2GGaming’s Twitch stream of Civil War
Last weekend’s Super Smash Bros. 4 tournament, one of the most anticipated yet, was a wrestling-style rivalry match between two crews led by two Smash titans. Drawing over 50,000 viewers, Civil War was a DIY event from the ground up. It’s the kind of event that could only exist around a gaming community left to its own devices, with essentially no meddling from developers or publishers.
Civil War was born of a tweet last year by a top Fox player named Larry “LarryLurr” Holland. He asked, “If there was a civil war in Smash 4 with ZeRo and Ally leading the opposing sides who do you think each top player would side with?” Below the tweet, the community heatedly debated which “Smash god” they were faithful to. Fan-made trailers, fan-made overlays and fan-made posters all contributed to the hype, which attracted players to the Santa Ana, California, event from as far away as Japan.
@TSMZeRo @komorikiri_SSCF
‘I won it for you.’ #CivilWar #TeamZero #CivilWarArt pic.twitter.com/lfOmbDFd8o— N’keln (@captainnkeln) March 27, 2017
Poster #15@LarryLurr and Fox as Starlord and Rocket Raccoon.
I wouldn’t trust them, I heard they’re not honest. @2GGaming #civilwar pic.twitter.com/pUNHEH4Ypo— SPIF (@SPIFspace) March 21, 2017
It caught on because of “plot”: the ongoing narrative Smash fans weave out of top players’ wins and losses against each other. Gonzalo “ZeRo” Barrios is widely considered the best Smash player around, but Elliot “Ally” Carroza-Oyarce has some ineffable power over him, stealing some unexpected wins throughout the years. Carroza-Oyarce’s surprising victories against Barrios spawned a “rivalry” — not a real one, Carroza-Oyarce insists — that led Smash promoter 2GGaming and California venue Esports Arena to join forces, making that rivalry the theme of a tournament. Nearly all the top players were there: MkLeo, Nairo, Dabuz, ANTi, and others. After getting split by allegiance, they formed crews, or teams spearheaded by either rival. The community latched on, spamming #TeamZeRo and #TeamAlly across the web all weekend.
Unlike publishers like Blizzard and Riot, Smash‘s developers or publishers do very little to cultivate or promote competitive scene. In fact, it’d be a mistake to ascribe any ownership to them. The culture belongs to the players, one-hundred per cent, and that’s what what makes it fertile for grassroots events like Civil War.
Smash‘s competitive scene is sometimes considered the black sheep of Nintendo’s esports-leaning franchises. Pokemon and Splatoon tournaments are both hosted by Nintendo, but for the most part, high-stakes competition runs against the publisher’s brand, which is built on easy-access fun. Prior to Smash 4‘s 2014 release, Nintendo briefly paraded it at an invitational tournament at E3.
But while Nintendo has sponsored events like Apex 2015, it rarely hosts them in the U.S. A little more relaxed, Nintendo runs Amiibo-only Smash tournaments in Japan, each limited to 16 players. The prize was a free Amiibo figurine.
Compared to the U.S.’s fiercely competent Smash tournaments, which attract players from around the world, Nintendo promotes a scene with more entry points than skill.
In an interview with Nintendo Life, Super Smash Bros. creator Masahiro Sakurai explained that he designs the franchise so each game “can also be enjoyed by a wide range of people, such as those who might just be getting into gaming when they are released.”
He stressed that, to do this, he can’t listen “just to the biggest fans, but to a whole range of different users to give everyone an experience that is fun.” Throughout the years, he’s made a few offhand comments in favour of casual play, implying that competitive play can polarize the community. To him, it seems, the competitive community doesn’t reflect the populist brand Nintendo stakes its success on.
Given Nintendo’s lack of support, the Smash 4 scene belongs to the players, and this is why events like Civil War are able to exist and thrive. “We created our own forums, chat rooms, strategy guides, tier lists, tournaments, everything,” Smash 4 player Stephen “Omni” Silver told me.
He thinks that the scene would be less “raw” if Nintendo had more of a hand in things. “There’d be less interaction between members of the community because, instead of building our own foundation, we’d simply stand on Nintendo’s curtails,” he explained.
With Civil War, players were empowered to create their own rivalry narrative, in part, because they owned the means of communicating about the game. They made the memes; they tweeted out fan art. There was no giant publisher swooping in with buzz-killing dad jokes about top players. There was no insane ticket price inflated by publisher-run tournaments. It’s by the fans and for the fans.
