Sonic & Knuckles will be my last Zone: 0 guide, and there may or not not be any further guides by other writers featured on this site once that is complete. Zone: 0 will remain in existence for as long as I am capable of hosting it, and will not be taken down, nor will any content be removed, however updates or changes cannot be promised after I have completed the final guide. At the point of transition from activity to inactivity, blog posts will cease and the forum will be closed, however the history of both will be available through an archive. Level artwork by Ricky Earl will continue to be added to relevant pages for as long as he wishes to produce them.
Because some writers have agreed to produce guides for certain games, I will allow these to continue if they so wish, however they are under no obligation to do so. If any writers complete their guides I will cooperate with them in adding them to the site and publishing them with the rest at any point in the future. However, it would be appreciated if they could use the content management system that the site runs on to build and publish the pages themselves as much as possible. There is very little HTML or web programming skill necessary to do this, mostly none at all, and I will continue to work on this system to make sure it's as easy to use and automated as it can be.
From now on however, the hunt for new writers has officially ended and I am no longer looking for new guides to begin. The unfortunate fact is that in over one and a half years since I first announced the hunt for new writers, despite several applications, no one has even come close to completing the guides that they have started. From some people I've seen absolutely nothing, from others I've seen no more than drafts for the first one or two levels, and then nothing for months. I don't particularly mind - things happen and such a voluntary, spare time project naturally has to make way for more important things in people's lives. Or perhaps some simply became less enthusiastic about it over time. Regardless, the lack of success so far in this endeavour is evidence enough that it should also cease at this point. If you're unbelievably passionate about this project and you know that you'll be able to contribute something else worthwhile then by all means send me an email but I can't guarantee cooperation with anything except that with which I've already agreed to cooperate. There are one or two newer writers who currently seem to be progressing well with their guides, and keeping in regular contact, so I won't rule these out, however I don't expect there to be many more than that. If there are, then who knows, maybe the site will be able to run under new management, but personally, I don't expect this to happen.
So that's about the situation. Never say never, I may well change my mind and fire up a new guide one day. But as much as I've enjoyed writing and putting them all together, the fact of the matter is that, for a spare time hobby, it's unbelievably time consuming. The Sonic 3 guide has taken almost one and a half years just to publish - not even including the original time it took me to write it - being fit around my real life, and even at that rate it's sucked out hundreds of hours of my time that, I must admit, could well have been spent on something fresher, and more creative. Zone: 0 is a worthwhile project and I'm immensely proud of it, but it demands nothing but spare time and no real occupation if you want to produce it to a high quality, with regular updates, and have time left over for other personal pursuits. Unfortunately I have a 9-hour-a-day job, and a future family life to think about, on top of other ideas for projects desperate to burst out of the confines of my mind and onto the screen. Some Sonic-based, some not, and some with more financial possibilities, which could be essential to me. Something's got to give, and though it's not an easy decision, that thing is Zone: 0 I'm afraid.
However, I've always said that no matter what, I would complete what I had started, and as the Sonic & Knuckles guide has already been written, I will see it through, and as quickly as I can. So consider this message me handing in my "notice". I did look forward to the day where I would actually be able to sit down and start writing a new guide from scratch - something I haven't done since 2006. Part of me would still rather enjoy it, but it's just not feasible for me anymore really. Besides, I must admit that my enthusiasm for this project has dwindled. Back when I started writing, a good 6 and a half years ago, my excitement (and large amount of free time) drove me to complete drafts for all six Sonic 1 levels in just over a week. At that speed, naturally I would have thought I'd have at least a dozen games covered online by 2011, but a number of things prevented that, my perfectionism for one. I went back on everything two, three, maybe four times to bring it all to a consistent level of detail. The addition of maps and site maintenance all added up to a far longer amount of time than I had first projected, even as a part time hobby. Nevertheless, I was amazed at my own unfaltering enthusiasm for building up the project of my dreams, where other ideas had lost their steam under far less time. I particularly loved refreshing the design and structure of the site completely, a couple of years back. Since then though, once I'd returned to building the guides themselves, I've definitely felt more of a noticeable tedium to it all. I thought it might have been just my slight unfamiliarity with Sonic CD compared to the other four games, which are like childhood friends to me, but no, it persisted through Sonic 3 as well. It was still fun, but just as often it began to feel like a chore. A chore that I now realise I can only do for so much longer.
As I say, there's many factors to this decision though, and my reduced enthusiasm for Zone: 0 seems to correlate with.. well, I suppose it's more of a changing relationship with Sonic as a whole. I can't deny, Sonic pretty much equates to a kind of religion to me, in terms of the amount of time I spend just thinking and internally debating about it. Any other type of game can only be so much fun, and for me, none compare to Sonic at his best. But it's not even the quality of the modern games as much as the sheer amount of resistance to them all over the internet, and most hurtfully, from the most outspoken fans themselves that slowly chips away at my love of Sonic. I feel like I no longer want to be a part of any community that, once united by love of something, is now held together only by constant arguments about what that thing should be, and even more disturbing, a mutual hatred of whatever that thing currently is. I may have had my own criticisms to make now and then, but I genuinely feel things are moving on toward a better level of quality now in terms of the games themselves. It's unmistakable. It may not be perfect yet, but it's all going in the right direction, and to see supposed fans fail to acknowledge this and continually complain over and over again, as if they're beginning to get some enjoyment out of it, depresses me frankly. A lot.
