Sonic Social Media Shenanigans (This totally just happened...)

Yeah, you could completely deny that it has anything to do with with the election. "It's just Sonic and he's always okay if he's got just one ring. And you'll always be okay long as you've got something to hold on to." Of course it is political though. The raw statement itself though is so non-political and could have been posted at any time. It's clever.

 

It's tastefully subtle and not blatantly divisive. It's just addressing the fact that a lot of people are saying they're scared and depressed. They just happen to like Sonic and follow him on Twitter.

 

And there are tons of people, like myself who are afraid to see how these next four years are going to play out. I think it's a great post for those who love Sonic and are thinking negative thoughts. (Note I'm not thinking like that myself. It's not worth taking my life over.)

 

I can't believe SEGA lets this stuff slide.

Sweep it under the rug? No. Just full on take the piss out of themselves. I love it I love it I love it.

 

Never forget.

 

It is brilliant. I mean to take any other stance on that game though would be shameful. They know what they did.

 

They also make fun of that in the Sonic part of Lego Dimensions. He started talking about how he knew a princess once, but then trailed off because remembering was too painful. XD

Here - https://twitter.com/SonicWindBlue/status/779754400986333184

 

I love how these recent years they've joined in on the running gag of dunking on '06. I feel like it's done the game more favours by turning it from something awkward into something that gives everyone a chuckle. Hell, I know friends who have tracked down Sonic 06 discs just from it's infamy alone.

 

Seriously what better way to redeem the game than to basically advertise it as "The Room" of video games.

 

Uuuuh, no, there are far worse videogames than Sonic 06.

 

Ya and there are far worse movies than the room, but sonic 06 is arguably one of the more famous trainwrecks. And like the room, Sonic 06 is, at least imo, so bad it's funny rather than just so bad it's bad.

 

Heh, you're talking to a guy who likes the game despite its flaws ^^

 

Exactly this. A badly made game can still give a lot of enjoyment if there's still ways to be entertained by it. Sonic 06 has so many things going for it: Laughably bad programming and glitches, over the top story that takes itself a bit too seriously, infamously long loading times, and quotable one liners that have evolved into meme status ("It's no use!"). Plus, very occasionally a decent bit of gameplay appears! (okay, definition of 'decent' might be subjective, but still...)
I love Sonic 06, but the game's a mess. A wonderful, wonderful car crash in videogame form.

Now in some bizarre twist of marketing genius, Sega's using it's infamy to strengthen the Sonic brand, and honestly it's something I couldn't imagine many companies doing in this day and age. Imagine Nintendo referencing the Mario Bros live action movie in the next Nintendo Direct?

 

Iiiiiiii don't think they're really strengthening the brand.

See, while Sonic related content might be popular in the "lel dank meme" sense, and the Boom show's been popular anong vets in the series, the game brand hasnt exactly improved at all. Games take time of course and they've only recently seemed to start to give a shit about their appearence/presence. Nautrally, they'd be interested in making themselves look better by just being amusing and fun. That doesnt exactly seem to, on a grand scale at least, fix people's ideas on the seires as a whole.

I know people who despite the genius twitter account STILL think Sonic is fucking stupid and actively hate it for the very reasons their social media's been self parodying themselves about. Its a situation of "Haha yeah that's funny still not gonna buy your games though." That I guarantee is a part of the series taking the piss of itself as a whole. As great as the Boom cartoon can be at times, its whole shtick is looking at the series' problems and simply laughing at them, inviting everyone else to. It's basically a comedy bit going "HEY GUYS AIN'T I TERRIBLE?" insert canned laughter. It simply acknowledges and makes a farce of the problem, the VERY SERIOUS problem, the series has, yet fails to actually fix itself.

I have no doubt the brand's identity has been improved among many individuals because of this, however I feel the more pertinent effects of this have been its social media pages being a comedy goldmine for a lot of people while only really giving a laugh to people *in the community.* The reason I say this is because the self aware angle only goes so far. Keep in mind this effort was right off the heels of their biggest high profile disaster since 06 which they openly disgrace so much to begin with, a game they admit was a mistake as much as rise of Lyric almost. Yes, the only reason Aron's been allowed to go wild is BECAUSE Boom was a bomb, and this is all very reactionary, but I don't see this as "improving" public opinion at all. The series is still a joke to millions of people and the butt of every youtuber's bad/awkward game specials. The Know always talks about them in a condescending/bad light (even making jokes about them losing their trademark for not persuing legal action on fangames even though THATS NOT HOW IT FUCKING WORKS), people still get their opinions from Game Grumps playing a lot of the shit games in the series the company can't just erase overnight, and aside from implying it with 06 the company hasn't outright admitted failure on any of their really poor titles like Black Knight, the closest to doing this being de-listing their games years ago... BEFORE Boom was released.

Boom being released in the state it was may in fact be one of the worst desicions theyve made as it put a hole in many people's trust towards that game. They openly released a game in a destroyed state of quality and then just dissociated from it when people got up in arms. Even considering a shift in management caused this attitude change, it still feels like evicting ones self to save face. I will say Aaron's work did an amazing job to at least make the brand still relevant and regain some trust in the form of "see we can be self aware," but the only reference we have to the games so far are Shattered Crystal which is alright if I remember, Mania which is coming out and is bound to gain a lot of in-community purchase, and "Project 2017" which I think is at this point the wildcard.

If we want to call the social media teams' efforts a "success," Project 2017 can't just be good. It has to be nothing short of spectacular.

