The Sonic Retrospective

Script below

During the Sonic 25^th Anniversary Party, SEGA announced two new Sonic games, Sonic Mania and an unnamed title.
But before I get to that, I want to take a retrospective at how far the franchise has gotten, with all of its loop-the-loops and pitfalls.

The Sonic videogame franchise has had more downs than it did ups in the last ten years.
Clunky controls, clunkier physics, terrible ports, swords, werehogs, and guns.

The issue is invention.

Sonic Team’s greatest sin is the habit of reinventing the wheel.
Instead of sticking with gameplay formulas that have proven to be successful, the developers continued to add features or replace the gameplay altogether.

Some fans may argue that this habit started with Sonic’s jump into 3D, but actually it started all the way back during Sonic’s early days.

In Sonic 2 we had Tails, who provided a little more attacking power.
In Sonic CD we had a time travel mechanic.
In Sonic 3 we had Knuckles, whose abilities allowed the player to access new paths and locations.
These were all fine as they were new elements that still kept the core gameplay unaltered.

Then the massive changes came with Sonic Adventure, a game which featured numerous characters that all played completely differently.
It was not just a Sonic game; it was a game that had Sonic but also robot-shooting, puzzle-platforming, treasure-hunting, and fishing.

At the time, these changes were welcome.
This was a period in which having more meant being more.
Throwing in additional content was the way developers managed to stay fresh.
But Sonic Team didn’t learn when to stop.

Storylines got darker, gameplay changed further, and the ensemble cast grew far too much.

Eventually the Team realized that they strayed too far from the original games and decided to shrink down the cast and streamline the gameplay.
Yet, even then they still couldn’t resist adding new elements.

Sonic 4 was meant to be a return to roots, but its wonky physics plus an unneeded homing attack led to a product that was trying to be both an emulation of the classics while still being new, and ultimately resulted in a mediocre experience.

Sonic Unleashed was worse; its speedy daytime stages were praised for having the best Sonic gameplay in years but ultimately the game was tainted by its nighttime stages.
During the night, Sonic turned into a werewolf hedgehog with stretchy arms and the game became a bland copy of God of War.

For Colors and Generations, Sonic Team finally decided that less was more.
They took the daytime gameplay mechanics from Unleashed and turned it into the core formula for the series; and it worked, reviews started to become positive and sales went up.
It appeared that Sonic Team finally found a footing that works for Sonic in this day and age.

Then they created Sonic Lost World, which went for a different format of gameplay that, while not bad, was still a step down from the well-received speedy style of its two predecessors.
Instead of the boost-and-dodge system, we were given a parkour system to use on Sonic Team’s interpretation of Super Mario Galaxy.

The idea was solid; players could still move quickly but they could also slow down for tighter controls.
However, the level design sometimes clashed with those controls, often with a large number of bottomless pits, instant death obstacles, and silly experimentation.
It sends the momentum into an abrupt halt, and in a franchise where the main character is advertised as the fastest thing alive, the slowdowns are jarring and make for a worse experience overall.

The franchise hit an even bigger roadblock with the release of Sonic Boom.
Though Boom was not developed by Sonic Team, instead by Big Red Button Entertainment, it was still under the SEGA name and the damage was painful.

The game was filled with boring level designs and an array of glitches, with the most infamous one being Knuckles’ infinite jump. Before it was patched out, the glitch allowed players to skip obstacles and entire levels of the game.
It was the worst game since Sonic 2006; maybe even worse because 2006 at least had good music and passion behind it
If anything, the only entertainment people get from Sonic Boom is from laughing at the game’s many faults.
The franchise was finally climbing out of its pit only to fall right back in.

However, SEGA’s announcements at Sonic’s 25^th Anniversary celebration showed that the company might have finally gotten its grips.
Two new Sonic titles are in development, Sonic Mania for Spring 2017 and an unnamed title for Holiday 2017.

Sonic Mania is a return to form; it’s a 2D platformer that looks like the old Genesis games and, based on the footage, plays like the old Genesis games.
This attempt at regaining the original purity worked spectacularly for Capcom’s Mega Man series and it’s about time SEGA did the same.

It is to be noted that Mania isn’t being developed by Sonic Team or Dimps (known for the Sonic Advance and Rush series).
Instead it is made by the development teams behind a number of Sonic ports and fangames.

Now, fanmade content often has a bad rap, especially with Sonic.
He is the posterboy of endless godawful recolors, fan characters, and fanfiction.
However, the fangames have often been excellent.
In fact, they captured the quality of the original games for years while Sonic Team was still trying to figure out why their innovations weren’t getting good reviews.
It’s a wonder why SEGA took so long to hire these guys as lead developers.

The unnamed title, currently dubbed Project Sonic, looks like it may be a successor to Generations.
The teaser trailer showed modern Sonic running alongside with his classic counterpart.
However, the same teaser also showed Sonic angrily staring at an apocalyptic city set on fire by giant robots.
It may be a return to Generation’s gameplay, but it also may be a return to the grimmer storylines that took part in the franchise’s downward spiral.

On a brighter note, it shows that SEGA might finally have a business plan that makes proper use of the blue hedgehog.
The Sonic playerbase has been divided for years now; half prefers the oldschool 2D games while the other half prefers the 3D installments.
Releasing these two games means that SEGA can appeal to both crowds and maybe even relight some faith in the series once more.

