Tumblr/Twitter Sonic's latest exploits

[Shaddy Zaphod]

I think it's just Sonic twitter being his usual self. 

It's "usual self" is just utilizing the franchise's memes and jokes, generally. This seems like something organized by Sega, rather than Aaron Webber. Unless he's given a huge amount of freedom with his posting, I don't see this sort of thing happening just because he felt like it.

There has to be something going on here. Generally polls lead to some decision being made with this series. I don't feel like "the character you all voted for is the character that got the most votes" is all we end up with here.

 

If the poll is asking "Which of all these choices would you like to see in the next Sonic game?" again, then it's the chao garden or bust for me

Yeah, see, that's kinda what I'm getting at. It might be less about "the winner gets their own game" and more "the winner gets more focus in the next game". But honestly, there might be a little more motivation to vote if Sonic team A bothered to show off what they've been working on for the past four years (cause Lost World and Colors were made by a different team right?)

Edited August 23, 2015 by Shaddy

[Mauro Fonseca]

Of course not, but this is irrelevant to the accusation that was brought up in the first place, and I've already admitted I've let go of the initial accusation.

Using anonymity as a shield is pretty irrational. The ability for some people in a group to share opinions does not lead to the conclusion that every single individual within a group shares opinions (a conclusion literally no one was operating with. When people say /v/, they mean it as a metonym for the relevant members of this discussion). The fact that we're all in agreement that /v/ has largely voted for Eggman because they like him presumes this to be true, and subsequently the same goes for organizing. You do not need to be in perfect lockstep harmony to organize, really. In short, you cannot agree that /v/ prefers Eggman in the context of this poll if you presume that they cannot share opinions as well. It doesn't make sense and has been a fundamental theoretical problem of discussing the actions of anon boards for awhile.

Anonymousity here isn't a shield, or even relevant, I just mentioned it because that's generally how it's always formulated. And /v/ can share opinions, or anons in /v/ rather, but that's different from "/v/ is doing this", depending on the context. In the context that was being said, it was "this mob is coordinating to perform this action", when instead it's "these members of a mob are each individually performing an action that happens to all go the same place".

No nonsense here, and don't really see how it can be a theoretical problem of discussing anon boards, but then again, might just be a question of familiarity with how the system works.

[GeneHF]

It's "usual self" is just utilizing the franchise's memes and jokes, generally. This seems like something organized by Sega, rather than Aaron Webber. Unless he's given a huge amount of freedom with his posting, I don't see this sort of thing happening just because he felt like it.

There has to be something going on here. Generally polls lead to some decision being made with this series. I don't feel like "the character you all voted for is the character that got the most votes" is all we end up with here.

I can assure you, there isn't. Settle down with the kool aid and black helicopters.

[Nepenthe]

=X But they're not ballot stuffing tho' Gene.

Anyway, PR social media handles tend to have a lot of leeway, and I feel like if this poll sincerely meant something for the franchise's future then it would actually be coming from a higher up source like an official website rather than the jokester Twitter handle being run by Aaron. Certainly the ShtH and Gen polls weren't run on fucking Twitter of all places.

Anonymousity here isn't a shield, or even relevant, I just mentioned it because that's generally how it's always formulated. And /v/ can share opinions, or anons in /v/ rather, but that's different from "/v/ is doing this", depending on the context. In the context that was being said, it was "this mob is coordinating to perform this action", when instead it's "these members of a mob are each individually performing an action that happens to all go the same place".

No nonsense here, and don't really see how it can be a theoretical problem of discussing anon boards, but then again, might just be a question of familiarity with how the system works.

We've already covered that /v/ wasn't acting unethically and we're clear on that. The problem is presuming certain human actions like organization to be impossible because of anonymity.

[ZERO_ninja]

=X But they're not ballot stuffing tho' Gene.

Anyway, PR social media handles tend to have a lot of leeway, and I feel like if this poll sincerely meant something for the franchise's future then it would actually be coming from a higher up source like an official website rather than the jokester Twitter handle being run by Aaron. Certainly the ShtH and Gen polls weren't run on fucking Twitter of all places.