Mania's almost a guaranteed success because let's be fuckin honest here. Project 2017 though is what people will be interested in the most, the one being made for the fucking NX/Switch and the only high profile game out of the company since Boom and the admittedly underwhelming Lost World. We have two games coming out in quick succession long after the series had its whole cultural change. They both have to be GOOD in order for the public to change its mind. It can't just be Mania being a fun 2D platformer. If the 3D game sucks, it's game over. "Fans do sonic better than sega" will be a fucking mantra after that because the comany'd have basically proven it themselves at that point. Those years of development need to pay off, or the Sonic twitter account will be seen as more pathetically reaching than charming.

I'll say one thing SEGA's marketing has done I totally agree with. Their stance on fangames, especially in the wake of Nintendo's tirade of takedowns, has been excellent. I feel even if this would be pushing it, endorsing/showcasing fan work, or even (wishful thinking but possible in the future) greenlighting smaller projects to be finished/polished and then taken in as official games, much like Mania, wouldnbe a great edge on the company. I knoe TaxStealth's passion project is a very new endeavor for the company to be taking, and to them a huge risk. If Mania proves successful though (which it will be), I think we can safely see SEGA give fan work a better spot than they already have, and that community involvement with actual GAMES people can play and ENJOY would, I think, definitely help the brand improve.

As it stands though, I see the equivalent of someone setting up a tent when they should be making a house, and havibg everyone laugh at how impractical it is, while also asking them to hang out some time.

 

Ya Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric was unfortunate that right out the bat they knew it was shit and that should have been reason enough to either cancel it or severely delay it, but of course they needed to throw that brand out the gate as soon as possible so that didn't happen. It's hard to say how the quality stance will play off though as they were really only concerned about quality after Boom RoL was a failure. And they did delay the most recent Sonic Boom game and it ended out... well ok. I enjoyed it for what it was and it was an improvement from the first 3DS game. Sonic Mania and Sonic 2017 are the first games to begin development either after or shortly before they announced that they're going to take things more seriously though, so this will be the first real test to see whether or not they're just full of crap.

 

Personally speaking, I can't really be bothered to fear for Sega (or at least in particular, Sonic Team here) if Sonic 2017 does fare worse critically (and if possible, commercially, though I very much doubt it) in comparison to Mania. Namely because Mania doing better than Sonic 2017 (if not the case of Mania being a hit and Sonic 2017 being a outright flop) would just vindicate what I assume a fair amount of us have been seeing it and calling it for years now (there's no conspiracy or curse against Sonic; rather, the series' chief studio and figureheads historically haven't been on the ball with franchise management for ages), and it's a bed that to be frank, Sega and Sonic Team themselves have built and will have to lie in.

And for what it's worth, "fans do it better than Sega" is and has been around quite a bit longer than that, see how Sonic 4 was paired up to other classic fangames like Sonic Fan Remix, Sonic 2 HD, and Sonic Before/After the Sequel among others. Interestingly enough, for all of that game's faults, I will say this about Sonic 4: the biggest contribution it gave was shining a bigger spotlight to community projects. Because it showed how even with a budget from a multi-million dollar business, the people with little to no budget had put more thought into their games (or at least, classic Sonic revivals, in this context). Which, depending on how 2017 may play out, may ring especially true with how Sonic 2017 fares against Mania (which, unlike the past examples, won't be a fan project this time around).

 

Oh yeah. Don't get me wrong. The current approach to public relations via this Twitter will be all for nothing if the quality of the upcoming games continues to be poor (or at least, Lost World levels of mixed), and there's only so much that someone can poke fun at themselves before it gets a bit depressing. In the end, the fans will be let down, the general videogame savvy audience will be let down, and only the people there for the cheap laughs will be left.

Regarding Sonic 06 though, I feel that it was such an infamous game that it's always going to be the elephant in the room. If the Sonic twitter tried to avoid mentioning it, people would treat it as some kind of 'sore spot' that makes everything awkward, like a repressed memory that no-one wants to recall. Instead the Sonic twitter embraces the public opinion and rolls with the punches. People are going to make fun of the game regardless, so using that angle to entertain people officially is a good idea IMO.

In other words, rather than "Strengthening the brand", I should be saying "Strengthening the public's opinion of SEGA's opinion of the brand (as in, showing that SEGA's opinion matches the average joe's opinion)". Yes, it involves demeaning some of the poorer games, but those are games that didn't any kind of reputation to uphold anyway, and hopefully the future content should be able to speak for itself without any need for PR or Memes to smooth things over. Fingers crossed.

 

Y'know, I have to wonder what SoJ's opinion of the @sonic_hedgehog Twitter is, assuming they care enough to stay on top of whatever SoA is doing. The two have been at odds with each other for the longest time, like a pair of siblings who have to put up with each other. It's like Steve Purcell, the author of Sam & Max, and his kid brother, who used to leave drawings lying around only for his older brother to pick them up and finish them as a self-parody, just because he loved to annoy him.

That's what I see SoA doing: whatever SoJ puts out, SoA ends up making fun of it with dank Sanic memes based on older games and the internet culture that consumed them, and everyone loves them now for it. Like a true older brother, though, he still sticks by the good efforts from SoJ and protects them from bigger bullies, like with Jim Sterling and Sonic Colors.

 

Well, they mandated Iizuka and other key members of Sonic Team to re-locate to the U.S. I don't know if that is considered an improvement or a punishment by Sega, but either way, that insinuates a pretty strong interest in how Sega's western branches handle their brands.

I've long felt Sonic Team was way too isolated from their core audiences (North America/U.K.) to be aware of what the audiences are looking for. I think Sega does care how the US/Europe handles their brands, and are looking to lean into it.

 

That could really help things. Maybe they realized it would be best because Sonic was always more popular outside of Japan? That's how I see it.