#1up.com

Needless to say, I was a little starstruck to meet an old hero of mine, but he was very nice about the whole thing, and flattered that I remembered his old writing. He was even kind enough to let me take some screenshots of the CEO hanging out with Princess Pop.

Afterwards, I was delighted to see that he had joked about the encounter on Bluesky!

So, how were Sonic fans (especially younger ones) looked upon back in the day, and has it really changed since then?

Let's see... 2009? That would have been one year after I started at TSSZ... huh. I'm genuinely surprised we did not cover it. GiantBomb also migrated to a new CMS recently and this does not preserve the old comments section, which is annoying. I want to see if I left a comment here back in the day.

Generally speaking, I do not remember this article by Jeff. It's possible I forbade myself from reading it. Jeff can be a very bitter man sometimes, and his opinions about a lot of Sega games do not align with my own. I do remember him mentioning on a podcast at one point that he played Sonic Unleashed up to the first Tornado Attack QTE level, which means he finished the first Sonic level, the first Werehog level, and then quit because he thought it was "a game for babies." (paraphrasing) That told me enough.

More to your point, what I do have a clear and vibrant memory of around this time was listening to 1up.com podcasts, and top of that pile was "GFW Radio." It was hosted by a bunch of guys who by their own admission did not like podcasts but were being forced by corporate to produce one, so every week they would do a very brief news segment about what was going on in PC Gaming and then spend the rest of the two or so hours just shooting the breeze.

And from there emerged this nickname for the podcast -- "97.5: The Brodeo." Because they were considered shock jock talk radio guys. A lot of 1up podcasts had this dirty edge to them, but GFW Radio in particular would get really dark and nasty, thanks in large part to one of the hosts, Shawn Elliot. He was a great writer, but he had the heart of a SomethingAwful poster. He delighted in rolling around in the internet's worst filth and it came out in a segment often titled "Heroes of the Web." It was an excuse to drag chemically maladjusted teenagers through the mud and laugh at them. It is also, to my arguably fuzzy memories, where "jenkem" was originally invented.

Sonic fans came up quite a bit on The Brodeo.

And from here, tendrils spread out across all of 1up.com's podcasts. I truly believe this is where a lot of the "Sonic fans are sooooo weird!" sentiment gained widespread traction. There were a few posts here or there on SomethingAwful or 4chan, but Shawn Elliot put them on the main stage.

It was a very dark time to be a Sonic fan. We were still coming off of Sonic 06, and now a bunch of pundits were using a strange minority to define the entire fandom. And that definition stuck.

It lead to Kotaku articles, like this clout chaser who bragged about having sex on Sonic the Hedgehog bed sheets. Isn't that weird? Or Patrick Klepek talking about witnessing a "Sonic the Hedgehog Orgy" inside of that Bubsy 3D fangame. Isn't that weird? Or how sexual Sonic CD's special stages are. Isn't that weird?

It has changed, and as much as I hate to admit it, it's because of Aaron Webber. I've learned over the years that a lot of people really did not like Aaron Webber, known sometimes in the community as "RubyEclipse." He was the Sonic brand manager for a long time, until he got promoted to managerial/producer roles and is still kicking around somewhere in the Sega of Japan corporate labyrinth.

I've heard from friends-of-friends who are in the know, but the press apparently couldn't stand him. Aaron was supposedly a pretty stereotypical 4chan troll kind of guy if you got to know him, which checks out given he cracked transphobic "attack helicopter" jokes on the official Sonic account during his tenure, back when the "sassy social media brand" was in vogue.

But what he did do was kind of blow off some steam and release the tension. Though he said some nasty things he never apologized for, he did also foster an environment where the Sonic "brand" kind of laughed at itself. It was in on the joke. And it kind of emboldened others to, like, "come forward" I guess, and it all sort of normalized itself.

1up.com

This is a hard question to answer.

I do think there are a lot of people in the press that expect Sonic games to be bad and aren't really willing to see them on any other level than snide commentary. I know people in the press, and I've heard them say "I hope the next Sonic game is bad so I can laugh at it."