We've already covered that /v/ wasn't acting unethically and we're clear on that. The problem is presuming certain human actions like organization to be impossible because of anonymity.

The vote is on SEGA's official blog (which is part of SEGA's official website) not just the twitter account, and the initial post even talks very briefly about when we'll hear of 25th anni plans, which I doubt is a coincidence.

Edited August 23, 2015 by ZERO_ninja

[Nepenthe]

The vote is on SEGA's official blog not just the twitter account, and the initial post even talks very briefly about when we'll hear of 25th anni plans, which I doubt is a coincidence.

It's also being run by Aaron however, and the actual voting methods aren't really all that secure. The question concerning 25th anniversary plans seems more geared towards the fact that he knows stuff is out there about it for the public to see and people have been asking for some kind of major non-Boom Sonic news, rather than trying to conjure up a deliberate link between this poll and that anniversary. Speaking of which, we've all been presuming the anniversary is classically-oriented due to the conjecture Hogfather's brought us, and I don't know about you but Jet, Silver, Cream, and Big have absolutely nothing to do with Classic Sonic anyway.

[azoo]

Just to elaborate on what I said earlier, I don't believe the poll has any part to do with what's to come in the games. Aaron likes to have fun, we all like to have fun and throw a mudslinging campaign against Silver and whatever.

But considering how just about any screwball thing can happen in the house of Sega, I keep my tinfoil hat in the glove compartment just in case.

Edited August 23, 2015 by Azoo

[Badnik Mechanic]

Gene is correct.

This poll has nothing to do with future plans. If anything does come out of it it's a coincidence.

Also about this impacting the 25th aniversary/being related. Lol. There are only about 7 months before Sega will announce stuff about it. 

They're not going to change stuff based on this poll at all.

[ZERO_ninja]

Eh, I just looked at is as SEGA statistic gathering and potentially assessing if they wanted to do anything with some of these characters in the future, be it small return in the games or more likely merchandising. Given how careful SEGA have been with the IP since Colours I wasn't expecting anything even remotely on the level of Shadow 2 type scale based on voting results.

[azoo]

Eh, I just looked at is as SEGA statistic gathering and potentially assessing if they wanted to do anything with some of these characters in the future, be it small return in the games or more likely merchandising. Given how careful SEGA have been with the IP since Colours I wasn't expecting anything even remotely on the level of Shadow 2 type scale based on voting results.

I'm not sure if I'd call Lost World's end product, the entire Boom thing, and plans of a live-action/CGI hybrid Sonic film as careful handling. For that reason, anything that sounds bad at this point sounds plausible, sadly.

But I digress. You're probably right; if this meant anything at all besides being a little thing for fun, it'd probably mean we see slightly more of them in games or something and not much else. Sega doesn't seem too interested in the extended cast past Sonic, Tails or Eggman at this point.

[Diesel]

Is there any proof that there was ever a character poll that led to Shadow's game?

[Moppsy]

Anyway, it seems like the guys I vote for tend to lose.  Just gonna sit the rest of the poll out and watch.

[Nepenthe]

You could always throw away your preferences and vote for the obvious choices.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

 

Besides, it's pretty clear the final is going to involve Shadow in some way, as he's the #2 character. Would not be surprise if Ow the Edge/crappy furry Solid Snake wins it all.

I'd be pleasantly surprised if Shadow made it in the finals in someway given who he'll be going up against, especially since his reputation took somewhat of a nosedive after his game began the obvious screw up of the series.

[TheOcelot]

Just voted for Eggman in the latest poll. He's got 60% of the vote at the moment. He should win but it's a close one.

I think the Boom cartoon has actually helped improve Amy's popularity by quite a bit. She always had her fans, but if this had been done 10 years ago then I think Eggman would have trounced Amy in terms of the vote. I just think the Boom cartoons does a much better portrayal of Amy, she comes off as a much stronger character and is more like-able than perhaps she was in the Adventure games.

