darkSpyro

~and other ways of improving the franchise's image~ because the topic title limit is too short.

I brought this up during a topic the other day about someone making an entire video series on how much Skylanders literally destroyed their childhood yadda yadda yadda. It was going offtopic to discuss my proposition, so maybe it needs a topic of its own.

We talk so much about people who hate Skylanders knowing nothing about it, but why don't we push the opposite: Let people know about it from a perspective other than "omg spyro ded" or "baby's first DLC"?

I got back to it after discussing with a friend that some youtubers will really only bring this up to **** on it. The rumor about Spyro being a late insert spread because everyone hates it enough to believe in lies and there's no one to defend it. Some non-Skylander fandom Youtubers collect the figures, but bringing it up is apparently a huge taboo that you have to cancel the Let's Play to hide from hate, wink wink nudge nudge.
But then you just think about it. We see a lot of videos and articles about omg Crash/Bowser/DK in the series being its only reason to play, or how much it ruined Spyro/the Autism Speaks controversy, but positivity? Just the umpteenth review about how it's a passable hack-and-slash or the neutral opinion of it. We have some fan content, but none seriously about bringing people to this; we just accept we're hated because of something that happened in 2011 and never bothered to at least look back into people who would like it if the image wasn't so smeared to ridiculous extents.

So it goes to the idea I proposed in the topic. A single video,or a video series about what it has offered to its fans, and how it's made a lot of people's childhoods or introduced them to new things. With real opinions from DS and maybe other forums, of course.
Just making a topic and some ideas isn't enough though.

• We need a channel that's at least decently big to post this. We have youtubers around, doesn't need to be the biggest person ever, but say I post this on my channel, it's going to get forgotten in the ditch of videos that appear daily on the tag with no effort. Has to be someone who at least has a chance of being seen.
  
• Bias, yes, but informative. As I said, people commonly have nowhere to refer to other than "omg look at this screenshot of Spyro from 2011, so ugly right" and some genuinely believe the games are still at Wii graphics. We need to explain the evolution of the series, maybe lore if it helps get the illusion that this is a babby game with no investment as well.
  
• Pros and cons. A gushing video isn't what we need, we do that all day here. Have fans explain what we love and what we wish was better, maybe go game by game and introduce them to outsiders who are thinking of starting on one of the games. Again, informative.
  
• Maybe it doesn't need to end at a video, maybe articles. Short text explaining the games' development and history(since according to the internet, Skylanders wasn't Spyro's Kingdom at any point nope so we need actual facts), the opinions of the fans, the impact it had on our lives.
  

Buuut... This is just what I thought up in a few days, really. And this is coming from someone with 3 other projects in her hands, and by the end of the month is going back into uni where I have nearly no time to work on anything. If we're a fandom, this idea shouldn't be done alone anyway, nor should the ideas just come from one person. Give your own suggestions, propose something else, or maybe just show your support or that we should trash this Bifrost how could you ever have such a dumb idea.
So yeah. I'm really bad at ending posts. Say your thoughts below, maybe we'll get somewhere.

I'm personally a bit doubtful about this changing the image of the series, but I hope that at least the haters start to hate the game based on true facts.

I know that Skylanders is not a perfect game. There are far better offerings on it's genres and I hardly reccomend people to spend as much money as the game demands (even from just the Starter Pack). But what the game offers really please my tastes, that's why I'm a fan of the games.

And no bias at all, please. Bias was the source of all the hate. Aside from that, I hope that next week I can somehow help.

By bias I meant what someone brought up on the other thread - it's going to be biased towards it being a good choice, because only the fans would care enough to talk about it anyway. If you get someome with neutral opinion, they probably wouldn't want to get involved to begin with.

Don't worry, if we het game master to talk about it, that should make up for all the positivity there would be.

We'd have to rename the video to "why do you have an unhealthy obsession with Skylanders figures" then

Quote: Bifrost

We'd have to rename the video to "why do you have an unhealthy obsession with Skylanders figures" then

"Why do you have an unhealthy obsession with skylanders figures, yet keep *****ing about them, and keep buying them?"

Preeetty much.

But I don't think collectors need to be introduced on eeeeverything; just some useful links to SCL should be plenty. Amiibo collectors see these figures right next to it and I've seen some actually give it the nickname of "baby's first Warhammer figure". The series is a black sheep in the game aspect.

Someone call James Rolfe.
But in all seriousness I kind of like this idea.

The best option I feel would be for someone with a fanbase who respects them to give a fair review of the games, do like a "Skylanders Retrospective" type of thing where they review each game in a row, provided they can get their hands on each game that is.