Which... did not really sit well with me at the time. I mean, they were talking about Sonic Forces, so it wasn't exactly unwarranted. But at the same time I couldn't help but have a pang of "Aw man :("

Is that bias? When I think of bias, I'd think of a person who refuses to admit even a good game is good. And I think the press cycle for Sonic Frontiers showed that a lot of people were willing to be open about the game.

That person who wanted to laugh at the next bad Sonic game? Also liked Sonic Generations.

At the same time, I do think there are people out there who would never admit it if there was a legitimately good Sonic game.

And the press in particular is not especially equipped to talk about a lot of Sonic games. More than most people, anyway. A lot of Sonic games are better on the replay, because they require such a degree of practice to learn, understand, and get good at, and in a way that's different from, say, Dark Souls. Learning a Sonic game is more akin to, say, learning bullet patterns in a shmup, and there aren't a lot of press out there with particularly complex opinions on those, either.

That's generally because when you play and talk about video games for a living, you can't really stick to one game for too long. Practicing and mastering a game aren't luxuries people in the press get. Unless you come in to the press with an inherent love for a specific genre (and become that genre's specialist) then it's a lot of churn and burn. You play games not because you want to, but because it's a talking point, and there will always be more talking points. You're always chasing where the spotlight moves to next.

There are also a lot of legitimately ugly people out there who pick cheap, easy jokes because they're low-hanging fruit. The Sonic franchise has been at the bottom of more than one dogpile, whether the game deserved it or not. So you get a lot of clown college dropouts that love to pick on Sonic games.

But more than bias, that's because there is a stigma around Sonic games. Which is what a lot of the "we're in on the joke" social media meme-ing was trying to break out of, I guess. Clearing the air and getting people to talk about more than just "HAHA, BRO, SONIC GAMES ARE SOOOOO BROKEN"

I think some of it is blown out of proportion by fans, sure. We can be a pretty sensitive bunch, sometimes.

But that sensitivity also did not come from nowhere. I remember the halcyon days of listening to podcasts like 1UP Yours or GFW Radio and having to endure them bringing up Sonic games just to get a few swings at the punching bag that week.

And it was like that, everywhere, all the time.

But that was also the era of Shadow the Hedgehog and Sonic 2006. It was not entirely undeserved.

The 1UP Show

New Post has been published on https://awesome-people.newonline.help/1up-com-kojima-productions-match-solid-mike-owns/

1up.com Kojima Productions Match - Solid Mike Owns

In 2006 1up.com held a contest for 15 participants to have a match against the Kojima Productions development team on the video game Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence (Online Mode), i was the 15th and last person selected out of the many people that entered.

We would get word on the end results of each match as they finished, i was apart of the last team to face them out of 5 teams, the word was, all the other teams that faced them were destroyed. We were not phased by this though, what you are about to see is a nerds dream come true, a truly awesome thing to happen in my life, i mean how many people ON THIS PLANET can say they beat the Kojima Productions team, and tea bagged them? :3 i feel awesome still to this day.

Sadly… METALGEARMILKY the man who made this video, was a bit of a let down, but it didn’t phase our team effort though! Thanks to Jim Sensei and his Shotgun and our man -Sou- GLIFF86 on Stealth Camouflage!

(Originally posted on 1UP.com, May 13, 2009.

This post, a reflection on my first five years on the 1UP blogs, is still probably the best summary of how much that site meant to me. And though it's gone now, I still feel its impact every day--especially since, just a few months ago, I finally married the first friend I made through 1UP.)

It's an unfortunate fact that I just haven't been posting that much lately, even by modern standards. It has nothing to do with a lack of satisfaction with 1UP or its community, or even a lack of ideas to write about--life just tends to take up my time if I let it, and when I'm not otherwise occupied I often prefer to relax and play some games instead of write about them. But I'm writing today, because it's May 13--and on a May 13 exactly five years ago, I made a decision that's responsible for a lot of those great things that keep me too busy to blog in the first place. You see, five years ago I joined 1UP.

PAX 2007

And Now I'm Going to Talk About It When I think about my experience on 1UP, I always go back to my first post, largely because of how hilariously inaccurate it turned out to be. I wasn't so sure about this blogging thing, you see, and doubted that I'd actually use this page for anything. Truth is, I kind of did want an outlet for all that gaming stuff going through my head, but a blog? As I said back then, it all seemed very self-indulgent.

