Sonic Team & It's fans.

[iambitter21]

If you know me by now, I have a ton of respect, love and concern for sonic and his creators. they've been in such a bizarre place for such a long time, but Sonic team, looking at the comments they made on fan games and videos, has proven that they've been listening to it's fans, one of the best examples being Christian Whitehead and where he stands now. sonic mania is not only one of my favorite games, but also one of the highest rated sonic games of all time, even surpassing sonic adventure 2, one of my other favorite games. their are a lot of fan games that have consolidated a direction for sonic to take going forward, but when you look at the pitches & editorials that they've made, holy cow they're amazing. I wish I could show you one I love the most but it's one that isn't allowed in this forum so I'll leave it for now. however, this fanbase has been through so much derision and bad games that whatever move This team got, the fans go critical, some even lost trust with this team. they've lost all of the optimism because of Sonic Forces, and now all this separated fanbase feels about sonic team is distrust, cynicism, and bleakness. they constantly go make a fangame with literally no originality from all of the others and go "hey look I'm better than sonic team" (which in retrospect, they are, sonic forces was made by inexperienced developers who'd be better off working on something else at this point. We'll get to that game later just you wait.) to the point where the only thing it takes to BE better than sonic team is to go on a physics engine and make a sonic game level that basically goes in a straight line, but said straight line has some multiple "paths" so It generally means they're better (despite mortar canyon existing). it literally takes no skill to be better now, and that only SOURS sonic team's reputation more to such a disgusting degree.

Sonic Team is in a confusing fever dream of a place because of all this. to start things off, sonic team has a lot of live and spark despite what people say, rockin music, nice staff and a ton of care for this franchise like we do. but after sonic forces, sonic team has so many holes of lost members, we were promised a game made by the people who made colors and generations, but instead we got level designers who were only experienced with lost world, writers who only worked on happy tree friends and knew nothing about this franchise, 3 years wasted on make a graphics engine because the old one couldn't use next gen hardware and only had one year to work on the game, after all this, parts of the team left. it makes sense why these fans feel betrayed and they shouldn't have to cope with this, But Sonic Team shouldn't feel Desperate making a new game either.  

to reiterate all this:

• The fans are full of creativity and care for this franchise. the trade-off is that this has gotta be the most critical fanbases of all time, not that it's a bad thing, criticality is quite helpful overall. but the thing comes with a huge amount of cynicism and distrust, to a point where when you say your better than sonic team, you're now factually right by the fans.
• Sonic Team is just as caring for this franchise as we are, the creativeness isn't really there though because of the inexperienced members. but the biggest trade-off is what this franchise now represents to the fans after forces. forces, for all the fun I had with it, is shallow, mediocre, hollow fan-service that was only made to please the already broken fanbase with an already incompetent game.

overall, Sonic's future is literally unpredictable, there's no telling what this company is going to do next, there is evidence that can consolidate a direction that sonic team can possibly go, but after that, what about the fans? what will the fans do? why would they do it? this fanbase is so unpredictable that Sonic Team thinks there's no idea what they want. I just don't know what to do about this, any thoughts you guys?

[mechagical]

There has been no such thing as Sonic Team after Adventure 1.

All three founding fathers of Sonic had left with Naka going last in 2006, and pursued their own careers. My take is that the Sonic Team "mantle" is given to whomever and whatever development team within Sega CS2 that is working internally on a Sonic title, with only Iizuka as the consistent frontman since 2010. A wild roller-coaster of quality is sure to be expected. The "souring" of the identity is an expected consequence due to SEGA not doing proper quality control.

As for the fans, yeah, game engines are now more accessible than ever and the entry to game development is way easier than it was back then, and i understand that most fan projects are bent on "fixing" Sonic or making their own dream Sonic game. I see no problem with that. SEGA doesn't mind too as long as they don't break any laws. But...

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to a point where when you say your better than sonic team, you're now factually right by the fans.

Yeah this is why i don't agree with fans.

The whole "Better than Sonic Team" or "SEGA hire this man" memes are only applicable if you are someone like Christian Whitehead or Simon Thomley, who've spent more than a decade proving themselves as pro developers in the fangame scene. So don't worry about that.

[Johnster4]

The only way I see the "SEGA hire this man" meme dying down is if Sonic Team consistently gives us high quality Sonic games, it might not happen after one game but 2 or 3 games later people might trust Sonic Team again.

[iambitter21]

On 7/15/2020 at 2:22 PM, iambitter21 said:

to the point where the only thing it takes to BE better than sonic team is to go on a physics engine and make a sonic game level that basically goes in a straight line, but said straight line has some multiple "paths" so It generally means they're better

if you were wondering, here is the game I'm talking about:

 

see what I mean now?