I hate how people take the idea that someone MAY be a bad person and use it as an excuse to be an absolutely awful person to them. Like seriously, big bad man allegedly ruined a fun event I was excited to watch, let me threaten his wife and children so they have to flee their home. Wtf.
I dont care even if he was a horrible person. You don't threaten his family or anyone close to him. I'd say you don't threaten anyone at all but maybe that's too much to ask for some people
@@chubbybutterflies8971 speaking as an entity that grew up in South East Asia, that part of the world ain’t that much better The Internet introduced pseudo-democratic noise. Noise gets defined by lowest common denominator, resulting in often groupthink extreme conclusions & actions Literally with enough numbers anything can be toxic & dog shit dangerous, no matter what platform (Unless it’s something simple maybe, like a kids game 🤷♂️)
I'm not even remotely into Smash and its scene, but it has been fascinating hearing about all this. It's also made me respect Mogul Mails ability to break down a story in a way that is engaging for people who don't know anything about that scene.
The way you described it made Alan sound like a tragic villain, someone who was too worried about the future to care about the present. If it is like Ludwig said, then the path to hell was paved with good intentions.
How does he sound like he has good intentions? He just sounds manipulative and like a compulsive lier that tried to destroy the entire already existing scene for his own monetary benifit.
on the Twitter post with Alan's response, the entire comment section was "waiting for the mogul mail" which really says a lot about the success of this channel, that peoples source for this kind of news is just Ludwig. Really well done, this channel is awesome
This also points to the fact that people don't want to form their own opinions, but side with someone they have designated. It means Lud has a LOT of control over the opinions of a good chunk of the Smash community and this is NOT a good thing, even if Lud doesn't abuse this power. People should be forming their own opinions, not waiting for someone to tell them what to think. If you've wondered why politics(especially in America) has become so polarized, this phenomenon is why.
@@choccy_bagel right, more than willing to bet the majority of people just didn't want to read a 30 page document on Twitter lmao. Having someone cut down and curate the info does not mean you can no longer have your own opinion - similarly to watching the news.
@@dmoogle2006 So you read every contract, EULA and other such things yourself, right? You don't have a lawyer go over them for you and explain in easier terms what they mean? Because you are expecting exactly that from everyone else with that statement. All the people were doing when they said they were waiting for MogulMail is that they were waiting for Lud to summarize it for them and because there is absolutely no point for everyone to take the enormous amount of time to read the entire thing when we know Lud will take the time to read through it and create a video to explain it and explain how it is completely bullshit, which is exactly what he did.
@@choccy_bagel Your point is that people are CAPABLE of forming their own opinion and doing their own research ??? ... which like is true... but the MAJORITY of people will have had their opinion formed by watching this video. These videos get like a million views and for most people it is probably the only thing they see about this drama at all.
I appreciate Ludwig saying don’t just believe me because I say something, it promotes a more healthy environment of doing your own research and I think that’s good especially in today’s world
@tooevil7665 tbh most peoples reading comprehension is so bad they probably should listen anyway. Some of the conclusions twitter is getting from the statements is not even bad just completely off
Completely unrelated to the topic: I really like how you manage your story with all the tabs on chrome being organized in order that you want to talk about each topic. It's a little thing, but it is satisfying to watch.
Ludwig has been really helpful for me in giving a pretty good summary in all of this Smash stuff. I'd also recommend watch Hungrybox's videos on this Smash situation since he's a big figure head of Smash and understands a lot of this in a more thorough manner.
Alan's actions make a lot more sense if you think of them as being done by someone who thinks that the sky is falling over something that he really loved. It doesn't excuse the unprofessionalism, but I could see urgency coming across as hostility with a lot of tournament organizers.
I'm an old fan of Ludwig but a new fan of mogul mail and I gotta say he is killing it, I've been so busy and haven't watched a ton of RUclips recently but to my knowledge he's doing content for his main channel, the yard, 2 huge events, mogul mail, and probably more. Mad fucking props to you man
I completely agree with your take of Alan basically catering to Nintendo instead of the Smash community. Even if he genuinely believes he had good intentions, he actively made the community worse by trying to intimidate all these other organizations. His goal should’ve been to make the community better for the players, not for Nintendo
It would have been both. Make competitive smash more viable for a larger audience and allow people to create a career off of smash while also benefitting nintendo. He was trying to do a Win-Win situation where everyone benefits.
@@YightLagami *In theory* it would have been both. Doesn't mean it would have been in practice. Well intended or not, conforming multiple grass roots Tournaments to a single homogenized standard with Panda as a centralized authority to hand out licenses sounds like it would lead to a lot of issues. There's a compilation of tweets from TOs that mention some of the specific issues they had with how exactly Alan was approaching it. Maybe he really was refining things and it would have worked out for the best in the long run. But unfortunately in practice he did not pitch his vision well to the key people he needed to convince - so much so that at least some of them felt they were being coerced (before he had ever even interacted with Ken Chen)
100%, instead of working with Nintendo and TOs to try to make it easier for them to license and find marketing(which would pay players better in turn), he worked against them for his own aspirations of having it all under big daddy Nintendo with him at the Panda League helm. I understand what Alan was trying to do but that is just corporatizing an independent movement, which most certainly will rub everyone the wrong way.
@@IronicHavoc Panda itself is much less strict and more lenient than Nintendo. PandaGlobal or Alan would still be using Nintendo's guidelines in judging what events could be licensed, but since Allan is ingrained in the smash community, he would be able to grant licenses more quickly. I think you are confused to believe that Panda was trying to homogenize the scene. The standards were already set by Nintendo themselves. Panda giving out licenses meant that obtaining them from Nintendo would much easier for everyone involved. Ultimately, at the end of the day, you didn't need a license to run an event, but getting one would greatly benefitted everyone involved. In practice or theory, many people would prefer a company run by a Smash TO help gain licensing by Nintendo without having to wait for Nintendo's approval which would take longer in theory and practice.