Of course, the very next day I was back, spurred by a comment elsewhere on the site to justify Grand Theft Auto as more than just a random violence simulator. The day after was Silent Hill, then the N-Gage and the tragedy of the Rifts game. And it went on like this--before I knew what was happening, I was blogging, daily, on subjects that maybe even I didn't realize I'd thought so much about. And crazier yet, people were reading it, and some of them apparently even liked it.

PAX 2007

Community I might not have stuck around through those first days if not for the early community, which felt surprisingly close-knit despite the lack of ways to actually communicate with each other (there were no blog comments, and the private messaging system was horribly unreliable). It probably helped that so many of us came in through Jeremy Parish's personal site, where he encouraged folks to start 1UP blogs as soon as the public beta opened. It's not that we all knew each other from there or anything--I don't believe he had forums in place at the time--but there seemed to be enough commonalities between readers that it wasn't a terrible idea to just dig through Jeremy's friends list for people you might want to follow. I know I was getting friend requests on day one from people I'd never met before, but who all seemed to have that background in common.

Those were the early days, though, and unsurprisingly I haven't kept in contact with everyone from back then--a lot of folks have left the site, or become less active, or remained fairly abstract entries on my friends list because we just never interacted that much. But what I find impressive is how many people this doesn't include, how many people I've only gotten to know better as time has gone on. There are those I continue to communicate with on the site, at least when I'm not too busy (I really want to leave more comments than I do!). There are those I've met in person, and still enjoy hanging out with at events like PAX. And then there are those I know better, the people I invite to my birthday.

PAX 2007

This is the crazy part, or at least a crazy part. I've been in online communities before, but they always tended to stay that way--it's all very nice on the computer screen, but when you disconnect you get back to your other, normal life, and the two never really intersect. Somehow, that barrier never existed on 1UP. From very early on I've been running into people in the real world who I knew from the site, and I think the fact that PAX began the same year as 1UP's blogs has a lot to do with this. The expo serves as a major nexus for in-person meetings, and as it's grown so have the social opportunities. In 2005 I met with several 1UP friends, both intentionally and through complete happenstance, and in 2006 we had a genuine, official meetup. It wasn't until 2007, though, that I started to understand how strong these so-called online friendships can really become.

You can read the details in the original posts if you want, but this was the year I spent an entire weekend with people I knew almost entirely through 1UP. Now, I knew some of them pretty well already, as far as the Internet goes; I'd met folks like Albert and Jen at previous PAXes, and it was a given that we'd get together at some point. But what no one expected was just how well everyone would hit it off, and that the lot of us--see the original posts for the full roster!--would be experiencing PAX together from beginning to end. It may sound sappy, but when all was done I realized that these weren't "Internet friends" who I occasionally met in person, they were just friends who I didn't get to see very often. And in fact, some of them I now see more often indeed--why, Jon just happened to move to the area last month, and the first thing I did was invite him to that birthday.

PAX 2007

Opportunities 1UP hasn't just been about meeting entirely new people, though--it's also afforded me the chance to meet some of the folks who put this site (and others) together, making even the journalism side of things feel more personal. Now, I've always made sure not to let this be about celebritization, because that's really a silly thing to do to people just because they write about games for a living. The fact is, though, that most of these folks get their jobs because they care an awful lot about games and are good at expressing it, and that happens to be the sort of person I like to talk to. That, plus the overall friendliness and lack of self-importance in the current and former 1UP crew, has made these opportunities more or less universally positive.

I guess I had a bit of an in since I knew Jeremy beforehand, but a lot of this stuff kind of just happened. Running into Nich Maragos (formerly of 1UP and the GIA, now at Atlus) back at PAX 2004 was completely unplanned, though he wouldn't have recognized me if not for 1UP. I'd met Jenn Frank on the site before she worked for it, but her hiring happened to coincide with my family reunion in San Francisco, leading to a tour of 1UP's inner sanctum. PAX 2006 was something of a big deal, with the small and informal meetup giving me a chance to really get to know some people, from those I already respected (like Jane Pinckard) to those I'd see a lot more of in the future (like Matt Chandronait). And with additional PAXes, GDC, and miscellaneous, it kind of went on like that.