I feel like someone like Jirard the Completionist would be a good guy to cover the games since he plays every game he reviews to 100% completion and he tries to be as fair as possible in his reviews, bringing up the good stuff but also the bad stuff in a game. There's also SomeCallMeJohnny, who also tries to be as fair as possible to the games he reviews, like in his review of Mighty No. 9.

This is of course if they even want to buy the games and post videos about them, that is.

I wouldn't want this on Jirard, he'd spend months trying to get every figure.

Don't even try Johnny, he's with BSC who are EXACTLY who I'm talking about. They're none the wiser about anything Skylanders, so when Ted gets tweeted the fake rumor, they all bought it 100%. They're usually the first to play before thinking,and are exactly who gave me this idea because the image has been so tained even people who are otherwise neutral hate it based on public opinion.
I also have to bring up Egoraptor who got so much hate over his GG of Skylanders SuperChargers that he chickened out. We don't need this kind of youtuber at all.

We need someone from DarkSpyro because A- they'd probably have some Skylanders content already for initial views, B- they know the users, so they'd never be gathering opinions from total strangers, c- they are in touch even after things are said and done, no way of just getting cheap subscribers then leaving the fandom to die.

I'm excluding stuff around editing and whatnot, this can be discussed. We just need someone to *post* the video having youtube's good graces to actually trend in the Skylanders tag - I know some users here who regular do or did videos on, say, Battlecast, but their videos would straight up be in the last page with over 100 views, below even the umtpeenth kid sticking his face in the camera and mispelling everything.

its cool.......... *leaves*

Wow, that added absolutely nothing other than a number to your post/gem count. Again, the idea isn't gonna take off without other opinions and suggestions.

But considering this got no attention, I guess most people really don't care.

Don't feel too bad, Bifrost, nobody cares about the General board anyway.

I mean, I feel like people focus too much on the game and not enough on the toy collection aspect. Just food for thought! Pixel Dan is a Skylanders.

Ok, just found out about this topic thanks to your super-useful signature, Bifrost, and... I LOVE this idea!

I am sincerely tired of explaining the series to random Facebook users (and real life friends) who simply see it as a money-eating kids franchise which killed Spyro, and now Crash.
The most annoying and illogical thing of them all is the fact the nerd sub-culture is living its best period since its "birth", with people finally understanding and accepting passions such as fantsy, sci-fi, videogames, comics, cartoons and such which were considered stupid stuff for kids, once; YET everyone is making the same mistakes which were made in the past!

Yes, Pokémon is now seen as a complex universe, with its lore and ecosystems able to interest both kids and adults... But Skylanders is trash (just like Pokémon for the majority of the people, when it first came out); and don't even get me started on the Amiibo VS Skylanders thing...
Ok, animated movies are now considered a form of art... But new cartoons, such as Adventure Time, Steven Universe and Gravity Falls are dumb, ugly and weird.
Sure, videogames milestones such as Tomb Raider, Mario and Monkey Island are now studied by Univesities and developers to come up with interesting theories or a new game... But recent indie (and some AAA) titles are pretentious rubbish, which will be forgotten in a couple years.

And when we try to make those ignorants think and open their mind, reminding them that their favorite games, movies and comics weren't "masterpieces" back then, all they can answer is "they were, we just didn't know it yet".
Or... You know... Maybe it's because they received the dedication, passion and love of so many fans over the years and somebody one day started to think "you know... Maybe there is more than what we see".

I have no problem admitting Spyro was mostly a kid's game (for all ages, sure, but that was the focus target) but try telling it to "true fans"!
And there's a reason why I'm still playing it almost 20 years after the first time: because it has likeable characters, a good gameplay and so much effort behind it, starting from the amazing soundtrack.

I really don't know how to help here, if not by keeping on trying to open people's eyes around the Internet and around me, but I wanted to share my honest thoughts.
Really hoping we'll find a way to organize some kind of project to let people know why we really love Skylanders and why maybe they could as well.

Count me in, if we do!

That's pretty much the objective, Drek. Sure, most people are too knuckleheaded to really accept that maybe they were mistaken about X, but at least with some easy reference to the series the few that WANT to know will have it acessible to them and their friends.

I really don't want to sound pessimistic but... Is there really someone who wants to know what this series truly is about, and still hasn't...?

I want to believe so but everything goes against it: everyone (and I mean everyone) I know who isn't invested in this series usually reacts in one of the following way when I start explaining a bit more than what they know:
- they laugh, saying it's cute how I still like kids' stuff;
- they laugh, telling me I'm exaggerating and that there is really nothing beside what they know;
- they laugh, telling me to grow up and start playing "adult" games (or simply give up games entirely);
- they talk about something else, completely ignoring me.

