Seeing high tier play with Melee for the first time at a LAN center in the summer of 2002. It blew my mind how far the rabbit hole went and made some good friends that summer.
My theory is that in the early days of Melee, Nintendo was open to the idea, but quickly changed their mind after a rep went to a regional smash tournament and almost suffocated from the smell.
I’d be interested to see an update to this video with all of the extra details on how Smash World Tour botched their licensing talks and cancelled of their own accord, while the community destroyed Panda Cup of their own free will. But I’ve noticed a lot of the “blame Nintendo” crowd haven’t really made follow-ups to these events when more details came out.
I think the beauty of Smash is that you can just pick it up and play it at a party by smashing all the buttons, but you can also get super deep into the mechanics if you want to.
its not really how you play the game, it has those options for a reason,. its about the type of community that eventually grows around that way to play. you can play very seriously with tournament rules in your house or with your friends and be completely fine,. but once people congregate in large numbers and made their events/gatherings public it starts to create a public image around the game, and thats what they're really after.
I don’t think the smash community understands how unappealing they are to both Nintendo and sponsors needed to run tournaments. Outside Looking in it seems like their top players do awful things and say awful stuff (the several allegations) don’t take the tournaments seriously when it comes to safety and security (Double Down both Hbox showing up with Covid and the ban nairo sign) and they smell (seriously ban people who don’t wash themselves) They blame Nintendo for this but they dug their own grave by not taking themselves seriously
You make a multiple great points but the Ban Nairo sign happened because of the allegations surrounding Nairo and the lack of any security at the entrance
Its a battle of Developer Vision vs Player Vision. Nintendo, as extreme as their methods are to make sure their games are loved by everyone, still want to preserve their games from anyone who wish to tarnish the artist's vision. That said, vilifying players for creating something new out of their IPs is not only extreme, but just flat out the wrong people to point the finger at. Capcom never really envisioned Street Fighter to be this super competitive game as it is now. Yet, Capcom fully endorses the player competition. EVO, Combo Breaker, hell, even they made their own tournament called Capcom Cup. Nintendo's problem is a cultural one, and that's too big to fix within the span of 5-10 years.
Not really... the upper management could have said "We will take no position yea or nay on Smash Bros. tournaments!" and the problem would have been solved.
@Christopher Kidwell That's just not how things work. It would potentially eat into their bottom line. They have shareholders. Ip protection is legally required of them anyways. They might be a bit extreme but it helps keep their profits up. I think Nintendo is totally reasonable, and I think pirates are totally in the right too. Both can be true.
@@Whatsup_Abroad Not to mention Nintendo as a company has some early-childhood trauma from being ruthlessly sued by MGM over their first Donkey Kong arcade cabinet game. (i.e. "waah they used King Kong without permission") And that same lawsuit clarified the IP law in a way that could potentially bite themselves in the ass now that they've become that very same giant with half a dozen of the world's most lucrative media franchises.
The only problem is, this is not " the smash community" this is the online American centric smash community that is famous not for skill in a game where skill is dumb, but for being the original example of the incel gaming community, and nobody wants to support that.
This was a well made video coming a small channel. As a Competitive Smash player I was hopeful that the Panda Cup was the turning point where Nintendo finally stops attacking the scene. Unfortunately, some dreams just dont come true. Either way, between this and the previous video, I can see this becoming one of my favorite channels
It's already become one of my favorites. I really hope that this channel won't "rest on its laurels" after gaining some popularity as I've seen with other channels. As long as the quality remains the same, I wouldn't mind rewatching these if I got bored.
I know. I hate competitive players. They act like if they own the game. It's their rules and their comfirt zone: three lives, no items, no hazards, not what makes Super Smash Bros. different from the other fighting games. And if you dare to ask for different settings you're a lesser race casual player. And if you manage to pull a series of victories while following their rules you're either a spammer or your char is OP, or both. And things are going even worse if you chat with them outside the game. They are all like:"Me think this characte should be in the game!" without offering any valid argument besides "because me like it" And you're like:"THESE are the kids I'm losing to?"
@@dunkyking6310 fr. Nintendo already has a very litigious and "stay out of public scrutiny" disposition, add a community with a questionable rep and its no wonder Nintendo wants nothing to do with us. Im an avid FGC fan and no other community is involved in as much drama and straight up criminal behavior than Smash. Its no wonder they wanted Panda to function as tard wranglers for the community.
@@Hemestal When SWT Finals got cancelled, I saw multiple videos straight up celebrating it as a 'fuck you' to the Smash community. While I do outright disagree with them, I see where they're coming from.
Compare this to competitive Pokémon, where there's been an official competitive format since the late 2000's that's still going strong today alongside an unofficial competitive format that runs on a simulator of thr game's battles. The fact that Pokémon Showdown hasn't been burned to the ground is astonishing.
I play Smash Bros Ultimate together with my cousins from time to time, and it’s such a special experience playing the game so casually that’s hard to replicate when you’re playing to be better at it than everyone else.
It's honestly a detriment in my experience. I stopped playing Ultimate going on two years now because I got caught in the limbo where I wasn't good enough to play at a high level competitively but too good to enjoy playing casually. Add on top of that how I don't really have local friends to play with anymore and you have a unfun combo
@@Rman1228 Omg bro!!! Same here! Im also stuck between rock and a hard place, so i understand. Too good for casual and too trash for competitive. No people to play locally with let alone someone with the same level of skill. Its impossible. So i figured, that i can play the game offline against lv.9's. But even that has lost its novelty. Half the time cpu do nothing but spam and i instantly dont feel like playing again as thats boring af.
Maybe Nintendo doesn't want to associate themselves with manchildren well in their 20s and 30s with strong BO that obsess about a children's party game? Not surprised that most of them turned out to didle little children
Putting actions of Smash players as "Minor oopsies" is a drastic and dangerous understatement. As someone who played smash competitive smash in that time period it was a serious matter you continued to understate throughout the video
Yeah some of the things a few Smash players were found doing are not just "minor oopsies" at all, and I'm sure Nintendo has definitely caught wind of such things. Has to be a factor in their business decisions.
@@rorbot_SMFthe thing is I bet Nintendo knew of this kind of shit before it all blew up in the competitive scenes face. Its not like all this stuff came out of nowhere and Nintendo just figured out about it with everyone else. These skeletons in the closet had existed for a long time, and anyone even semi regular in the Smash scene could see this kind of community was not safe for minors in general. The way lax attitude with adults drinking and gambling around minors and going to hotel rooms alone with each other or sleeping in hotel rooms together, underage girls and older men didn't matter and it was all normal. And if you said anything about how fucking strange it all was back then you were the one labeled a creep and a weirdo as these grown dudes were getting 15 yr old girls drunk and finger blasting them behind closed doors. I fucking hated the Smash community and knew that shit was gonna blow up in their face eventually and I'm sure Nintendo went to a few tourneys undercover and saw the same kinda shit I saw too. Its not like they were trying to hide it back then BTW, this was all out in the public but back then there was no MeToo movement for dumb underage girls to victimize themselves with after putting themselves in the worst situations imagineable with dudes who barely ever talked to girls.
It's more like Nintendo responding to the horrible situation the smash made themselves and the smash community blaming and nintendo for their own short comings and horrible behavior
I wonder if all the Final Destination, no items Fox only matches during Melee's time kind of soured Nintendo to how they saw the competitive playerbase treating their game. Picking probably the most soulless stadium that was just a floating platform and no utter randomness being displayed most of the time probably was not the look they were going for. There's a lot of things in the game that competitive players have turned off that you might not see in the other competitive game spaces on Nintendo like Splatoon. Granted, having a thriving competitive market never does hurt the game community as a whole. there wasn't really a formalized ranking system in the games that weren't enforced by third parties, and people had the option off having chaotic fun online with other fun players, in person with friends, or having more colorful Final Destination fields with the omega stages and go on a more skill based matchup (barring lag). if you don't want to support that competitive scene, then fine, but don't be hostile to free advertisement from people wanting to have competitive fun.
i do think it's extremely funny that the meme of fox only final destination is taken as fact when solo fox has never been ranked #1 in the world and the real dominant force at tournaments has generally been marth with the occasional puff, peach, or falco. like fox is a super popular character because he's fast, strong, and generally fun to play but he doesn't really win tournaments more often than other characters, especially not by himself. heck, even the current stage list is basically as anti-fox as it can possibly be, we banned iconic stages like temple because a slower character literally cannot do anything against a fox running away and shooting lasers.
despite it being a common saying, this has NEVER been a thing. people have never been forced to pick a specific character, and FD is just one of the stages allowed.
To be honest, I never really enjoyed the competitive aspect of Smash. In my personal preference, fun comes first while shmoving comes second. Though, I also understand that it can really suck when stuff like this happens.
@@bobveltman Why should they? Nintendo's entire brand is "games anyone can play" and while Melee is excellent as a competitive game, you're lying to yourself if you think there isn't a latent elitism to the scene.
@@bobveltman Why? Its their game, they can direct it as they see fit. Players and the community can't take that ownership away and change the narrative. Nintendo made the game with a goal of a game for everyone. They believe they made a mistake with Melee, and literally made sure all future games didnt repeat that mistake.
@@smokyprogg what do you mean by latent elitism? Also it’s one thing to not endorse the community and their take on Smash as a fighting game, if they don’t want to it’s their right. But what Nintendo does is actively hurting the scene and at this point most smash players just wants to be left alone without worrying that their tournament will get banned for some arbitrary reason.
But those games are meant to be competitive. That's the difference. Also Nintendo doesn't host Pokémon tournaments. The Pokémon Company (partly owned by Nintendo) does, there is a difference.
Cool video. small point of critique in regards to cuts, i had to go back and pause at 8:22 to read what happened with Panda Cup. Just leave it longer for people to read or vocally sum up what happened before moving on. Otherwise, keep up the great work!
Nah bruh y’all don’t get it. Nintendo is a brand for children. Why would they endorse foul smelling, foul mouthed adult men “competing” in a children’s game. They look at smash players as societal outcasts that’s bad for branding.
I love how many topics you cover and how good your actual points are. Video essays have been sort of wack as of late and it nice to see a channel with some exaggerated swagger
The thing is, Smash is still a party game. People choosing to set certain rules and play the way they want doesn't make the game magically change. You can have one group doing a competitive tournament with 1v1 no items, while next door a group is just having a party playing 4 player with items. Smash has the ability to be many things and that's a good thing. What Nintendo is doing is like if Mojang went after people for playing Bedwars just because it "wasn't intended".
I feel like it’s more on Sakurai’s part in the beginning. He was forced to make melee and along with all of the audience in the E3, he found out that very moment that he would be leading the next smash game without a heads up.
