This post ended up being way longer than I expected, but these ideas mean a lot to me and I wanted to fully explain. Thanks in advance to everyone who takes the time to read it.
If you attended Apex 2015 and stuck around for Smash 4 Finals, you probably heard chants of “Melee” coming from parts of the crowd. You also probably noticed that, a few seconds later, shouts of “NO!” coming from many other attendees. Whether you were there or not, you can probably guess that neither “side” was happy afterwards.
There’s already a ton of discussion happening about this on Twitter, but I haven’t seen anyone actually split out the issues and problems yet. I think there are at least 2 different things we’re discussing at the same time without knowing it:
- Respect for Smashers across titles
- Respect for the time of tournament attendees
Respect for Smashers across titles
Almost no one who identifies as a Melee community member thinks that the Melee vs Brawl fighting in 2008 was very productive. Comparing the merits of the 2 games was an interesting and potentially healthy conversation, but we let things get personal and we stopped being respectful of each other.
We’ll tell you we learned that a big part of respect is not attacking or labelling people whose personal preferences aren’t the same as our own. In fact, many of our community leaders believe in the concept of “One Unit” – working towards a Smash community that is accepting and respectful of anyone who cares about Smash.
So why, then, at Apex 2015, did fans of Melee shout in disapproval in the middle of Smash 4’s Finals? Isn’t that blatantly disrespectful of Smash 4’s community, which is a huge subset of the Smash community more generally?
Well, yes and no.
Respect for the time of tournament attendees
I want to give some context for the frustrations some Melee fans encountered at Apex – if you have to skip some part of this article, I guess it can be this.
Everyone who attended Apex 2015 for Melee had to find their way to Secaucus, NJ, spent Friday running around in confusion, and made the 45-minute journey to Somerset, NJ at least once. Most of them were from out of the state of NJ. Many of them had obligations (work or school) on Monday.
Some of them had to wait for hours for a bus from the Clarion to Somerset, only to find that there wasn’t enough space. They had to pay for a cab to the venue and they were DQd from their pools.
On Sunday, SSBM fans came to the venue to watch on Finals day – those who watched teams arrived in the AM hours.
Melee Bracket was supposed to end at 5pm, but it didn’t. Smash 4 Finals were supposed to end at 8pm, but it didn’t. Melee Finals were supposed to start at 8pm and end at 10pm, but it didn’t.
There were a lot of things that went wrong at Apex, and as a result, we were still watching Smash 4 Finals past the time the whole event was supposed to have ended. Instead of being on their way home, SSBM fans were stuck waiting for top 8 with no updates on when it might start. On top of that, snow threatened to cancel flights and make the late-night drives home even scarier.
And then, someone, or a group of someones, hit a breaking point. Chants of “Melee” began, in opposition of the Smash 4 event taking place, and others joined in. From the stage it felt like at least half of the crowd was cheering.
I can think of some reasons why this chant was started, and why it spread, but I think they all boil down to 2 possible main underlying motivations:
- a desire to hurt the Smash 4 event or community in some way
- a desire to vent frustration and impatience
When I look at it this way, I have a really hard time believing that the people chanting were motivated by reason #1, even if I count “starting Melee early” or “cutting off Smash 4 Finals” as a subset of reason #1.
But, that doesn’t change the fact that the chant did hurt the Smash 4 event and its community.
Coming full circle
It’s my opinion that, to truly respect one another, we need to give one another the benefit of the doubt.
It’s true that anyone who started that cheer or participated in it was being inconsiderate of anyone who was enjoying Smash 4, but it’s my belief that very few of them were doing it out of a lack of respect for Smash 4 and its community.
To come full circle, all Smashers need to reject the action of cheering “Melee” because it implies that Melee is better than other games. We need to reject anyone who deliberately tries to hurt another event or community. This means that we all need to speak out against such things, and we also need to back people up when they do. For example, in retrospect, I wish that I had joined in with the “No” chant.
