Sonic in the 2010s.

You keep going off of the assumption that "meta era" can't possibly mean anything to anyone when it resonated enough to catch on, which is all that's required of labels this dubious

I do not like any of these labels for any of these eras. I think people should just talk about whichever specific game or trend they're trying to talk about. But if you were to choose one for 2010s Sonic "meta" is as servicable as the rest. Certainly more distinct than "platformer era" when talking about a platforming video game series. "Neo-classic" might hold up a bit better considering the sudden, newfound reverence for Sonic 2 but the word 'Classic' implies a bar for quality I'm not sure I'd attribute to them.

 

I don't think that's true. Even "Nostalgia era" would make more sense than "Meta", since conveying the idea of Sonic being particularly navel-gazy seems like a retroactive reading of "Meta" and in any case is totally distinct from the "blaming Webber/Pontac/Graff/Boom for everything" meaning. And while they might have taken the "stop reusing stages" advice seriously, I don't really see any end to the series dredging up old material (look how hyped people are for Sonic X Shadow's Oiled-up Twerk-off Generations, a retread of a retread!), so neither definition is even close to airtight unless we're saying that era never ended at all (which I would almost respect, but then we'd have to stop judging it by being the 2010s at all).

Time will almost certainly screw over one reading and being stupid took the other from the start (also, Flynn loves being self-referential). At least we know that the four classic games are the four classic games, that Sonic Adventure is Sonic Adventure, and that 06 was a laughingstock. Those are at least trying. "Meta era" is trying to fit a square peg into a cinemasins-shaped hole. I'm not even using "platformer era", I just don't have a way of conveying "'more platformy than the last era' era" succinctly.

Come to think of it, "Wisp era" might not be such a bad one, though. They are in all four main games, and not in either the decade before or after. They define a bunch of the gameplay and design decisions, and the term is pretty neutral on the quality, which is a plus.

 

I think that you're conflating the term "meta era" with people who annoy you saying it and dismissing it based off that, which is fair to a degree. I also was on the side providing lukewarm cover for Sonic Colors's tone against a lot of...passionate critique. I also didn't get why games with maybe half an hour of cutscenes max, games that were clearly less narratively driven than their counterparts, was getting scrutinized solely for that aspect. I also thought Pontaff holding the entire bag for sprinkling bad jokes onto what was an obvious lackluster narrative design stint from Sonic Team proper was silly. Just about every critique I could muster for Sonic Colors's storytelling also applies pretty cleanly to Frontiers, but you'd see an alarming amount of people who were against the former kissing the ground of the latter. I find this trend more grating than just about any other one in Sonic discussion at the moment, but that's an aside. See how I'm putting this aside?

It doesn't devalue the term, which basically survives any critique you could throw at it as well as the others do. "Neutral quality statement"? Meta is much more neutral than dark age and classic. It only becomes a quality statement in the jeering context it was used in initially, but I don't think of it that way so why should I give a shit? It only calls to mind being self referential which the games are, much more so than their predecessors. This is not a bad thing on it's own. I actually prefer it to the series saying "fuck it" every two games when it's done well. I'm a lukewarm Ian Flynn defender. I defended Mania's level reuse. I would prefer more reverence for the classic artstyle than not.

It's not "air tight" and all encompassing? Considering that I've been seeing arguments that Sonic Adventure/Advance belong with the classic games and that the evolutionary line for Boost era Sonic actually traces back to Sonic Rush in 2005, none of these terms really are? We're already playing the game of trying to put messy, connected things into separate, neat boxes.

Discussing these games becomes a lot easier(and more fun) if you stop thinking about people that annoyed you 5, 10, maybe even 15 years ago if we go back far enough.

 

I mean, a little bit, but I think I wouldn't be annoyed with anyone if I thought the term actually fit. I mean, I am in the prime age demographic to be the guy angry about the term 'dark age' and defending Shadow and 06 and Secret Rings, but I'm not because I've played a lot of those games and still have the scars to prove it.