You have to view smash as what it is - a family/friend oriented game designed within Japan for the Japanese. Almost every generation of Japanese family has experienced nintendo by now, and smash to them is a game where grandpa can sit down and play Donkey Kong vs his son who plays the DQ hero, and a grandson who likes Pokemon - in that light, you can work out why the vision for smash isn't competitive, it's a game all nintendo fans can share with eachother, regardless of whether or not they enjoy the same IP's.
that's why I completely understand Nintendo behavior because the smash community is changing the image of the game for the worse, they want their game to be seen as a family game because it touches more people if it's seen as a fighting game then its market becomes really niche and an image of technicity is added to it (I never played Tekken or SF because of that and because of the community) moreover it indeed attracted a toxic community riddled with scandals and that is not good for business either.
Yeah, but even in that context, grandpa is probably going to get absolutely flattened if anybody else has even a little more experience than the presumably extremely little experience and overall gaming skill he has. This isn't based on assumptions, but my own direct experience with playing Smash Bros with family, spanning the original Smash 64 all the way to Ultimate. None of the entries have EVER been games "anybody can win," and you don't have to be tournament level skill to absolutely shutout someone who doesn't game much. The tourney scene isn't corrupting what Smash is about, the games were already "corrupted" with the potential for differing skill to present an overwhelming barrier from the beginning. Nintendo's just trying to reject its own shadow here, and getting appropriate results.
@@Alloveck I didn't say it's a game "anyone can win", I never said that so I really don't know why it's in quotation marks. I suggested it's a game anyone can play and enjoy together, which it is. Their goal is mass appeal
Surprised you actually got it but you nailed it relatively accurately. If you have to understand anything about how japan and older corporate heads run Japanese companies you'd know its simply about control and "Doing it the japanese way" or "the Nintendo way", whether its competitive or not isn't the problem. It's a pride issue. This is also why aside money, why Nintendo will never see eye to eye with modders and game hack creators in the same way Sega does. IF they see a fan doing it, whether its good or not, hell it can be better than anything Nintendo's ever made. It doesn't matter, its not jealousy they simply dont care because its "wrong" because "westerners" or "non Nintendo controlled effort" went into the game. They're too control focused and always will be till the old guard literally dies. retro studios is the only example I can think of, of them truly branching out their IP's to westerners, but i think thats because they're creatively dead to Metroid so w/e.
They aren't control focused. They're focused on rightful sales/bad rep/emulators. Almost all of the mods for newer games are on emulators, which really harm sales. Nintendo was very worried that the actions of the Smash community would rub off on them. The reason they were worried? A representative was sent to a contest and almost fainted from the smell of the people around them.
@@TeamRocketHQR It's actually because Japan has a very colorful history and have pride in their creations. It's a huge culture gap that trying to turn Japan into America is affecting.
Only reasons Sega is super cool with molders and roms and stuff is because they have to be. Sega is like a desperate man who will do anything no matter how demeaning or wrong it is just to keep the lights on.
I don’t blame Nintendo. The smash bros community fully deserves all of what they get. And before you trash me in the comments, I love smash bros and I shower daily
Don't get me wrong, there is toxic, sometimes very toxic people in teh community (like in pretty much every big community) but isn't that unfair to punish everyone because of this minority ?
Bro is really trying to gloss over the fact that the community is at fault for nintendo not supporting the competitive scene. From players not knowing basic hygiene to pros touching little boys inappropriately there’s no way Nintendo would want to support a community like that. The best players are usually the most popular/“famous” so they should be the model for the community to follow and what’s worse is that the community ends up not holding them accountable for their actions and letting them come back in some cases.
@@lightmaker5648 How about players like Nairo admitting to it themselves. Stop trying to justify disgusting behavior. That's the reason the Smash community is failing now.
@@virn333 bro its americans they hate because as far as i know nintendo dosent hate colombians or any other latin americans its just the trash american part of the smash community that have always sucked
The reason could be that they want the competitive be focus on the new releases and maybe they also want to have the control of the competitive events.
I've found some info on what happened to Panda Cup, and it says that its linked to the wrongdoings of the former CEO of the organization sponcering Panda cup( "Alan" of Panda). It seems that he was demanding the "unofficial" Smash tournament to be cancelled, claiming Panda to be the only legit tournament. This was heard into Nintendo's ears, which lead to that CEO to be disthroned. So at one point Nintendo backed down Panda cup for the sake of protecting the unofficial Smash tournament. It was unfortunate that the unofficial tournament was also canceled because it had some issues about licensing, a request the former Panda CEO had demanded. I would like to mention that the reason Nintendo wants no more Smash on EVO is because EVO has strong ties with Sony, Nintendo's biggest rival company in Japan.
This is a perfect video and im really glad i clicked on it. props on the depth of research, on the way you presented the video, on your voice and the way you articulated it. Youre awesome man
ironically, multiversus has the opposite problem of smash where the game is built off nothing but competitive without any other gamemodes (arcade, more party options, etc). Where as smash bros has a lot of options for casual play with a ton of game modes but nintendo actively shuts down or hinders any competitive modes
Except that's not really the problem smash has it was never designed to be a competitive game in order for it to compete with smash you would have to make the same type of game
@@MisterSkullium Fighting games can't survive just being designed to appease the competitive scene, even a traditional fighting game series like Street Fighter needs additional content like arcade/minigames/story mode ect. to maintain being profitable. However it seems like Multiversus is less about trying to compete with Smash and more so with other free to play games like League of Legends considering its free to play too (also explains the lack of content).
@@codyholley maybe not in the first few smash games, but then why in current smash and even smash 4 have updates that change frames of moves or small battel field? Just looks like they were trying to do a little of both
9:23 To caveat on this section: Not just Mr. Wizard (who is a mess in and of himself), but about 50 members of the Smash community, like Sky Williams for instance, were implicated, were identified as perpetrators, or confessed to sexually targeting minors in some way shape or form. While point four is absolutely valid and certainly partially responsible for the way Nintendo treats Smash, it can not be understated how serious the problem in the Smash community was and still is.
I was someone who was pretty decent at Smash. I got second place in a local tournament, and was always just slightly above average. I enjoyed the game, and played it a lot. Then, a friend of mine (who had gone off competitively to play) came to my apartment to help celebrate my birthday. I was sober, and he was drunk. Even while inebriated, he kicked my tail. Over and over again. It was that night that I realized Smash was a fun game when everyone was on almost equal footing, but a terrible game against try-hards (like most games). It's been over two years since I touched Smash, and that experience made me realize I never wanted to play it again.
Lol yo ur trash. 1v1 me right now, i’ll make u rage quit real life….. is what an inconsiderate person would say. That sucks bro I hope u can one day, you can pick up smash and not suck. Cheers m8.
Sad to hear. There is two sides to this though... I know MANY people who got extremely motivated by said tailkicking. They then got really good themselves to the point where some of them even surpassed the people who taught them competitive play and still play at offline weeklies to this day.
@@pizzaeater8905 Well if they both roughly win 50% of the time, I'd consider that equally skilled. (at least in the heads-up: It might still be a different story when playing the whole player-pool ofc.)
Because the community sucks. People have no self-control, the fans are toxic, they are gatekeepers and there are no regulations, no norms, just wild debauchery..
I think what made them "ally" with panda is that it is a serious company where the environment is much more controlled, the history of the competitive smash community is very stained and also the fact of 50 people (players and tournament directors) They are guilty of harassment and abuse in the same facilities is something that no company wants to be involved, in addition to representing Nintendo. Besides that it should not be said that they are minor errors
Great video! I'm 31 and just got back home from hanging out with my 7 and 9 year old nephews who love smash bros on the Nintendo switch. I played a few rounds, but wasn't having fun. I told my sister (their mom) that it feels too complex and I don't really have the want to learn how to play smash bros since I don't have a Nintendo. It's like being in school in order to get the hang of it. I was ready to bring out some Tekken to show some combos 😆
Wait. That doesn't make any sense. You say Smash is too complex, but then you ponder the idea of booting up Tekken? Dude, Tekken is far more advanced than any Smash game ever made! Smash is literally designed to be easier to understand than other fighting games!
@@jakescartoons6045 i don't own a switch. Plus they have a ton of experience since they've unlocked every character. I haven't played smash since the N64 days and none of it feels familiar. They were wrecking me. The Tekken thing is a joke. Implying that I was getting tired of getting whooped. Also these kids were researching combos while I was barely getting the movement mechanics down. This video is discussing how Nintendo likes to make video games easy to pick up and enjoy with all skill sets in mind. I'm agreeing with them that smash bros does not fit that mold and I understand why they don't want to appeal to the competitive players. It can isolate a lot of players from wanting to try it.
Never thought I'd have one of my videos featured when I clicked on this lol. I think this is a great video and good documentation of Nintendo's actions .
It’s even more insane when you look at what Nintendo is doing with Pokémon VGBC, with a world tour format, heavily advertised finals with their own little anime short. And this for the single most casual JRPG on the market, with a past incident or two involving western influencers having sexual misconduct scandals too. I just don’t understand
SSBM was like my teenage years. pretty much the only game me and my 3 buddies played! we got the achievement for 1000 hours played on at least 2 consoles.
Has anyone considered the idea that Nintendo doesn’t like certain people being the symbol for a particular character/franchise- on top of the idea that an S tier character is positive for that franchise, whereas low tier characters are a negative symbol and detracts from that particular franchise.
"overall analysis is just excellent" Except the basic understanding of numbers. At 1 minutes he talks about "the two most competitive of the smash titles have performed better in sales than their less competitive counterparts" Where it literally shows that Smash Brawl and Smash 3DS outsold Melee. Brawl the game everyone hates on is the 2nd best selling smash game.
People seem to forget that Nintendo is a Corporation and allowing Smash to become the peoples right of choice means they would lose a very valuable asset that only they want to have. Of course Smash Bros is property of Nintendo. But they don't want communities where the game is for the people, instead of the customer.
The casual player makes up the majority of sales though...so the community is not the competitive one. A game "for the people" would be one where anyone can just pick up the game and have fun. Why are they going to limit themselves cutting out the majority of players? That wouldn't make any sense to do, then your denying the average player the ability to grow that relationship between them and the game, reducing their player base.
@@mariopadilla1445 It really does come down to them simply being furious at the idea of anyone other than them making any amount of money off their games. The little developer guys might have opinions about the game, but all the vampire lords care about is getting a slice of the moolah.
I've been lured in so many times by fighting games by the colourful array of characters you can play but every time I bounce off them hard as my dyspraxic brain struggles to pull off a basic combo in training mode let alone an actual battle. Sakurai pratically made Smash for people like me and its great. I honestly hope the series does not try to focus on competitive, there are already so many hardcore fighting games.