At the same time, all Smashers, including Smash 4 fans, need to acknowledge the very legitimate frustrations of the “Melee” chanters – we don’t want tournaments to run until 3am on a Sunday. We also should acknowledge that SSBM Finalists were asked to be available to play for 18 hours on Sunday (9am – 3am), which in my view is unacceptable.
Players and attendees need to let TOs and TO staff know what we expect from them. Out of respect for our time, we need them to make realistic schedules, fight hard to keep to that schedule, and let players and attendees know if things are slipping.
One Unit
I said on Twitter that “One Unit” is not a description of the way things are. Far from it. One Unit is an ideal, it’s a vision for the community that we are striving to become. To really understand One Unit is to understand that the starting point is each and every one of us, and that it’s hard work.
Working to be aware of how our words and actions might hurt others is hard, especially when we’re frustrated.
Working to listen to others and acknowledging them even when they’re doing it in an unproductive way is even harder.
But these are the things that One Unit is asking us to do.
What are you asking me to do exactly?
If you started, participated in, or didn’t see anything wrong with the “Melee” chant at Apex, I’m asking you to consider how that action hurt the people enjoying Smash 4 and why it may not have been the right thing to do.
If you were there for or heard about the “Melee” chant and think that Melee players are jerks and that they wanted to hurt Smash 4, I’m asking you to consider their experience of Apex and to acknowledge that their frustrations were legitimate.
Boiling our differences down to “the other side is wrong” isn’t how we’re going to get closer to One Unit. Join me in trying to find common ground in all that we do together as Smashers.
I agree with most of this, aside from one particular point.
“Smash Community” is a misnomer.
There is no single determining aspect of Super Smash Brothers that invariably “brings us together”. The most important determining factor for being part of the community is an individuals preference to specific aspects and intricacies of the games themselves.
Communities are formed as a result of a shared interest in these preferences. They are a natural occurrence.
Smash games are wildly different – folks segregate to certain games they prefer based on aspects of the game. It is completely natural that two individual smash games both spawned their own communities with no real connection to each other than their games sharing a franchise. Communities can evolve and exist outside of simply a love for the game, but they don’t really form without that initial spark. I’m sure we’ve all met lifelong friends that we wouldn’t have met if it weren’t for a shared interest in a specific smash game.
People play games for different reasons. Some people like Smash 4 because of its new and exciting cast of characters. Some people like 64 for nostalgia and for its super fast paced 0 – deaths. Some people like Melee because of Prog’s sexy voice and Leffen’s anime hair.
What then is the connecting thread that forms a Smash community? And moreover, why is it so important?
As we’ve already established, the Super Smash Bros franchise is vastly different in every iteration. I as a Smash 4 player play my game for wildly different reasons than someone who plays Melee. Other than warm fuzzies, what is the point of One Unit?
The FGC has no problem at all disliking other games in the FGC, or being respectfully (or otherwise) vocal about it. It is mutually understood that not everyone is in the FGC for the same reason. Sure, there is crossover (just like there is in Smash), but events like Evo don’t tend to have animosity – and when they do, its “I prefer my game over yours” specific.
“When’s Marvel” came during a time that Marvel was the most hyped thing on the planet. The Marvel community was not looked down on for being passionate about their game – and no game should be. Segregated communities is a natural part of the FGC and they are not bent on forcing unity. Other communities respect that passion and try to strive for it, not get upset that Marvel fans prefer Marvel over other games. Even between individual street fighter titles, it doesn’t make sense to be caught up in the franchise rather than the individual games.
Melee folks wanting Melee on stream, despite my bias for Smash 4, is completely justified. As you pointed out it was more out of frustration than intentional animosity. I found Smash 4 finals entertaining because it displayed the aspects of the game that I value. Melee folks do not need to enjoy or even PRETEND to enjoy the game just because they share a franchise. Yes, chanting for melee after zeros win could be seen as rude, but it is not a community issue, it is a “don’t be a douche” issue. And really, it wouldn’t have been an issue if the games were handled individually, whether that be on two separate streams or at two separate tournaments.
