THE DUALITY OF SONIC FANS II

I’ve got a lot to say about the Sonic Frontiers discourse and SEGA’s less-than-nice actions towards their fans recently. Regardless, this blog will contain legitimate analysis and is not a rant. So, enjoy.

Welcome to The Duality of Sonic Fans II: New Frontiers + SEGA’s Idiocy

SECTION ONE: SONIC FRONTIERS

I’ve seen fans analysing Sonic’s model in the upcoming Sonic Frontiers these past few days, and have noticed increasingly negative reactions to such analysis.

Sonic fans analysing, criticising or simply being interested in different aspects of Frontiers is no different from a Marvel fan analysing scenes from the Spider-Man No Way Home trailer. When someone is excited for something, let them. If someone is concerned that the game they’re looking forward to might look rough around the edges, let them.

People are harassing and bullying these fans for merely wishing something could be better, and that saddens me.

SEGA has chosen to be very cryptic about what they show in Sonic Frontiers. This is common in the games industry, but people forget that publishers like Nintendo have earned the trust and respect of their fans (in making games, not in other.. shadier.. practises), which allows them to play the mystery act with releases like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

Sega’s reputation for creating good Sonic games is six feet under. In the past ten years, we’ve received the underwhelming Sonic Lost World, the universally hated Sonic Boom, the hilariously atrocious Sonic Forces and the embarrassingly bad port of Sonic Colours. You may notice one game missing - Sonic Mania - and that’s because that game was amazing. And not made by Sonic Team.

Fans have the right to critique and criticise what Sega shows us, and when all they want to show us is Sonic facing into the distance (yet another piece they’ve shamelessly stolen from Zelda..), fans are going to analyse that. They’ve identified the model in promotional pieces as the Sonic Forces model, which in that game was very lifeless and boring, so, yes, it is disappointing.

Sonic Frontiers is supposedly a “new direction” for the series. So why is Sega hell-bent on reusing the worst of the recent assets? Sonic Generations released in 2011, and has an infinitely more interesting and charismatic model for the titular character. Why does Sonic’s big 30th anniversary game have the model and animations from Forces lazily stuffed in?

If this really is an open-world adventure game, we’re going to be seeing Sonic’s back a lot. We want something interesting to look at!

The worst thing you can do as a “fan” of Sonic is manipulate your fellow fans into thinking that discussing character design and pushing for more vibrant, nuanced designs is bad.

SECTION TWO: CORPORATE ELITISM

What a surprise, right? The billion-dollar corporation doesn’t care about polish and nuance, and would rather churn out new rip-offs for its biggest cash cow.

I sound like every 14-year-old on Twitter ever.

If you’ve been reading the funny words I write for a while, you’ll have noticed my gradual but noticeable shift in attitude towards Sega as a corporation. I once praised them for continually pushing out amazing games, but after the disappointing release of Sonic Colours Ultimate after two years of silence, my attitude quickly changed.

I know that the second this blog starts circulating in chats and people start to comment, there will inevitably be the “at least they’re not Nintendo” comments. You’re right, SEGA isn’t Nintendo.

They’re worse.

Alright, I can hear the angry SegaStans typing their comments already. Just - here me out here, mkay?

Nintendo is known for taking down fan games, right? They’ve taken down about fifteen Super Mario fan games over the past decade, and a handful of fangames under other IPs (especially Pokémon, thanks largely to Gamefreak). Twitter would have you believe that this number is in the thousands, but in reality it’s just a few remakes/ports of existing games.

Don’t get me wrong, Nintendo still sucks. They take down re-uploads of their music regularly, while providing literally no way to download it officially. They still send Cease & Desist letters to Super Smash Bros. tourneys, which is really unfortunate.

But can we stop pretending that Sega is any better? In November 2021, Wave Master (SEGA’s music distributor) began requesting the removal of over five hundred albums of downloadable music for their IPs, including Sonic. This included albums containing music for games that had no commercial release.