See, I just can't help but see it in the context of the franchise as a whole, not just Sonic Team's output, and I still think it's dumb even if you do limit it that way. I agree that "eras" aren't real and it maybe isn't a healthy way to discuss the series, but so long as we do have those discussions, the language we use is going to be influenced by how it's used. The purpose of a name is what it does. People, now, legitimately are reclaiming the brand of "dark age fans", and while I think that's kind of silly, I think it's in stark contrast to how "meta era" just gets thrown around as a vague blanket term for "in the 2010s but I don't like it". You will still see people arguing right now that Mania isn't even a "Meta era game" even though it meets all the supposed criteria.

Yes, I recognize that there is no silver bullet, but there are things that are more like throwing a wet napkin by comparison. There are traits that people apply to the Adventure games that only exist in the Adventure games, there's stuff in Unleashed that disappeared after Unleashed, but every possible connotation I've heard for the "meta era" is present in Frontiers, which strikes me as less cogent even if there will never be a perfect all-encompassing term. I am all for treating the series as a collective with no real eras! But I also follow where the conversation goes, and I feel like that discussion is made worse by such unspecific and inaccurate language. The least I can do is say "by the way, this fucking sucks" every once in a while.

I'm really not, I don't think so at least. I mean that would certainly be convenient, given how many of those people were Sonic forum users. I'm not blind to the idea of only having the conversations you want to, but this is in-fact a conversation I think is interesting, because I think the way people naturally categorize things is interesting. I could dissect how a giant pile of the "classic" games are hot dogshit, or how people just kind of naturally lump SA1 in as a "2000s game" despite it releasing three years before the decade technically started. And yes, the fact that the language a person uses to reference a title can be partially used to judge their opinion on it is then very relevant. I throw my lot in because I would prefer if that language would change. Not sure what else I'm supposed to do.

 

I am morbidly fascinated in how this critique would even form, because to me they are borderline not the same type of storytelling whatsoever. Not an observation on quality, just simply that they are entirely different stories.

The rest of the post I get, but saying that people basically arbitrarily prefer Frontiers' story to Colors--its not arbitrary, there are objective difference regardless of which you prefer or think is better.

But anyway my take is that the discourse around these games was FAR worse than any of the games themselves, yes, even games like Rise of Lyric, and above all else while I understand Sega's marketing techniques in the 2010s, I vastly prefer the "actually Sonic is cool" approach they're taking, which already has more consistent results than anything in the "meta era" or the "dark age".

Also I still laugh at the name "meta era". You'd know it'd just be called the dark age if there wasn't already a "dark age". "Meta" is a terrible descriptor for that age, whether you're talking about the games themselves or its discourse. Sega has always been "meta" and keenly aware of what is said about and around Sonic.

Defining them as an era isn't really the problematic aspect, it's how they are defined. There are clear and reliable points but it's largely just predicated on bias and common knowledge.

 

Personally, anyone that uses "dark age of Sonic" is just foolish to me anyway, seeing as it's literally two years of inherently bad games and most surrounding stuff is take it or leave it. People need to cut out the blanket statements and actually confront individual games properly instead of this dumb era/age stuff, because all it does is muddle discussion and make everything absolutely stupid.

 

I don't see the point in trying to find airtight aprioristic formulations for definitions that are inherently intersubjective and only exist after things happen. "Classic Sonic" is far from being airtight, and what it means changes over the years, at least because what it's being compared to changes. This doesn't make it less valid. Historical objects are subject to history happening. Big whoop.

The fact that Sonic has never stopped being aware of its cultural presence as a structuring element for games since Sonic 4/Generations doesn't mean much. All sufficiently mature cultural bodies will navel-gaze, but very few will launch Murder of [icon], even if (maybe especially) as a joke, and there's a very clear point where the series started using that as a structural premise for the games. Even though that's debatable, it's... fine for definitions to be debatable? It's completely stupid to try to make historical eras seem objective, because they by definition can't be.

 

Also you:

 

I think referring to that time period from 2009-2019 the “meta era” it would be more appropriate to call it the revisal era, as this is when the brand not only consolidated ideas, but cut a lot of fat in an attempt to better define what sonic even is as a brand. Basically they took a step back to address concerns and to reinvent the brand, a revision of their work, as you could call it.

 

I honestly can't say for certain how bad being a Sonic fan was in the 2010s, since I tapped out the series after Lost World disappointed me and didn't get back on until the movie.

I would just dismiss everything as Sonic fans going way too overboard but I became a huge RWBY fan not too long after moving on from Sonic, and if Sonic fans were dealing with stuff like what RWBY fans had to deal with during that time, I'd be super defensive too.