Fighting games as of late have been trying to make learning a lot easier and have more casual modes in general, it's interesting seeing how the design for them is evolving
I'm very confused about the "2 most competitive titles have performed better..." point. Like doesn't the screenshot fairly clearly indicate that brawl sold almost 2x as many copy as melee? Like in what sense is it "lower down on the charts"? In fact if we put the 2 smash 4 versions together and only look at growth, the 2 underperforming titles are melee (
I think a big reason why they like to make games in the way they like them. They are a company run by game designers, so they would be really anal about how a game “should be played”
@@crystalbry4741 well SEGA allows it for Sonic because they are corrupt and only care about Sonic as a public figure. They take down fan projects for their other games.
@@thomasffrench3639 doesn't sega of Japan take down games? Not sega of America. Because i haven't heard about sega taking down games that were made by fans at least the American company.
The reason is quite simple. Nintendo doesn't want to be associated with these people who ruin their reputation as a family business. A Leffen alone and his toxic behavior is not for what the game and the company stands for. It's very clear to see why they don't support them.
Honestly, I kinda agree with Nintendo's philosophy. When Smash Ultimate first came out, I had tons of fun just goofing around with 3 friends with items on and all hell breaking loose. But once I got more serious, and started playing competitively, it took all the fun out of the game for me. Elite Smash is too stressful with people playing OP characters just camping every game, while playing with friends isn't as fun anymore since I can just 3 stock all my friends with no effort since they are all casual players. While a minority of players do enjoy competitive smash, I feel like the majority of players will enjoy smash the most when they're all just playing casually. This does incentivise Nintendo to dissuade people from getting into competitive smash.
@@Matanumi I agree that's cool, but since shit is on by default, it's a party game first, fighting game second. I've seen plenty of competitive Dark Souls, with frame data and all that. That doesn't make Dark Souls a fighting game, in my opinion.
Within a few months of Melee's release my friends and I were playing 1v1 stocks/final destination/no items with Fox, Captain Falcon, Sheik, etc. Not because we heard of that online, but because it was competitive and fun. And we were all just normal gamers, and not major fans of regular fighting games. Nintendo is confused; few players get anywhere near melee's skill ceiling, but that doesn't stop casual gamers from loving the competitive parts of the game.
It seems like an easy fix would rules for conduct that could lead to disqualification if not followed (although we saw that go awry with competitive pokemon). Granted that also doesn’t address Sakurai’s concerns.
smash events also just have a louder, more rowdy crowd and players (not to mention the frequent rage moments). not a scene most people would associate with nintendo. doesnt surprise me nintendo prefer to hold splatoon tournaments.
With the amount of hardcore competitive games that are specifically marketed that way that are already out, its a breath of fresh air to see a company take such a stance. Normally games designed around PvP feature toxic communites with high skill floors and little to no enjoyment for casual players. A battle game that stands in opposition to that awful gaming culture is to me, a legitimate hope that gaming isn't ruined.
In what case has the competitive scene ever influenced the causual scene in a negative way when they're both kept exclusive from eachother as an option?
@@islandboy9381 Off the top of my head, Overwatch was ruined by aggressively trying to appeal to eSports players. Everything that made the game unique or appealing at its initial launch was eventually stripped away, streamlined and optimized into a corporate bland sameness calling itself 'balance'.
@@ravenfrancis1476 devs fault for doing so. A game well balanced for comp is typically a game well balanced for casual. Everybody fuckin hated many of Overwatch’s balancing - casual and comp players alike.
@@ravenfrancis1476 no, I’m talking about the dev rebalances and stuff. Comp players and casual players alike disliked the changes because they were poor changes. I’m not saying that at launch over watches balancing sucked- because I wasn’t there for the launch - but you can bet people didn’t like many of the rebalances
The Mario in Melee and brawl looked the most badass and Alpha The Brawl Mario's textures such as the denim in his outfit looked so realistic and dope for that time.
I think some of the darkness that has come to light in the smash community has affected Nintendo decision on supporting competitive play. Your video was well done as well will sub.
That's kind of stupid though... the Smash competitive community and the casual Smash player rarely meet, so how could they affect each other? Also, I think some of Nintendo's decisions may have to do with how many IPs they've collected in one product (literally one -- if not the biggest crossover in history). That's a whole lot of legal paperwork to swim through.
Reputations and influence fucking spreads man. There's this thing called "the Internet". It doesn't matter if these people don't directly interact personally. The non-stop toxicity and rottenness to the core of the competitive Smash scene does nothing but put regular bad press out there on the game that's particularly negative when viewed from a "normies" point of view. Is someone gonna be more or less likely to want to play the game casually (particularly to KEEP playing it) when they are constantly hearing about the non-stop toxic bullshit associated with the game? Hell yes. Many people pick up Smash and then stop playing because the Smash community just kinda fucking sucks. 🤷 People had a good thing going and then THEY fucking ruined it, not Nintendo. Nintendo didn't make the competitive Smash scene a toxic cesspool of shit. The scene did that plenty good and fine on their own... 😑
@@Cooe. And yet the casuals you mention are not at all tuned in to the gaming world. I mean, I'm a gamer myself (as in dedicated gaming, not mobile gaming) and Nintendo has influenced me since I was a kid... and **I** rarely hear _anything_ about the competitive Smash scene. If I don't (and I keep a much closer eye on the gaming world than the average normie) how much less do the casuals? I get what you're saying, but sounds blown way out of proportion to me.
@@Cooe. the only person being toxic here is you I've seen more than 1 comment from you saying literally all smash players should die. Hmm I wonder why smash players would be mad at that 🤦♀️ Maybe you should go get a grip on your life instead of being mad at people trying to have fun playing a game.
If nintendo is going to deny they demanded a cease and desist, why don't they just ignore them? What they're doing is cowardly and people should tell them to kick rocks
Because if you press on toward your event they basically said, "We will C&D this event if we have to", then you end up betraying the players who waste time and money in travel, vs at least giving them a chance to recoup costs and definitely NOT waste time. Hold the idea the idea they didn't C&D up as evidence of their manipulation, given they had months of notice.
@@ngcf4238 Yeah it’s a stereotype. But it didn’t come to be without a reason. I have personally had experiences at cons where I almost vomited from the smell of some people hanging around the smash booth. The worst smell to date was probably around the Rainbow Six Seige booth though. I guess these games just attract these kind of people. Just make sure to take a shower first before going to any gaming/con event please.
I personally dislike competitive Smash, as it invites a lot of judgement and bias in the community (as some people start treating people as inferior or saying they're bad at the game for having a more casual playstyle for example)... but even I am disgusted by Nintendo's attempts to stamp out the Smash Bros. competitive scene. Yes, Smash Bros. is a great party game... but why would you ever go out of your way to prevent people from enjoying the game the way _they_ want to? There is no "objectively wrong" way to enjoy a game.
But that's just it. In Nintendo's eyes, there IS a wrong way to play their games, and it's in any way other than what they specifically intended. Nintendo is extremely, extremely controlling of their IPs and see other ways of playing and other derivative efforts as attempting to subvert their control.
@@LordSiravant Yes, if I recall its a part of Japanese business culture... Its seen as "rude" to not partake of a product in the way it was intended to be used or something like that. I'm not an expert though, so I could be wrong.
The thing is, by avoiding the static combo systems of previous fighting games, they made the best emergent competitive fighting game of them all. It's not really a game anymore, but a robust fighting system, that can be played rewardingly at any skill level. If only they could see that.
Basically everything after Evo 2013 can be boiled down to stopping mods of their game or whatever tourney they shut down having such shitty PR skills that Nintendo was forced to step in
I never really think about it but yeah my relationship with nintendo was forever ruined by this. Ive been playing melee since around 2007 and started EMG with my friend almost 10 years ago. Competitive Smash was a massive part of my identity as a person and its been years since ive gone to an event or even played at this point.
I don't think nintendo hate competitive player otherwise they would have never allowed some tournament to exists. I think they like that people are so fond of smash bros so on one hand they want to support them because it's good for the company but on the other hand they care about their public image of being a family friendly company. I don't think any hope is lost for the competitive scene but don't expect too much
I doubt there will be another smash bros game but anything is possible. As time goes on the competitive scene will grow smaller and smaller and it's very sad
Well, I can confirm Nintendo is 100% not against competitive play in family/ kids games, let’s all not forget that competitive Pokémon exists, and Nintendo holds a annual competitions for Pokémon. They just don’t want smash to be competitive.
Game Companies don't like it when people are playing their game but they are NOT making any money. That is the reason why I think Nintendo hates the Smash Bros Melee community events so much. Nintendo can't make any money if the Smash Organizers already had brought their GameCubes and Melee disks 20 years earlier.
Sakurai wanted to make Checkers, players found a way to play Chess, and Nintendo got pissed off at Chess becoming so popular, because they want the people who buy Smash to play casually, like checkers, that's an extremely restricted view.
You're forgetting an important factor. The players who found a way to play chess out of checkers are trying to force Nintendo to cater to their chess. Nintendo made Checkers for the Wii and Checkers for the 3DS/Wii U and the Chess players bitched and moaned because the game that was clearly Checkers wasn't Chess. They felt they were entitled to play Chess. So Nintendo released Ultimate Checkers with a few additions to make the Chess players finally shut the fuck up. The Chess players got more entitled and greedy, they stopped bathing, they started grooming kids, they complained even harder about every new Checkers piece because they only cared about making that piece work for Chess. They even got the Bear and Bird Checkers piece they've been bitching about for over a decade. He wasn't meta enough for Chess, so the pathetic Chess players dropped the Checkers piece immediately. Nintendo is in the wrong morally for shutting down tournaments. They are not in the wrong for telling the Chess players "fuck off, we are not making Chess."
I think the answer is pretty obvious. Look at Nintendo's ads. Happy nuclear families smiling, creating fond memories together. Look up 'competitive smash' and you'll see autism, people fucking up their hands to the point where they need braces and surgery, people literally shitting themselves at tournaments, and creepy-ass gay pedophile drama. The revenue they'd get from supporting the community where all this shit happens wouldn't be worth the risk to their brand.
@@hideokojima2015 I actually quite enjoy Smash as a game, I'm just saying it's not good business sense for Nintendo to support the competitive scene. 'SKILL ISSUE'
@Hideo Kojima It really isn't for the reasons outlined in my original comment. If someone looks up 'smash bros' and finds say, the whole Nairo controversy, that's harmful to Nintendo's branding by association. The revenue brought in by competitive Smash is fuck all in the eyes of a company that makes as much money as Nintendo, while supporting a scene with these types of figures in it is a huge risk factor to the value of their IPs in the age of Twitter outrage and cancel culture. It's just not logical.
