Sega’s Sonic Team on Memes: “We Like People to Have Fun”
It’s not every day that a video game company welcomes memes with open arms, but that’s exactly what’s happening at Sega when it comes to Sonic the Hedgehog series – in fact, it could be said that it has contributed to the renewal of the brand over the years.
Before release Sonic X Dark Generation and Sonic the Hedgehog 3 movie later this year, Sonic Team leader Takashi Iizuka recently addressed all the Shadow and Sonic-related memes in a conversation with Polygon. First off — yes, the team sees fans posting “a lot of interesting stuff.”
In his opinion, he thinks these memes can be a “positive thing” because it illustrates how fans are invested in “the brand and the characters.” Sega also likes to just observe “what’s going on” and likes it when “people are having fun” and interacting with blue blur and his friends like this. He’s even seen the Knuckles and Amy meme:
“I don’t know how many years ago… there were a lot of Knuckles memes that came out, all of a sudden… and there were a lot of Amy memes too. Objectively speaking, we were just watching what was going on, and we loved that people were having fun and interacting with our characters.”
Not only is Sega open to memes, but it’s also not as strict as some other video game companies when it comes to fan-made games. It’s even hired talent like Christian Whitehead, who started out creating fan-made games and went on to create one of the best Sonic games of all time. Sound Mania.
Yes, Sanic…Sonic fans, check out this meme!
