Do you think that SEGA should stop listening to game journalists and critics?

[Spooky Mulder]

The more I think about it the more I think SEGA is given too much credit for "listening to fans/critics." They definitely have in some places (ex: incorporating 2D into the Modern games after 2006, Classic Sonic's appearance in Sonic Generations, lack of other playable characters) but I think largely they are more guilty of following whatever industry trend they spot and trying to do what was successful for other companies.

Ex:

Increasingly serious, dark storylines in the Adventure to 06 years

Shadow the Hedgehog shooter game

God of War-type werehog

Nostalgia cash-in 2D New Super Mario Bros Sonic 4

Mario Galaxy Sonic fusion

Sonic: Breath of the Wild

These gimmicks and approaches all have had varying degrees of success but I do think SEGA/Sonic Team spends too much time thinking about what makes other properties successful and not enough about what does or would make Sonic appealing and successful

If the only thing SEGA was doing was listening to fans and critics, we'd all be looking forward to the release of Sonic Mania 3 this year along with a remake of the Classic Trilogy with momentum based physics in 3D. Maybe that wouldn't be a good thing. 

[VO.SUPER]

Honestly, it just involves critical thinking. Yeah, some journalists spout off repetitive and often reductive bile, but there is some merit in the back of their words. It's a dev's and publisher's job to parse through what is useful and what is not and relating them to their past projects.

And don't take certain things at face value. Like how kids wanted to give Sonic a gun. Gamma was the right way to handle this back then. Shadow was the wrong way to handle it.

[KnuxDLX]

No, they should not listen to critics because the mainstream critical discourse around Sonic games is that they’re bad, they’re always going to be compared to Mario games, and they are always going to be bad in comparison.

 

I just read a whole article yesterday about how Sonic should control like a car? A button to accelerate, a button to brake? Could have been the worst idea I’ve ever read but there it was published on a gaming website. 
 

Everyone said Adventure’s controls were bad and now we haven’t had a 3D Sonic game that controls half as well since, like, please Sega just do what you genuinely think is good (and for the record we now know that THEY KNEW that they thought almost every Sonic game starting since ‘06 was pretty bad, Unleashed, Generations, Colors, and mobile games the only exceptions). 
 

I want the art house indie studio who thought up Nights, Billy Hatcher, and Samba de Amigo back. There is such a  void in the industry left by all these mega-corporations buying up smaller developers, skepticizing their art, and focusing everything down to the lowest common denominator. 
 

It’s a plague really and I still have hope that the brilliant minds who gave Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony a run for their money and, more remarkably, a run for their tech specs can do it all again with a great idea or two.

 

[Kazhnuz]

The idea of an accelerate button is also present in the fandom, like in a video of BlazeHedgehog (where it's said a dash button could be used to solve the "slow and fast gameplay" issue of Sonic, by using this kind of style for higher speed when using the dash/accelerate button) and in the quite popular fangame Sonic Revert. So honestly, I wouldn't call that a reason to "not listen to game journalist", far from it, as for once there it's an article that makes some reflection about game design.

I'm not saying that this decision should be made, but that it's the kind of game design discussion that have every right to happens, and it's interesting to have those kind of those.

( And I would be interested in seeing the source, because the only article talking about it I've found is a 11 years old article by destructoid. )

 

( And I wouldn't say that there is that much of a "void" nowadays left by the old SEGA, there are a lot of spiritual successor, and we're in a state nowadays when finding new games outside the "skepticized art game" you believe there is in mainstream gaming is pretty easy, the indie market is extremely vast nowadays. )

[KnuxDLX]

2 hours ago, Kazhnuz said:

The idea of an accelerate button is also present in the fandom, like in a video of BlazeHedgehog (where it's said a dash button could be used to solve the "slow and fast gameplay" issue of Sonic, by using this kind of style for higher speed when using the dash/accelerate button) and in the quite popular fangame Sonic Revert. So honestly, I wouldn't call that a reason to "not listen to game journalist", far from it, as for once there it's an article that makes some reflection about game design.

I'm not saying that this decision should be made, but that it's the kind of game design discussion that have every right to happens, and it's interesting to have those kind of those.

( And I would be interested in seeing the source, because the only article talking about it I've found is a 11 years old article by destructoid. )

 

( And I wouldn't say that there is that much of a "void" nowadays left by the old SEGA, there are a lot of spiritual successor, and we're in a state nowadays when finding new games outside the "skepticized art game" you believe there is in mainstream gaming is pretty easy, the indie market is extremely vast nowadays. )

Yes it was the Destructoid piece. Using a button to accelerate might work if you’re moving in one direction but it would make a lot of potential movements that the joystick provides impossible. I’m sure there is a market for players who want Sonic to control like a car, but I definitely think it is a niche idea for a game or two if it hasn’t already been done by now. I’m not gonna pretend like I’ve played all the games as @Cube has done, only the major titles and some sides. 
 