@@skataneric Alan was trying to make it easier. The other TO’s took that as Alan threatening them rather than him recommending guidelines for those TO’s to get licensing. The only thing Alan did badly was try to push for a response by other TO’s b/c they outright ghosted or went unresponsive. Which at the end of the day had nothing to do with SWT being cancelled. I think the more of a bogeyman you claim Alan or Nintendo to be, the more closed you make the community. Ultimately, if you want nintendo’s license, you would have to follow their guidelines. In a case like SWT where they followed Nintendo’s guidelines, it would still take 3 years or more based on Alan’s statement to get a license which wouldn’t happen before the event. Alan and PandaGlobal supporting licensing and streamlining the process makes it easier for everyone involved everyone involved where as asking for Nintendo of Japan for a license is not sustainable. Nintendo supports Panda and then Panda supports the TOs to support the community. Panda wasn’t going to make those guidelines stricter than Nintendo’s but instead more lenient/faster to get approval
"they said they had no expectations of a lot of people showing up" sounds like he contacted the hotel after the event was cancelled so the front end employee saw no even planned. That is not evidence of a "fake event"
This was clearly one of, if not the most, time and effort you've put into making a Mogul Mail video, and it shows. Thank you for all you're doing for the community, Lud.
I just finished reading the document and then this notification, honestly man it’s really hard to get the complete full story and I don’t think we ever will get that. It all honestly just sucks, smash was doing so well recently it feels like every time we take a step forward we also take 2 steps back
@Nоt RiскrоII 🅥 That's not how that works. You don't get to just do the exact same thing, slap a "fUnNy" caption on it, and call it parody or satire when you're still just doing the exact same thing as the bots.
Yea, the problem with this whole thing is that, as someone not in the smash community, there’s almost nothing in terms of evidence. I don’t care about accounts from “respected” individuals. I want real evidence, so I can’t come to any conclusions.
I think it’s basically Alan came in with good intentions but had a vision for the scene no one else agreed with. Along with he was never transparent and insinuated a lot of this and that. But basically it’s either multiple independent tournament organizers and independent businesses came together and lied or Alan lied lol
@@flogos989 you’ll never get that because a lot of these things happen in conversations and calls which is illegal to record lol. But you can read between the lines of everyone’s statements, and Alan’s have a lot of inconsistencies , inconsistent with his own and panda’s even. Like the hotel not being booked, but there was already evidence it was booked and people were paid
The way Ludwig articulates Mogul Mail is so incredible you can get so lost in every detail and I love how he adds his opinions but still doesnt say or mean them like they are close to fact giving you that room to form your own
The only way this drama is gonna get more juicy is when we find out Dr Alan is two identical twins with one being evil and manipulative and the other good and supportive like a Spanish soap opera...
I think in Alan's mind he was trying to persuade event organizers to join Panda with the proposition that their event could be licensed. In case they stuck with another company they might get shut down instead. Instead, the event organizers thought that he would actively try to shut their event down if they didn't join, therefor the "strong arming" accusations. Now, I'm no expert so I refrain from having an opinion whether what he did was right or wrong, but I can understand both sides.
I'm impressed with how consistent Ludwig is in his support of smash. I could not care less about smash but it's cool to see him put his money where his mouth is time and time again. I hope that i would do the same for the communities i care about if I was in his shoes. !
I think Ludwig should react to/read the fan comic series "Reviving the Smash Fighters". Gabeleth's channel fandubbed the entire thing!!! It'd be a nice morale booster after everything that's happened for the Smash Community.
Not all of it, but that claim was mostly baseless. The other part is that Alan had no reason to go after SWT and that SWT was not going to obtain a license by Nintendo in the time frame they set out yet still went with that choice. Not to mention that Alan already decided to have the Panda Final set on a far worse date already and allowed multiple people in PandaGlobal go to SWT. There is no incentive or real motive for Alan or even Nintendo to explicitly go after SWT. PandaGlobal does not benefit in anyway from SWT taking place in a completely different streaming date from PandaGlobal. The fact that even Nintendo had stated that they were not going after SWT and that Alan was constantly advocating for the community is what causes the confusion At the end of the day, Nintendo simply said they weren't going to grant the license, but did not try to cancel the event and VGBC assumed it meant that the event can no longer be run b/c it didn't have a license.
I fucking love this channel. I've enjoyed Lud's content since I started watching a few years ago but now I actually respect him as a person with a solid moral compass and a drive to be transparent with his viewers
Mogul Mail has become one of the most transparent and trustworthy news sources in the gaming/tech world, Lud understands that things are not black and white and he keeps up with the story as it evolves. Thanks LUD
My conspiracy is that this was all Nintendo's goal from the start. Give both sides conflicting information under the table and off the books. They'd learned from the last time that the community backlash for this behavior was large (even if it didn't actually hurt their bottom line). They chose to do it this way this time so that the competitive Smash community would tear itself apart from the inside and Nintendo could remain clean of any blame.
Agreed. Nintendo would love for the Smash scene to destroy itself while they're just on the sidelines, with everyone just treating them like "yeah Nintendo are kinda bad but we just have to deal with them lol" (which is how it seems most people see them right now). Nintendo are, and always have been, the real destroyers of the Smash scene.
Honestly it would be some 4D chess shit from Nintendo. But realistically, I think it is just a huge corporation with tons of layered bureaucracy. Nintendo, like many corporations that operate internationally has a certain hierarchy established. From what we know is that VGBC, BTS, and most of TOs deal with the regular staff, who are managed by a director, who takes orders from the national branch (think Nintendo of America) who takes orders from Nintendo Ltd, Japan. Essentially what tends to happen is that lower employee conveys one thing, the manager hears of it and either approves or rejects the proposal, or a higher-up in NoA or even NoJ rejects that proposal leaving a lot of employees in an awkward spot. I think a lot of the silence is essentially the immense inefficiency of communication between branches both horizontally and vertically, which means unless it is deemed a priority, things are not happening for months. I think Alan had access to some higher up in the chain than VGBC did. However, I think he lacks communication skills sufficient to placate Nintendo and so after speaking with Alan, Nintendo likely got the wrong message. Alan to give him the benefit of the doubt, truly believed he was a savior of Smash, since he accomplished one thing no one else did, have direct connections and partnerships with Nintendo. And so in his messiah complex, he believe that to save the scene, everyone must be centralized under the umbrella of Nintendo and didn't see or kindly take rejection from other TOs and orgs but have a justified distrust of Nintendo.
Small note about the Hotel situation: Even if they didn't block off rooms Downtown San Antonio and the area surrounding The San Antonio airport both have hundreds of hotels surrounding them anyway. Even if we take Alan's word for it, you're still probably going to get a better deal on a room within walking distance of the event if you booked something on your own.
@@joywolf83 there’s a reason why Pax South ended up in San Antonio and why briefly SxSW thinking about moving to SA It’s just well suited for large events.
