Sonic Stadium Defends Black Knight Controversial Comments

Webmaster: “Sonic Stadium isn’t a News Source”

Comments from two of the Sonic Stadium’s top webmasters were at the forefront of our discussion last night concerning the uproar the Sonic community is staging over the rumors of Sonic and the Black Knight.  In some areas of the community their comments aren’t nearly as severe, as a few thoughts we found that we didn’t published compared the announcement to September 11th.  We’re not kidding.

Still, today, they are defending their speech.

Webmaster Svend Joscelyne began the day by responding on the front page of the Stadium to several user attacks at their story:

Looks like a few people want Sonic to go all ‘Legend of Zelda’ on us after all. Since our (note) not-news-story broke of the new Wii game, we have had a few comments of complaint. It’s nice when people don’t bother to use the ‘Contact’ form to inform us of new Sonic happenings, but it’s used up the wazoo when a BLOG states its opinion on a new title. Guess all people can do is complain.

But we thought we’d address each comment directly, and provide a broad generalisation as to just why we reacted the way we did. So here goes.

dude seriously i dont think you are a sonic fan i mean seriously mario had to travel through space to find a freaking princess its the same story line over and over again, so what if sonic makes a game about sub characters it just adds to the story line, at least sega is trying unlike  nintendo, or YOU, they have great ideas, u can take this feed back anyway u want, seriously just let sonic be the way he is, and stop bitching about something new about him,

yous sincerely a true sonic fan

We’re not Sonic fans at all, no. Oh sorry, for a second there I thought we were on the Mario Stadium and not the Sonic Stadium. OK, so Super Mario has to repeat the same basic storyline ad nauseum. But think about it. Do you play a Sonic game for its gripping storyline? If you do, you’re probably better off grabbing an RPG and playing that - recent attempts to add a ’serious’ tone to the Sonic games have been poor, and it shows it’s just not possible in the realm of Sonic. When you consider we’ve had seven years of poor console Sonic titles you’d think Sonic Team would drop the whole ‘plot’ thing by now.

Funnily enough, if we wanted to bitch about Sonic, we would really be having a go at Sonic Unleashed right now. But we’re not, because 50% of that game is looking absolutely fantastic. There’s this weird perception at the moment that, because a game concept is totally rubbish (Sonic with a sword? Really?) and we say it is, that means we’re automatically ‘bitching’.

You like the idea of Sonic and the Black Knight. Good for you. Seriously. Have a brownie. But don’t tell us where to get off because a lot of other people are facepalming themselves right now. Consider: Sonic Rush Adventure, the Sonic side of Sonic Unleashed. Now consider: Shadow the Hedgehog, Sonic 2006. The latter two games sucked - you might love Shadow or Sonic 2006, but no opinion will get around the fact that they are poor, misprogrammed, rubbish-concept games.

What is a ‘true Sonic fan’ anyway?

Next:

What’s up with the news post about the Black Knight? Not only do you slate something you know next to nothing about, you attack a guy guilty only of providing us with this information. Really, that’s poor journalism and an insult to members of the Sonic Stadium.

I’m sorry if it looked like we were attacking the awesome guy who provided the scan - obviously light-hearted irony is beyond most people. Perhaps some shouldn’t have the ability to read if they jump to such conclusions. That last sentence was another one, see? Not a slight against you. Honestly, if you’ve been reading The Sonic Stadium for this long and not noticed the dry sense of humour we have, I feel sorry for you. We weren’t attacking the guy - in fact, in protecting his name and address, we’re the only source on the Internet that’s backing him up!

I guess we could be attributed to slating something we know nothing about. In all reality though, we were simply posting our first, most initial reactions to such news. We thought it would be quite fun, but obviously the “Defend Sonic!!11!!” brigade have come to stop us all. Thanks. Again, if you have been reading TSS lately, you’ll know this is not how we usually roll. We don’t usually post massive “NO” letters across the screen, and are usually a bit better than that.

But you know, what we can take from even that magazine scan, is an idea of the concept of the game, and that is a very concerning thing indeed. We do know something about the game - the cover tells us more than what it doesn’t. While Sonic wouldn’t be caught dead with a gun in Shadow the Hedgehog, he’s more than happy to grab a sword for some reason. The game might be great, but the concept stinks, and if people can’t agree on that then I don’t know what to say to them.

[....]

I can understand your comments on ‘removing the old story and replacing with a more professional one’. But again, a professional way of saying “this game concept sucks” will still result in a news story saying “this game concept sucks”. It was probably tagged incorrectly for the context the post was in (I understand you expect more from your News posts) so I have changed the category of that particular post. I apologise for unprofessionalising the news sector with a post full of opinion.