Bo Burnham: Trying to Make Everyone Happy

Who is art for? The audience or the artist? When Bo Burnham began uploading his comedic piano ballads to YouTube in 2006, his art was only a way to express himself. Becoming successful through YouTube was barely concept at that time, so two years later at the age of 18 it was almost impossible for him to say no to a record contract with Comedy Central. The consequence of becoming a professional was the increased necessity of having audience appeal, despite getting into comedy for self expression. Coming from YouTube meant that there was an almost non existent barrier between him and his audience, allowing his fans to influence the art more. In traditional stand-up comedy, there isn’t any feedback after the comedian walks off stage, but with an internet based audience, Bo is immediately and constantly aware of his fans’ expectations. It is impossible for him to ignore his audience, like he could if he came from the comedy club scene.

The low barrier between Bo and his audience on the internet lead them to believe his onstage persona is identical to his real life personality, but they aren’t. Comedians are devoted to proving their authenticity to the audience, but their onstage persona will never be an accurate self-portrait. They bend and stretch their most marketable personality aspects into a caricature of themselves. He is extremely flamboyant and exaggerated on stage, but consistently attempts to remind the audience that the real Bo Burnham is nothing like that. Unfortunately, the audience still thinks they love Bo the person, even though they’ve only seen Bo the performer. Thusly, Bo feels fraudulent and imprisoned by his audience. People believe his popular stage persona to be his true self, but the two are intrinsically distinct.

In his new special “Make Happy”, Bo almost directly answers the question of who the show is for by saying, “You’re here to laugh right? Well that’s only half right…I hope I don’t get more from this than you do.” The show is for the audience, but not entirely. To please the audience, “Make Happy” nearly perfects his usual mix of theater, music, and stand-up comedy. He continues to be critical of society and media, singing songs about: the dishonesty of modern country music, the ease of life for a straight white male, and how nobody should expect perfection from a romantic partner. But he leaves some room for himself in there too, lifting the veil to monologue about being unable to balance making art for himself versus art for the audience. During his dramatic autotune monologue finale, Bo reveals that performing for an audience makes him miserable. He tells us to “Come watch the skinny kid with a steadily declining mental health / and laugh as he attempts to give you what he cannot give himself.”

In all of his societal critiques, Bo Burnham hates inauthenticity, but as an onstage performer, he is what he hates. He’s been trapped by having an audience as well as his financial and psychological need to please them, but the way he entertains his audience best contradicts his self-interests. His final monologue is an autotune resignation letter, explaining why he has to quit for his own sake. Bo’s audience was thrown at him at a young age quickly snowballing out of his control to the point that he’s unhappy with his life. Despite all of his misgivings, Bo dedicates time to sing a post-performance questionnaire asking his fans if they are happy.

The title “Make Happy” is Bo’s to do list, to make both himself and his audience happy, but he was unsuccessful at making art to fulfill both requirements. His next move is quitting stand-up to go behind the scenes, attempting to find a new way to make everyone happy.

Article by Taylor Kalsey

Media’s Uncanny Valley

Television is fake. It’s always been fake and will always be fake. Shows are portrayed realistically, but ooze fakeness. Everything is cleanly performed, shot, produced, edited; And it’s too clean, too witty, too clever, too convenient; all in the ways that people are not. Real people say things awkwardly, make jokes that don’t land, and often can’t find anything to say at all. That is the rift between reality and television. Now, none of this is new. Everyone knows that TV is fake, and is perfectly fine with this. Fake is over there in that flat screen and reality is over here with these people I’m physically adjacent to. That is until social media burst onto the scene and created authenticity in mass media.

Social media gave mass media the reality check it desperately needed. Social media eliminates clinically executed quips and predictable scripted conversations, unfiltered and unpracticed humanity became available online for all to see. People from my generation grew up along side the varying social networks and that influenced our expectations from media. TV became old fashioned because we no longer passively accept its fakeness. To many of us, it’s just  not interesting if it’s fake, and entertainment has  has to be genuine and real to be valuable. With TV no longer satisfying our entertainment needs, we turn to the internet’s TV, YouTube. The success of Youtube is it’s humanity. YouTube doesn’t have popular characters, it has popular people, who are just being people. Talking about their day, what they like, whatever news interested them in that day, just like social media. There are no scripts, nobody trying to convince you that the video is more than it is, just Wheezy Waiter recounting the events of touring with his band.

There is an argument to be made that the authenticity in all forms of internet media is only perceived authenticity. In the internet media business, nobody is referred to strictly as a person; they are called personalities.  There is a scale between being entirely yourself and entirely playing a character. Youtubers and their “personalities” are in the middle of this scale. They are exaggerating certain aspects of their personalities to make their videos entertaining, but that does not mean they are being disingenuous. I argue that they are still being authentic enough to not feel misleading, like television shows.

The uncanny valley is “the phenomenon whereby a computer-generated figure or humanoid robot bearing a near-identical resemblance to a human being arouses a sense of unease or revulsion in the person viewing it.” People see something that’s not quite a reflection of humanity, inherently recognize that it’s not real, and are then repulsed by it. Media has experienced problems with realism and authenticity since it’s inception and, despite its off-puttingly overproduced nature, has been largely given a pass. The internet and social media generation are rebelling against this now, because we grew up with a more truthful version of human interactions and experiences on websites like Facebook or YouTube. The internet is helping reduce mass media’s uncanny valley.

Article By Taylor Kalsey