It is a dark time for the video game industry. Publishers have increasingly turned their back on the faithful customers who have supported them for all these years for the sake of pandering to groups that don’t even play video games. Games can’t just star a regular white guy anymore; they insist on forcing all these ugly diverse protagonists that gamers can’t relate to.

I am speaking, of course, about the Sonic the Hedgehog series, which has consistently expected gamers to accept a hedgehog as the main character. I am not a hedgehog. I am a human being. I only want to play games where the main character looks like me, which means he needs to be a person. Where’s Sonic the Human, huh, Sega?

It’s clear this erinaceous abomination was pushed on us in a foolish attempt to sell video games to hedgehogs, even if it drives away the hobby’s existing human fans. But this will never work. Hedgehogs don’t buy video games. Humans buy video games. Hedgehogs don’t even have money or thumbs, so why the hell are we pandering to them? And don’t try to bullshit me, I know what I’m talking about. I went to my local GameStop and asked the girl at the counter if she ever saw a hedgehog walk in and buy a video game. She said no. Then I asked if she would be my girlfriend, and she said to leave now. But the crucial point is that nobody wants to buy a video game that stars a hedgehog. Not even hedgehogs.

But this series is even worse than you might think. While I’ve never played a Sonic game and never will, I’ve seen pictures of them on X and the whole cast is just a big parade of repulsive diversity. Sonic’s friends include a fox, an echidna, and a whole bunch of other animals that, like hedgehogs, do not play video games. There’s this one guy named Charmy, and he’s a bee. A bee! I don’t even think bees could push a button.

I know what you must be thinking, is there even a single human in the whole cast? Well, guess what, there is. It’s Dr. Eggman, the villain of the franchise. A series full of animals and the one human being is the bad guy. That will sell well with the human audience. It’s clear that rather than simply focusing on making a game that’s fun to play, somebody paid Sega to push a shameless misanthropic agenda and tell gamers to hate their own species.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate hedgehogs. I just never want to see them in any work of fiction ever and will get mad at anybody who puts them in one. This doesn’t come from a place of hate; it’s simply good business sense. Your customers are humans, so give them what they want. If hedgehogs care about video games half as much as these corporate cheerleaders think, they can make their own games about hedgehogs that I will proceed to get just as mad about.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to play a real game. One with people in it. I can’t think of any games I genuinely like off the top of my head, but rest assured I will definitely play one because I am a person who plays video games, which HEDGEHOGS WILL NEVER DO.