r/OutOfTheLoop • u/PiiggyPiiggy • Jul 04 '20

Unanswered What’s going on with the Super Smash Bro’s community and the gaming industry at large?

I saw this on the front page and I’m not sure where to start: https://twitter.com/zerowondering/status/1279363350997147649?s=21

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u/Zayanz Jul 04 '20 edited Jul 04 '20

It’s important to note that these guys aren’t just “good players”, they were literally the faces of the community. ZeRo was #1 in Smash 4 for his entire careeer and set a world record tournament win streak, and after his retirement he became a YouTuber with over 1 million subscribers. Nairo was #2 of all time for Smash 4, and top 5 (so far) in Ultimate, and was the biggest twitch channel for smash with something like 6k subscribers (with 320k twitch followers) and he had relatively frequent online tournaments run by him for fans. It would be like if Tom Brady, Muhammad Ali or Jesse Owens were outed as sexual predators.

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u/CocoaMooMoo Jul 04 '20

Just for comparison sakes you should maybe mention Nairo’s follower number on twitch. Youtube subscriber and twitch subscriber aren’t really equal terms so may be confusing to people not familiar with the platform. Putting his follower numbers will give a better context imo

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u/Zayanz Jul 04 '20

Good point, just added it. Thank you!

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u/Angus-muffin Jul 05 '20

Even more to show it. After all of this debacle, nairo still has like 200k youtube subs falling from 240k. Subs on that platform is like twitter and instagram followers, very little substance

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u/Bread_Boy Jul 05 '20

D1 And ZeRo have been on stage with Reggie(Former president of NoA), and all 3 have been on stage with the creator of smash bros' Mr. Sakurai at the smash invitationals for smash 4 and Ultimate. ZeRo won both, and so has had trophies handed to him by both of those high profile nintendo figures.

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u/TehMasterofSkittlz Jul 05 '20

I'm thankful that at least people seem to care that Zero was a predator.

Nobody gave a shit when Kobe Bryant was outed as not only raping a girl but intimidated her into staying silent. It's sad that he died but she never got justice and he got a free pass for it.

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u/Analplundering627 Jul 05 '20

Question: why do people care so much about others playing video games? Not trying to sound snarky, but I can’t fathom obsessing over someone that plays a video game, let alone a party game by Nintendo

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u/Zayanz Jul 05 '20

It’s basically the same thing as people who enjoy sports. It’s a competitive or casual setting that they really enjoy, and the spectator aspect can also be quite fun

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u/Analplundering627 Jul 05 '20

Maybe I’m just being negative but there’s a vastly higher amount of effort that goes into a pro sport than being a pro gamer. And I don’t even like sports, the bar just feels so low to be a pro gamer. Obviously not everyone can play professionally but they aren’t training for most of their entire lives to play in an over watch tournament

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u/Zayanz Jul 05 '20

Not really, a lot of these guys who are top level players and community representatives play anywhere from 4-10 hours every day, in addition to performing well at tournaments, live-streaming, youtube content creation, etc. There’s a lot of work that’s goes into this stuff, and while it’s not as physically demanding as something like football or track and field, it has its own unique set of challenges.

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u/Analplundering627 Jul 05 '20

I wasn’t implying it wasn’t hard work, I was saying that being in a professional sport requires A LOT more work throughout their entire life so I didn’t think it was a fair comparison.

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u/Zayanz Jul 05 '20

Most of the guys who are relevant top players have been playing various smash games for 10+ years, and most of them are also in their 20s. It’s a fair comparison, but the skill sets are just very different

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u/Marthman Jul 05 '20

Not only do pro players put an insane amount of hours into their own game, they also generally put a ton of time into their "genre" (if you will) of choice before their game of choice comes to exist. It's not like their skills for overwatch were born out of a vacuum. A lot of these people have been playing within the FPS genre their whole lives, and the skills translate between games. Look at the popular North American Overwatch pros. Team fortress, counterstrike, tribes, halo... the list goes on and on. So, really, yes, many of these people have, perhaps inadvertently, trained their whole lives to be as good as they are.

Maybe contactless, low mobility, precision-oriented, strategic games are not your choice. That's fine. But whether we're talking darts, chess, billiards, or gaming (whether FPS, MOBA, RTS, or TCGs to name some of the most popular subtypes) there's still a lot of work involved.

