That's just called having a niche. It's normal, MOST content creators who specialize in one specific thing have a hard time finding an audience when they branch out to something completely different. There is a reasonable jump between Sonic news and say, Mario news, but when Sonic content creators start making completely different content it gets less views because it's outside their target audience. That's normal for content creation and I don't think it has anything to do with the fact that it's Sonic or the Sonic fanbase. Huge creators have the luxury to do whatever they want and still get SOME views, unless their niche is games in general or they are a variety streamer like Ludwig or Jerma who specialize in just doing whatever the hell they want. Ex: if Ninja plays a random game outside his general niche of fps games, he is going to get significantly less viewers per stream, and when you only average 5-10k on your videos, it's gonna be much more noticeable when your views drop bc your view count was fairly tame to begin with. You'll hear a lot of people in streaming and YT say you need to slowly work your way into a new niche, "branching out" all of the sudden is often viewed as a poor decision. Sonictubers also generally produce quick / low effort content (I said generally), so if a Sonictuber makes ex: a COD video, its gonna be a 10-minute rant over some gameplay and is quickly gonna get drowned out by a sea of already-established COD creators doing the same thing. I'd also argue Poyo Poyo and Sakura Wars have next to nothing in common with platformers and they are also MUCH less popular series with next to no visibility, especially in the US. I like a lot of SEGA franchises because of their aesthetic and that 90's SEGA flair they used to have, but your average person who loves platformers like Sonic and Mario isn't going straight to Poyo Poyo or Sakura Wars, especially when SEGA does much less marketing for those franchises and one of them is literally a puzzle game with a very small online playerbase.
Yeah, it's really not fair to accuse Sonictuber viewers of having no interests outside of Sonic, it's just that their business and brand is built on Sonic. If I'm watching a Youtube channel whose entire branding, imaging, everything is built on Sonic, then of course it's gonna seem alienating when they start "branching out". Think about when Cartoon Network did "CN Real" back in 2009. Were kids alienated by that because they have no interests outside of cartoons? No, it's just that they neither expect nor want live-action shows from the Cartoon Network. And what does this have to do with Frontiers, again?
I don't recall ever "accusing" all Sonictuber viewers of not having interests outside of Sonic, I just said that many Sonic fans have no interest in franchises outside of Sonic, which is factually true. Ian Flynn once talked about on his podcast how a marketing company showed him that Sonic fans have one of the largest brand attachments of any franchise. You put words in my mouth. Okay, ignore my reference to Sonctubers. It still doesn't change the fact that there are a large amount of people in the fandom who don't really play anything outside of Sonic. I used the Sonictubers as an example because it was an easy frame of reference but I've been around the community enough to know that there are a lot of people like that out there. Excuse the double post, but the numbers I originally used were pulled out of my ass. I didn't expect anyone to honestly argue with me about the fact that some Sonic fans only play Sonic so I didn't think I would need to do this but here we are. I'm going to use Premydyremy as an example. He has 60k subscribers. His videos typically get 15 - 27k per video. That 5k-10k metric I gave earlier was made up. I've had many conversations with him during his live streams about the people who watch him mostly for Sonic because he made a second channel for non Sonic content and he said it's because he actually LOST subscribers when he would stream Non Sonic content, even related stuff like Mario or big games like Spider-Man PS4. You can say it's because he caters to a niche, but when he tried to cover more things in the beginning it got him nowhere. His non Sonic channel has 1/10th the amount of subscribers. I'm not a fan of this person but GamerguyD has 86k subscribers and averages 17 - 39k per Sonic video. He tried covering the new Lego Star Wars game when it came out and only ONE of the three sagas he covered cleared more than 1000 viewers. I'd argue the Lego Star Wars games are very much in the same interest pool as Sonic so for him to deal with that shows this might hold some truth. I know Puyo Puyo and Sakura Wars are in different genres, but many of the games the person I quoted are in different genres. They were talking about how much they love Final Fantasy which is very far away from Sonic, so I had every right to use that in my point because they are examples of games Sonic fans won't touch because they aren't Sonic. I know very few people who only play a few specific type of genres and don't have interest in games as a whole and those tend to be the Madden, 2k, CoD, and Fifa crowd who just play those. And there are a lot of Sonic fans who just buy Sonic out of habit and are very similar to those crowds. I'm not saying all Sonic fans are like this. Maybe not even most. But they are out there and make up a considerable amount of the fandom.
