HOW TO GET PUMPED FOR SUPER SMASH BROS. MELEE

The Evo hype train is easy to ride. How can you not feel the feels as you watch your favorite gaming all-stars cry with emotions? Not even Silent Wolf can deny the excitement of a 58-second four-stock by Axe’s Pikachu in top eight.

Now that Evo 2014 is over, the flood of recap blog posts clogs your news feed and people just can’t stop talking about how mature Mango has grown and how much Prog made them cry during his speech.

But new questions arise. Chances are you’re sitting in your room reading about Evo and wondering if we’ll get in next year. Wondering how many tournaments Melee has left. All this talk of Melee being the oldest game featured at Evo (by a lot) is kinda getting to you. The game seems to have stood the test of time, but how long could a 2001 Gamecube game really last? Will Smash 4 leave Melee in the dust?

I’m not here to be a downer. I promise.

In fact, I’ve come up with some ways to rev up the Melee scene, even after Evo 2014 has come and gone. Part of what makes us awesome is our passion, our spark. Our drive. Determination. Whatever you want to call it, it’s what got us into Evo last year, and it’s what has kept this scene alive since 2002. Here’s how to keep it going.

Get better at what you do.

Focus on yourself. What do you most love and excel at in the Melee scene? Do you play a mean Falcon? Run a great stream? Commentate? Whatever gets your heart aflutter, get better at it. We need more amazing Falcons, top-notch streams, and on-point commentators. Figure out what you most enjoy about Melee and practice those things at every opportunity. If you enjoy running tournaments, focus your time on providing the best tournament experience for your attendees. If you truly enjoy being part of this community, do your best to improve yourself so you may better serve the community as a whole.

Be yourself.

This goes hand in hand with #1. Another incredible aspect of the Melee crowd is its fantastic diversity. No two smashers are alike. That being said, I often see newcomers trying hard to “fit in” with everyone around them, whether it’s by overusing the vernacular, showing off their (rather useless) knowledge of Melee mechanics, or faithfully remaining in the highest tier of characters. Just because everyone is on about Fox taking over the world doesn’t mean you have to play Fox to keep up with the game. Play the characters you enjoy, and let your personality shine through your playstyle.

“That is the way to learn the most, that when you are doing something with such enjoyment that you don’t notice that the time passes.” 

– Albert Einstein, not a smasher but a pretty cool guy

Likewise, it’s awesome to know a lot about the game, but in trying to prove yourself you’re probably just being annoying and wasting your own time. If you’re really passionate about memorizing Mew2King’s info dump, knock yourself out. Otherwise, spend your time learning things that interest and benefit you. The Melee community doesn’t need more Hungryboxes, Mangoes, and Mew2Kings, we need more awesome personalities that bring their own unique perspective to the game. We need you.

Remember the past…

I still get crazy excited when I watch the MLG NY 2006 grand finals between PC Chris and Ken. Sets like that, the ones that make history, will never die.

Never forget the effort that we have put into keeping Melee alive. We’ve been pulled through our darkest times to become stronger than ever before. We crushed the Evo 2013 poll by a landslide and when they thought it was a hack, we donated $94k to breast cancer research just to prove it again. Melee died out quite a bit when Brawl came out in 2008, but when the new Smash installment left many of us unsatisfied, we fell back to Melee. Our numbers grew, and continue to grow.

…and look to the future.

At Evo 2014, with 970 entrants, the number of Melee entrants grew by nearly 300 since Evo 2013, while the number of Marvel entrants dropped by almost the same amount (despite Marvel being newer than Melee by ten years). We are a growing community. With streaming becoming a gaming staple within the last few years, we’ve gained more exposure than ever and continue to broaden our audience.

Recently, we’ve made a big step forward by finally receiving Nintendo’s blessing. Until now Melee was the rebellious child of Nintendo, unwilling to be forced into our creators’ design for us. This year, however, Nintendo sponsored Evo, and thus sponsored competitive Melee. They took a big step forward with the Smash Invitational at E3 by acknowledging the competitive community and inviting our stars to their party. Yeah, these gestures were probably to get us all interested in Smash 4, but even so I think competitive Smash can expect continued support from Nintendo.

Starting months ago, even before the Smash invitational, smashers were already complaining about Smash 4, saying it looks terrible, or that it looks “exactly like Brawl.” Stop being afraid of change and try to look forward to the next Smash installment. Smash 4 is not going to be Melee, and it’s probably not going to be Brawl, and it’s not going to be PM or Smash 64 either. Let’s await this game with an open mind. Maybe Smash 4 and Melee can coexist.

Give back.