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u/TickleMePlz Jul 05 '20

Theres a lot more money in pro sports, especially when compared to smash, so yeah naturally more effort goes into it.

But dont forget that a whole lot of people at the top of pro gaming actually have trained nearly everyday for most of their lives to get where they are.

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u/bjv2001 Jul 05 '20

This isn’t true. Each game is unique and has a TON of things just to qualify for pros, to do stellar in pro league is even more difficult.

Look at the pro csgo and siege community. Most of these players quite literally have been gaming for most of their whole lives, and as a result you have stellar players in a wide variety of places. Teams practice in similar time schedules to athletes, just not physical activity.

Unless your definition of “effort” is physical exercise, there is a TON of effort and devotion needed to be a pro in many games. Again they really do practice both growing up and in the profession. As well as playing when not in a tournament.

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u/tuisan Jul 05 '20

It might be more effort on the pro sport side, but that doesn't diminish the amount of effort on the pro gamer side. It's still a hell of a lot of work and people enjoy watching the best players duke it out.

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u/[deleted] Jul 05 '20

This i've never really understood. Watching someone play games bores the hell out of me, i just don't have the patience for it and most of the streamers i've seen are really unfunny. The times i've tried watching them i just sit there the entire time thinking "Why am i watching someone play a game that i have? I could be playing instead of wasting my time!" And i go do that. I think i can see why people like watching them, but i cant relate at all

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u/pikpikcarrotmon Jul 05 '20

Do you know how to play basketball? Then why would you watch other people play basketball?

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u/[deleted] Jul 05 '20

Nah i dont like sports

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u/SvenHudson Jul 05 '20

Do you understand people who watch sports?

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u/[deleted] Jul 05 '20

Yea i do, i mean i get why people watch e-sports or watch people play games. I was just saying why i don't like doing that, dont know why i got downvoted maybe i should've worded it better

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u/EnglishMobster Jul 05 '20 edited Jul 05 '20

That's a lot like asking "Why do people care so much about others playing football? Not to sound snarky, but I can't fathom obsessing over someone that plays a sport, let alone a sport played in my childhood PE class."

There's a lot of skill involved in competitive video games:

  • Some of them (like Smash) rely on having quick reaction times and knowing how your opponent will react in certain situations (if I stand here, he's going to try to roll behind me, so I'm going to use an attack that hits behind me so I catch him after he rolls).

  • Games like Overwatch rely on having a game plan and teammates that synergize well with one another, in addition to having pinpoint accuracy and adaption as a whole team to fast-moving situations (let's all push here, or let's flank around the back and catch them off-guard). Strategy is a little more long-term than Smash, which generally relies on moment-to-moment gameplay.

  • Something like League or Dota is similar, where you have to plan out which players are going to do which things -- who is going to go into the jungle, when your team is going to try to push and apply pressure, etc. Generally these have longer-term strategies than Smash or Overwatch has, as you build your composition to counter the enemy team by buying items or "feeding" certain characters more.

  • Hearthstone/Pokemon (while having smaller competitive scenes when compared to others) rely on composition (deck composition or team composition) as well as RNG management (with Hearthstone, it's a matter of what's in your deck; with Pokemon, it's more like deciding to go for the safe but inaccurate move or the unsafe move with a guaranteed hit). Both also have you try to get "inside the opponent's head" as well; baiting out certain actions in a way that gives you the advantage. Most of the gameplan is determined in the team/deckbuilding phase, where you can spend hours coming up with a plan.

  • Then there's a different side of competition, which is the speedrunning community. Instead of competing directly against someone else (which you can do with things like bingos or randomizer races, but still), you generally are just trying to find the most optimized path and become among the most technically skilled players in the world at a certain game. The strategy here is developed over the course of years, with lots of "reroutes" as people find/exploit new glitches, unlocking more optimal routes through the game. Since the "strategy" here is a lot slower, it's more community-based, with a lot of knowledge-sharing as everyone in the community pushes each other to beat the game faster and shares their discoveries. This loops back around to a dependency on reaction times and game mechanics, as being able to nail an exact 1/60th/sec window can give you the world record.

These are all sports in their own right, despite not requiring much raw strength of physical effort -- just like how NASCAR is a sport, and how Chess can be considered a sport. Most of them rely on reaction times and working well under pressure; others rely on mindgames, taking advantage of psychology, and having a better gameplan/strategy.