Nobody views themselves as the villain in their own story. In Alan's eyes, everything he did was justified and for the betterment of the community. He highlights how kindly he talked to people, and how good the deals people were offered were. But if people didn't want to take them, they didn't want to take them, and they had no obligation to. Repeatedly bringing up that partnering with Panda gives you safety and legitimacy would be perceived as a threat/protection racket. Especially when someone has already rejected the partnership. It's Hubris. It's Light Yagami syndrome. It's thinking you know what's best for the community. How to save it. How to turn it profitable. How to legitimize it. He views himself as a savior, but others clearly don't agree. If I were a 35 y/o MD and Owner/CEO of a Multi-Million dollar eSports organization, I'd probably have quite the ego / delusions of grandeur too.
It seemed to me like Alan had this big deal going on with Nintendo and didn't want to share the details with everyone else thinking they might either take a slice away or the whole pie from him (taking his idea). So he went about it in a round about way that didn't exactly put himself in the audience's shoes to understand what he's actually asking of them. Even though in his mind the deal is good because he sees the End Game if they accepted it, but he fails to see what they're seeing, he's too focused on the success of it all that he became blinded. Was it so much to just tell people or someone trustworthy of your plan? Even in person? It seemed all so rush. Could have been as simple as "Hey, I'm trying to work on commercialising Smash". The fact this guy worked on this for 4 years? Almost feels like he didn't work on it at all, he speed ran the thing to the ground in a matter of days. It was like 1 guy having an idea and 9 other guys not having it, but the 1 guy proceeded with his plans oblivious to the opinions of the other 9.
If conversations are truly smooth I doubt anything like this occurs. It would take a lot to plan a whole event, get within weeks of it, and feel as if there's no other option than shutting it down. At a bare minimum he definitely needs to work on communication
The only thing i've accepted is that Dr Alan is the character with good intentions that became the antagonist because his methods were wrong and as much as he wanted to do good, he ended up as the villain. Even tho you have to defeat them and bring peace to the land, you can't help to wonder if he's that evil after all, but the damage is already done and there's no going back.
Dr. Alan: I didn't do it guys. Also Dr. Alan: Now, excuse me while I make this statement with nothing but insinuations and no receipts... and try to get you to infer some kind of evil conspiracy... you know... like a Super Villain would.
Because he is under immense duress of his entire company going under ruin in the span of 5 days and Alan being solely blamed for Smash World Tour being cancelled which he most likely had nothing to do with yet got hit in the cross fire of the blame. The initial statement of SWT is very clearly him being confused for why the event was cancelled given that he believed wholeheartedly that Nintendo supported the event, but also the fact that VGBC was not going to get a license in the timeframe they set. Everything with BTS sounds like Alan trying to help the community his own way and the other TO's pushing back against it which just sounds like beef/drama unrelated to SWT altogether.
I don't know if anyone out there has ever played the game Tales of Vesperia (spoilers incoming i guess), but I think Alan is matching closely to Duke, the game's final boss. Duke is encountered all throughout the story (mainly musing on the flaws of humanity and their destructive tendencies), but he's never painted as the main antagonist until towards the end. Duke isn't really a villain - he's an antihero. He wants to guarantee the safety of the world he lives in, but thinks the only way to do it is to end all of humanity so nature can find its own way again. The main protagonists fight him to keep that from happening and show him their resolve that there is another way. In the same way, I do think Alan wants what is best for "the world" of Smash - but he wants it in the way that would kill off everything the smash community has become. He's an antihero. He got a little too caught up in the dream and actually believed that Nintendo would operate the smash community in the way other major esports corporations regulate their games. Knowing Nintendo, they'd over-regulate everything. They'd suck the life out of what has made smash tournaments so special. They're not a competitive esports type of company by nature. I feel sorry for Alan, reps from PG that have decided to quit, and for SWT. There's no good that's coming out of this really (except for Ludwig's Scuffed World Tour event). At the end of the day, smash has been around for 20+ years and no matter the fact that people can't make a living on it, they continue to play and watch and run events. Alan decided to believe in the wrong thing and handled everything so abysmally. I believe in the people and players of the community to keep the game alive, even if they have to play for $25 in someone's garage (to paraphrase Mang0). These games won't die as long as we don't let them.
We know from pokemon tournaments that nintendo is really really good when it comes to professional worldwide events and their regulation is never that strict. I honestly think that what you are saying is true, but alan/panda isn't in the wrong as they are kinda just trying to improve how the tournaments work and want more money and sponsors for all, including the smaller county-wide tournaments. In a perfect world, alan is completely in the right, but we know that the world isn't perfect and it all went poorly and alan promising something wasn't going to happen because it wasn't licensed wasn't him threatening, just informing and trying to tell everyone that they have to do things through nintendo now. It seems like he was just too optimistic about the whole thing when in reality no one liked the fact that they would have to report directly through nintendo for Smash (Which again, has never been an issue for pokemon).
@@Jacknorrington Pokemon is sort of unique. Nintendo has some say because they are part owners of The Pokemon Company. However, the Professor Program (judges) and tournaments are done through Play! POkemon, a branch of The Pokemon Company International, while in Japan The Pokemon Company has direct involvement in those tournaments. Notice if you go to large Regional or International tournaments you will see Nintendo and Pokemon Company EMployees incognito keeping an eye on things, such as mods, a bullet proof briefcase with a special Switch/3DS/DS, or other issues and they report the TO back to the company. Usually, it turns out well, other times ... well there was an intense controversy.
@@Jacknorrington That's actually an interesting point and I appreciate you sharing that. I guess why I have such a pessimistic view of how Nintendo would handle Smash is because they clearly _don't_ want it to be the flagship competitive IP. They've never even expressed a hint of interest in operating it at that kind of level. They don't even like the rule sets tournaments run on (I'm pretty sure the rare Nintendo-sponsored Smash event always had items?). Either way, it's a mystery why they resist Smash so much, but not Pokemon.
hotbid has been part of every community I've been in and he's incredible and loved in all of them. All the way back to when TeamLiquid wasn't even a team but still just a brood war message board.
yeah that was SUPER sus. Hotbid is ANCIENT. He's been around since 2003. Like pretty sure if he had been sus at all in the past people would have known.
@@Chris-qh5tz Occam's razor. hotbid had been in the esports scene since 2003 and has worked with MLG, ESL, WCS, IPL, DreamHack, TL, Valve, BeyondTheSummit, and more as high ranking positions. There has never been any bad rep about him, and all of the projects hes done have been very good for their respective communities. He has done things across multiple major games, including Brood War, Starcraft 2, DotA2, and most recently Smash. Hotbid isn't just a "smash guy". His resume is huge. He's bigger than smash and he's been everywhere. If he was a bad person to work with, we would have heard about it from at least one of the scenes he's been apart of.