I know I said to focus on yourself before, but now turn your attention to those around you. What can you do to help others in the community? It can be as simple as being a respectful tourney goer. Acknowledge the people who keep things going. A pretty good policy at tournaments is to thank the TO(s), without whom you wouldn’t be there. Thank the streamers, who go through more than we give them credit for (as I discussed in my last post). Offer to help with cleanup if you can spare the time, or at least pick up your trash. I really like making people food, so whenever I host/co-host tournaments I make sure to feed everybody a meal. You could provide housing to travelers or offer to practice with new smashers. Anything that you can do to make someone else’s job easier, to help everything run more smoothly, to make Smash better, do it.

This summer was inundated with amazing Smash events. Things may be calming down now, but we have a whole new Smash installment to look forward to, and there are still plenty of Melee tournaments to come. Ride the Evo hype as long as it lasts—but find your own hype, too. Dig up your passions and embrace them. Remember why you still smash. There has never been a better time to be active in the scene. We are on the rise.

BONUS VIDS TO UP YOUR GAME

• Shiz vs. M2K - Revival of Melee Losers Finals 4 - Nothing beats the raw excitement from the spectators of this match. Shiz will always be one of my favorite players.

• M2K vs. PPMD - MLG Anaheim Losers Semis - An incredibly close set with amazing gameplay from both players. "Ten more years?" "Twenty."

• Here's a playlist of timeless classics.

• Hax vs. S2J - Evo 2013 QF - Is there a person on this earth who doesn't enjoy a good Falcon ditto?

• Mango vs. Armada - Genesis 2 GF - Another close set in a dead-even rivalry. When will Armada and Mango fight next?

• The Smash Brothers - Most smashers have seen this, but if you haven't, you really should. This documentary series is an excellent source for Smash history and for perspectives from the pros. If you have seen it, watch it again. The effort that Samox put into creating The Smash Brothers makes it worth watching two or three or ten times.



-Venance

Smash Studios Presents: Another Look at Streaming

Streaming is an incredible aspect of the Smash community, one that is often undervalued. Many smashers tend to take streaming for granted and forget the work that streamers have to put in. Large tournaments are expected to be streamed somehow. I think we need to take a minute and realize how good we have it.

For all the sad people who can’t go to Apex or Evo or ROM, myself included, being able to watch those events live is excellent comfort. It allows smashers everywhere to be involved with their community and support players by learning new names and viewing the progress of those already established. Small-town smashers especially have a difficult time integrating themselves into the community, but streaming allows them to stay up-to-date on big events. Sure, it’s not the in-person tournament experience, but watching the stream is definitely more exciting than reading the tournament results online and waiting for videos to be uploaded. Watching the Evo 2013 top eight on stream is one of my favorite smash memories. Streams are fantastic for everyone who can’t attend these monumental events.

Not only is streaming awesome for those involved in the community, but it also helps draw in new players by giving exposure to the scene. Super commentator/streamer D1 says he has “received numerous tweets, facebook messages, and the like from people who never knew our scene existed.” More players means more playing. More tournaments, bigger turnouts, and a bigger, more impactful community.

Now I want you to imagine for a second what the community would be like without streams. Not as cool. Streaming is a link between worlds.

As I mentioned earlier, our community tends to take streaming for granted sometimes. We expect streams and we expect them to be decent quality, and we get a lot of whiners when no one delivers. But few people know what goes on behind the scenes. Streaming isn’t easy. In fact, it’s pretty difficult, as I recently heard from D1:

“You have to make sure you have the proper layouts and slides, advertising the event on all avenues of social media, making sure there’s internet at the venue and more.

You have to be spot on with changing scenes, which consists of the crowd cam, player cam, direct feed footage of the game, slides, and also remembering to play ads.  Some people find sitting for 7 hours at a desk job to be tough, but streamers (and commentators) sometimes find themselves working for longer periods of time, with barely any time for lunch in between.  I've seen streamers do long shifts miles away from their home without getting compensated for their hard work.” 

That’s a lot to handle. It’s so important for our community not to take advantage of this amazing aspect of our community, but to give back. Supporting our streamers is the first step.

And how about that last bolded bit? TOs, compensate those who stream your events. Streamers often spend their own hard-earned cash trying to get you the best stream they can. Compensation is only fair considering that, as D1 says, streamers are “practically advertising their event for them and in turn more people will attend the next event the organizer hosts.”

As a viewer, you can of course donate and subscribe to your favorite streams. In general, donating or subscribing to a stream costs significantly less than a venue fee, and you still get to watch the matches. It's a pretty small price to pay for an ongoing experience. But here are a few suggestions from a streamer:

“Money isn't the only way to show thanks to the streamer.  A simple thank you message, following their stream, subscribing to them on youtube, and sharing their videos is also greatly appreciated.  Just because they may not respond doesn't mean they don't appreciate the love you send their way.”

Basically, our streams depend on streamers. Our streamers, in turn, depend on the community to support them so they can continue streaming. Remember this next time you tune in, and maybe send a quick thank-you to the streamer. I’m sure they’d appreciate it.

Huge thanks to D1 for contributing to this article.

-Venance