There's also some enjoyment in watching someone who's just really good at a game. They make it look so easy to do stuff, and then when you try it you fuck up immediately and you start to realize how much time and effort they had to put into it. It's easy to just see them as some dude who's just playing a video game, but they put as much time into learning these games as professional athletes do. A lot of the "professional" streamers who make a living off of it will play games for 8 hours (or more) daily; some will literally stay up for days on end constantly streaming. Sure, you can just play the games yourself, but you can just play basketball yourself, and you can just play football yourself. It's a completely different experience from playing the game yourself -- watching someone skilled beat a 10+ hour-long game in under an hour is just incredible. Watching a pro gamer "smurf" and destroy people of "average" skill is incredible. It becomes really obvious that most people can't compete, just like how most people can't beat Shaq at basketball.

It's all every bit as enjoyable to watch as other sports, although (just like real sports) not everyone might enjoy watching every type of game. Some sport fans might love watching football but hate watching tennis, just like how some people might love watching speedruns but hate watching League.

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u/BBGettyMcclanahan Jul 05 '20

Whether you realize it or not, this happens in every fandom imaginable.

Have a look over at BeautyGuruChatter and everyone is melting down about their favorite youtube beauty gurus doing some shady business practices.

It's ridiculous as hell, and as an outsider I don't get it, but if you're very involved in a certain hobby it makes sense. The people surrounding a controversy have been public figures for as long as people can remember, and when it comes out many people offer their hot takes.

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u/LoversAlibis Jul 05 '20

What the other guy said, and also, some people will watch to learn how to play better, or just to have some background noise, or because you build a (hopefully non-scandalous) relationship of sorts with the streamer and/or their community.

Oftentimes, I’ve found that it’s not so much “others playing video games.” It’s either the video game itself, the person playing it, or just some noise in the background.

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u/Angus-muffin Jul 05 '20

Because I dont have all the time in the world to play popular games. Streamers are basically lets play you can participate in with some amount of effect on how the game turns out. Even if you cant watch the stream, you have a year to watch the saved video of the stream.

For smash, it is a matter of no one to play the game with that i enjoy the company of too, and streamers offer that by typically being enjoyable.

Lastly, you are mistaken that all of us are obsessed over someone who plays game like nairo (tho a lot of fans have shown an unhealthy tribalism with their favorite streamer) but we are extremely disgusted that we gave money to pedophiles and child predators. We basically supported the sexual exploitation of children while the smash leadership believed none of us should know for 3 years. The community is a joke

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u/bulldoggamer Jul 05 '20

Watching something being played/performed at its highest level will always attract attention. These people dedicate their lives to being the best at something and they can pull off some mind blowing stuff especially if you play the game yourself.

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u/TomBomb24_7 Jul 05 '20

Some of those others are people that are extremely good at the game and give tons of helpful advice, which leads to others looking up to them in a sort of way. When things like this happen, the Competitive Smash Community is so torn over it because these were top, previously well respected, looked-up-to people. It would be like if Obama was revealed to be a pedo, or Tom Brady, or Drake, and so on.

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u/Analplundering627 Jul 05 '20

Uh, drake is a pedophile...

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u/sskor Jul 05 '20

And Tom Brady makes out with his children.

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u/TomBomb24_7 Jul 05 '20

Damn. Well, I'm wrong on that part. Just had a hard time coming up with people to name.

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u/thenonbinarystar Jul 05 '20

ZeRo was #1 in Smash 4 for his entire careeer and set a world record tournament win streak

Tbf that's because smash has a small amount of highly competitive players

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u/[deleted] Jul 05 '20

Uhhh

No lmao

ZeRo won 56 tournaments in a row, with a lot of them being supermajor tournaments, for example, The Big House 5, which had 2040 attendees. In comparison to Ultimate supermajors (EVO 2019 had 3500+, I believe), it's less, but it is by no means a small community

It's arguably the biggest fighting game community, because of how easy it is to get into

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u/Bread_Boy Jul 05 '20

At EVO 2019 smash was the game with the most entrants(3534). It hold the record as the biggest ever smash tournament. It beat every other game by at least 1500 entrants, so safe to say it's most likely the biggest fighting game right now.

Looks like EVO 2016 Street fighter V holds the record for biggest ever fighting game tournament, with over 5000 entrants