@JALECO ARCADE trying to shut it down just annoys that fanbase though and it doesn't really reduce the amount of association they have. Also most families that play smash have no clue nor do they care about the competitive scene, you just seem weirdly mad.
I feel like it's such a missed opportunity from Nintendo. They seem to be adverse to people playing games differently than intended, which imo is the beauty of gaming. You can consume the media in a way you like. Whether it's competitive smash, a Speedrun abusing glitches, or nuzlocking Pokemon. Nintendo should take a more indifferent approach rather than a hostile one.
My understanding was that they wanted control over the esport scene for their title. Many companies like riot games ensure they are in control of all large scale esport activities. Maybe nintendo was not ready to run it themselves yet, and they wanted to stop other people from establishing control off their IP. A grant example if how mobile legends which ripped of league many time over has hindered the growth of riots own wild rift.
Woah! As ML player, you got that point where Riot Games missed this opportunity that's why their Wild Rift haven't grown that high since ML already took place back then. Aside its comparison to this Nintendo-Smash situation, here comes the situaion when Sony missed the opportunity at how high the potential of From Sorfware is because of Demon Souls given the praise from western players since its release to the west unlike the reviews from eastern players, and then Bandai Namco (which was supposed to be Sony back then) acquired Fromsoft and we now had Dark Souls up to Elden Ring (and its latest game Armored Core 6) in any platforms worldwide instead of Playstation exclusives (except for Bloodborne).
It'd be cool one day if Nintendo were able to create a Smash Game that has a competitive mode and a fun mode. Something like a combination between brawl and melee. Would love to see another subspace emissary instead of world of light. Is it not possible to advertise the game towards family fun and for competitive people, like having a fun mode and for glory mode? I hope if there is a new Smash Game in the future, they bring back what made the other smash games good and mash them all together, like Brawl's Subspace Emissary/Music, Wii U's For Glory, Melee's tech/skills. Perhaps the fun mode and for glory mode can be better separated, by applying some brawl features to the fun mode and melee features to the for glory mode besides match settings like items.
I don't think you even need to do that because the "fun" features in brawl were literally just restrictive of skill based play. You can always add items into the game which adds a luck element and makes it more of a party game vs a fighting game
I mean I got the first smash game until the last I was a fan but what strikes me was why we can’t have tournament the way it use too I only played in 2 and that’s it it was small community tournament nothing for glory I played for a third time at a family party that last 3rd one was I lost due to star Fox Arwing shooting me while I was recovering it was devastating and traumatic and well I was wasted but that never stopped me from playing smash bros I just realized how the person beat me just took credit for that Arwing being there and if it was a different place and no foreign foul play enemies it would be different to this day that person who beat me still says it’s a onetime chance to beat him saying that to break my ego (which I didn’t had any and it was a for fun tournament) but it wasn’t I played and got beaten several times that they was just that good.
8:50 as a company, there is a monetary incentive. It’ll be years before the next smash game, and the sales for Smash will go up with all the free advertisement that competitive tournaments give to games. Sales go up every time there’s a tournament with a lot of publicity. The more they support competitive communities, the more copies they’ll sell to everyone. It’s so fucking simple and such a low cost for advertising compared to what they spend.
I gotta say, y’all talking about “brand image” that doesn’t actually affect sales. In any significant way. As long as they aren’t directly sponsoring the event, they face none of the legal or moral ramifications. And consumers won’t care. Just like Activision blizzard having a litany of charges being filed against them hasn’t really hurt their sales of CoD considering it’s still the most well sold game for 2022. Hell Blizzard had some of the worst of it and their Diablo Immortal mobile game, one where they literally insulted the crowd at E3, made over 100 million dollars so far. EA still makes boucoup bucks on Madden and FIFA even though literally NO ONE will say they like or support EA. So no, branding and image doesn’t matter. And if it did, Nintendo would have never sold so many games with the way they have treated their own fans time and time again.
@@anthonygilletteThat's just from your measly analysis. This is Nintendo we're talking about, the ancient one who had took care of their brand since the Mario movie + Zelda show debacle. They have a reputation to uphold to for future endeavors, and these groups are dangerous parasites at best. They've been here for centuries and still going strong due to their archaic stance. Regardless, you want Nintendo to take a page from Activision of all things?
this proves why in the early times of ultimate a random kid won a tournament playing rob, sakurai didn't want to see people playing his game get divided by their skill in like fighting games while blinded by the beauty of skill expression in said games i can imagine how his vision would play and the outcome feels so alien i cant believe it existing ever
I don't understand it. I played it once, tiny characters ya can barely see, rapid flashes causing headaches and more eye strain and screen going all over the place making it even harder to see what's going on. I don't understand how people even play smash bros.
It sits in weird spot where its not really a party game nor a true fighting game. If I want a party game there's Mario Party or Dokapon Kingdom, if I wanted a Fighting game I would rather play Guilty Gear, Dragon Ball FighterZ or Street Fighter. To me Smash sucks at both genres but it does have a rabid fanbase
10:14 Minoru Arakawa was never the CEO of Nintendo. He was the first president for Nintendo of America, but never the whole company. The president you are missing is Sekiryo Yamauchi, the second person to run Nintendo.
The ESports scene and the "Pros" are what killed Apex Legends. (And the streamers that followed the Esports crowd) It got to the point before I quit playing that *every single* player went full-blown meta and played every match as of it were a damn tournament or would leave their squad just to get clips for social media. Which made the game a literal job/ work rather then *FUN* as intended, so i agree to keep the toxicity of the "Pros" away from any game you truly enjoy.
No one plays it as a party game though. Every time I play it with 3 more people it plays like absolutely shit. It becomes a chaos that feels insanely unfun. So while they let Sakurai have his dumb stance, it's the actually the competitive play that sells the system. Even if it's just you and a friend on the couch together.
honestly, i think Sakurai's reasoning (if true, likely not) that Smash should be rooted into the casual audience is a bit absurd considering the fact that its a _Fighting_ game, yknow, a game with a Win and _Lose_ condition against _other people_ . EVERY game with a VS scenario will _always_ turn competitive. Look at Mario Party, despite not having tournaments held for pro level Mario Party players, that game gets very competitive very quickly if you peek into any living room with Kids, or even Adults, playing Mario Party. Smash in of itself is rooted in a competitive nature, just like Mario Party. The fact alone it has a Win/Lose condition against other players was the _instant_ it was a competitive game. That's where we get the root word for competitive after all, Competition. Just like Mario Party, its a competition to see who Wins, and who Loses. and a fight is no different from a competition, its literally a battle with a Winner, and a Loser. Even if Sakurai (though i personally doubt so) wanted it to be a more casual experience, he would never get that due to the nature of the game that was developed. It was competitive the moment he decided to make a Fighting Game
What is your favorite memory playing Smash?
Losing.
Playing with my brother on the Wii probably
Me my bro and cousins getting demolished by my bros pit smash ball attack on one of brawls custom stages. Shit was hell to dodge but fun.
subspace emissary
Seeing high tier play with Melee for the first time at a LAN center in the summer of 2002. It blew my mind how far the rabbit hole went and made some good friends that summer.
My theory is that in the early days of Melee, Nintendo was open to the idea, but quickly changed their mind after a rep went to a regional smash tournament and almost suffocated from the smell.
lolz
💀😂😂
Kek
I mean you're not wrong
🤮🤮🤮🤮
I’d be interested to see an update to this video with all of the extra details on how Smash World Tour botched their licensing talks and cancelled of their own accord, while the community destroyed Panda Cup of their own free will. But I’ve noticed a lot of the “blame Nintendo” crowd haven’t really made follow-ups to these events when more details came out.
Like that would happen. They would have to admit they are wrong. And the smash community can’t do that
they spported a pedo
@@lunar3055egotistical people are rampant in the community.
I think I've seen like 1 person make a follow up on it.
I think the beauty of Smash is that you can just pick it up and play it at a party by smashing all the buttons, but you can also get super deep into the mechanics if you want to.
its not really how you play the game, it has those options for a reason,. its about the type of community that eventually grows around that way to play. you can play very seriously with tournament rules in your house or with your friends and be completely fine,. but once people congregate in large numbers and made their events/gatherings public it starts to create a public image around the game, and thats what they're really after.
I don’t think the smash community understands how unappealing they are to both Nintendo and sponsors needed to run tournaments.
Outside Looking in it seems like their top players do awful things and say awful stuff (the several allegations) don’t take the tournaments seriously when it comes to safety and security (Double Down both Hbox showing up with Covid and the ban nairo sign) and they smell (seriously ban people who don’t wash themselves)
They blame Nintendo for this but they dug their own grave by not taking themselves seriously
facts
You make a multiple great points but the Ban Nairo sign happened because of the allegations surrounding Nairo and the lack of any security at the entrance
@@daviddaniel8304 agreed definitely i was bundling alot of that with the sign
@@markantony9038 yeah they do and the actions of the competitive smash community justifies their stubbornness
Its a battle of Developer Vision vs Player Vision. Nintendo, as extreme as their methods are to make sure their games are loved by everyone, still want to preserve their games from anyone who wish to tarnish the artist's vision. That said, vilifying players for creating something new out of their IPs is not only extreme, but just flat out the wrong people to point the finger at.
Capcom never really envisioned Street Fighter to be this super competitive game as it is now. Yet, Capcom fully endorses the player competition. EVO, Combo Breaker, hell, even they made their own tournament called Capcom Cup.
Nintendo's problem is a cultural one, and that's too big to fix within the span of 5-10 years.
Not really... the upper management could have said "We will take no position yea or nay on Smash Bros. tournaments!" and the problem would have been solved.
@Christopher Kidwell That's just not how things work. It would potentially eat into their bottom line. They have shareholders. Ip protection is legally required of them anyways. They might be a bit extreme but it helps keep their profits up. I think Nintendo is totally reasonable, and I think pirates are totally in the right too. Both can be true.
@@Whatsup_Abroad Not to mention Nintendo as a company has some early-childhood trauma from being ruthlessly sued by MGM over their first Donkey Kong arcade cabinet game. (i.e. "waah they used King Kong without permission")
And that same lawsuit clarified the IP law in a way that could potentially bite themselves in the ass now that they've become that very same giant with half a dozen of the world's most lucrative media franchises.
Its literally a waiting game for a bunch of old senior management people to die.
The only problem is, this is not " the smash community" this is the online American centric smash community that is famous not for skill in a game where skill is dumb, but for being the original example of the incel gaming community, and nobody wants to support that.