This is not to defend what the Melee players did at all, being a douche is being a douche – but sitting through close to 4 hours of a game you don’t care at all about to watch a game you are crazy passionate about, which you naturally blame Smash 4 as being the culprit of holding up the tournament (along with the other things you mentioned) – it’s obviously going to cause some sort of collective sigh of relief when they can finally get to see what they came for. It doesn’t make me want to blame them, it makes me want to make our community stronger to shut them up.
And if Melee players simply didn’t show up to Smash 4 and the crowd was way smaller, they’d be getting yelled at for not supporting Smash 4 and how it is selfish of them to not even give Smash 4 a chance (a game they don’t care about or enjoy).
We don’t connect on a love for a franchise, we connect on a love for a game. Expecting folks from different communities with wildly different preferences to value and enjoy the same things…. just doesn’t seem to make sense. If there wasn’t so much effort being put in to trying to force that unity, to shove each others games down each others throats, then we’d all get along better for it.
Props to you for speaking from a position that is probably very unpopular, but that makes a lot of sense. One problem I see with it is that people outside of smash don’t see the same divergence in the games that we do, so they expect us to get along, care about each others’ games, and probably hold them at the same tournaments. For example, from interviews and tweets from Mr. Wizard of Evo, it’s clear to me that he doesn’t understand the separation of the smash games and expects melee players to move on and play Smash 4 in addition. That’s one of the sources of pressure for us to be one unit, even though it might be easier to separate and let each game create leaders to run the tournaments themselves. It’s not the end of the world for leaders of other communities to misunderstand us, but it’s at least something that’s pressuring us to have unity.
If I could upvote this post like 100 times I would. I find smashers need for the other games approval so weird. Douchiness towards Zero is the only issue here, not some game ideology issue. We are talking about Nintendo products not religion.
If one wanted to find a case against the idea that “there is no one unified smash community”, I implore you to look no further than the Friday of Apex 2015. Not the melee community, brawl community, smash 4 community, nor 64 community, but the smash community as a whole group effort is what made that event go on.
If this happened this one time I might have bought “Impatience” as an excuse.
Unfortunately melee fans did the exact same thing to Brawls champion last apex. But sure, keep sweeping it under the rug by making it sound like back and forth hate between smash4/Brawl players and melee.
How on earth is the smash 4 community to blame. They’re victims. As a melee player, i hear the constant uttering on twitter, twitch, and reddit about how noncompetitive and lame Smash 4 and its players are.
But most of all. I hear it in person just as often. This is not a ‘minority’ issue, we in the melee community simply use that as a defense to allow us to continue hating any non-melee smash game at each large national. It will happen again, just as it does every time.
Melee is a better game than SSB4. It just a fact, should we really cuddle and give sunshine stickers to everyone that tries? The vast majority of people at the event have no desire to watch a slower less competitive version of the game they came to see. Why do all the ssb4’s have to get super butt hurt and cry that they are playing a game we don’t find interesting or challenging? We aren’t telling them they can’t play their game we are telling them they can’t make us watch it and care. SSB4 isn’t a sequel, it’s a different game entirely sharing almost nothing with the game that everyone cares about other than a name and developer and frankly probably would not have been on the main stage at APEX if not for Nintendo $$$. It’s not interesting it’s slow and I don’t give a single iota of a fuck about it and we are so sick of people who have no idea about the game asking us why we don’t play the “new one” and having to deal with this faction that thinks Melee has to die for new smash game to matter. Nintendo has to make a smash game that competes with Melee first then you might have an argument. As a die hard Melee’r and fan when people tell me I should respect SSB4 players cause it’s the same game it’s would be like me telling a die hard football fan they should respect soccer players cause both games use a ball.