1UP Offices, 2006

This site didn't just grant me opportunities to meet people, though--I also, once, had the chance to give something back and contribute to it in an official way. Back on New Year's 2005, during a trip to San Francisco, Jeremy informed me that Sam Kennedy liked what I was doing on my blog and wanted me to write an article for the site. I was baffled that the head honcho even knew about my blog, let alone read it or liked it, but apparently it was true (we actually ran into him shortly afterward by complete chance, so that confirmed it). This led to my only paying piece of video game journalism ever, a feature on Hunt the Wumpus that appeared as part of the ill-fated Crucial Classics series (an unfinished followup to the Essential 50). Even though I never took that particular line of work any further, it was a great experience--I was exploring an obscure but important corner of gaming just like I enjoyed doing on the blog, but it got a lot more exposure and really seemed to prove the worth of my writing. Unfortunately, the article seems to have been lost from the site, along with the rest of the Crucial Classics, but maybe I ought to reformat it and post it here someday. [Note from the future: It's right here!]

The Wumpus article was the first and last time I did this, but it's interesting to imagine where things could have gone if I'd chosen to take it further. I found out too late that I'd been invited to help cover that year's E3, and there probably could have been other opportunities if I'd looked for them, but I did already have a pretty good job that I wasn't willing to give up for some crazy adventure in game journalism. Despite that, though, 1UP would end up having an impact on my real career as well.

PAX 2006

I was finishing college when I first joined 1UP, but I already had a position at Microsoft lined up, working on Visual Studio. And it was a good thing to get started on, but I really had my sights set on something in gaming. So a couple years later when I saw an opening in the still-nebulous XNA, I jumped on it, especially when they told me about this secret plan to open up Xbox 360 development to the masses. During the interview, I happened to mention that I had this blog, you know, no big deal (this was actually my mom's idea, so thanks!), and afterward I got a mail asking where it was. So I sent along the URL plus a few direct links to my favorite posts, and when my new manager later called to say that I'd gotten the job, he specifically noted that the passion displayed here made up for any experience I was otherwise lacking. Suddenly my dream of working in the game industry had come true, and three years later it's still amazing just how much--in terms of personal satisfaction, career growth, friends, and other perks--has come of that. And if I didn't have this blog, who knows what would have happened.

The Really Crazy Part But let's get back to the social aspect of the site for a bit. I've built a lot of relationships in my time on 1UP, some stronger than others, but there's one person who's been there since the beginning. Jen was the first to send me a message on 1UP, in reply to that very first post, and the first person I didn't already know to send me a friend request. Unlike some of those early members, we both stuck around and maintained some level of contact, eventually meeting at PAX 2005 where I was soundly defeated at Lumines. Things continued like this for a very long time, the friendship growing ever-so-gradually, until--after several vists last year--I finally decided I should probably ask her out. (Well, so much as you can "ask out" someone you already know and see somewhat regularly. You know what I mean.) So, very early on the final morning of PAX 2008, I did just that.

Whistler, 2009

I'll spare you the sap, but it's a choice I'm very glad I made. And it never would have happened if I hadn't come to 1UP.

In a Nutshell So that, more or less, is where these five years on 1UP have taken me. It's been a long, crazy trip, and it's still astounding to think of how much I've gotten from it: I've been able to exercise my writing and even find a bit of an audience; I've met so many people, including some who have become great friends; I've gotten to know a number of the folks who made this site possible; I contributed an article of my own; I landed a great job; and I even fell in love. Even I have a hard time believing it, and I was sort of there.

But seriously, joining 1UP has had a profound impact on my life, and I can't even imagine where I'd be right now if I'd made a different decision five years ago today. And in part, this is why I don't post so much anymore--backward as it seems, many of these opportunities now keep me busy elsewhere, and many of my 1UP-spawned friendships are strong enough that we don't need the site to stay in contact anymore. But this is also why I can never truly leave, even if my writing slows--because, frankly, I owe the site way too much. There will always be games to write about, after all, and it's going to take a lot more than this to keep me away for good. Here's to five more.