This was a well made video coming a small channel. As a Competitive Smash player I was hopeful that the Panda Cup was the turning point where Nintendo finally stops attacking the scene. Unfortunately, some dreams just dont come true. Either way, between this and the previous video, I can see this becoming one of my favorite channels
Glad to hear you enjoyed the video! Super disappointed about the panda cup situation as well :/
It's already become one of my favorites. I really hope that this channel won't "rest on its laurels" after gaining some popularity as I've seen with other channels. As long as the quality remains the same, I wouldn't mind rewatching these if I got bored.
fuck panda cup and fuck anyone who supports them. 🙂
If you've ever met someone serious about Smash Bros, you know why Nintendo is afraid.
I know. I hate competitive players. They act like if they own the game. It's their rules and their comfirt zone: three lives, no items, no hazards, not what makes Super Smash Bros. different from the other fighting games. And if you dare to ask for different settings you're a lesser race casual player. And if you manage to pull a series of victories while following their rules you're either a spammer or your char is OP, or both. And things are going even worse if you chat with them outside the game. They are all like:"Me think this characte should be in the game!" without offering any valid argument besides "because me like it" And you're like:"THESE are the kids I'm losing to?"
They don't hate smash, the community around is whats bothersome to them.
Especially with how many of the pro players keep getting involved with underage minors
@@dunkyking6310 fr. Nintendo already has a very litigious and "stay out of public scrutiny" disposition, add a community with a questionable rep and its no wonder Nintendo wants nothing to do with us.
Im an avid FGC fan and no other community is involved in as much drama and straight up criminal behavior than Smash.
Its no wonder they wanted Panda to function as tard wranglers for the community.
@@Hemestal When SWT Finals got cancelled, I saw multiple videos straight up celebrating it as a 'fuck you' to the Smash community. While I do outright disagree with them, I see where they're coming from.
This is legit the exact reason why I stopped going around the FGC years ago. I love the games but then yeah there's that part.
Can you blame them?
Compare this to competitive Pokémon, where there's been an official competitive format since the late 2000's that's still going strong today alongside an unofficial competitive format that runs on a simulator of thr game's battles. The fact that Pokémon Showdown hasn't been burned to the ground is astonishing.
I play Smash Bros Ultimate together with my cousins from time to time, and it’s such a special experience playing the game so casually that’s hard to replicate when you’re playing to be better at it than everyone else.
It's honestly a detriment in my experience. I stopped playing Ultimate going on two years now because I got caught in the limbo where I wasn't good enough to play at a high level competitively but too good to enjoy playing casually. Add on top of that how I don't really have local friends to play with anymore and you have a unfun combo
@@Rman1228 You can always still play the game by yourself. I still play the game solo every so often.
@@Rman1228 You don’t have to quit, you can always revisit Smash Bros Ultimate anytime you want on your own.
@@benmalsky9834 very true! I still pop the game in to test controllers so maybe I can come back in every once and awhile
@@Rman1228 Omg bro!!! Same here!
Im also stuck between rock and a hard place, so i understand.
Too good for casual and too trash for competitive. No people to play locally with let alone someone with the same level of skill. Its impossible. So i figured, that i can play the game offline against lv.9's.
But even that has lost its novelty. Half the time cpu do nothing but spam and i instantly dont feel like playing again as thats boring af.
Maybe Nintendo doesn't want to associate themselves with manchildren well in their 20s and 30s with strong BO that obsess about a children's party game? Not surprised that most of them turned out to didle little children
Most is crazy
Except they were already doing this crap way before any of that was found out. But please, keep consuming the Twitter narrative, drone.
Putting actions of Smash players as "Minor oopsies" is a drastic and dangerous understatement. As someone who played smash competitive smash in that time period it was a serious matter you continued to understate throughout the video
Yeah some of the things a few Smash players were found doing are not just "minor oopsies" at all, and I'm sure Nintendo has definitely caught wind of such things. Has to be a factor in their business decisions.
At least he got the minor part right lmao
It didn't fit with his thesis, so he needed to downplay it. Despite it being the most likely culprit.
It was pretty much an open secret that the pro Smash community was full of pedos. I believe it's the same with the speed running community.
@@rorbot_SMFthe thing is I bet Nintendo knew of this kind of shit before it all blew up in the competitive scenes face.
Its not like all this stuff came out of nowhere and Nintendo just figured out about it with everyone else. These skeletons in the closet had existed for a long time, and anyone even semi regular in the Smash scene could see this kind of community was not safe for minors in general. The way lax attitude with adults drinking and gambling around minors and going to hotel rooms alone with each other or sleeping in hotel rooms together, underage girls and older men didn't matter and it was all normal. And if you said anything about how fucking strange it all was back then you were the one labeled a creep and a weirdo as these grown dudes were getting 15 yr old girls drunk and finger blasting them behind closed doors. I fucking hated the Smash community and knew that shit was gonna blow up in their face eventually and I'm sure Nintendo went to a few tourneys undercover and saw the same kinda shit I saw too. Its not like they were trying to hide it back then BTW, this was all out in the public but back then there was no MeToo movement for dumb underage girls to victimize themselves with after putting themselves in the worst situations imagineable with dudes who barely ever talked to girls.
It's more like Nintendo responding to the horrible situation the smash made themselves and the smash community blaming and nintendo for their own short comings and horrible behavior
That suakuria quote hit me hard at the end but some people can't play games without being competitive and sometimes that means there favorite games
For the love of God, "SAKURAI".
🤬How can you misspell the name of that legend so badly?!
@@christianleon7311 shut up bro my auto correct kept changing it I rewrote my sentence like 7 times
Seems like all these up and coming RUclips channels I've been subscribing to lately are also Smash fans. Keep it going! Love the informative content.
I wonder if all the Final Destination, no items Fox only matches during Melee's time kind of soured Nintendo to how they saw the competitive playerbase treating their game. Picking probably the most soulless stadium that was just a floating platform and no utter randomness being displayed most of the time probably was not the look they were going for. There's a lot of things in the game that competitive players have turned off that you might not see in the other competitive game spaces on Nintendo like Splatoon.
Granted, having a thriving competitive market never does hurt the game community as a whole. there wasn't really a formalized ranking system in the games that weren't enforced by third parties, and people had the option off having chaotic fun online with other fun players, in person with friends, or having more colorful Final Destination fields with the omega stages and go on a more skill based matchup (barring lag). if you don't want to support that competitive scene, then fine, but don't be hostile to free advertisement from people wanting to have competitive fun.
i do think it's extremely funny that the meme of fox only final destination is taken as fact when solo fox has never been ranked #1 in the world and the real dominant force at tournaments has generally been marth with the occasional puff, peach, or falco.
like fox is a super popular character because he's fast, strong, and generally fun to play but he doesn't really win tournaments more often than other characters, especially not by himself. heck, even the current stage list is basically as anti-fox as it can possibly be, we banned iconic stages like temple because a slower character literally cannot do anything against a fox running away and shooting lasers.
despite it being a common saying, this has NEVER been a thing. people have never been forced to pick a specific character, and FD is just one of the stages allowed.
@@connorkillmice do you ever think about the fact that rainbow cruise was just a legal stage before
To be honest, I never really enjoyed the competitive aspect of Smash. In my personal preference, fun comes first while shmoving comes second. Though, I also understand that it can really suck when stuff like this happens.
Melee just is a competitive game and they should embrace that. Damage is already done.
@@bobveltman Why should they? Nintendo's entire brand is "games anyone can play" and while Melee is excellent as a competitive game, you're lying to yourself if you think there isn't a latent elitism to the scene.
@@bobveltman Why? Its their game, they can direct it as they see fit. Players and the community can't take that ownership away and change the narrative. Nintendo made the game with a goal of a game for everyone. They believe they made a mistake with Melee, and literally made sure all future games didnt repeat that mistake.
Fully agreeed
@@smokyprogg what do you mean by latent elitism? Also it’s one thing to not endorse the community and their take on Smash as a fighting game, if they don’t want to it’s their right. But what Nintendo does is actively hurting the scene and at this point most smash players just wants to be left alone without worrying that their tournament will get banned for some arbitrary reason.
Not only does Nintendo hold official Splatoon tournaments, they also hold official Pokemon tournaments.
But those games are meant to be competitive. That's the difference. Also Nintendo doesn't host Pokémon tournaments. The Pokémon Company (partly owned by Nintendo) does, there is a difference.
@@SanderEvers pokemon co is nintendo
@@bilis2866 Only for about 33%, others are GameFreak and Creatures, Inc.
@@SanderEvers all of them are nintendo
@@bilis2866 Except not. GameFreak and Creatures Inc are not owned by Nintendo.
Cool video.
small point of critique in regards to cuts, i had to go back and pause at 8:22 to read what happened with Panda Cup. Just leave it longer for people to read or vocally sum up what happened before moving on.
Otherwise, keep up the great work!
Isn't it weird he may have tried to not get that brought up?
After a year, the reason is really just jealousy towards Panda Global and the insistence of the OG organizers that wanted things to stay grassroots.
Nah bruh y’all don’t get it. Nintendo is a brand for children. Why would they endorse foul smelling, foul mouthed adult men “competing” in a children’s game. They look at smash players as societal outcasts that’s bad for branding.
I love how many topics you cover and how good your actual points are. Video essays have been sort of wack as of late and it nice to see a channel with some exaggerated swagger
The thing is, Smash is still a party game. People choosing to set certain rules and play the way they want doesn't make the game magically change. You can have one group doing a competitive tournament with 1v1 no items, while next door a group is just having a party playing 4 player with items. Smash has the ability to be many things and that's a good thing. What Nintendo is doing is like if Mojang went after people for playing Bedwars just because it "wasn't intended".
I feel like it’s more on Sakurai’s part in the beginning. He was forced to make melee and along with all of the audience in the E3, he found out that very moment that he would be leading the next smash game without a heads up.
Great vid man, and JEEZ 10k after only 2 vids is INSANE.
You have to view smash as what it is - a family/friend oriented game designed within Japan for the Japanese. Almost every generation of Japanese family has experienced nintendo by now, and smash to them is a game where grandpa can sit down and play Donkey Kong vs his son who plays the DQ hero, and a grandson who likes Pokemon - in that light, you can work out why the vision for smash isn't competitive, it's a game all nintendo fans can share with eachother, regardless of whether or not they enjoy the same IP's.
that's why I completely understand Nintendo behavior because the smash community is changing the image of the game for the worse, they want their game to be seen as a family game because it touches more people if it's seen as a fighting game then its market becomes really niche and an image of technicity is added to it (I never played Tekken or SF because of that and because of the community) moreover it indeed attracted a toxic community riddled with scandals and that is not good for business either.
Yeah, but even in that context, grandpa is probably going to get absolutely flattened if anybody else has even a little more experience than the presumably extremely little experience and overall gaming skill he has. This isn't based on assumptions, but my own direct experience with playing Smash Bros with family, spanning the original Smash 64 all the way to Ultimate. None of the entries have EVER been games "anybody can win," and you don't have to be tournament level skill to absolutely shutout someone who doesn't game much.