I’m not being rude, I’m stating a fact, Super Smash Bros. Melee is the superior game. It just is. There’s no better game out there. There’s no reason to ever play any game except for Super Smash Bros. Melee for the Nintendo Gamecube released in November of 2001. If you tell me you like another game, I’ll laugh at you and I’ll shame you. How dare you have different taste in video games than I, a fan of Super Smash Bros. Melee for the Nintendo Gamecube? If you like playing Project M, even just for fun, I’ll spit on you. If you have a good time playing Smash 4 with your friends on Friday nights, I’ll call you every bad name I can think of. There’s no excuse. You need to get off your lazy ass and play Super Smash Bros. Melee for the Nintendo Gamecube or I’ll never talk to you again. For those of you who choose to play using Dolphin, you’re illegally emulating the intellectual property of Nintendo and therefore not a REAL fan of Super Smash Bros. Melee for the Nintendo Gamecube. The only reason the Nintendo Gamecube, the console that originally ran Super Smash Bros. Melee, the best game in the entire world and the only one anyone should play, sold any units at all was so that people could play Super Smash Bros. Melee, the ultimate game.
fantastic article bobby
This article was not too long Scar. We trust your voice as a community leader, so you should trust your voice as well, it is valuable.
“I said on Twitter that “One Unit” is not a description of the way things are. Far from it. One Unit is an ideal, it’s a vision for the community that we are striving to become. To really understand One Unit is to understand that the starting point is each and every one of us, and that it’s hard work.”
totally agree with this, 100%. Something a lot of people don’t understand IMO. We’re nowhere near ‘one unit’ and I think It’s confusing hearing that it’s where the community is supposed to be by figureheads who have the most to profit off of a unified community. — but at the same time games like PM (which I do not play) somehow don’t fit in that hashtag– mostly because of the issues and money surrounding it from sponsors.
Where does PM fit into oneunit? Or are we talking Nintendo official smash games only? Would be nice to know. PM community is massive.
I think this issue, while needing to be addressed, has somehow overshadowed what a terrible event Apex could have been and how the Apex staff has a lot to answer for? Keitaro was put on blast after his event was horribly run in November, and I think the same needs to be done for members of the Apex staff. But instead we talk about this.
I don’t think it’s really fair to blame APEX staff here when the original venue was closed down by the Fire Marshall the day before the event and they lost an entire day scrambling to find a new location. Frankly it’s a miracle it even happened and everything got done.
While I agree with Scar’s sentiment, I disagree on several points.
1. I think the “Melee” cheering was out of frustration AND outright disrespect. This actually started a 500+ post heated debate within STL’s local Melee Facebook group. It went from “Smash 4 sucks” to “Brawl sucks” to even “PM sucks” with a good swath Melee elitism and personal attacks.
2. “all Smashers need to reject the action of cheering “Melee” because it implies that Melee is better than other games.” I disagree with this statement. Personally I do think Melee is a better game. All things being equal, I don’t think there’s anything intrinsically wrong with mere act of implying that Melee is better than the other games. I think people are right to think that and voice that in the appropriate setting.
3. The real issue is respect and professionalism. To give an example, I hate baseball. It’s slow and boring as all hell to watch/play. Football is a way better sport, with more strategy involved–way more fun to watch and play. I have no issue smack talking/debating the crappiness of baseball with people I know. But I don’t go up to a baseball athlete and insult their sport to their face. Even though I don’t care for his sport, I can respect him as an athlete that has worked hard to achieve excellence in an activity he’s passionate about. I also don’t go to a baseball game and start telling the fans around me how much baseball sucks and is inferior to football. These fans came to watch a baseball game and I’m disrupting the experience they’re seeking.
Trash talking other games and demeaning the accomplishment of that game’s players in public settings is neither respectful nor professional. Chanting “Melee” during Smash 4’s finals was like pulling the Kanye West/Taylor Swift award’s ceremony stunt. It was Smash 4’s time to be on center stage (even if the tournament was running late) and Melee players d
As a final note, I want to say that it’s sad so many Melee smashers seem to have forgotten how #OneUnit fueled a great Melee revival during the breast cancer fundraising drive for EVO 2013. We would not have beaten Skullgirls without the combined help of the Brawl, 64, and PM communities. Melee smashers are cool with #OneUnit when it’s getting Melee into EVO, but can’t exhibit #OneUnit respect during Apex 2015 now that the Melee scene back and bigger than ever.