As for Internet folks, they usually insult.
But I'm used to it.
I found a couple rare nice guys which understood what I said and agreed, but they never asked me to know more and hardly went beyond "they are fine games, not the Devil's products everyone say they are".
Still a small success, I guess.

And yeah, media cover age mostly sucks.
"So, there is this new Skylanders game coming out, where you get to create your own heroes and play as 30 new Senseis ONE OF WHICH IS CRASH, OH MY GOSH HE'S BACK HYPE BUT THEY ACTUALLY KILLED HIM JUST LIKE SPYR-" and so on.
But it's normal to make 100 articles every single time a new Sun and Moon Pokémon is revealed.

What is Pokémon's focus target, again...?

(sorry if I won't reply again for quite a while and sounded like I wanted to cut it short, but I'm going on a vacation in a couple hours and I probably won't be able to write here for roughly two weeks.
I'm subscribing to this topic though, so that I might be able to read and post something now and then )

Soo many youtubers. As I said in my big wall fo text, there's a lot whose opinions can be reduced to 'I thought of checking it out, but everyone says it killed Spyro so I don't want to waste my time'. We need that one thing telling them that no, you can find these games for super cheap nowadays pre-Trap Team, it's not a waste of time and here's why. Some actually have the SuperChargers to get the amiibo and are buying Imaginators for Crash, but they're just going to stuff these on a shelf and never look again if there's nothing to convince them.

What impresses me still about Skylanders is the overwhelming number of characters. When you choose the path and hat, you are putting your personal touch and ownership into it as well. What other game franchise is able to come up with (how many are there now, over 300?) so many unique characters? And it's a collectors game, too with the thrill of the hunt. If you can get past the silly ease of the first few chapters (when will they stop designing it for 8-year-olds? Fans are growing older!), it gets to be a fun and challenging game. And old PvP was such a blast. I loved putting time into leveling up my characters, upgrading, getting the best hat, and boosting stats with heroic challenges. The new games don't have battle mode, of course, but graphics and level designs have improved.

I don't have the time or tech to create a video to explain this. Just invite the haters to play.

This idea is good IMO.
My bro has a friend who seems like he might actually like it... Maybe.
His first reaction was "you actually play that?"
He might not want to give it a shot, and I'm not sure he should, he can't afford to be a collector, not so sure he would even play a series he can't "100%"

If this is any good, I also use another forum, and the majority of people don't really hate Skylanders (because many of then don't even care at Spyro to begin with). There are just one guy who uses the most cliché arguments you can think of and some guys that hate Toys-to-Life games because "Oh my gosh, those evil companies and their cash-grabs for kids".

I already talked to some of then about the game. Some got a little interested. Some don't really care. I said that they can just spend around U$25,00 (100,00 of my local coin) on a Swap Force Starter Pack, since this was the most well-received game. If they like it, buy one or another figure.

Is this helping in any way? I think that's something...

It is something, especially if you bring up stuff like using older characters or that beating the story mode only takes a single figure.

Yup, I said all that. I even recommended using Series 2 Spyro since it's the best figure from the character if people like Spyro. You know, Series 1 is a bit deformed, and Series 3 has the giant horns.

I also said that Swap Force has a big replay factor even with just the Starter Pack figures.

Well, since we're getting nowhere with a big video, how about we start smaller?

Maybe something along the lines of DYKG, have a really clickbait title that would get the attention of outsiders like, say, "Five(?) Things You Didn't Know about Skylanders!(King Spyro? Shotgun Skylander?)".

And it'd cover some of the bigger issues and misinformations, like say:

-"At some point in development, Spyro was a king!" and then explain the development of the franchise, subtly mentioning that yes Spyro was always part of it.
-Kaos is literally ZIM, maybe his 2 different backstories since that's some fun information
-Bring up Buckshot because people like guns? This is a stupid idea disregard it.
-Talk about the graphical improvements, maybe show comparison screenshots of Spyro as reference; that way there's some amunition against the idiots that still think we have Wii graphics.
-Some more specific stuff that's always been fun trivia between us, like S.A.B.R.I.N.A.'s origins, Malefor, the villains, that kinda stuff.

It'd definately take half the work, though for quality we'd still probably at least strive for something voiced with fun editing, but it's a start without needing much assistance and just some Wikia fun.

Did You Know Gaming would be a good place for that. I don't think that they would do that, but they already did Spyro, so who knows...