The tourney scene isn't corrupting what Smash is about, the games were already "corrupted" with the potential for differing skill to present an overwhelming barrier from the beginning. Nintendo's just trying to reject its own shadow here, and getting appropriate results.
@@Alloveck I didn't say it's a game "anyone can win", I never said that so I really don't know why it's in quotation marks.
I suggested it's a game anyone can play and enjoy together, which it is. Their goal is mass appeal
Surprised you actually got it but you nailed it relatively accurately. If you have to understand anything about how japan and older corporate heads run Japanese companies you'd know its simply about control and "Doing it the japanese way" or "the Nintendo way", whether its competitive or not isn't the problem. It's a pride issue. This is also why aside money, why Nintendo will never see eye to eye with modders and game hack creators in the same way Sega does. IF they see a fan doing it, whether its good or not, hell it can be better than anything Nintendo's ever made. It doesn't matter, its not jealousy they simply dont care because its "wrong" because "westerners" or "non Nintendo controlled effort" went into the game. They're too control focused and always will be till the old guard literally dies. retro studios is the only example I can think of, of them truly branching out their IP's to westerners, but i think thats because they're creatively dead to Metroid so w/e.
They aren't control focused. They're focused on rightful sales/bad rep/emulators. Almost all of the mods for newer games are on emulators, which really harm sales. Nintendo was very worried that the actions of the Smash community would rub off on them. The reason they were worried? A representative was sent to a contest and almost fainted from the smell of the people around them.
YES YES YES someone finally finally really talking about the pride issue! It's a issue all over japan in anything there!
@@TeamRocketHQR It's actually because Japan has a very colorful history and have pride in their creations. It's a huge culture gap that trying to turn Japan into America is affecting.
@@danielthecake8617no Japan is insanely racist they used to be muderously so.
Only reasons Sega is super cool with molders and roms and stuff is because they have to be. Sega is like a desperate man who will do anything no matter how demeaning or wrong it is just to keep the lights on.
I don’t blame Nintendo. The smash bros community fully deserves all of what they get. And before you trash me in the comments, I love smash bros and I shower daily
Don't get me wrong, there is toxic, sometimes very toxic people in teh community (like in pretty much every big community) but isn't that unfair to punish everyone because of this minority ?
"we're kinda weird, we took this thing and made it our own" my dude, that's just the nature of reality
Bro is really trying to gloss over the fact that the community is at fault for nintendo not supporting the competitive scene. From players not knowing basic hygiene to pros touching little boys inappropriately there’s no way Nintendo would want to support a community like that. The best players are usually the most popular/“famous” so they should be the model for the community to follow and what’s worse is that the community ends up not holding them accountable for their actions and letting them come back in some cases.
Can you give some sources for those claims?
@@lightmaker5648 How about players like Nairo admitting to it themselves. Stop trying to justify disgusting behavior. That's the reason the Smash community is failing now.
@@chewezx1767 I just asked for sources, I'm not justifying anything. If you can give a source I'll happily agree with you.
You would have a point if Nintendo hasn't been doing this since the early 2000s. This is literally just them being racist and hating westerners
@@virn333 bro its americans they hate because as far as i know nintendo dosent hate colombians or any other latin americans its just the trash american part of the smash community that have always sucked
The reason could be that they want the competitive be focus on the new releases and maybe they also want to have the control of the competitive events.
I've found some info on what happened to Panda Cup, and it says that its linked to the wrongdoings of the former CEO of the organization sponcering Panda cup( "Alan" of Panda). It seems that he was demanding the "unofficial" Smash tournament to be cancelled, claiming Panda to be the only legit tournament. This was heard into Nintendo's ears, which lead to that CEO to be disthroned. So at one point Nintendo backed down Panda cup for the sake of protecting the unofficial Smash tournament. It was unfortunate that the unofficial tournament was also canceled because it had some issues about licensing, a request the former Panda CEO had demanded.
I would like to mention that the reason Nintendo wants no more Smash on EVO is because EVO has strong ties with Sony, Nintendo's biggest rival company in Japan.
The competitive smash community is so bad that every dollar Nintendo spends trying to kill it is justified.
Someone whooped your ass too hard?
This is a perfect video and im really glad i clicked on it. props on the depth of research, on the way you presented the video, on your voice and the way you articulated it. Youre awesome man
Super smash bros needs more competition Multiversus was doing well but smash is still dominating
ironically, multiversus has the opposite problem of smash where the game is built off nothing but competitive without any other gamemodes (arcade, more party options, etc). Where as smash bros has a lot of options for casual play with a ton of game modes but nintendo actively shuts down or hinders any competitive modes
@@MisterSkullium Yeah I agree
Except that's not really the problem smash has it was never designed to be a competitive game in order for it to compete with smash you would have to make the same type of game
@@MisterSkullium Fighting games can't survive just being designed to appease the competitive scene, even a traditional fighting game series like Street Fighter needs additional content like arcade/minigames/story mode ect. to maintain being profitable. However it seems like Multiversus is less about trying to compete with Smash and more so with other free to play games like League of Legends considering its free to play too (also explains the lack of content).
@@codyholley maybe not in the first few smash games, but then why in current smash and even smash 4 have updates that change frames of moves or small battel field? Just looks like they were trying to do a little of both
9:23 To caveat on this section:
Not just Mr. Wizard (who is a mess in and of himself), but about 50 members of the Smash community, like Sky Williams for instance, were implicated, were identified as perpetrators, or confessed to sexually targeting minors in some way shape or form. While point four is absolutely valid and certainly partially responsible for the way Nintendo treats Smash, it can not be understated how serious the problem in the Smash community was and still is.
Sky is innocent
@@albertwesker4729 Very, very wrong
I was someone who was pretty decent at Smash. I got second place in a local tournament, and was always just slightly above average. I enjoyed the game, and played it a lot. Then, a friend of mine (who had gone off competitively to play) came to my apartment to help celebrate my birthday. I was sober, and he was drunk. Even while inebriated, he kicked my tail. Over and over again. It was that night that I realized Smash was a fun game when everyone was on almost equal footing, but a terrible game against try-hards (like most games). It's been over two years since I touched Smash, and that experience made me realize I never wanted to play it again.
lol
Lol yo ur trash. 1v1 me right now, i’ll make u rage quit real life….. is what an inconsiderate person would say. That sucks bro I hope u can one day, you can pick up smash and not suck. Cheers m8.
Sad to hear. There is two sides to this though... I know MANY people who got extremely motivated by said tailkicking. They then got really good themselves to the point where some of them even surpassed the people who taught them competitive play and still play at offline weeklies to this day.
Perhaps a stupid statement, but is it even possible for 2 players to be equally skilled? Whoever wins means that they are not equally skilled.
@@pizzaeater8905 Well if they both roughly win 50% of the time, I'd consider that equally skilled. (at least in the heads-up: It might still be a different story when playing the whole player-pool ofc.)
Because the community sucks. People have no self-control, the fans are toxic, they are gatekeepers and there are no regulations, no norms, just wild debauchery..
I think what made them "ally" with panda is that it is a serious company where the environment is much more controlled, the history of the competitive smash community is very stained and also the fact of 50 people (players and tournament directors) They are guilty of harassment and abuse in the same facilities is something that no company wants to be involved, in addition to representing Nintendo. Besides that it should not be said that they are minor errors
Great video! I'm 31 and just got back home from hanging out with my 7 and 9 year old nephews who love smash bros on the Nintendo switch. I played a few rounds, but wasn't having fun. I told my sister (their mom) that it feels too complex and I don't really have the want to learn how to play smash bros since I don't have a Nintendo. It's like being in school in order to get the hang of it. I was ready to bring out some Tekken to show some combos 😆
Wait. That doesn't make any sense. You say Smash is too complex, but then you ponder the idea of booting up Tekken? Dude, Tekken is far more advanced than any Smash game ever made! Smash is literally designed to be easier to understand than other fighting games!
@@jakescartoons6045 i don't own a switch. Plus they have a ton of experience since they've unlocked every character. I haven't played smash since the N64 days and none of it feels familiar. They were wrecking me. The Tekken thing is a joke. Implying that I was getting tired of getting whooped. Also these kids were researching combos while I was barely getting the movement mechanics down. This video is discussing how Nintendo likes to make video games easy to pick up and enjoy with all skill sets in mind. I'm agreeing with them that smash bros does not fit that mold and I understand why they don't want to appeal to the competitive players. It can isolate a lot of players from wanting to try it.
Never thought I'd have one of my videos featured when I clicked on this lol. I think this is a great video and good documentation of Nintendo's actions .
It’s even more insane when you look at what Nintendo is doing with Pokémon VGBC, with a world tour format, heavily advertised finals with their own little anime short. And this for the single most casual JRPG on the market, with a past incident or two involving western influencers having sexual misconduct scandals too. I just don’t understand
SSBM was like my teenage years. pretty much the only game me and my 3 buddies played! we got the achievement for 1000 hours played on at least 2 consoles.
Has anyone considered the idea that Nintendo doesn’t like certain people being the symbol for a particular character/franchise- on top of the idea that an S tier character is positive for that franchise, whereas low tier characters are a negative symbol and detracts from that particular franchise.
Your videos are outstanding. Editing, narration, and overall analysis is just excellent.
"overall analysis is just excellent"
Except the basic understanding of numbers.
At 1 minutes he talks about "the two most competitive of the smash titles have performed better in sales than their less competitive counterparts"
Where it literally shows that Smash Brawl and Smash 3DS outsold Melee.
Brawl the game everyone hates on is the 2nd best selling smash game.
I can't believe i'm witnessing the birth of such an amazing channel, keep up the good work!
Awesome well thought out video. I hope it can go kind of viral like the other one
That last clip was one of my fave moments from the smash doc. Thanks for using that.
The fact that almost nobody watched this video after your previous one got over a million views breaks my heart.
People seem to forget that Nintendo is a Corporation and allowing Smash to become the peoples right of choice means they would lose a very valuable asset that only they want to have.
Of course Smash Bros is property of Nintendo. But they don't want communities where the game is for the people, instead of the customer.
The casual player makes up the majority of sales though...so the community is not the competitive one. A game "for the people" would be one where anyone can just pick up the game and have fun. Why are they going to limit themselves cutting out the majority of players? That wouldn't make any sense to do, then your denying the average player the ability to grow that relationship between them and the game, reducing their player base.
@@mariopadilla1445 It really does come down to them simply being furious at the idea of anyone other than them making any amount of money off their games.
The little developer guys might have opinions about the game, but all the vampire lords care about is getting a slice of the moolah.