With all these different moving parts, absolutely crazy. My big takeaway (besides Alan’s involvement of course.) and how I’ve always felt about Nintendo, is they are flat out antiquated. I just cannot for the life of me understand why they make everything so difficult. Nintendo hates positive PR and their fans apparently. It frustrates the hell out of me because their games are special and special to me as well. Thank you Lud, and to Charlie as well, for keeping these tournaments alive. I have a really fond memory of my first Smash tournament at my high school, and that thrill of getting 2nd is something I won’t forget!
The whole "why won't you work with me" just sounds like the adult version of "why won't you be my friend". I think its obvious Alan is oblivious to how he comes off.
So before I watch this video, I really tried to understand his points. I understand why he is so emotional right now, but that really reflected in this document. Like his apology to BTS was very passive aggressive, and it felt like he wasn't taking any accountability for his part in that situation because he was too focused on his grudge with Ken. Most of the evidence also didn't seem to hold much weight. I think he probably would have been better off having someone help him write this, it seems like his emotional state resulted in this document lacking comprehension and focus.
I think that's a trap many people without PR reps fall into when making personal rebuttals to drama. It takes a long time, and multiple sets of eyes to look over what you've written and poke holes into it until it coherently tells the story you're trying to share. I understand that this was a rush job for him, but the general tone of him being the indignant, wronged party is the wrong approach to take to a community banging down your door no matter how vindicating it might feel. If he felt he was right, he should've taken enough time to engage with the staff he still had and his friends to give him honest feedback on where he fucked up so he could take ownership of it. But now the damage is done, and it started with his petulant 2 sentence summary accusing everyone else of lying. It sets the tone for everyone else replying to him in kind.
@@Astertane Because he basically got fucked over already and PandaGlobal is basically completely ruined. It is hard not to be emotional when from his perspective, the community basically self imploded on Panda for no reason other than TO's not liking Alan
@@YightLagami I recognise that it's tough not to act on your gut immediately, but the better statement for the company was the second one put out directly by Panda. There are clearly talented people working there who could've helped him save face, because the long-term success of the brand could have been rebuilt if it was handled in a way the Smash community could feel sympathetic to. Ludwig has done a far better job of making Alan look sympathetic than he did himself - which is a credit to Lud as a person for always waiting to hear someone out. If an effective game plan was put in place immediately for Alan to take a step back and for someone else to take control of company communications whilst he reflected and tried to rebuild his image then who knows what could've been possible.
Alan basically decided he wanted to completely change the existing community to fit his vision and then got upset when people didn’t want to go along with it and couldn’t understand why. People like that are dangerous to community.
Good video! I honestly believe Alan did what he thought was best, what he thought was necessary to save the smash scene. As you said, the idea of a big umbrella licensed by Nintendo, to get proper sponsorships, is the right idea. The only mistake that he made, was thinking he was the only person who could do so. *it's not his decision to make!* the smash scene is so much bigger than just Panda, and to get to that point, you need a big collaboration between them, VGBC, BTS, and some others. He wanted to make it his own thing, where he alone could make the decisions. I genuinely believe it came from a good place, and he had good intentions, but the way he went about getting there was terrible, and he deserves to lose all trust of the community. (Not to be threatened tho, please keep things civil)
Really appreciate this take. Not dogpiling for the sake of the east dunk but actually trying to understand one’s actions not in the lens of a cartoon villain but a real person who believes he’s doing the right thing. I can see where dude was coming from but given the history of the community that kinda of relationship with nintendo isn’t ready yet and he tried to force it a lil. Don’t think he’s a bad guy but maybe a bit over in his head. He’s like the relatable anime antagonist crine ima still laugh at da jokes tho cuz they’ve funny
I think after reading this and SWT’s response, I’m starting to see exactly what everyone’s role in this was. The way TOs have been talking about Alan it seems like he was super aggressive to get them to work exclusively with Panda Cup, but it makes sense why - they were the licensed Nintendo event and likely had Nintendo breathing down their necks to make tournaments exclusively Panda Cup events. And with the broadcasting rights, Nintendo was sinking a decent amount of money into this partnership (as Alan said) and wasn’t just going to let BTS stream the events for free. They wanted to own the tournament/broadcasting scene and they were going to do anything to get it. And then at the last second, they tried to eliminate Panda’s biggest competitor SWT by claiming they don’t have a license. They just misjudged how hard the blowback would be to Panda Cup. TL;DR I don’t think Panda was maliciously trying to hurt the Smash scene, but their existence was a threat due to being Nintendo’s vehicle to monopolize the Smash tournament scene
i think it’s important to note that, though it might not be outright malice, there is definitely negligence / naivety on alan’s part. It seems like he entered a scene and ignored all of its history (Nintendo’s track record of interference) and concerns from TOs and other established community members who had more context. At best he was naively optimistic about Nintendo’s involvement with the Smash scene
This. This is what i have been thinking since the first statements came out. Nintendo has always wanted to have absolute control. But i want to add something. I think nintendo was actually trying to use panda to just end Smash competitive. Maybe panda tried to get to a point where that couldnt happen? In the end, panda could have done things properly or not, but nintendo would have done whatever the fuck they wanted. SWT closing down isnt panda's fault entirely cause they cant tell nintendo what to do. As simple as that imo. Over all the situation is so fucking weird, but so sad everything came out so bad.
what i i dont understand is why alan became the big bad guy here. he def is wrong for threatening people and trying to use inside knowledge to gain an upper hand, but at the end of the day nintendo is the one that actually caused SWT's cancellation. alan was just an opportunist who knew nintendo's plan and used it to push the panda cup
@@maneskinned he got nintendo involved with the scene when historically the scene has always tried to stay out of nintendo’s radar / active communication knowing this would happen
@@eded94 fair, but it’s worth noting that Panda/Alan have been around for a long time (2017 IIRC). It’s not like he jumped into this whole mess without any idea of what he was getting into. The one thing I’m still struggling to understand is, what was Nintendo’s game here? Surely buying out the broadcasting rights for all these tournaments would be a drop in the bucket for them. So why go through all this trouble with Panda when they could buy the whole scene themselves?
Honestly I think that him believing the Nintendo shit was inevitable led to him having a bit of a savior complex and inflated his ego way to huge which is so terrible because it means that he probably doesn't even understand that he did anything wrong.
Damn, so Allan became Emperor Palpatine from the comics. Forcefully trying to unite everyone because he thinks its the only way to survive against outside threats.
