Back again, this time with a special guest!
Kevin, Jay, JonoD, Tom and Donnie are joined by special guest Bill Freiberger! Exective Producer and show runner. We discuss his thoughts on “certain” kinds of fan comments, clarification on the season 2 rumors, Drawn Together, his reaction to the reaction of “new” Knuckles, Shadow appearing in the cartoon, comic books, plus insider info on the show!
Instead of having to sit through the whole thing, why not just state his response to fans criticism of Knuckles?
Bill is a real awesome executive, you know? I love this guy’s involvement with the fanbase, and the mentality he has when creating this show. I also like how free he is to talk about what some fans have been saying, and even what he himself thinks of some of the show’s concepts and episodes. I love this guy’s honesty, and I feel like we have a really passionate team on our hands here.
I’m in the same boat as him when it comes to Knuckles and the general negativity surrounding the whole different nature of Sonic Boom. If you don’t like how he looks, just get over it, there is no sense taking up every SEGA facebook page post with “Steroids? What the hell were they thinking? This franchise is ruined forever!” I generally agree with his reasoning behind the designs too. They’re perfectly fine to me, though I understand why one would be ambivalent to them.
And thanks for asking about the future of the show, guys… I am ESPECIALLY intrigued to find out if the talk towards Shadow leads to him being… a thing.
Unfortunately “get over it” is in no way a reasonable statement and shows no desire to change things for the majority of fan base desires, an unfortunate continuing spread of Takashi Iizuka’s mentality we do not need in the company.
True, but remember, Iizuka says that about gameplay elements, which actually DO impact the franchise’s well being. What I’m primarily referring to is stuff like blue arms, or beefed up Knuckles, or just something new in general that is meant as a real side project. I mean, when I saw the Donkey Kong Country cartoon… I thought it was absolutely awful, but never did I say it would ruin my viewpoint of Donkey Kong forever, or something like that.
I feel what Bill means is quite different from what Iizuka means…. and Bill generally does seem to be taking fans’ opinions and words into supreme consideration. So far, it just seems he is sick of all the “ruined forever” surrounding Knuckles and Boom as a whole.
That is the fault of he and the staff surrounding him. They had limitless potential and limitless options when considering what to do with the BOOM franchise, and instead of sticking tried and true to what has been done the past 24 years and sticking tried and true to fans ensuring they do something new yet easy to take in by the fan base, they did any and everything they wanted with Sonic.
You cannot cater towards your desire to make a fan-fiction side series of Sonic titles and expect fans to take root. Free range, self indulging experimentation has done the most damage to communities today by Takashi Iizuka as is, and now with a whole division doing the same thing as him, its doing nothing short of causing long lasting damage to the “paying market” of the Sonic franchise who are refusing more and more to pay the company to do things they do not want, hence the sales of Lost World and especially Sonic BOOM as a whole plummeting off the chart since Unleashed/Colors.
The “paying market” will pay the company to cater to them and create satisfying experiences for them, not to do solely what they desire with the franchise without consideration of how unsettled and possibly repulsed the majority of long following communities may be.
The more SEGA focuses on bringing in “new audiences” the more they lose their “foundation audience” and in turn, the more of their “foundation audience” they lose, the more everything is going to completely collapse, no matter how greatly they try to build up their “new audience”.
A tree cannot grow unless its roots do at the same time. Its sheer ignorance to think it can.
So you say they have limitless options, but yet they should stick to what Sonic has done for the past 23 years? I’m… not following you here.
And they have indeed listened to the fans. The show would not even be what it is without them. If you ask me, it doesn’t stray that far from roots either. Dr. Eggman is making evil robots, and Sonic is stopping them. I’d argue that other Sonic cartoons strayed much farther from Sonic’s roots. This is especially true, because since 2010, Sonic has been nothing but this sort of stuff. The designs are definitely different, but no one is saying you should love them.
What Bill is trying to say is that this is a TV series, and is not at all replacing or making Sonic. If you don’t like it or its art style, that’s cool, because no one is really being forced to see it. This has nothing to do with the fate of the franchise as a whole, and that’s really what I’m getting at. If a video game series relied on a TV show to keep itself alive, that isn’t much of a game series at all.
I haven’t sat through the entire recording yet (really wish I could join in on one of these calls, actually), but I gotta agree with what BlackHoodedGamer stated above: it’s nice to see the crew caring about what they make for this show, even if they aren’t all die-hard Sonic fans. That says a lot to me and also shows in the response that the show has been getting in the writing department.
I especially like their reasoning for the moment where Knuckles puts up a birdhouse. Many people thought it was just a random thing with no connection to the character, but the idea was that Knuckles seemed like the kind of character who would be interested in nature. Which actually makes a lot of sense, seeing how much he cares about Angel Island, its inhabitants and history, and how much time he spends outside guarding the Master Emerald. It’s a really interesting observation, and one I don’t think I’ve seen talked about in the series for a very long time. Heck, I think that’s a side of him I don’t think I’ve even seen covered in the comic books.
Looking forward to seeing if The Sonic Show can get more people on board to talk about their experiences working on the show.
I’m amazed you managed to get the executive producer in on it,nice job.
To be fair, Knuckles’ build made no sense when compared to all the other powerhouses in Sonic games, who’re always twice his size. He was the only one who was strong and average sized. So I don’t mind it, since it does tell you “This is the strong guy!” just by looking at him. But I do agree with the aspect of “If you don’t like it, ignore it” thing, since I always come across a whole lot of people who just are always negative, always hating on something or somebody, as if they spend all of their energies to have you know they hate things to a degree. It does nobody any good, especially themselves. As well as the whole “These guys don’t know what they’re talking about” I get are said by people who don’t even know half the stuff that goes on in stuff like that.
All in all, great interview! Always interesting to hear what goes on in the making of episodes and would be grand to hear from more writers and producers down the line. Bill’s a cool guy!
As for what I’ve enjoyed most from Sonic Boom? Tough question. Safe to say the Eggman-centric episode, but I suppose any time we see Sonic & Eggman interacting in a way you don’t expect them to are usually my favourites. It’s like rather than being bitter enemies trying to take each other down by any means (although that is usually a case) it can come off as some sort of very weird vitriolic friendship of sorts, it’s kind of fascinating at times. Heh.