I've been lured in so many times by fighting games by the colourful array of characters you can play but every time I bounce off them hard as my dyspraxic brain struggles to pull off a basic combo in training mode let alone an actual battle.
Sakurai pratically made Smash for people like me and its great. I honestly hope the series does not try to focus on competitive, there are already so many hardcore fighting games.
Fighting games as of late have been trying to make learning a lot easier and have more casual modes in general, it's interesting seeing how the design for them is evolving
I'm very confused about the "2 most competitive titles have performed better..." point. Like doesn't the screenshot fairly clearly indicate that brawl sold almost 2x as many copy as melee? Like in what sense is it "lower down on the charts"?
In fact if we put the 2 smash 4 versions together and only look at growth, the 2 underperforming titles are melee (
Didn't nintendo c&d a tournament for using a modded version of melee (to have rollbacks)?
They did, but they do the same with fan games of their IPs.
@@heavymetalmixer91 Yeah, I know, I'm not a fan of nintendo games but some of the fan games/rom hacks they took down were genuinely great.
@@crackny4n That's why I don't buy anything from Nintendo anymore.
@@heavymetalmixer91 Add Take Two and Rockstar to the boycott list too, they are even worse.
Rare Nintendo W.
The Smash Bros. community deserves nothing and I'm glad the company doesn't give a fuck about them.
I think a big reason why they like to make games in the way they like them. They are a company run by game designers, so they would be really anal about how a game “should be played”
If that's the case then why is Sega ok with fan games, fan mods?
@@crystalbry4741 well SEGA allows it for Sonic because they are corrupt and only care about Sonic as a public figure. They take down fan projects for their other games.
@@thomasffrench3639 doesn't sega of Japan take down games? Not sega of America. Because i haven't heard about sega taking down games that were made by fans at least the American company.
The reason is quite simple. Nintendo doesn't want to be associated with these people who ruin their reputation as a family business. A Leffen alone and his toxic behavior is not for what the game and the company stands for. It's very clear to see why they don't support them.
Honestly, I kinda agree with Nintendo's philosophy. When Smash Ultimate first came out, I had tons of fun just goofing around with 3 friends with items on and all hell breaking loose. But once I got more serious, and started playing competitively, it took all the fun out of the game for me. Elite Smash is too stressful with people playing OP characters just camping every game, while playing with friends isn't as fun anymore since I can just 3 stock all my friends with no effort since they are all casual players. While a minority of players do enjoy competitive smash, I feel like the majority of players will enjoy smash the most when they're all just playing casually. This does incentivise Nintendo to dissuade people from getting into competitive smash.
It's a fighting game. Of course it's going to be competitive whether you like it or not.
Is it, though?
it's a party game
@@Matanumi I agree that's cool, but since shit is on by default, it's a party game first, fighting game second.
I've seen plenty of competitive Dark Souls, with frame data and all that. That doesn't make Dark Souls a fighting game, in my opinion.
@@kinglear6150 Yeah but you don't see From Soft C&Ding grassroot communities for choosing to treat the game as a second thing?
@@islandboy9381 True, but that's not what we're discussing in this comment. We're debating whether Smash is a fighting game or not.
I totally get why Nintendo doesn't want to officially endorse the Smash community, but shutting down tournaments feels weird.
Result from Trials and errors
That's why
I'm sure this has been pointed out, but Wii didn't have a HDMI port man. Wasn't till the Wii U when Nintendo finally added HDMI
Within a few months of Melee's release my friends and I were playing 1v1 stocks/final destination/no items with Fox, Captain Falcon, Sheik, etc. Not because we heard of that online, but because it was competitive and fun. And we were all just normal gamers, and not major fans of regular fighting games. Nintendo is confused; few players get anywhere near melee's skill ceiling, but that doesn't stop casual gamers from loving the competitive parts of the game.
It seems like an easy fix would rules for conduct that could lead to disqualification if not followed (although we saw that go awry with competitive pokemon). Granted that also doesn’t address Sakurai’s concerns.
"And Sakurai a God among men"🤓
smash events also just have a louder, more rowdy crowd and players (not to mention the frequent rage moments). not a scene most people would associate with nintendo. doesnt surprise me nintendo prefer to hold splatoon tournaments.
With the amount of hardcore competitive games that are specifically marketed that way that are already out, its a breath of fresh air to see a company take such a stance. Normally games designed around PvP feature toxic communites with high skill floors and little to no enjoyment for casual players. A battle game that stands in opposition to that awful gaming culture is to me, a legitimate hope that gaming isn't ruined.
In what case has the competitive scene ever influenced the causual scene in a negative way when they're both kept exclusive from eachother as an option?
@@islandboy9381 Off the top of my head, Overwatch was ruined by aggressively trying to appeal to eSports players. Everything that made the game unique or appealing at its initial launch was eventually stripped away, streamlined and optimized into a corporate bland sameness calling itself 'balance'.
@@ravenfrancis1476 devs fault for doing so. A game well balanced for comp is typically a game well balanced for casual. Everybody fuckin hated many of Overwatch’s balancing - casual and comp players alike.
@@yeetmahhotpockett1723 Not really. It was mostly only competitive players that whined.
@@ravenfrancis1476 no, I’m talking about the dev rebalances and stuff. Comp players and casual players alike disliked the changes because they were poor changes. I’m not saying that at launch over watches balancing sucked- because I wasn’t there for the launch - but you can bet people didn’t like many of the rebalances
The Mario in Melee and brawl looked the most badass and Alpha
The Brawl Mario's textures such as the denim in his outfit looked so realistic and dope for that time.
I think some of the darkness that has come to light in the smash community has affected Nintendo decision on supporting competitive play. Your video was well done as well will sub.
That's kind of stupid though... the Smash competitive community and the casual Smash player rarely meet, so how could they affect each other? Also, I think some of Nintendo's decisions may have to do with how many IPs they've collected in one product (literally one -- if not the biggest crossover in history). That's a whole lot of legal paperwork to swim through.
agreed, just seems petty to me.
Reputations and influence fucking spreads man. There's this thing called "the Internet". It doesn't matter if these people don't directly interact personally. The non-stop toxicity and rottenness to the core of the competitive Smash scene does nothing but put regular bad press out there on the game that's particularly negative when viewed from a "normies" point of view. Is someone gonna be more or less likely to want to play the game casually (particularly to KEEP playing it) when they are constantly hearing about the non-stop toxic bullshit associated with the game? Hell yes. Many people pick up Smash and then stop playing because the Smash community just kinda fucking sucks. 🤷 People had a good thing going and then THEY fucking ruined it, not Nintendo. Nintendo didn't make the competitive Smash scene a toxic cesspool of shit. The scene did that plenty good and fine on their own... 😑
@@Cooe. And yet the casuals you mention are not at all tuned in to the gaming world. I mean, I'm a gamer myself (as in dedicated gaming, not mobile gaming) and Nintendo has influenced me since I was a kid... and **I** rarely hear _anything_ about the competitive Smash scene. If I don't (and I keep a much closer eye on the gaming world than the average normie) how much less do the casuals?
I get what you're saying, but sounds blown way out of proportion to me.
@@Cooe. the only person being toxic here is you I've seen more than 1 comment from you saying literally all smash players should die. Hmm I wonder why smash players would be mad at that 🤦♀️ Maybe you should go get a grip on your life instead of being mad at people trying to have fun playing a game.
Just look at Overwatch, watch as competitors scene completely screw over casual while competitors scene crashed. Overwatch lost both scene.
If nintendo is going to deny they demanded a cease and desist, why don't they just ignore them?
What they're doing is cowardly and people should tell them to kick rocks
lmao are you paying for their legal fees?
@@chunny3441 what legal fees? Nintendo is denying cease and desist cases, have some backbone
Because if you press on toward your event they basically said, "We will C&D this event if we have to", then you end up betraying the players who waste time and money in travel, vs at least giving them a chance to recoup costs and definitely NOT waste time.
Hold the idea the idea they didn't C&D up as evidence of their manipulation, given they had months of notice.
Going from your Decline of eSports video to this, and these breakdowns are incredibly fascinating and engaging.
Probably because they can smell the Smash booth all the way at their headquarters 🤢
Is it really that bad? I know I have heard these stereotypes for smash players over time but I've never been to an event.
@@ngcf4238 Yeah it’s a stereotype. But it didn’t come to be without a reason. I have personally had experiences at cons where I almost vomited from the smell of some people hanging around the smash booth. The worst smell to date was probably around the Rainbow Six Seige booth though. I guess these games just attract these kind of people. Just make sure to take a shower first before going to any gaming/con event please.
I personally dislike competitive Smash, as it invites a lot of judgement and bias in the community (as some people start treating people as inferior or saying they're bad at the game for having a more casual playstyle for example)... but even I am disgusted by Nintendo's attempts to stamp out the Smash Bros. competitive scene. Yes, Smash Bros. is a great party game... but why would you ever go out of your way to prevent people from enjoying the game the way _they_ want to? There is no "objectively wrong" way to enjoy a game.
But that's just it. In Nintendo's eyes, there IS a wrong way to play their games, and it's in any way other than what they specifically intended. Nintendo is extremely, extremely controlling of their IPs and see other ways of playing and other derivative efforts as attempting to subvert their control.
@@LordSiravant Yes, if I recall its a part of Japanese business culture... Its seen as "rude" to not partake of a product in the way it was intended to be used or something like that. I'm not an expert though, so I could be wrong.
The thing is, by avoiding the static combo systems of previous fighting games, they made the best emergent competitive fighting game of them all. It's not really a game anymore, but a robust fighting system, that can be played rewardingly at any skill level. If only they could see that.
Basically everything after Evo 2013 can be boiled down to stopping mods of their game or whatever tourney they shut down having such shitty PR skills that Nintendo was forced to step in
Congrats for the 10k subs in one month!
I never really think about it but yeah my relationship with nintendo was forever ruined by this. Ive been playing melee since around 2007 and started EMG with my friend almost 10 years ago. Competitive Smash was a massive part of my identity as a person and its been years since ive gone to an event or even played at this point.
I don't think nintendo hate competitive player otherwise they would have never allowed some tournament to exists. I think they like that people are so fond of smash bros so on one hand they want to support them because it's good for the company but on the other hand they care about their public image of being a family friendly company. I don't think any hope is lost for the competitive scene but don't expect too much
I doubt there will be another smash bros game but anything is possible. As time goes on the competitive scene will grow smaller and smaller and it's very sad
Nintendo thought there was a future in competitive smash. They realized there wasn't and now they hate competitive smash.
Well, I can confirm Nintendo is 100% not against competitive play in family/ kids games, let’s all not forget that competitive Pokémon exists, and Nintendo holds a annual competitions for Pokémon. They just don’t want smash to be competitive.