Cant be said enough how Important Mogul Mails are. These statements are Made TO CONFUSE the audience, & so many ppl are believing Alan and Doubting those in good faith. We’re lucky that Mogul Mail, Ludwig, & others don’t just summarize, but also call out BA
This is another grassroots vs E-sports issue. You can't fully have both. Some wish to push the game in one direction over the other. Nintendo doesn't care about competitive smash. Companies that do care about their competitive scenes exert greater control over the community.
Important to note that Dhir the TO that Ludwig referenced a few times in this video was set to be the head TO for Panda Cup. The fact that he is siding with Ken over Alan should tell you a lot
TL;DR for everyone's rationale behind what they did in all this drama: - Nintendo feels "competitive" smash is antithetical to what they believe SSB is: a party game for fun, and they are highly controlling of how Smash events are put on if they are going to be associated with the Nintendo brand directly. - Alan thought he needed to save smash (make it more commercially viable top to bottom) by taking it corporate and mainstream with Nintendo, believing conceding some control to Nintendo was worth keeping competitive smash afloat long term. - TOs and BTS thought going with Alan and Nintendo would rob the scene of its soul and wasn't worth the infusion of money, and the pushy, pressured experience they had of working with Alan confirmed their worst fears about what a Panda/Nintendo-led Smash scene would be like. - VGBC went the middle road of cautious but optimistic trying to work with Nintendo, maybe looking for a world where Nintendo could be involved but grassroots TOs wouldn't lose creative control of events. It all comes down to different groups having different beliefs about what Smash is and should be. Its a bunch of horses all hitched to the same cart but pulling in different directions because they have different destinations in sight.
The BTS/Ken stuff isn't going to go anywhere. It was a conversation where each party will have negative accounts of the other. Any person "corroborating" Ken or Alan wasn't in the call and is just a friend of theirs trying to support that their friend is not who the other party paints them to be. I don't give any real weight to anything that a BTS member besides Ken has stated because realistically they are just repeating what Ken probably told them months ago.
Phenomenally thought out, and Eloquently stated. I just wish you would’ve showed the hole in your ceiling when you said “you know I’ve been Swatted a couple times” that is all.
Coming from the smash community I really didn't know much about this channel or the main channel in general besides finding out about it after the tournament you hosted. But honestly, I'm really impressed by the quality of your content and your style of journalism. You got yourself a new fan 👍
I'll keep saying it, if neither party confirms they banned the tournament, just go through with it, if someone speaks up, we know who wanted it to be shut down
Ok, from what i got: Alan had a plan to make the Smash scene legitimate, but went about it in the wrong way, in multiple ways, and that got us to where we are at rn. So overall i think Alan had a good cause and a good idea but a terrible way of going about it.
The Dr. Alan tweet lost me the moment he started questioning the legitimacy of the San Antonio event and coming up with a 3-part 'gambit' as to how VGBC created a can't-lose scenario out of the drama. I could only see Charlie Day up against the document wall.
I'm not sure what to think anymore; Alan seems more like a human being than a cartoon villain now that he's spoken, with "why" answered, I do not really think that he was too far in the wrong, he just went extreme to make sure that Smash could go further, and got caught before he could reel it all back in.
I've seen several videos from many takes on this drama, and this has been the best one that sees it mostly objectively from all sides involved. Kudos to you.
My takaway is that Alan essentially wielded Nintendo as a club, trying to get good deals and wink-wink-nudge-nudge saying 'Nintendo might want to talk to you about those streaming rights if you don't agree to a deal that is favorable to me...' Now after all is said and done, he can of course claim he didn't **really** threaten anyone, he didnt **really** control Nintendo, etcetera. Which is of course technically true, but it completely ignores the fact that in these kind of negotiations, implications and wink-nudging is the norm and legal action is a last resort. He definitely isn't giving the full picture in his response.
the thing I come back to is that there were people who came forward and specifically mentioned that Alan was pulling a *wink* and *nudge* about Nintendo shutting things down.
Well, I did read the whole thing earlier today, and he does sound like an extreme narcissist to be honest, his vision was perfect, everyone is wrong except him, it's quite pathetic
Yeah, but the other takeaway is that there really isn't an obvious greedy or nefarious personal gain for doing this. In essence Alan motive could be that Nintendo holds the keys, Nintendo very well be clamping down all these unlicensed events regardless, and the only way forward is through a unified Panda umbrella of licensing and broadcasting control that legitimizes the professional scene to ad investors and Nintendo has say in. Smash gets to be elevated to other esports and he gets to be a defacto commissioner.
@@arcc4 ye, but it only works if you agree with the fact that the community needs nintendo, which it didnt for 20 years at this point. Basically he/panda created that concept by pushing to involve Nintendo, and it fucked everyone else
I like that Mogul Mail is using their journalism degree, doing private interviews and actual reporting for a RUclips video. Mogul Mail really seems like a smart guy!
Man that comment of trey lugging a crt to a tournament really got to me. It really brought me back to my college days in Australia. Smash will never die
Glad that you clarified that people should read and come to their own conclusions because you know there was a score of people who didn't even read the fucking response that they demanded from alan that were waiting for this video to come out so you could make their opinion for them
@@muzikmuzik3693 Because it's always important to hear both sides of a story and realistically just blindly trusting everyone who says it's full of lies without reading it yourself and coming to that conclusion yourself is hella sheep mentality and isn't healthy for the scene imo
@Super Mega Foxy Awesome Hot my guy it's a video game not fucking World War 2 it's not like Alan is trying to kill anyone y'all need to chill the fuck out
I think 2 things can be true. Allen could genuinely want to improve the smash tournament community, and want to put himself at the head of it. The why is always up for question marks, and since we cant read his mind we will never know if it was altruistic as he is claiming or greedy as its being viewed. As presented, I think it lies more on the greed side personally, though I don't think it was about the money at all. I think he wanted the POWER of being the "head of Smash community tournaments". A lot of his actions make way more sense from the perspective of he thinks "greed = money" and that's it. He doesn't seem to recognize that to a lot of people the power he was clearly trying to amass is just as greedy as if he was strong arming people into paying him "licensing processing fees" or whatever. Even if he never abused it, and it's debatable if his "discussions" about buyouts and Nintendo licensing was already abusing it, it makes a lot of people wary. I think his hurt and confusion over this are justified, but its the same as when you have a cat that's hurt and confused you threw away the mouse it brought you. He can't seem to process he did anything wrong, or even that other people could objectively think it was wrong if you don't want to go as far as to say he is wrong himself.