Doodle of the real heroes at Civil War ? pic.twitter.com/fA6Jzm4JEr
— ( . Y . ) (@ohnips) March 27, 2017
In an email, 2GGaming tournament organiser James “Jmex” Chacon described all the art, fan overlays, trailers and final renders the community put together to brand Civil War. Nintendo’s hands-off approach to Smash‘s competitive scene means anyone can contribute to it, he says.
But when it comes to money, a little help wouldn’t hurt. “I hope Nintendo reaches out to the larger orgs doing Smash events,” Chacon told me, “and even some of the smaller guys just starting to build their local scene. This’ll help maintain Smash and the community behind it for many years to come.”
The Smash community’s culture runs pretty deep — rivalries, friendships, “plot armour” — players who win because they have good stories — memes, upsets and the Wombo Combo. “Hype” is one of the most-used words for describing Smash‘s competitive scene.
It’s an organic sort of hype, built from the ground up, that grew strong as the game’s grassroots culture strengthened. It’s like constructing a kids-only treehouse that your parents have never entered. With that said, no kid ever turned up their nose at a $US20 ($26) slid under the door.
Comments
10 responses to “Smash 4’s Competitive Scene Is Hype Because Nintendo Leaves It Alone”
Except the smash community almost puts moba communities to shame when it comes to being horrible.
As a member of Sydney’s Smash community and a close follower of the scene as a whole, I respectfully disagree with this statement.
You are part of a small community segment, look into the drama coming out of the major tournaments. Its pretty disgusting, with things like actual racial remarks not being uncommon.
Evo is normally a good example, where players in other games seem much more responsible. Your group may be exception to the standard, but they definitely don’t set it.
What drama are you talking about?
Google just “smash community” and tell me what the first recommended search is. Its hard to know where to start with the community because it is so volatile, people used to say that the way CS 1.6 players treated newbies (CZ, Source and GO) horribly, but I have never seen infighting as bad as Smash and Brawl, worse yet is how they treat players that play the same title.
It is a game that seems to bring the worst out in people, even when not playing anonymously behind a screen.
It’s true the community was rather toxic around the time Brawl was released, and the community really split between the Melee players and the Brawl players. That divide is still around between Melee and Smash 4 now but the community as a whole is a lot closer than it used to be.
There’s actually been a lot of effort by TOs and other prominent members of the community over the years to bring the community together and honestly it’s been working. The Smash community as a while, I think, is in a really good position at the moment and it’s continuing to improve. I’m not going to disagree there has been problems in the past but the scene is evolving and those problems are disappearing.
As a recent example – a player went into cardiac arrest at a big tournament in Europe last month and needed to be sent to hospital, where he needed multiple operations. The community has donated $30,000 to date to help to pay his medical bills. Does that sound like a toxic community to you? This is just one example, these kinds of stories usually don’t get posted on mainline news sites like Kotaku because they don’t generate the clicks – stories about the drama are what drives clicks, so unless you were involved in the community you’d probably miss them.
I’m not going to say it wasn’t bad in the past, because it was. I’m not denying that. But the Smash community as a whole has really matured especially over the past few years, to the point where it’s one of the better communities out there in my opinion.
That’s because Smash isn’t a competitive fighting game. Masahiro Sakurai Has stated that he never designed it with competition play in mind and thinks the community that has created these events are offensive to the game he made.
No, he doesn’t think “the community that has created these events are offensive to the game he made”. He never said that. He did say that he thinks the way competitive Smash doesn’t utilise all the game has to offer is a “shame”, but went on to say that the way the winners are determined is definitely on skill, that he’s happy both Melee and Smash 4 are being played competitively, and he’s happy that players can enjoy the game in their own way. He also said that he needs to design it with many different styles of play in mind, and he’s also said that he considers the fun factor of the game above all else and wouldn’t make balance changes if that detracted from the fun factor. It’s true that he considers it a party game first and foremost but that doesn’t mean he hates the competitive side of it.
http://sourcegaming.info/2016/04/09/sakurai-on-balance/
The game may not have been specifically designed with competition in mind initially but neither were Starcraft or Doom when you think about it.
Also consider, Smash 4 has been patched multiple times for balance changes. This isn’t something they would consider doing if they didn’t care about the competitive scene. Also, Sakurai himself has attended multiple Japanese tournaments in person both as a spectator and even as a competitor in the very early days – again not something you’d expect him to do if he apparently hated competitive Smash so much.
I believe President Han Solo said something similar in 1973.
I’m glad we got that 20 translated to the aus dollar. I was a bit confused there for a second.