Sonic: Zone 0 To Assume Inactivity; Creator Blames Community Discontent in Part

“Negativity is the new positivity, and I’m so unbelievably sick of it”

Congratulations, green eye shunners and the more vitriolic Sonic purists among us; you have claimed your first major casualty of conflict, and we’re fairly certain it was far from what you desired to see die.

The webmaster of classic Sonic game guide website Sonic Zone: 0 announced yesterday that he will discontinue regular work on the website after completing guides for Sonic & Knuckles.  The site is a mini-encyclopedia of sorts for Sonic’s 16 bit era with an emphasis of strategy playthroughs, visuals, and trivia tidbits.  It will continue to remain online “for as long as I am capable of hosting it,” says webmaster LiQuidShade in his announcement.  But going forward, he will not seek additional writers, and elements like its forum will eventually be shut down.

An array of reasons are cited for the departure, including time constraints, family, and consideration of future projects.  The one LiQuidShade wrote at most length about, though, was the state of the Sonic community:

As I say, there’s many factors to this decision though, and my reduced enthusiasm for Zone: 0 seems to correlate with.. well, I suppose it’s more of a changing relationship with Sonic as a whole. I can’t deny, Sonic pretty much equates to a kind of religion to me, in terms of the amount of time I spend just thinking and internally debating about it. Any other type of game can only be so much fun, and for me, none compare to Sonic at his best. But it’s not even the quality of the modern games as much as the sheer amount of resistance to them all over the internet, and most hurtfully, from the most outspoken fans themselves that slowly chips away at my love of Sonic. I feel like I no longer want to be a part of any community that, once united by love of something, is now held together only by constant arguments about what that thing should be, and even more disturbing, a mutual hatred of whatever that thing currently is. I may have had my own criticisms to make now and then, but I genuinely feel things are moving on toward a better level of quality now in terms of the games themselves. It’s unmistakable. It may not be perfect yet, but it’s all going in the right direction, and to see supposed fans fail to acknowledge this and continually complain over and over again, as if they’re beginning to get some enjoyment out of it, depresses me frankly. A lot.

Everyone’s entitled to their own opinions, and maybe I’m just a bit too soft, but it’s not just in Sonic, there’s a worrying trend I’m noticing throughout popular culture. Everyone’s a critic and what’s more, they love it. Negativity is the new positivity, and I’m so unbelievably sick of it, but for something as close to me as Sonic, it’s all too much to take. I’d rather ignore the comments, reviews and debates, (much of them, as they are, over the most trivial of things) entirely and get back to enjoying Sonic as I used to do as a child, and with some degree of wild-eyed innocence. At least then, any gripes I have will be my own, and not those pointed out by others and which honestly wouldn’t have really bothered me until they had done so. To some extent, Zone: 0 still kind of connects me to their endless nit-pickings, although I admit it’s hardly the central hub of current Sonic affairs. Still, I would feel some degree of relief from it for these reasons, and I do rather want to prove to myself that it’s still possible in this day and age to be as big a Sonic fan as ever while having little or no connection or awareness of other fans, online or otherwise. Put simply: I want out of the Sonic community.

LiQuidShade said he is proud of the progress Zone:0 has produced; the site launched in early 2009.  He thanked those who gave him, in his words, “positivity” to get the place where it is now.