You should join with some other creators to buy a majority stake in panda and completely rebuild the company from the group up as a smash tournament organizer that works with ALL other tournament organizers.
Looking at it reasonably, it does seem like Alan wanted to be the man Nintendo used to regulate Smash meaning he would have a lot of control over how the scene was (or wasn't) changed. If he had been a bit less uh... up front about things, he could have slowly taken over the scene by buying out failing events that couldn't get licensed and started getting C&D's from Nintendo. If he had done things slowly and leveraged his license advantage properly, he would have ended up looking like the community's savior in a few years when other events were dying off and Panda was there to pick up the pieces and keep things going (as long as he didn't completely change the way the scene looked). Instead, he tried to get the TOs on board with his idea (not realizing that it sounded like he wanted the Esports equivalent of a Hostile Takeover) and managed to piss off the entire community while simultaneously torpedoing his company. It really doesn't sound like Alan had bad intentions (unless he is a spectacularly inept businessman). Rather it sounds more like the TOs just weren't on board with Alan's ideas, and they were (probably rightfully) worried that Alan would leverage his official license and connections with Nintendo against them to force a buyout or a shutdown. Alan does kind of have a point that being officially licensed would bring a lot of money to the scene. However, I think he has a fundamental misunderstanding of the scene and he personally values that influx of cash much more than the actual players and fans. So yeah. In short: Two totally different ideas for which direction the Smash competitive scene should take clashed, and the corporate-approved officially-sponsored direction lost. Very very badly.
Alan reminds me of those video game villains with good intentions, where the bad empire is taking over your land anyways I may as well be the leader to shelter you from them by taking you over so I can act as an in between
The journalism degree actuallly coming in clutch rn story was covered very well and non-biased esspecially for someone so embeded and with so many smash conections.
That "rise up" speech at the end give some chills not going to lie. If anyone would be a good face for smash tourneys, it would be ludwig (even though we all know hes a little bit of an asshole)
Regardless of how this was done, you smashed breaking down a nuanced situation with a level head and giving everyone their fair shake. Regardless of how this all goes to be, you pointed at us, the players, and told us to remember why we do it all. o7
![Yeat & Quavo - 5BRAZY [Official Music Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/4XxnTAwyxus/mqdefault.jpg)
OKAY I SAID CHESSBOXING WAS MARCH 11 IT'S DECEMBER 11 I RECORDED AT 3 AM LOL ANYWAY GET A TICKET :) ludwig.gg
bozo
lostwig
hit the luddy
Lmaoo I was so confused 🤣
bro was FADED THAN A HO. cut him some slack, Yodie Gang! Ya feeeeeeel me? Yuh!
1:08 This drama was so intense that Ludwig had to delay his chessboxing event by 3 months
@here is the full clip no one cares about your sadge videos newb
Wait that wasn’t a slip of the tongue?
Millionaire Mogul mail man mislead many maliciously
@@AD-lh3jk nah it was a slip, that's the joke
@@AD-lh3jk it was lol. The comment is just a joke
I hate how people take the idea that someone MAY be a bad person and use it as an excuse to be an absolutely awful person to them. Like seriously, big bad man allegedly ruined a fun event I was excited to watch, let me threaten his wife and children so they have to flee their home. Wtf.
thats Western social media culture for you :) why I stay off twitter, because it's intellectually and emotionally draining.
I dont care even if he was a horrible person. You don't threaten his family or anyone close to him. I'd say you don't threaten anyone at all but maybe that's too much to ask for some people
@@chubbybutterflies8971 speaking as an entity that grew up in South East Asia, that part of the world ain’t that much better
The Internet introduced pseudo-democratic noise. Noise gets defined by lowest common denominator, resulting in often groupthink extreme conclusions & actions
Literally with enough numbers anything can be toxic & dog shit dangerous, no matter what platform
(Unless it’s something simple maybe, like a kids game 🤷♂️)
Def was the ultimate players
@@AD-lh3jk people made toontown toxic, never underestimate the internet 😂
I'm not even remotely into Smash and its scene, but it has been fascinating hearing about all this. It's also made me respect Mogul Mails ability to break down a story in a way that is engaging for people who don't know anything about that scene.
The way you described it made Alan sound like a tragic villain, someone who was too worried about the future to care about the present. If it is like Ludwig said, then the path to hell was paved with good intentions.
How does he sound like he has good intentions? He just sounds manipulative and like a compulsive lier that tried to destroy the entire already existing scene for his own monetary benifit.
on the Twitter post with Alan's response, the entire comment section was "waiting for the mogul mail" which really says a lot about the success of this channel, that peoples source for this kind of news is just Ludwig. Really well done, this channel is awesome
This also points to the fact that people don't want to form their own opinions, but side with someone they have designated. It means Lud has a LOT of control over the opinions of a good chunk of the Smash community and this is NOT a good thing, even if Lud doesn't abuse this power.
People should be forming their own opinions, not waiting for someone to tell them what to think. If you've wondered why politics(especially in America) has become so polarized, this phenomenon is why.
@@choccy_bagel It's a shame that "better than a twitter shitshow" is the benchmark for intelligent discourse these days
@@choccy_bagel right, more than willing to bet the majority of people just didn't want to read a 30 page document on Twitter lmao. Having someone cut down and curate the info does not mean you can no longer have your own opinion - similarly to watching the news.
@@dmoogle2006 So you read every contract, EULA and other such things yourself, right? You don't have a lawyer go over them for you and explain in easier terms what they mean? Because you are expecting exactly that from everyone else with that statement. All the people were doing when they said they were waiting for MogulMail is that they were waiting for Lud to summarize it for them and because there is absolutely no point for everyone to take the enormous amount of time to read the entire thing when we know Lud will take the time to read through it and create a video to explain it and explain how it is completely bullshit, which is exactly what he did.
@@choccy_bagel Your point is that people are CAPABLE of forming their own opinion and doing their own research ??? ... which like is true... but the MAJORITY of people will have had their opinion formed by watching this video.
These videos get like a million views and for most people it is probably the only thing they see about this drama at all.
I appreciate Ludwig saying don’t just believe me because I say something, it promotes a more healthy environment of doing your own research and I think that’s good especially in today’s world
Makes me believe him when he just says something even MORE
@tooevil7665 tbh most peoples reading comprehension is so bad they probably should listen anyway. Some of the conclusions twitter is getting from the statements is not even bad just completely off
Damn what's with all these bots
@@FroyourHistory join us
i think if you need to be told to think for yourself you’re already too far gone
Completely unrelated to the topic:
I really like how you manage your story with all the tabs on chrome being organized in order that you want to talk about each topic. It's a little thing, but it is satisfying to watch.