Nooo, not calling DYKG, some episodes in the past showed that they're nowhere above bias and several of their commentators fit the bill for Classic Spyro genwunners. I just meant in the style of expanded trivia instead of one-sentence stuff.

I just hope it's not one of those loud videos full of crazy idiots screaming about things in a vlog-style video. Pick a good channel because Skylanders already has a unpleasant reputation because of crazy kids channels.

I don't want to sound offensive or anything. I might be exaggerating, but it's best to do something more sophisticated for this. Maybe a click bait title is good, but don't go overdrive.

Well, considering they can read the topic, someone might pick up the idea for themselves and actually screw it up. Heck, might as well bring up the Skylanders Fast Facts - oh sorry guys we decided that JUST THIS VIDEO we'll actually just state facts about the franchise and not any actual trivia.

We could still apply the same thing as the other idea and just gather some good info, and have someone with a significant channel here post it.I'd even volunteer to read stuff but I barely have a decent mic, it'd probably sound horrible.

Not a bad idea. I think that it's good to do something like "5 Misunderstandings in Skylanders". Maybe this will call more attention of non-fans, together with a big channel.

Misunderstandings or Misconceptions would help, yeah, also be easy reference for actual fans.

I dug up some compilation I made in another site about common stuff I'd find from clueless users. Basically, this mess about the development aside:

• -People constantly assume Spyro's not playable since SSA, or since SF because he didn't get more figures.
  
• -Richard Horvitz "ran out of ideas" to voice Kaos despite the fact that they've NEVER been shy about the fact he's literally ZIM recreated in fantasyland, and in a blog I-Wei talked about how they wanted someone who was absolutely in love with supervillany for kids to root for even if they fought against him.
  
• -That "you need every toy to play the game", with the exceptions of completionist-obsessed people. Even then, you usually only need half the lineup+adventure packs to get 100% on a save file, Heroic Challenges were the only exception to the rule and they didn't count towards percentage iirc, nor did Accolades.
  
• -Good old "look guys this is a screenshot of SSA this is how the games look today", makes me want to punch a puppy every time someone has the gall to say it.
  
• -Three developers. Vicarious Visions isn't rushing the Crash Remasters out of the door for Imaginators, the only thing they did for it was Crash; TFB is doing everything else. And on top of their cycle of doing every other year, Beenox is also around, and all have greatly differing styles and quality. Pluuuus QA is handled by Activision and neither of the three, so big glitches and etc are fault of the higher ups.
  
• -"Baby franchise, forgettable plot" oh boy do I need to tell anyone about the time Kaos almost caused omnicide via undead magic in Mask of Power, or how Kaos' Mom is abusive in all but words as explained by Book of Kaos, or SuperChargers anything
  

I thiink those are mostly the big ones.

Good good. People like edgy things in a story to make it feel mature. But, as I know, Beenox just helps with ports, and maybe one or another help on the game itself.

And poor puppies, don't punch then. They did nothing.

Quote: Bifrost

-That "you need every toy to play the game", with the exceptions of completionist-obsessed people. Even then, you usually only need half the lineup+adventure packs to get 100% on a save file, Heroic Challenges were the only exception to the rule and they didn't count towards percentage iirc, nor did Accolades.

Actually in SSA, I think there was an accolade "complete 32 heroic challenges with one skylander."

As I said, the Accolades didn't add to the 100% completion(iirc). For all the games you only needed every level, including APs, with all stars.

"5 Reasons Skylanders is actually the Best Series ever"
"5 Good Reasons to start playing Skylanders"
"If you hate Skylanders, you won't after watching this video"

I still think we just need one of the popular video game reviewers, one who puts all bias aside for his reviews, to do like a Skylanders retrospective, and cover the good and bad aspects of each game.

Tangentially related, oh boy, leave it to Neogaf to sah Skylanders "abandoned" Spyro, despite him having 5 editions and stopping where every other older figure stopped.
However, trying to reason with Neogaf is like hitting your head against a metallic object for 10 minuts straight, so I wouldn't bother, but here's another misconception.

They just forgot of the existence of the comics and TV show.

I'm impressed that you didn't gave up on this Bifrost.

Silly Crash10, side material does not exist, only the vidya gaemz and my 60fps 1080p resolution, reading is for non gamers. At least those are some really common types of whining I read there when by some misfortune I have to look for developer posts.

Those freaking nerds and their comics. Daring to search for a lore.

They are so nerd that they know that past Spyro figures can be used on any game.

Ugh, I hate people who say hes "dead"
"OMG, NO SPYRO FIGURES SINCE 2013, AND NO SPYRO GAMES SINCE I DONT CARE HES DEAD. THANKS A-"

Me: SHUT UP.

