Christian Whitehead takes leave of absence from video gaming industry following artist disillusionment towards Sonic fans
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Christian Whitehead, best known as the director and programmer for the recent game Sonic Mania, has officially announced that he has quit working for the franchise, as he has grown sick and tired of the fandom, who have gotten a notable reputation of being scathingly negative of a number of Sonic games released after the 1990s.
Whitehead had mentioned in a recent interview with us that he had heard many people consider him to be a better handler of the Sonic franchise than Sonic Team themselves, and he stated that he immediately disagreed with them. He himself said he very much enjoyed Sonic Forces, which was generally considered to be mediocre after Sonic Mania's growing acclaim. He also mentioned that Takashi Iizuka, the current head of Sonic Team, had been unfairly blamed for all the problems that had happened in the franchise as a whole, and pointed out that many people, himself included, had caused various problems to the franchise.
"I appreciate the fact that people enjoyed my game, but I don't appreciate how people are seeing me as a God-like figure. I mean, loads of people over the internet just show love for me whilst consistently bullying the people at Sonic Team for not making good games, despite the fact that they were responsible for some of the franchise's best titles. I need to clear something up - I didn't do anything heroic. I didn't devote my time to anything like teaching impoverished schoolchildren in Africa. I made a fucking video game. Is it really that hard for people to realise that I'm not exactly humanitarian of the year? The worst part is, as I look back on it, Sonic Mania, in my eyes, isn't even that good! I believe I did at most a mediocre job on it, yet everybody loves it. Sonic Forces was made by veterans who know their shit. It really deserves more respect than it ended up receiving."
The breaking point that led to him making these decisions was at The Steam Awards on January 3. He had won the "Even Better Than I Expected" award for Mania initially, but during his speech much of his comments, that showed support and respect for Sonic Team and Iizuka, had been met with denial and acrimony by many people in the audience. Eventually, after many attempts to calm the audience down, he berated the audience for their actions, walked off stage, and returned his award. During his berating, he said the following:
"You know why my game is good? Because Sega had been convinced that you weren't smart enough to appreciate the Sonic franchise, and I told them that you should have a chance. I told them that you were smart. Turns out, I was wrong. You people are stupid."
This is hardly the first time that artist disillusionment has been experienced on such a level. Some have noted that the situation is very similar to Dave Chappelle, who had left his TV series Chappelle's Show following heavy dislike for major parts of the fandom, amongst other reasons. Similarly, Notch of Minecraft fame left his franchise and sold it to Microsoft because he didn't want to be a symbol "responsible for something huge that [he] don’t understand, that [he] don’t want to work on, that keeps coming back to [him]" (said "symbol" being his fame for developing Minecraft).
It is unknown how this will affect the Sonic franchise in the future. There were initially plans to make a sequel to Sonic Mania, but with Whitehead's acrimonious departure, it is unknown if it will continue development.
This is a satirical website. Don't take it Seriously. It's a joke.