When you think about it though, every single website is just full of opinion. The Black Knight post - as mentioned before, created in a certain style to provide entertainment and nothing more - at least makes those opinions the forefront of the post rather than foreplaying the reader with cleverly-worded guff. I guess in a way our Black Knight story is rather post-modern. TSS is avant-garde, you see. We’ll be attending art galleries next.

No, not ‘everyone’ will feel the same about Sonic and the Black Knight. You might like the sound of a blue hedgehog dressed up in cosplay saving worlds swinging a sword and looking totally out of character. Good for you. Personally, we thought Sonic Team had learned with Sonic Unleashed - there’s this air of Sonic Team just randomly picking game concepts out of a hat and using Sonic as the guinea pig for such projects. Sonic and the Black Knight just looks like one of these times, and while everybody can disagree on what the game will be like, not an awful lot can disagree that the concept of the game sound so far beyond Sonic it’s unreal.

As for tags, we have some that seriously reference every article, but we have some joke tags in there too - I apologise if the concept of light-hearted humour goes over most people’s head, but I guess that’s dry humour for you.

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In conclusion, a humour post went very wrong in the eyes of some “Sonic Defenders”. I’m sorry if it feels like there’s a rain of discontent with every new game announcement, but that’s because Sonic Team no longer know what they want out of a Sonic game. It’s easy to say “give them a chance” and it’s easy to say “you don’t know anything until you’ve played it yourself” but from this cover scan I can tell you that, with Sonic an the Secret Rings and Sonic Unleashed, Sonic Team/SEGA seem to be scrambling for whatever new concept might work, when all they needed to do was keep Ohshima and make sure they made more Sonic Adventure 1 games.

As we said elsewhere, Sonic Team are constantly looking for new ideas that may strike gold, but they had already hit gold years ago. It was only when they started thinking outside the box like this in Sonic Heroes that it all went to pot. New ideas, gimmicks (such as level gimmicks) and such as fine in a new Sonic game, but with an image like that it doesn’t really give you the biggest hope of seeing Sonic in his prime ever again.

At the end of the day, the only thing The Sonic Stadium is really guilty of (apart from putting a post in the wrong category) is loving Sonic too much to see silly game concepts like Black Knight come to pass. And does that make us Sonic fans? Hell yes.

This article was followed up by a second one by Svend, in which he reminds his readers that the popular Sonic News component of the Stadium has been closed and fused into the new “blog” format of the site.  The most interesting comment made by him is his pushing away from the idea of the Sonic Stadium as a reputable Sonic news source:

The Sonic Stadium used to be host to a news service called ‘Sonic News’. This service involved providing readers with the latest happenings in the Sonic universe by being unbiased, serious and generally governed with a rod up its bum. ‘Sonic News’ became the new word for ‘The Sonic Stadium’, as it was the main thing getting updated every now and then, so something was done to combat this (as it was, after all, getting annoying. There is a website accompanying the news service, you know).

We brought back the News area into The Sonic Stadium. So, as we stated in our very first introductory post since we relaunched last month, Sonic News does not exist anymore. It’s not here. You can’t find it. Not even playing Hide and Seek. It’s gone for good. All news will be relayed via The Sonic Stadium, and will provide the facts you need to know coupled with some entertaining writing and perhaps even some thoughtful/homourous opinion. We are allowed to think independently of SEGA, despite our connections - the Rt. Hon. Romily Broad would have wanted it that way.

“Oh dear Svend, but a News site doesn’t apply opinion into their stories”. Quite right Sir/Madam, which is where you made your first mistake. The Sonic Stadium isn’t a news source. It’s a Sonic fansite. We write about Sonic because we are passionate about the series, we collect the games and merchandise, we watch the shows (even the piss poor ones like Underground). And further, we want to be a fansite that connects with you, another fan. If you don’t agree with our opinions, fine. But don’t get confused as to why we’re trying to be funny, or trying to pour some personality into a post to begin with.

We have different awesome writers with different opinions, making for a fruity bowl of Sonic fun. We could heavily edit some of our work to be a bit more ‘unbiased’ - I almost heavily edited the “Sonic and the Black Knight” article from last night. But you know what? What’s the point if fans can’t go a bit crazy sometimes and just tell it like it is? And if you don’t like it, why do you care?

This is, for all intents and purposes, a blog. Not a news site. If you wanted really serious, boringly-told stories with your seizure-inducing gaming session of Sonic Heroes, you shouldn’t be going to a fansite. You should be going to CNN. And you shouldn’t be playing Sonic Heroes.

We hear a lot of people were in fact confused about why the ‘News stories on Sonic News had gone downhill’, and I thought it best to explain why. This is not Sonic News, we have not gone downhill, we are writing to entertain and to inspire your mind. Or something.

We will shortly have a new poll here on TSSZ News asking you to tell us what you think of these rumors and all the discussion it is causing.  We welcome your thoughts.