Here's something interesting for those not too familiar with the idea of being a games industry black sheep. I know I'm bringing Sonic up again, but it's the best reference by far; here's an article on how the journalism media beat the franchise's image into a shadow of what it used to be.

As much as the Sonic fandom can be pretty extremist, I think that many times people are unfair to the franchise, thinking that every game they made after the classic ones is as good as 2006.

That's pretty much the point of the article. No one other than the crazies are defending Rise of Lyric and 06, but not only the media makes these the ONLY fans around, it also self-justifies for them the need to insult the franchise at any point like every game is a mess and how dare you like this furry weird thing. It's gotten as bad as people are dissing the classic games, too, just because they want to be with the cool guys that say Sonic was a mistake of a franchise.

Tough in Skylanders it's a little of the opposite. The critics generally like it (okay, they are payed, but still) and the community hates it. And it's funny how things are doing the exact opposite of evolving. People are believing in more and more lies. Why this happens? I don't know. Maybe humanity is just lost anyway...

Because despite 'information is everywhere', people still look at their first twitter post then assume it's the truth until it knocks on their door. No amount of speed outruns apathy.

But the critics aren't that good either, several made their NEWS TITLE "they're still making skylanders games"(well idiot you can just not have the views if you hate it so much), and IGN overall glosses over the plot because kids' game and calls it forgettable and mediocre, every time.

Quote: Bifrost

But the critics aren't that good either, several made their NEWS TITLE "they're still making skylanders games"(well idiot you can just not have the views if you hate it so much)

They never say this to Call of Duty...

Now I just remembered of the very first Skylanders Fast Facts video, and it was one of the few non-fan-made videos that looked well-searched and not biased. It was released some time ago, but they said about Spyro's Kingdom (and yes, they said that Spyro was there since the start, but the opposite rumors didn't existed at that time), about the existence of fake variants being sold at the time of Spyro's Adventure, and even about the slime Skylander that turned into Zap and Sun Dragon. They even put some things that I wouldn't expect from a non-fan, like some secondary characters like Kaos, Glumshanks (such a hard name to write) and Flynn, and a little joke from The Beginning trailer. They even made a "parody" of a Skylanders hater (just not saying about "spyro is ded"). I can't link now because I'm lazy to search, but it's a very old video from now (from 2014 or before). They really gave the impression that they wanted and liked to do it (they where not payed for this Fast Facts video).

I think that was just one of the Fast Facts/Lore. The second ones about Trap Team were just such random facts that barely felt like trivia iirc.

no idea of what is IIRC, but yeah, I was talking about the very first one, which I personally recommend.

Oh, and by the way:

Quote: Ted Price (Insomniac Games CEO)

Activision has done a great job with Spyro. They resurrected him and, in my opinion, Skylanders is still about Spyro. It's got the same aesthetic, the same broad appeal and they've done a great job of bringing that character and his world to a brand new set of fans. That's very hard to do in an age where a lot of games are darker and grittier. We'll always love Spyro. I've learnt to say 'never say never' so... who knows?

Why people don't remember of this?

Quote: Crash10

no idea of what is IIRC, but yeah, I was talking about the very first one, which I personally recommend.

Oh, and by the way:

Quote: Ted Price (Insomniac Games CEO)

Activision has done a great job with Spyro. They resurrected him and, in my opinion, Skylanders is still about Spyro. It's got the same aesthetic, the same broad appeal and they've done a great job of bringing that character and his world to a brand new set of fans. That's very hard to do in an age where a lot of games are darker and grittier. We'll always love Spyro. I've learnt to say 'never say never' so... who knows?

Why people don't remember of this?

Because it's easier to make a narrative of "Activision hates Spyro" then actually seeking the truth and putting aside biases

I can agree that Activision is not the best company and maybe Skylanders was not the best destiny to Spyro, but we can all agree that it's better than not having anything Spyro anymore.

Activision is a bad company in my opinion, but they have pretty good developers, so you know... I don't like the company, just like who's in charge of the games.

Hey, if this ends up a video and we need a voiceover, I have a pretty nice Snowball mic, Audacity, at least 2 hours of solid recording time a week and hope. Unfortunately, I'm bad at video editing though.

Well, it's a start. I do have some fun with editing but none of the actually good software, too; also time is always an issue for me.

Ohh, edit since it's not too far down in General. This is EXACTLY what I'm talking about, down to editing(not the funny, I mean pictures quickly going by to convey what you're talking about). Just an example, since it's a Pokémon version of it and obviously in a much lighter tone than the stuff we'd be tackling.