I noticed that on tab 3 and was like "wow that was really useful"
it's super satisfying, especially since seeing all of those are kind of overwhelming lol
@mana256k We get it. You're miserable
@mana256k He never said he was impressed, just that he liked it and found it satisfying
Yeah after i watched charlie scrolling down the long text, i realized Ludwig technique kinda dope
Holy shit, that last part really just made Alan look like a sympathetic but crazy Pokemon villain.
Nah he deserves to be broke and starve.
You're so good at turning this entire response into a coherent interesting story, what a great watch
I appreciate mogul mail's dedication to congest a 32-page document for us. Just look at how many tabs he has open 💀
congest? you got a stuffy nose?
edit - someone really just asked if english wasn't my first language (then deleted it). lmao. pick up a dictionary.
@@bsings7928 Congest is the wrong word.
*Compress
*consume
@@Pheatan ingest would also work, though it changes the meaning of the sentence.
Ludwig and Charlie absolutely carry the gaming/tech news space and I love it
Ludwig is slacking mogule male took his lane
Who’s Ludwig
Ludwig has been really helpful for me in giving a pretty good summary in all of this Smash stuff. I'd also recommend watch Hungrybox's videos on this Smash situation since he's a big figure head of Smash and understands a lot of this in a more thorough manner.
Ludwig? Who is this stranger you speak of?
Mutahar/some ordinary gamers, sometimes makes news over this kind of stuff, you might want to check him out.
Now this is the fast content I came to mogul mail for. Wish Ludwig was this on top of the news
Alan's actions make a lot more sense if you think of them as being done by someone who thinks that the sky is falling over something that he really loved. It doesn't excuse the unprofessionalism, but I could see urgency coming across as hostility with a lot of tournament organizers.
The problem is he was the one that caused the sky to fall by going to Nintendo in the first place
I'm an old fan of Ludwig but a new fan of mogul mail and I gotta say he is killing it, I've been so busy and haven't watched a ton of RUclips recently but to my knowledge he's doing content for his main channel, the yard, 2 huge events, mogul mail, and probably more. Mad fucking props to you man
I completely agree with your take of Alan basically catering to Nintendo instead of the Smash community. Even if he genuinely believes he had good intentions, he actively made the community worse by trying to intimidate all these other organizations. His goal should’ve been to make the community better for the players, not for Nintendo
It would have been both. Make competitive smash more viable for a larger audience and allow people to create a career off of smash while also benefitting nintendo. He was trying to do a Win-Win situation where everyone benefits.
@@YightLagami *In theory* it would have been both. Doesn't mean it would have been in practice. Well intended or not, conforming multiple grass roots Tournaments to a single homogenized standard with Panda as a centralized authority to hand out licenses sounds like it would lead to a lot of issues. There's a compilation of tweets from TOs that mention some of the specific issues they had with how exactly Alan was approaching it.
Maybe he really was refining things and it would have worked out for the best in the long run. But unfortunately in practice he did not pitch his vision well to the key people he needed to convince - so much so that at least some of them felt they were being coerced (before he had ever even interacted with Ken Chen)
100%, instead of working with Nintendo and TOs to try to make it easier for them to license and find marketing(which would pay players better in turn), he worked against them for his own aspirations of having it all under big daddy Nintendo with him at the Panda League helm. I understand what Alan was trying to do but that is just corporatizing an independent movement, which most certainly will rub everyone the wrong way.
@@IronicHavoc Panda itself is much less strict and more lenient than Nintendo. PandaGlobal or Alan would still be using Nintendo's guidelines in judging what events could be licensed, but since Allan is ingrained in the smash community, he would be able to grant licenses more quickly.
I think you are confused to believe that Panda was trying to homogenize the scene. The standards were already set by Nintendo themselves. Panda giving out licenses meant that obtaining them from Nintendo would much easier for everyone involved. Ultimately, at the end of the day, you didn't need a license to run an event, but getting one would greatly benefitted everyone involved.
In practice or theory, many people would prefer a company run by a Smash TO help gain licensing by Nintendo without having to wait for Nintendo's approval which would take longer in theory and practice.
@@skataneric Alan was trying to make it easier. The other TO’s took that as Alan threatening them rather than him recommending guidelines for those TO’s to get licensing.
The only thing Alan did badly was try to push for a response by other TO’s b/c they outright ghosted or went unresponsive. Which at the end of the day had nothing to do with SWT being cancelled.
I think the more of a bogeyman you claim Alan or Nintendo to be, the more closed you make the community. Ultimately, if you want nintendo’s license, you would have to follow their guidelines. In a case like SWT where they followed Nintendo’s guidelines, it would still take 3 years or more based on Alan’s statement to get a license which wouldn’t happen before the event.
Alan and PandaGlobal supporting licensing and streamlining the process makes it easier for everyone involved everyone involved where as asking for Nintendo of Japan for a license is not sustainable.
Nintendo supports Panda and then Panda supports the TOs to support the community. Panda wasn’t going to make those guidelines stricter than Nintendo’s but instead more lenient/faster to get approval
1:07 Don't worry. I'll definitely watch your chess boxing stream on "March 11." Can't wait!
NO SHUTUP IT' DECEMBER
@@MogulMail I thought you moved the event lmao
@@MogulMail why so many bots :(
What happened here?
i never knew there was a button for the time 2:08 2:08 2:08 2:09
"they said they had no expectations of a lot of people showing up" sounds like he contacted the hotel after the event was cancelled so the front end employee saw no even planned. That is not evidence of a "fake event"
Him yelling "WHY WON'T YOU WORK WITH ME?!?!" basically sums up his whole vibe
He is basically the stereotype villain that wants to demolish the whole area and build some kind of dystopian complex at the place.
This was clearly one of, if not the most, time and effort you've put into making a Mogul Mail video, and it shows. Thank you for all you're doing for the community, Lud.
And yet he still manages to massively misrepresent the post. Go read it for yourself please it takes 30 mins. not a massive effort kekw
I just finished reading the document and then this notification, honestly man it’s really hard to get the complete full story and I don’t think we ever will get that. It all honestly just sucks, smash was doing so well recently it feels like every time we take a step forward we also take 2 steps back
@Nоt RiскrоII 🅥
That's not how that works. You don't get to just do the exact same thing, slap a "fUnNy" caption on it, and call it parody or satire when you're still just doing the exact same thing as the bots.
Yea, the problem with this whole thing is that, as someone not in the smash community, there’s almost nothing in terms of evidence.