This has no bearing whatsoever on whether Sonic fans play other genres. It's peoples YouTube watching tastes. And as has been said before, it's not unusual at all. I'm subscribed to loads of YouTubers whose views tank and lose subscribers if they cover other topics and games. It's incredibly hard to branch out. I get it's frustrating to provide evidence if you think it's clearly apparent, but I don't think it is. I really don't think most Sonic fans haven't played other games or genres. I haven't even heard decent arguments on behalf of it nevermind evidence.
Woah I did not intend for it to become this whole big discussion. I apologize, it was just meant to be a off-hand comment based on my own personal experiences. I didn't anticipate it becoming a bigger issue.
That's cool. Putting the forum to one side, it's just something that bothers me because when I usually see it brought up it's along the lines of 'people only tolerate the Werehog and Sonic with a sword because they haven't played good games in those genres and know no better'. As I've shown before, it's a fallacy. I understand why people think that way but they are just projecting. I'm thinking of TelekenisticMan for example, who said this but had no evidence whatsoever. And his critiques are usually good. I think it's relevant to Frontiers because I think that game is also clearly inferior looking to most open world action games. But that doesn't mean most people who are excited for Frontiers haven't played better open world games. Lol.
Is there a way to get evidence outside of ancedotes for something like this? If multiple Youtubers view numbers, conversations I've had with a prominent Sonictuber about his experieces with Sonic fans and how hard it has been to branch from that even when he's tried similar franchises, and Ian Flynn having an entire discussion about how Sonic has a higher brand attachment than most franchises, which he learned from a marketing company, isn't enough to show there might be a large group of the fandom who only play Sonic, then I don't know what is. I guess we'll have to just agree to disagree.
I don't think "brand attachment" means that you don't do other things. In all my time in the Sonic community, I've never heard of people only playing Sonic games. I *have* heard of people diligently consuming Sonic media even if it's a critical failure (hi I'm people), which is what I'd consider "brand attachment".
That's the way I'd feel as well. I don't have any interest in this and I'm disappointed that it's not going to be like the Unleashed, Colours, Generations games that made me love the series again, but also it'd be nice for Sonic to stop being a punching bag for a while. Still, Spark the Electric Jester 3 is pretty good.
While I’m not completely thrilled with the direction of the gameplay, not really enjoying BotW or most open world games, I think it’s a better direction than sticking to boost if Forces is what we’d be getting. While Generations was superb, and Colors and Unleashed were good, the Adventure games are still the closest to my 3D Sonic ideal out of the official games. This seems to be nearer that, so I’d be excited to see where they continue to take this without the overt BotW styling.
Yes, and no. While I don't believe all Sonic fans only engage with Sonic, I do at times feel like Sonic is the only series they have any real attachment to. Sonic fans tend to praise the series for doing things that other franchises do way better. As you said, Breath the Wild is a much better open world game, and there are better character action games. That being said, I feel like this is just a natural phenomenon for Nintendo fans and Sonic fans, of which there is a lot of overlap. There is an almost cult mentality when it comes to those franchises. I feel like Souls games from Software are much better open world games, but Zelda is the one that gets treated like a pioneer of the genre mostly by virtue of it being Zelda. The same is true for Sonic, its brand identity is much more important than the quality of the games themselves. You can argue the reason Sonic games have had such a hard time taking off is because the brand was much weaker before. The 2010's were slowly rebuilding up the brand and now its arguably stronger than its been since the 90's and early 2000's, especially after the movies. In short; brand awareness is the key here. Much more people are aware of and willing to watch Sonic related content because Sonic is simply a more recognizable brand. Compared to say, Souls games which are primarily geared towards adults. I personally wish Sonic was more niche bit that simply isn't the case.
New IGN article with small details about Super Sonic: https://www.ign.com/articles/sonic-frontiers-super-sonic-details-bosses Full poster reveal:
OK, wow. That Chemical Plant zone stage is literally just the Gens version copy and pasted. At least the Windmill Isle stage was recreated using Green Hill assets?!
>Most of the bosses in the the game are Super Sonic's level, at least. Yea, we are definitely getting a new form, if only just for escalation purposes.
The level is clearly not 1-to-1, and has a bunch of extra paths, remixes, and additions. Also, all of the 2D sections are cut entirely. The Green Hill stage is precisely Windmill Isle, but this stage is more original.
Yeah I gotta admit it's doing some new things I'm not happy it's reusing bits at all, but it's not literally the same stage.
Also the Windmill Isle Act 1 and it's Green Hill copy are both tutorial levels. I have no problem with them copy and pasting a perfectly well done tutorial level, as long as they only do it for the tutorial. And that's looking to be the case.