 

 

[Kuzu]

This poll is going to get so entertaining near the end now that /v/ is involved. Should be great laughs.

[TheChris110]

I doubt this poll is legit. There were thousands of votes and nevertheless it took these 4chan people only a very short time to change the results from 50:50 to 60:40.

[GeneHF]

Is there any proof that there was ever a character poll that led to Shadow's game?

Explicitly? No. But the poll itself was very slanted in that direction. The game asked who your favorite character was at that time and the choice was limited to every non-Sonic character in Sonic Heroes, Eggman included.

Then it asked which title would be most interesting: you had stuff like a Amy romance title, a Dr. Eggman puzzle game, and a Shadow action game among others.

Next, it asked what kind of gameplay mechanics would people be interested in seeing. As it was popular at the time thanks to the likes of Jak II and Ratchet and Clank, some of the options included guns, automobiles, and branching story paths based on your actions.

The game was then announced in late 2004/early 2005 with a gameplay trailer. It was also around this time people learned that the Sonic Adventure voice cast would be dropped for the 4Kids cast due to Sonic X and (I assume) due to Deem Bristow dying. Some people say one of the early Shadow trailers still had David Humphrey voicing Shadow, but I honestly don't remember this and some voice actors say they were never called in to record lines. Maybe reused SA2/Heroes samples?

But yeah, SEGA never explicitly said if the fan vote was influential. We know they did it again in 2010-2011 by asking fans what they though the most popular zones in the series were and then Sonic Generations came out. I'm more surprised that Sky Sanctuary and Mushroom Hill ranked in higher than Flying Battery and Ice Cap, but this was before we knew that there was some sort of legal dispute over Sonic 3's soundtrack that's basically caused the game to be shelved in any capacity by SEGA.

If a Sonic Anthology game is released in 2016 (which I think will happen), Sonic 3 will likely be included since it looks using the game itself without any augmentation is still okay, but otherwise it doesn't look good for the title.

tl;dr: SEGA's weird.

[Your Vest Friend]

It was also around this time people learned that the Sonic Adventure voice cast would be dropped for the 4Kids cast due to Sonic X and (I assume) due to Deem Bristow dying.

Nope. Mike Pollock has gone on record to say that the 4Kids transition was in the works before Deem Bristow's death, it was just very unfortunate timing.

[GeneHF]

Ahh. Good to know, then. I always figured that was causation, but I guess using the 4kids crew as a package deal (and for brand consistency) makes sense.

[Diesel]

Explicitly? No. But the poll itself was very slanted in that direction. The game asked who your favorite character was at that time and the choice was limited to every non-Sonic character in Sonic Heroes, Eggman included.

Then it asked which title would be most interesting: you had stuff like a Amy romance title, a Dr. Eggman puzzle game, and a Shadow action game among others.

Next, it asked what kind of gameplay mechanics would people be interested in seeing. As it was popular at the time thanks to the likes of Jak II and Ratchet and Clank, some of the options included guns, automobiles, and branching story paths based on your actions.

OK, but is there any proof that such a poll existed in the first place?

[Salamander]

Well, people voted in it and remembered it, so I assume there's as much proof that it existed as there is that the present Sonic Showdown poll exists.  Or perhaps it never existed in this timeline, just like the Berenstein Bears spelling.

[Diesel]

Well, people voted in it and remembered it, so I assume there's as much proof that it existed as there is that the present Sonic Showdown poll exists. 

People claiming that they voted in it and remember it isn't proof that it existed it all. That is just hearsay. There actually is proof that the current Sonic Showdown poll exists, as one can easily find it on the Sega blog.

[Clewis]

People claiming that they voted in it and remember it isn't proof that it existed it all. That is just hearsay. There actually is proof that the current Sonic Showdown poll exists, as one can easily find it on the Sega blog.

Even if their claims just boil down to being hearsay, I don't think people would be bringing up that particular poll at all if it had not existed at one point in some sort of fashion.

[Nepenthe]

It's not hearsay if the account is being given by people who voted in the poll. That's called testimony which is valid evidence.