Everyone's entitled to their own opinions, and maybe I'm just a bit too soft, but it's not just in Sonic, there's a worrying trend I'm noticing throughout popular culture. Everyone's a critic and what's more, they love it. Negativity is the new positivity, and I'm so unbelievably sick of it, but for something as close to me as Sonic, it's all too much to take. I'd rather ignore the comments, reviews and debates, (much of them, as they are, over the most trivial of things) entirely and get back to enjoying Sonic as I used to do as a child, and with some degree of wild-eyed innocence. At least then, any gripes I have will be my own, and not those pointed out by others and which honestly wouldn't have really bothered me until they had done so. To some extent, Zone: 0 still kind of connects me to their endless nit-pickings, although I admit it's hardly the central hub of current Sonic affairs. Still, I would feel some degree of relief from it for these reasons, and I do rather want to prove to myself that it's still possible in this day and age to be as big a Sonic fan as ever while having little or no connection or awareness of other fans, online or otherwise. Put simply: I want out of the Sonic community.
Let none of this take away from how proud I am of this site though. I'm genuinely amazed it's even lasted this long, and when I flick through the dozens of pages of info I've produced, I can't believe just how much I've actually done. The project existed for a couple of years before anyone was even aware of it, and during that time I had no idea if it was what people wanted it, but I've genuinely been touched by the many, many messages of support I've received. In general, I haven't really even heard anything spoken against it, so I realise how much of an achievement it is. Because it was born at a time before web 2.0 really emerged, I like to think it has an element about it of the old fashioned way of doing a website. Not a neutral, homogenous wiki made up of content from multiple people, but a highly focused, highly personal creation that cares more about, initially, the details of what it covers than its scope. Sadly, that scope probably won't be enlarged to the degree I had originally hoped for, but regardless, it'll always have a special place in my heart, and as I say, it'll continue to exist for as long as the Internet, myself, civilisation as a whole, and the small amount of money required to keep it hosted, exists too. Those are good odds, I think.
The show's not over yet. We've still got one fifth of the way to go in fact, and I'm going to make sure it's just as good as as the others! Thank you to everyone who has provided some much needed positivity to get this site to where it is now.
Comments 28 Comments have been posted.
#1. Comment posted by Rom on Sunday, 6th February 2011, 3:53pm
#2. Comment posted by Tricky E on Sunday, 6th February 2011, 7:04pm
#3. Comment posted by Mercury on Sunday, 6th February 2011, 8:00pm
#4. Comment posted by MoDaD on Sunday, 6th February 2011, 8:15pm
#5. Comment posted by JC on Sunday, 6th February 2011, 10:25pm
#6. Comment posted by Dapassified on Monday, 7th February 2011, 3:45am
#7. Comment posted by RS on Monday, 7th February 2011, 7:44am
#8. Comment posted by LiQuidShade on Monday, 7th February 2011, 8:03pm
#9. Comment posted by KMetalmind on Monday, 7th February 2011, 9:22pm
#10. Comment posted by Eurysilas on Tuesday, 8th February 2011, 5:03am
#11. Comment posted by LiQuidShade on Tuesday, 8th February 2011, 7:32pm
#12. Comment posted by MNV on Wednesday, 9th February 2011, 9:52am
#13. Comment posted by AJ on Wednesday, 9th February 2011, 4:10pm
#14. Comment posted by Andrew on Friday, 11th February 2011, 9:26pm
#15. Comment posted by Traxus on Saturday, 12th February 2011, 3:45pm
#16. Comment posted by Max-Ale on Saturday, 12th February 2011, 10:24pm
#17. Comment posted by Tricky E on Tuesday, 15th February 2011, 12:42pm
#18. Comment posted by Oobo on Thursday, 24th February 2011, 4:55pm
#19. Comment posted by CJ on Saturday, 12th March 2011, 6:01am
#20. Comment posted by SpeedingHedgehog on Sunday, 13th March 2011, 3:44am
#21. Comment posted by murphy341 on Monday, 9th May 2011, 11:24pm
#22. Comment posted by Hyper_Sonic on Sunday, 17th July 2011, 12:02pm
#23. Comment posted by MAR on Monday, 22nd August 2011, 6:53am
#24. Comment posted by David on Thursday, 1st September 2011, 11:01pm
#25. Comment posted by Adam on Wednesday, 7th September 2011, 12:09am
#26. Comment posted by ALEXISTH on Tuesday, 20th December 2011, 2:44am
#27. Comment posted by Josh on Saturday, 24th December 2011, 11:26pm
#28. Comment posted by Wassapman on Wednesday, 25th January 2012, 2:33am