Game Companies don't like it when people are playing their game but they are NOT making any money.
That is the reason why I think Nintendo hates the Smash Bros Melee community events so much.
Nintendo can't make any money if the Smash Organizers already had brought their GameCubes and Melee disks 20 years earlier.
its more then that, its control over thier IP that nintendo is fanatic about.
It still hurts looking at the 2013 EVO bit where Skullgirls got one upped at the end.
Sakurai wanted to make Checkers, players found a way to play Chess, and Nintendo got pissed off at Chess becoming so popular, because they want the people who buy Smash to play casually, like checkers, that's an extremely restricted view.
Nintendo IS an old company with boomer business practices during its entire existence as a company
You're forgetting an important factor. The players who found a way to play chess out of checkers are trying to force Nintendo to cater to their chess.
Nintendo made Checkers for the Wii and Checkers for the 3DS/Wii U and the Chess players bitched and moaned because the game that was clearly Checkers wasn't Chess. They felt they were entitled to play Chess.
So Nintendo released Ultimate Checkers with a few additions to make the Chess players finally shut the fuck up. The Chess players got more entitled and greedy, they stopped bathing, they started grooming kids, they complained even harder about every new Checkers piece because they only cared about making that piece work for Chess. They even got the Bear and Bird Checkers piece they've been bitching about for over a decade. He wasn't meta enough for Chess, so the pathetic Chess players dropped the Checkers piece immediately.
Nintendo is in the wrong morally for shutting down tournaments.
They are not in the wrong for telling the Chess players "fuck off, we are not making Chess."
I think the answer is pretty obvious. Look at Nintendo's ads. Happy nuclear families smiling, creating fond memories together. Look up 'competitive smash' and you'll see autism, people fucking up their hands to the point where they need braces and surgery, people literally shitting themselves at tournaments, and creepy-ass gay pedophile drama. The revenue they'd get from supporting the community where all this shit happens wouldn't be worth the risk to their brand.
Someone got 4 stocked and is still really upset about it.
@@hideokojima2015 I actually quite enjoy Smash as a game, I'm just saying it's not good business sense for Nintendo to support the competitive scene. 'SKILL ISSUE'
@JALECO ARCADE its actively bad business sense for them to try and shut it down.
@Hideo Kojima It really isn't for the reasons outlined in my original comment. If someone looks up 'smash bros' and finds say, the whole Nairo controversy, that's harmful to Nintendo's branding by association. The revenue brought in by competitive Smash is fuck all in the eyes of a company that makes as much money as Nintendo, while supporting a scene with these types of figures in it is a huge risk factor to the value of their IPs in the age of Twitter outrage and cancel culture. It's just not logical.
@JALECO ARCADE trying to shut it down just annoys that fanbase though and it doesn't really reduce the amount of association they have. Also most families that play smash have no clue nor do they care about the competitive scene, you just seem weirdly mad.
I'm not a competitive player and love the series. it's not my job to play a difficult game and it's great. Players can always make games harder.
I feel like it's such a missed opportunity from Nintendo. They seem to be adverse to people playing games differently than intended, which imo is the beauty of gaming. You can consume the media in a way you like. Whether it's competitive smash, a Speedrun abusing glitches, or nuzlocking Pokemon. Nintendo should take a more indifferent approach rather than a hostile one.
As we all know, competitive party games don’t exist
My understanding was that they wanted control over the esport scene for their title. Many companies like riot games ensure they are in control of all large scale esport activities. Maybe nintendo was not ready to run it themselves yet, and they wanted to stop other people from establishing control off their IP. A grant example if how mobile legends which ripped of league many time over has hindered the growth of riots own wild rift.
Woah! As ML player, you got that point where Riot Games missed this opportunity that's why their Wild Rift haven't grown that high since ML already took place back then. Aside its comparison to this Nintendo-Smash situation, here comes the situaion when Sony missed the opportunity at how high the potential of From Sorfware is because of Demon Souls given the praise from western players since its release to the west unlike the reviews from eastern players, and then Bandai Namco (which was supposed to be Sony back then) acquired Fromsoft and we now had Dark Souls up to Elden Ring (and its latest game Armored Core 6) in any platforms worldwide instead of Playstation exclusives (except for Bloodborne).
It'd be cool one day if Nintendo were able to create a Smash Game that has a competitive mode and a fun mode. Something like a combination between brawl and melee. Would love to see another subspace emissary instead of world of light. Is it not possible to advertise the game towards family fun and for competitive people, like having a fun mode and for glory mode?
I hope if there is a new Smash Game in the future, they bring back what made the other smash games good and mash them all together, like Brawl's Subspace Emissary/Music, Wii U's For Glory, Melee's tech/skills. Perhaps the fun mode and for glory mode can be better separated, by applying some brawl features to the fun mode and melee features to the for glory mode besides match settings like items.
I don't think you even need to do that because the "fun" features in brawl were literally just restrictive of skill based play. You can always add items into the game which adds a luck element and makes it more of a party game vs a fighting game
That first sentence is literally how the game is designed. That's the reason why a competitive ruleset can exist at all.
I mean I got the first smash game until the last I was a fan but what strikes me was why we can’t have tournament the way it use too I only played in 2 and that’s it it was small community tournament nothing for glory I played for a third time at a family party that last 3rd one was I lost due to star Fox Arwing shooting me while I was recovering it was devastating and traumatic and well I was wasted but that never stopped me from playing smash bros I just realized how the person beat me just took credit for that Arwing being there and if it was a different place and no foreign foul play enemies it would be different to this day that person who beat me still says it’s a onetime chance to beat him saying that to break my ego (which I didn’t had any and it was a for fun tournament) but it wasn’t I played and got beaten several times that they was just that good.
People pay them money to play these games and they have the nerve to tell their customers what they can and can’t do with their copies of the game.
You can meet up with everyone their and pay games... there's a difference between that and commercialization of their intellectual property...
@@BodieB "Commercialization"
Oh yeah buddy, the Smash competitive community is totally known for its big money.
@@mechadeka The amount of money made doesn't change the fact that tournaments are commercialized.
8:50 as a company, there is a monetary incentive. It’ll be years before the next smash game, and the sales for Smash will go up with all the free advertisement that competitive tournaments give to games. Sales go up every time there’s a tournament with a lot of publicity. The more they support competitive communities, the more copies they’ll sell to everyone. It’s so fucking simple and such a low cost for advertising compared to what they spend.
It's not about the revenues. Its about the (company) values, and branding imaging, that Nintendo is going off on. There is a difference.
Not worth associating with these communities when it can hurt their brand image.
I gotta say, y’all talking about “brand image” that doesn’t actually affect sales. In any significant way. As long as they aren’t directly sponsoring the event, they face none of the legal or moral ramifications. And consumers won’t care. Just like Activision blizzard having a litany of charges being filed against them hasn’t really hurt their sales of CoD considering it’s still the most well sold game for 2022. Hell Blizzard had some of the worst of it and their Diablo Immortal mobile game, one where they literally insulted the crowd at E3, made over 100 million dollars so far. EA still makes boucoup bucks on Madden and FIFA even though literally NO ONE will say they like or support EA.
So no, branding and image doesn’t matter. And if it did, Nintendo would have never sold so many games with the way they have treated their own fans time and time again.
@@anthonygilletteThat's just from your measly analysis. This is Nintendo we're talking about, the ancient one who had took care of their brand since the Mario movie + Zelda show debacle. They have a reputation to uphold to for future endeavors, and these groups are dangerous parasites at best. They've been here for centuries and still going strong due to their archaic stance.
Regardless, you want Nintendo to take a page from Activision of all things?
this proves why in the early times of ultimate a random kid won a tournament playing rob, sakurai didn't want to see people playing his game get divided by their skill in like fighting games while blinded by the beauty of skill expression in said games
i can imagine how his vision would play and the outcome feels so alien i cant believe it existing ever
They hate the toxic fanbase not the game, big difference
They also hate how a game that’s supposed to be fun and wacky is turned into a street fighter styled game.
10k subs with just two videos is just showing how amazing this guys content is. I have never enyoyed content of this type this much.
I don't understand it. I played it once, tiny characters ya can barely see, rapid flashes causing headaches and more eye strain and screen going all over the place making it even harder to see what's going on. I don't understand how people even play smash bros.
It sits in weird spot where its not really a party game nor a true fighting game.
If I want a party game there's Mario Party or Dokapon Kingdom, if I wanted a Fighting game I would rather play Guilty Gear, Dragon Ball FighterZ or Street Fighter.
To me Smash sucks at both genres but it does have a rabid fanbase
Are you bragging about being a grandpa?
I would love competitive smash with random scenarios and items, not the always 3-stock final destination boring option.
Calling competitive smash boring is just delusion
thats not competitive then lol
final destination is not even one of the most common stages lmao
blud has never seen competitive melee😂its 4 stocks lol
All the replies missed the point.
10:14 Minoru Arakawa was never the CEO of Nintendo. He was the first president for Nintendo of America, but never the whole company. The president you are missing is Sekiryo Yamauchi, the second person to run Nintendo.
The ESports scene and the "Pros" are what killed Apex Legends. (And the streamers that followed the Esports crowd) It got to the point before I quit playing that *every single* player went full-blown meta and played every match as of it were a damn tournament or would leave their squad just to get clips for social media. Which made the game a literal job/ work rather then *FUN* as intended, so i agree to keep the toxicity of the "Pros" away from any game you truly enjoy.
No one plays it as a party game though. Every time I play it with 3 more people it plays like absolutely shit. It becomes a chaos that feels insanely unfun. So while they let Sakurai have his dumb stance, it's the actually the competitive play that sells the system. Even if it's just you and a friend on the couch together.
Who is these 3 people?
honestly, i think Sakurai's reasoning (if true, likely not) that Smash should be rooted into the casual audience is a bit absurd considering the fact that its a _Fighting_ game, yknow, a game with a Win and _Lose_ condition against _other people_ . EVERY game with a VS scenario will _always_ turn competitive. Look at Mario Party, despite not having tournaments held for pro level Mario Party players, that game gets very competitive very quickly if you peek into any living room with Kids, or even Adults, playing Mario Party.
Smash in of itself is rooted in a competitive nature, just like Mario Party. The fact alone it has a Win/Lose condition against other players was the _instant_ it was a competitive game. That's where we get the root word for competitive after all, Competition. Just like Mario Party, its a competition to see who Wins, and who Loses.
and a fight is no different from a competition, its literally a battle with a Winner, and a Loser. Even if Sakurai (though i personally doubt so) wanted it to be a more casual experience, he would never get that due to the nature of the game that was developed.
It was competitive the moment he decided to make a Fighting Game
At its core, a video game is a toy. There is no wrong way to play with a toy so long as you’re having fun.