradually lose all interest in Sonic if I started taking it too seriously.

Or, if I'm to compare it to real life stuff, the office that my dad works at is a good substitute for a comedy club. Funny things are happening and being recorded all the time, one guy even has a small internal comic that crudely depicts the day-to-day funnies, and there's no shortage of memes and running jokes circulating the internal email threads. Its not because nobody is passionate or nobody works hard. Its because, well, its not easy-- there's a lot of stress and anxiety floating around the office, not to mention broken promises and messy conflicts, and if there wasn't anything to provide levity... well, the people working there would probably go mad.

And well, things happen. Even in 1 or 2 years, a lot can change. No company plans on making bad stuff-- yeah, I know its really obvious and I've said this a lot in the past, but in the midst of all the drama and disappointment, I think that tends to be forgotten or ignored. These jokes were probably made before the PR even knew what Forces looked like. This is a risky marketing strategy, and well, maybe it didn't pan out as well as it could here, but I thought people generally wanted Sega to take more risks and such??? I mean, maybe go about it a bit better, but Sega not playing it safe so often? Yeah, I'm on board with stuff that indicates such.

(That and I actually don't think Forces quite makes the same mistakes, as say, 06, or even qualifies as anything less than adequate, but that's a different discussion that would just derail the topic at this point.)

And well, I'm just gonna remind everybody that Sonic Team (or to be more exact Iizuka) is pretty much the reason Sonic Mania was made at all and they did apparently contribute a lot to advocating for original levels and such. So I doubt Sonic Team is completely tone-deaf, not that PR from overseas (especially that made before SoA knew what Forces and Mania looked like) and DLC that likely wasn't planned from the very start and doesn't even matter much in the grand scheme of things really indicates a whole lot about Sonic Team's mentality anyway.

[LBomb]

My problem with the memes is that before Forces the PR team paraded them confidently, like they had learned from their mistakes. You can make self-deprecating jokes about your franchise but I'm not buying a shit game. Seeing headlines about "Sanic t-shirt DLC" just makes my eyes roll, because if the game was good I doubt they would do that. They're trying to make a positive out of a negative, I get that, but besides Mania its felt like the series has been stalling for far too long now.

[Iko]

Call me childish or what you want, but I actually like the Sanic/gotta go fast meme, at least it was funny because it was a parody of some aspects of the series and the vision of the series according to a part of the fandom; the main problem is that it was used so many time and in a repetitive way that it got old now, I mean, it was around since a lot of years now.

I like it doesn't mean that I always find it funny, it's quite overused and honestly I don't think putting a Sanic shirt in Forces was a good move, though I think that I wouldn't bother if it was used less often and more as an easter-egg (example, you visit an hub world, you see through the window of an house that a TV monitor is showing a "sanic" cartoon, or, think of a Chao Garden, a chao may occasionally draw a Sanic while playing).

Anyway, I prefer Sanic, or Big the Cat memes to stuff such as bad quotes or Ugandan Knuckles: bad quotes aren't really a meme, they are just making fun of bad quality content in official games, there is nothing really fun nor productive in that... and Ugandan Knuckles is not fun at all, it makes no sense and can be seen as a racist meme in some cases.

I honestly think that putting memes into official games or PR material may be funny if done in the right way, such as hidden easter eggs (like Big the Cat in Sonic Adventure 2) that don't influence the image of the game to general audience, and especially when they aren't overused; just don't build 90% of your PR around memes or the reputation of the franchise may just fall into a deep pit.

[MetalSkulkBane]

6 hours ago, Monkey Destruction Switch said:

 

That being said, I do have a problem with the self-deprecating bent, as it's used by the Sonic social media. It would be a very different situation if the series was actually in a good place of consistent quality right now - I would have no problem with making fun of past mistakes if such was the case. But after Forces came out and was widely considered disappointing or just average, it just leaves a bad taste in the mouth. You're mocking yourselves for creating lousy products, then turning around and selling us more lousy products? It's not a good look, at all. Selling a product that you know and perhaps even tacitly admit is bad is very off-putting. Even at least pretending to have some pride in what your company is putting out comes across as better to me.