 

I'm referring entirely to Shadow the Hedgehog and Sonic '06, I guess I did blanket statement that one awkwardly as a bout of hypocrisy but it's still a point to make about how everything in those years has this weird dark age veil, and wrap Unleashed, Heroes and both Adventure games into it as well, even with considering Riders and the Storybook titles in this context. The only people that would call all of that entire period a literal "dark age" have no idea what a dark age in a fandom/series actually should or would be, or just did not care personally for the period while ignoring everybody else's thoughts.

It's a "dark age" because it became the journalistic ragebait / "Youtuber's favorite" period to criticize of Sonic losing his way, an easy target for anyone to shoot jabs at, and everyone thus immediately goes off citing it to be the worst period altogether. Some have even used Sonic '06's mere existence as damnable proof that everything in the 00's was cursed. Unleashed definitely had its controversy in the fandom when it initially released and still does to this day, but at this point every single game since the turn of the millennium pisses some people off and it's just tiresome.

 

I'm sure i speak for a lot of fans when I say this. I really dislike the accusation that Sonic got unimaginative, boring, and stale in the 2010s as if the Sonic series was a creative powerhouse in the 2000s.

A lot of fans don't like the 2010s for what the decade came to represent with Colors. They fundamentally dislike the fact Sonic hit the reset button on its melodrama. A large subset of fans unironically liked the anime style melodrama of the 2000s. I strongly believe this is what most people mean by 'Sonic got stale and unimaginative in the 2010s' because besides from the reuse of levels (which is doubtlessly unimaginative) it didn't get any more stale and unambitious than 2000s. Sonic in the 2000s was just a rehashing and general degradation of Sonic Adventure. Especially in gameplay. I really disliked Heroes, Shadow, 06 simply because they were poor attempts at Adventure gameplay and storytelling. I don't see how you can seriously say Colors and Lost World are more unimaginative and stale than those games. And I'd say Forces is no less unimaginative than Heroes or Shadow. I mean aside from the level rehashing which is an absolutely valid take.

Because the fact is the grievances about the 2010s are almost entirely about the story and tone. It's why Unleashed is getting the renewed appreciation it does but Colors being hated despite the two games being actually very similar. That's OK I just wish people were more honest about it. There are grievances which i agree with. Like the repetitive and often unfunny meta humour. But if we are being honest it isn't the series getting 'stale'. It's just the series going in a direction people didn't like.

It's OK to think Sonic got stale in the 2010s. The rehashing of aesthetics was annoying and the series flattened with Forces. But you can't also speak as if the 2000s were somehow creative in comparison.

 

I am anxiously anticipating what's going to happen when the kids born in like 2010 start finding their voice. I'm so sick of this particular brand of revisionist history, and while I'm sure they'll have their own take on it ("everyone loved Forces until [insert current popular YouTuber] lied about it! Because of them Sega made Frontiers, to try to cater to people who hated Sonic!"), at least we'll finally get some DIFFERENT discourse that isn't just these same talking points over and over again.

 

Sonic Colors is definitely going to have a huge nostalgia surge for one big reason: it came out on the Wii and DS, whose primary audience comprised children between the ages of 7 and 11, and sold four million across both platforms.

 

Nah, big nostalgia booms usually take 15-20 years to happen, from my perspective. I don't remember the huge Adventure 2 one happening until 2015/2016ish, and Unleashed has only seen a huge surge over the last two years. It hasn't hit Wii-era games just yet - you'll know when the eBay prices start skyrocketing to comical proportions.

 

Speaking as someone who largely grew up with the games from the 2010's (I was aged 6 through 15 during the decade) I can safely say that now that I've hit 20 and started to grow nostalgic for the games I played then, that the 2010's era of Sonic games are not something I'm fond of. I always find myself preferring to go back to the 2000's and 90's games instead because they innovated and had more genuine stories. Even as a child I could recognize how stale and safe the stories and gameplay was. I genuinely preferred and still do to this day prefer Sonic 06 because it's so much more exciting with it's scope and stakes. I do not see Colours ever being looked back on with fondness, especially as newer entries like Frontiers and Shadow Gens bring back the big melodramatic stories, people will only continue to see it as safe, corny, and childish.