It definitely doesn’t seem like there are as many major indie developers with pockets big enough to hold their own against the industry titans of today. They’re all getting bought up now or they’re stepping stones to working with the titans. Every time there’s an interesting indie studio shaking things up it gets snatched up just like that. 
 

Of course with greater access to technology anyone can make video games, but we just don’t see many major independent game developers doing it all on their own anymore. Let alone anyone trying to enter the console market. 

[Wraith]

8 hours ago, KnuxDLX said:

 

I want the art house indie studio who thought up Nights, Billy Hatcher, and Samba de Amigo back. There is such a  void in the industry left by all these mega-corporations buying up smaller developers, skepticizing their art, and focusing everything down to the lowest common denominator. 
 

 

You didn't lose this because of the critics. You lost this because sega's notoriously bad at retaining talent. Every time Sonic took a major quality hit you can look around and pin it on a major creative figure either leaving or getting the boot.

[KnuxDLX]

30 minutes ago, Wraith said:

You didn't lose this because of the critics. You lost this because sega's notoriously bad at retaining talent. Every time Sonic took a major quality hit you can look around and pin it on a major creative figure either leaving or getting the boot.

You are totally right there, losing core team members is always demoralizing.  But the shakeups seem like reactions to the bad press where someone is trying to take the franchise in an authentic direction and then someone is trying to appease critics. The OG side typically gets booted while the critic-chasing newcomers take over, try something new that they think will appease critics, and variably fail.

 

Definitely sucks to see so few OG Sonic staff working on the games today, but as long as Ohtani and Kumatani are still doing the music it isn’t all bad.

[Zoomzeta]

This whole thing is dumb. Yes, Sonic Team should be able innovative and make these games as they see fit, but that does not mean they should shut themselves out of feedback that could benefit them. There has be a balance, and sometimes that balance has went into 2 extremes with no in-between. Right now, you are suggesting one of them.

[Badnik Mechanic]

The "control like a car" piece is nearly 10 years old (if not over that).

However... after recently playing Sonic Adventure again... I'm sorta inclined to agree.

The 1st Adventure game is far more enjoyable to control in sections where the camera doesn't shift to a dynamic viewpoint compared to every boost game.

 

Why is this?

I'm quite sure the reason for this is similar to racing games. In the boost games. The game will either lock you or prevent minor nuanced adjustments to your movement and control, this results in a lot of hugging the wall as you build up speed but lack the control to stay on the critical path.

 

The Adventure games however allow for more control which allow you to be more precise. 

Similar to the best racing games, it's not as black and white as "he just needs an accelerate button". It's like driving in real life. 

You don't just hold the accelerate and away you go. You're constantly making minor adjustments on the wheel even if you don't realise it. 

That's what I think the journalists is trying to get at with the point they made, it's a control problem not a speed problem. 

[Mangoaxe5]

I think that Sega at the very least should stop listening to the game reviewers who bitch about "Sonic's shitty friends". I miss being able to play as the other characters.

[Badnik Mechanic]

On 4/15/2022 at 3:50 AM, Vampfox said:

I think that Sega at the very least should stop listening to the game reviewers who bitch about "Sonic's shitty friends". I miss being able to play as the other characters.

Fans have been saying this exact criticism for years.

Now that some critics dared to mention it in some of their movie reviews, it's a problem.

[Razule]

19 minutes ago, Badnik Mechanic said:

Fans have been saying this exact criticism for years.

Now that some critics dared to mention it in some of their movie reviews, it's a problem.

People have been complaining the critics' complaining about the friends for years. If they stopped, it's because the friends haven't had prominent roles in 16 years.

[Rienasketch]

I think part of SEGA's problem is that they feel like they can only listen to one group of people over another rather than letting the player -- to some extent -- tailor their experience. Don't want to play as Sonic's friends? Make that optional rather than something that needs to happen all the time. Shipping, character interaction, experimental gameplay mechanics, etc. could be things made optional on some level. There's no need to force these things and have this much division over so much of this in the fandom when we have the technology now in gaming to address these issues even better than we did in the 90s-2000s.

SEGA's problem to a degree wasn't that they listened to critics. It was the fact they never learned to adapt to the diversity of the Sonic fanbase and always kept alienating people. They did it before when they abandoned the American and western versions of Sonic, then every 5 years or so kept repeating the same problems -- making radical changes to the tone of the story or gameplay at the expense of loyal followers.

[TheBreaker3321]

Definitely, one hundred percent.

Sega knows its excellence, but the problem is that they've allowed the fandom to practically enslave them and tell them otherwise to the point where they unfortunately believe it. Sega should know better than anyone else, even more so than GameFreak, that these screaming masses are just an a vocal minority.

If people want to come together and fix a problem, something that I also advocate for, they need to do their homework first. They need to understand how Sonic contrasts with Mario, even as a both a Sonic and Mario fan myself, and fix these supposed issues with presentation without compromising Sonic's values with attitude, style, and edge. It also needs to be done in a manner that respectable to the creators.