[dbzfan7]

It depends on what they do. Stuff like Cooking with Eggman is just fun. It's not really a meme, but a silly way to use the character. I don't mind something like that. Personally character humor in a scenario where you want them out of their comfort zone, is if you can keep them as close to as possible with being themselves. So it makes a scene more entertaining. Like pretty much any time Batman has to do something silly when he is grim dark. Though really Sonic just lately really REALLY sucks at character humor by making it either to meme central or character troping to the point you could put anyone in the same spot and tell the exact same joke, which makes their own version generic. They're more comfortable writing themselves as the characters and placing them in situations rather than letting them feel organic.

But stuff like art show cases, some occasional meming/joking is fine. I think they can do a good job, and when they interact with other social giants it's entertaining. It's just the self deprecation jokes that are THE WORST. They don't work when you don't learn from your mistakes. Sonic is still fucking up to this day, and pretty much focusing everything on Classic feels like they're way of making people forget about how Forces was received. Not to mention their self deprecation jokes are usually the used condom of jokes. Like Sonic 06 jokes...probably the most used of condoms. It's not funny no more. Not to mention they just sweep under the rug their latest fuck ups when doing this type of humor. Like when Rise of Lyric was like the devil at the time or even since. I didn't see nothing about self deprecation there then or years later. Really you only had positive spins on the game like Infinite jump Knuckles. If you're going to self deprecate you better not acting like you learned your lesson when you still fuck up, and then try and pretend you're not fucking up while trying to point attention away to past fuck ups.

I think the most fun one was "It's better than nothing", which REALLY strikes hard back that the social media had the balls to act like they're so much better, and then also fuck up like Mighty No9. Perhaps not as ball dropping, but still fucking up with the same better than nothing like effort put into their own games. Overall it's not for me, but I do think the social media is mostly harmless now. Less than before when it was boom focused as at least now they're focused on something good.

[A person, that exists]

Honestly, to me it's kinda better that Sega understood how much of a joke the series is. 

Although, it is sad that they don't learn from their mistakes, and just keep pointing them out with no consequences whatsoever.

[StaticMania]

Don't dislike how they embrace them...

Dislike the way they use them...

[Osmium]

I'm not really amused by the memes at all, but that's because I don't really like memes in general and so I couldn't care less about the Twitter actually. It's just not funny stuff to me.

I think people forget how little bearing the PR have on the franchise itself. Even so, that doesn't mean there isn't an impact. When I was still in high school people would constantly say "gotta go fast" and stuff like that at me so there are obviously a large number of (mostly younger) people being encouraged by the thing to spout shitty jokes everywhere they go. But that's all they are, shitty jokes. The damage the games themselves have created is the real problem. 

That being said I find any sort of joke that just makes fun of self and uses it as an excuse not to change to not only be unfunny and annoying but damaging. 

Slightly off topic, but I'm not very much a fan of the super-jokey direction the IP in general has been taking at all. Maybe it's my preferred humour is in a different direction, but I really just can't stand the "we're aware we can make fun of absolutely everything about ourselves and we're going to do it because it's all we have lololol" shtick that got old on internet flash videos a bloody decade ago. That combined with the sitcom nature of Boom turned me off immediately. I like when something sets the vibe that it's ridiculous but can self-sustain itself with a competent consistent universe that makes you care. I don't get that from Sonic anymore.  

 If we had a highly respected history with consistently quality content this wouldn't be a conversation right now. Everyone could laugh at some occasional self-depreciating humour since it would just be fun pokes at a strong IP. But when it's just "lololol" coming from all sides when Sonic can barely keep his head out of the grave, it's like whatever, man. You do you.