Needs Help: Seasonal Rot

Last February I wrote an It's the Same, Now It Sucks! entry for the Mario franchise on the whole - wasn't aware that period was excluded from what's now Audience-Alienating Era.

Me personally, I think it would count as such an era, if the mentioned writeup is any indication - I definitely remember people complaining about it a lot more than any Mario-related media within the Switch era save for Paper Mario: The Origami King's announcement and possibly the initial leak of Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle. Among other things, there was:

• Paper Mario: Sticker Star taking the Paper Mario series in a controversial new direction, leading to the contested Paper Mario: Color Splash (see also the infamous announcement day YMMV page for the latter)
• New Super Mario Bros. getting hit with It's the Same, Now It Sucks! due to the release of both New Super Mario Bros. 2 and New Super Mario Bros. U in the same calendar year (plus New Super Luigi U the following year, though personally I liked that one)
• Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon using the mission-based structure and ditching the one-building design and interesting Portrait Ghosts of Luigi's Mansion, and also becoming contested for it
• Super Mario 3D World initially coming off as Super Mario 3D Land but again, when people wanted a game in the Collect-a-Thon Platformer style of 64, Sunshine, and/or Galaxy
• Mario vs. Donkey Kong suffering from Sequelitis after the fourth game, Mini-Land Mayhem!, with the So Okay, It's Average receptions of Minis on the Move, Tipping Stars, and amiibo Challenge
• Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash's entire existence
• Mario Sports Superstars essentially being a combination of Mario Golf, Mario Tennis, Mario Strikers, and Mario Superstar Baseball / Mario Super Sluggers (as well as horse racing!) without the elements or charm that interested people in the originals
• Mario & Luigi entering a decline after Dream Team, culminating in AlphaDream's untimely death after the utter commercial failure of Bowser's Inside Story + Bowser Jr.'s Journey

I don't think this thread is the place to discuss such a topic, as it's more for the repair of the YMMV at large and not about Mario specifically, but I thought it was worth adding onto in the events someone else starts a thread - easier to bring over.

It's been over 5 years since that Audience-Alienating Era started, so I think an entry is warranted. 2012 is when that era would've started.

Edited by PlasmaPower on Jan 25th 2022 at 9:07:18 AM

Yeah, the Wii U era seems to be regarded in the gaming community as a joke at best, and financially it didn't do very well for Nintendo comparatively speaking.

I do think we should consider that kind of context when it comes to these entries. A hugely successful franchise having a period of slightly-above-level success can be enough for the fans and the company to deem that period a failure.

"A hugely successful franchise having a period of slightly-above-level success can be enough for the fans and the company to deem that period a failure."

Fittingly, exactly that happened during the Wii U era too.

My personal favorite way to describe such things is some variation on "it's not so much 'bad' as much as it is 'least good'", and I think that's a good way to describe the Wii U era - yeah, there were a lot of well-received games then, but not to the point where the majority of them are often regarded as having exclusively positive reception.

Edited by MegaMarioMan on Jan 27th 2022 at 5:34:57 AM

Huge Nintendo fan here.

The Wii U may not be the greatest console in Nintendo history, but it does have some good exclusives, most of which are either ported to the Switch or have sequels on the Switch.

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, despite otherwise being a solid Zelda game, had the unfortunate distinction of being released on two of the least popular major Nintendo home consoles.

Edited by Nen_desharu on Jan 27th 2022 at 7:27:04 AM

That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about the fandom consensus and the financial reception, which was indeed comparatively negative.

Hell, it says a lot that Breath of the Wild is seen as more of a quintessential Switch game than a quintessential Wii U game, though it also came out during the generation crossover.

Thanks for the clarification and I agree.

The TV Networks page still needs some major cleanup; the majority of examples reek of complaining, and many of them aren't even "audience-alienating" as per the current definition.

I would like to nominate the current era of Disney Theme Parks under Bob Chapak (late 2010's to 2020's) for Audience-Alienating Era please. I have seen many criticise the parks for the focus on I Ps over original properties and a much more sanitised, corporate feel that many codemn as lifeless. Watch works by channel Poseidon Entertainment and read the comments and you'll see what I mean. https://www.youtube.com/c/PoseidonEntertainment/videos

Edited by generation81 on Jan 29th 2022 at 9:40:57 AM

Is it time to close this thread and start a cleanup project for the Age, the Rot, and the -itis?

Edited by magnumtropus on Jan 29th 2022 at 7:07:08 PM

I'm for it. Maybe in Long-Term too since these tropes are going to keep attracting problems IMO.

Same here. My big concern is that "audience-alienating era" is just going to attract the same kind of complaining that "dork age" did. And without a more specific definition and a strict cutoff, anyone can say a given work or creator is currently in an audience-alienating era if they, personally, disapprove of the direction it is taking. As I mentioned before, there's a lot of this on the TV Networks section, with editors voicing their dislike for a network's current programming, without giving any proof that it is a widely-shared opinion.

Edited by ElSquibbonator on Jan 29th 2022 at 12:13:22 PM

Well, we can just clean up the examples for now, and if there are still issues we can eventually take this trope back to TRS.

I think moving clean up to long term projects is a good idea since multiple tropes are involved.

Sure, but you need to keep in mind that all that misuse came before the rename and retool. It's harder to justify a shoehorn if the trope is about monetary success and not quality.

If it doesn't exist yet, I'll start one

It is done

Edited by magnumtropus on Jan 29th 2022 at 6:56:53 PM