After eight years of development, a fan-made remake of Streets of Rage was shut down by the lawyers at Sega in 2011. Sega themselves stated, “...we need to protect our intellectual property rights and this may result in us requesting that our fans remove online imagery, videos or games in some instances.”

Of course! If Sega didn’t take down a fan remake that didn’t use a single line of code from the original game, their company would be doomed! They knew about it during development, too, but waited until the fans sunk eight years of their time into making it and then shut it down just a few days after release. Classy.

People love to bring up Sonic Mania, an example of Sega “publishing a fan game” - except it never was a ‘fan game’. It was always developed in partnership with Sega, so claiming they officially published a fan game is disingenuous at best.

Even if it was a fan game, Sega would have only given that opportunity to - what - a dozen-or-so fans? Nintendo created the Super Mario Maker series to let anyone make the Mario game of their dreams and share it with ease.

In December 2021, Sega filed a trademark for the ‘SEGA NFT’, which would allow them to freely make non-fungible tokens without anyone else using their name for any NFT-ventures. They also filed a trademark for ‘Sega Classics NFT Collection’.

You don't me to tell you that NFTs are evil. There are people freezing in New York right now because blockchains used up so much power that it raised their energy bills, and now people can't afford to pay for heat. There is no artistic value in this, its just money and scams with the facade of art.

“But what if they were only taking the names so no one else could make them?” - Oh, but no. They designed and submitted a logo for both trademarks, too. This was going to be a real product, and may still be.

SEGA of Japan expressed interest in creating NFTs last year, but have recently backtracked after significant backlash, stating “if it is perceived as simple money-making, I would like to make a decision not to proceed”.

Sonic fans were, of course, quick to jump on this and defend their precious faceless corporation and attack the big bads at Nintendo. Yes, Nintendo. Not Square Enix or Ubisoft, who have both publicly announced their movement into crypto and NFTs. Nintendo. Because what will they do without the console war!?

..of course, this statement was a month after they filed the trademarks, which itself was after months of very public backlash.

Sega is one NFT leak from saying “Oh sorry! I didn’t know they were bad! Please buy our games! We’re so fucking disconnected from reality that we think it’s acceptable to whore out our mascots for this pyramid scheme money-laundering trash.”

SECTION THREE: FRACTURED FANBASE

This fandom is more fractured and fragile than ever. This franchise is stretched so thin, covering games, comics, animated shorts, TV shows and movies - and they’re all different from each other. There’s no consistency, and it creates a complete mess of a fandom that is frankly embarrassing to look at.

I’m going to repeat what I said last year in the first fandom-related blog I wrote.

“It’s no secret that Sonic fans are split about.. just about every topic. However, there isn’t a topic more divisive within the fandom, and with many other fandoms, than the games themselves. Hey, remember when the first Sonic Movie design was revealed and it was universally hated? The fans spoke together, as a collective, to voice their disdain, and it worked in the end. That is proof that Sonic fans can be less divided, more united. Together, we can fix the divide in our fanbase community. But only together. One day, I hope it becomes possible.”

To the surprise of absolutely fucking nobody, nothing has changed in the months that followed. Even here, on this Amino, the community is a toxic, hostile mess. There’ll be at least one angry comment on this blog calling me something unsavoury, I’m sure.

This blog is not intended to be a call-out post about the fans, or about Sega. However this community is full of elitist fanboys and fangirls, who believe the key to a happy life is trashing on the things that others like.

I’m cautiously optimistic for Sonic Frontiers, and Sonic Origins (though the lack of communication regarding the latter is, to say the least, concerning) and I don’t want to rain on anyone’s parade. But the concerns people have for that game are 100% justified.

Oh, and Sega isn’t your friend. They’re a corporation, just like Nintendo. Using every bad thing Nintendo does to praise Sega is toxic, just like the comparisons drawn between Microsoft and Sony, as well as Valve and Epic Games.

So stop being so damn elitist, you weirdos.