Today, we have Jamil “Jam Stunna” Ragland writing an article about sharing the joys of being in the community with his young son.
Jamil and son watching the Charizard/Greninja reveal for Super Smash Bros. 4
Introduction
My son wants to go to a Smash Bros. tournament. He’s been playing videogames his entire life, just like his father. I remember being five years old, helping my mother to get over those impossible jumps in Super Mario Bros., playing the Nintendo Entertainment System we rented from Blockbuster and never returned on time. My blood boils when I remember how my uncle humiliated me at the age of seven in Street Fighter II, double-perfecting me with nothing more than Chun-Li’s grab.
But tournaments? I used to line up in the arcades when Street Fighter II Championship Edition was released, waiting for the opportunity to play as Sagat and Bison, but it never occurred to me that people held tournaments for videogames. I organized a round-robin style competition in my dorm during my freshman year of college, but that was just for bragging rights, not a cash pot. I didn’t attend my first tournament until I was almost nineteen years old, where I was promptly bodied by players who’d perfected wavedashing and l-canceling before I even knew what those terms meant. Here’s my son, on the other hand, immersed in the competitive side of gaming from birth, ready to put his dad’s money on the line for a chance at being the best, all before his seventh birthday.
I was decent at Melee, at one point even managing to come in 9th in my state’s power rankings. I lost more matches than I won. While that was frustrating, I would tell myself that I just needed to work a little bit harder, go to a few more tournaments, and then I would have that breakthrough moment where I began performing well at a local, and maybe even regional level.
Unforeseen Events
And then life happened. I found myself with a pregnant wife while working and attending college, all shortly after my 21st birthday. I played Melee whenever I could- between classes at school, on slow days at work, with my wife in the evening. It was clear that I didn’t have the time to dedicate to improving my gameplay, or traveling to tournaments to gain the experience only the cauldron of the brackets can teach you. There would always be Smash, but competitive Smash would have to wait.
After my son was born, my plans changed again, but not in the way I expected. My wife was very supportive of my desire to begin attending tournaments again, and encouraged me to go whenever I could get a weekend off from work. Suddenly, I didn’t want to go. I never wanted to be away from this strange little creature that did nothing but eat, cry and poop. I went to work and school to provide for him, but leaving him to go play a videogame? It didn’t make sense to me anymore to spend hours away from home, blowing money on what was a silly hobby.
Juggling Everything
That lasted for about six months. Being a newlywed is stressful. Having a newborn is stressful. Juggling a job and classes is stressful. Doing all these things at the same time is the equivalent of taking a Falcon Punch to the nerves. I had to get away, if only for a few hours, to spend some time with my friends. Viva La Smash was the perfect opportunity, a 3-day regional event being held about 45 minutes away from my home. My wife told me to go for it, to even spend the night at the tournament so that I could get some “me” time. I took her advice, and attended the largest Smash tournament I’d ever been to up to that point. I carried my son’s baby pictures with me, and used every excuse I could find to show off my favorite image, a picture of him in his swinging chair, holding a Gamecube controller.
The lack of practice was apparent, and I didn’t even make it out of my first pool. The rest of the weekend would be me watching other matches and catching up with friends. But as soon as I was eliminated, I wanted to leave. Not because I was salty, but because I wanted to see my son. I made my best friend and training partner drive me all the way back home that same night because I couldn’t bear the thought of being away from my family. Smash and my friends were still a part of me, and I was thankful for the chance to play with them again. It was just an increasingly smaller part of me.
How could I continue to play Smash if I didn’t want to be away from home long enough to do so? Eventually I decided the only solution was to start hosting my own tournaments. It was perfect: I could attend the tournament and have my son there with me at the same time. They were never big or fancy, and I was lucky if I got 30 people to show up. My tournament organizer career was a short-lived one though. Playing in tournaments is fun; running one is not; playing in and running a tournament is basically impossible. It became tiresome as well trying to find local venues that could accommodate a couple of dozen people and several CRTs and game systems. I used my home, my college’s auditorium, even a Blimpie’s (don’t ask). If I wasn’t a great Melee player, I was an even less great TO.
As my son grew older, I introduced him to all the games that I played and loved: Street Fighter, LittleBigPlanet, Mario Kart, the Legend of Zelda. None of them made the same impact on him that Smash Bros. did. He’s played all four games in the series (counting Project M as its own game), and loves everything about it. Melee was his favorite until P:M 3.0 was released; now he no longer has to take the Brawl disc out of the Wii to play with Mewtwo. On my end, I’d pretty much given up on ever playing Smash competitively again. I simply didn’t have the time. Yet playing with my son, whether it’s Smash 64 or Melee or even Brawl, has brought the game back to life for me in a way I can’t really understand. It took me a while to realize that it wasn’t Smash that was so amazing, but the ability to bond with my son over a game series that I’d fallen in love with fifteen years ago.
That bonding time has become even more important to me now, but not without pitfalls. Ever since my divorce three years ago, I’ve tried to avoid falling into the “Fun Weekend Dad” trope. I admit that I’ve lapsed from time to time, as the guilt surrounding my marriage’s dissolution sometimes gets the best of me, and I find myself trying to make up for not being around my son as much as I would like with toys, sweets and games. It’s not a healthy thing to do for my son, emotionally or physically, and I can’t be a good parent if he sees me as his friend and not his father. Yet I love gaming, and above all I love gaming with my son. I’ve gone to giant majors and hole-in-the-wall weeklies, played my best friend for hours and been destroyed by the likes of Cort, Chudat and Mew2King. None of those experiences come close to sitting in front of my ancient CRT and playing Project M with my son, fighting two level nine computers, team attack off.
It’s never as simple as that though. My son is not allowed to play videogames during the school week; this is something both his mother and I agree on. During the week, he stays with his mother. I often wonder how he perceives this: does he understand that he can’t play games during the week because he has homework and other responsibilities to attend to, or does he simply think “Daddy lets me play videogames and Mommy doesn’t.” Have I become the Fun Dad in spite of my attempts not to? Balancing my desire to have fun with my son against my need to be his father is one of the hardest things I’ve had to learn. I’ve made mistakes, and I’m bound to make more.
Looking Ahead
This summer, Zenith is taking place in Brooklyn, NY. While I’ve tried to avoid my son’s first tournament experience being a major with hundreds of people laughing, cursing and carrying on in the way Smashers do, I think it might be the right time for him. He’d get to play a bunch of matches thanks to pools, and after we both get knocked out (I have no illusions about doing well in these games any longer), we can head over to the Nintendo World store. Being a Smasher and being a father have not always gone hand in hand, but when my son talks to me about training and learning how to dash-dance and wavedash, and when I think about us together, whether it’s in my apartment or on the train back from Brooklyn this summer, I don’t think there’s a better combination in the world.
-Jamil
Wow, that was a really touching article. It’s always nice to see how smash can be more than just a game.
This was really touching and kind of makes me look forward to what the future holds in regards to my life and Smash. I’ll try to make sure to say hi at Zenith. 🙂
As a father of a 4 month old, the article really touched home for me. Thanks for this read and meleeiton.me for some great content!
Good read, and touching indeed!
On the ”fun dad” part, have you ever asked him why he thinks he isn’t allowed to play video games during weekdays? I’m not a parent, but I think kids ”get” more then we think they do sometimes!
Great article. But I’m not sure a large smash tournament is the best place to be for a seven year old. They’re overwhelmingly populated by late teens and twenty somethings, and it might turn your son off to the scene, or so on to the scene that he gets addicted. Admittedly I know nothing about child development, but I would say waiting a couple years would be prudent.