Hmmm. Seems like my comment got cut off on my third point. I don’t even remember what I was trying to write.
As a final example, I remember one time my football team won an important away game. After shaking hands with the other team we started chanting “WHO’S HOUSE? OUR HOUSE!!!” on their home field in front of them and their fans. Our head coach was not happy. Disrespectful and unprofessional, he said. He lined us up on the sideline then and there and made us run suicides. Lesson learned.
What so your saying if you went to the Super Bowl showed up to your seat at the right time and then the entire last game of the AAA world series was played before you were allowed to watch the Super Bowl that you would be incredibly excited about it? That you’d cheer on the game just because it was on and not be mad you have to watch a gaming you find boring before the game you paid 800$ to see? You wouldn’t be irked? Then image the AAA games they all get boo’d off and no one cares who one except a couple of their family and then baseball team gets all mad about it and tweets what assholes the superbowl fans are for not supporting their game.
The Smash community displays an incredible degree of unity…when the incentives of the sub-communities converge. Apex was saved because it was to the benefit of all parties involved. But what happens when those incentives diverge? A popular game gets offered as a sacrificial lamb in order to gain the approval of a developer who was perfectly happy to attempt to stifle the scene not two years prior. A hard-working champion gets ignored because another group had to wait approximately as long as Brawl players did at Apex 2013. People ignore legitimate complaints others may have against their game of choice, driving the resentment between factions underground to boil over at the least convenient times.
An allegiance built not on respect, but merely on shared interest is perhaps the most fragile kind there is. Until the Smash Bros. communities actually respect each others’ dedication and accomplishments, #OneUnit will continue to be a band-aid over an already-infected cut, one that merely contains the ooze rather than curing the illness.
People didn’t come to APEX to watch SSB4. With out Nintendo paying for it would SSB4 even have been on the main screen? Probably not. Zero only mains a cheap boring character in a slow game that has nothing to do with Melee that was then forced on Melee fans for 4 hours. Melee players have nothing against people playing SSB4 we have EVERYTHING against people telling us we should care because it has the same name as the game we like. They can play their game all they want, just don’t make us watch and don’t get all emo when nobody cares and is excited about the event they flew 5 hours to see. On top of of that Zero is literally the definition of the most boring cheap play style seen to man, nobody should be cheering that guy for Diddy Combo X12004004032487 Apex victory. Jesus that was the most awful shit I’ve seen in days I would have boo’d him off the stage even if Melee wasn’t next.
shut the fuck up you idiot.
Scar, well said. We talked briefly at Apex (you broke the news to me about Shroomed beating M2K) and you shared some frustrations about the time wait for Melee Top 8. However, it was nice to see top community members practicing what they preach. You showed frustration with the time, not the other game. Not every game is everyone’s cup of tea, but that doesn’t make someone’s game bad. The whole point of OneUnit is to improve the Smash community as a whole, as well as the experiences we all get to share. No one is wrong in supporting their own game. Keep in mind that the Melee chant was more about supporting their own game than attacking the other person’s. Was it respectful? Certainly not, and that’s a mistake that was a result of frustration, as Scar pointed out. But the important thing is we still successfully ran the biggest Smash tournament of all time despite losing our venue and a whole day. If that’s not symbolic of OneUnit, I don’t know what is. Keep it up Smashers, let’s make 2015 the best year yet!
In Smash, #oneunit mindset has a major problem.
Melee viewers do not always want to watch Smash 4. Forcing them to do so (Apex 2015) can cause issues. This is the underlying issue.
Watching Melee / PM is different to watching Smash 4… you’re subscribing to similar games with VERY DIFFERENT PLAYSTYLES.
To be clear, I play Smash 64 (emulator on phone) and dabble in Melee/Smash 4. I watch all games minus Brawl. This is just my concern with this community going forward.
[…] ever), the field isn’t quite that competitive, either. Finally, the fact that people feel compelled to cheer for Melee during the Apex 2015 Smash Wii U Finals shows the huge amount of disrespect that can be shown for the game and its […]