I don’t care about accounts from “respected” individuals. I want real evidence, so I can’t come to any conclusions.
I think it’s basically Alan came in with good intentions but had a vision for the scene no one else agreed with. Along with he was never transparent and insinuated a lot of this and that. But basically it’s either multiple independent tournament organizers and independent businesses came together and lied or Alan lied lol
@@flogos989 you’ll never get that because a lot of these things happen in conversations and calls which is illegal to record lol. But you can read between the lines of everyone’s statements, and Alan’s have a lot of inconsistencies , inconsistent with his own and panda’s even. Like the hotel not being booked, but there was already evidence it was booked and people were paid
@@Jason_Altea they are also bots my guy
You know its the real deal when mogul mail uploads a 30 min video on a drama
Its like that line from Arcane - "In the pursuit of great, we failed to do good"
The way Ludwig articulates Mogul Mail is so incredible you can get so lost in every detail and I love how he adds his opinions but still doesnt say or mean them like they are close to fact giving you that room to form your own
Basically, Alan is the hero in his own story but the villain in everyone else’s
The only way this drama is gonna get more juicy is when we find out Dr Alan is two identical twins with one being evil and manipulative and the other good and supportive like a Spanish soap opera...
El Hermano moment
The question is: which Dr. Alan twin are you? 👀🤨
and what if it turns out that Alan isn't even a doctor, his twin is! *gasp*
Dude
Who would've thought when Melee dropped how much drama would follow it forever
I love seeing people’s responses on the Twitter thread saying they’re waiting for the Mogul Mail on it
W
The little monologue at the end was so passionate yet objective; I wish Ludwig could achieve that kind of emotion & balance.
I think in Alan's mind he was trying to persuade event organizers to join Panda with the proposition that their event could be licensed. In case they stuck with another company they might get shut down instead. Instead, the event organizers thought that he would actively try to shut their event down if they didn't join, therefor the "strong arming" accusations.
Now, I'm no expert so I refrain from having an opinion whether what he did was right or wrong, but I can understand both sides.
I'm impressed with how consistent Ludwig is in his support of smash. I could not care less about smash but it's cool to see him put his money where his mouth is time and time again. I hope that i would do the same for the communities i care about if I was in his shoes. !
It's the scene he came up in
I think Ludwig should react to/read the fan comic series "Reviving the Smash Fighters". Gabeleth's channel fandubbed the entire thing!!!
It'd be a nice morale booster after everything that's happened for the Smash Community.
Same. I don't play Smash, but I love gaming and I don't like seeing something like this happen to people so passionate about gaming.
holy shit the bots are talking to eachother
Melee is fucking SICK is why
Ok so Alan's defence is 'This was all a conspiracy by Smash World Tour to take me down'.
Not all of it, but that claim was mostly baseless. The other part is that Alan had no reason to go after SWT and that SWT was not going to obtain a license by Nintendo in the time frame they set out yet still went with that choice. Not to mention that Alan already decided to have the Panda Final set on a far worse date already and allowed multiple people in PandaGlobal go to SWT.
There is no incentive or real motive for Alan or even Nintendo to explicitly go after SWT. PandaGlobal does not benefit in anyway from SWT taking place in a completely different streaming date from PandaGlobal. The fact that even Nintendo had stated that they were not going after SWT and that Alan was constantly advocating for the community is what causes the confusion
At the end of the day, Nintendo simply said they weren't going to grant the license, but did not try to cancel the event and VGBC assumed it meant that the event can no longer be run b/c it didn't have a license.
Ludwig is like the coffeezilla of smash drama at this point
@here is the full clip reported
@TheMasterZar lol me too
I fucking love this channel. I've enjoyed Lud's content since I started watching a few years ago but now I actually respect him as a person with a solid moral compass and a drive to be transparent with his viewers
Man, whenever I see that many tabs open for Lud, I get a drink, maybe some food, we’re in for a GOOD explanation of what’s going on
Thank you Ludwig
Mogul Mail has become one of the most transparent and trustworthy news sources in the gaming/tech world, Lud understands that things are not black and white and he keeps up with the story as it evolves.
Thanks LUD
Why are you talking about Lud ? Hes not even in this video
YEAAA what's going on guys it's scarce here got nothing on this guy with the monthly uploads or whatever
LUD whos that? bro this is mogul mail guy bro who tf is lud
him and charlie absolutely carry I love it
really getting his milage on that journalism degree
can't wait to watch chessboxing on march 11!
i had to double check on what he said XD
March 11th is going to be both Pog and Champ
It’s December 11th. He made an oopsie.
as someone who doesn't use twitter, I now feel like I do very well done
My conspiracy is that this was all Nintendo's goal from the start. Give both sides conflicting information under the table and off the books. They'd learned from the last time that the community backlash for this behavior was large (even if it didn't actually hurt their bottom line). They chose to do it this way this time so that the competitive Smash community would tear itself apart from the inside and Nintendo could remain clean of any blame.
Agreed. Nintendo would love for the Smash scene to destroy itself while they're just on the sidelines, with everyone just treating them like "yeah Nintendo are kinda bad but we just have to deal with them lol" (which is how it seems most people see them right now). Nintendo are, and always have been, the real destroyers of the Smash scene.
Damn that actually kinda make sense and indeed a possibility we are facing rn 😅
Honestly it would be some 4D chess shit from Nintendo. But realistically, I think it is just a huge corporation with tons of layered bureaucracy. Nintendo, like many corporations that operate internationally has a certain hierarchy established.
From what we know is that VGBC, BTS, and most of TOs deal with the regular staff, who are managed by a director, who takes orders from the national branch (think Nintendo of America) who takes orders from Nintendo Ltd, Japan. Essentially what tends to happen is that lower employee conveys one thing, the manager hears of it and either approves or rejects the proposal, or a higher-up in NoA or even NoJ rejects that proposal leaving a lot of employees in an awkward spot. I think a lot of the silence is essentially the immense inefficiency of communication between branches both horizontally and vertically, which means unless it is deemed a priority, things are not happening for months.
I think Alan had access to some higher up in the chain than VGBC did. However, I think he lacks communication skills sufficient to placate Nintendo and so after speaking with Alan, Nintendo likely got the wrong message. Alan to give him the benefit of the doubt, truly believed he was a savior of Smash, since he accomplished one thing no one else did, have direct connections and partnerships with Nintendo. And so in his messiah complex, he believe that to save the scene, everyone must be centralized under the umbrella of Nintendo and didn't see or kindly take rejection from other TOs and orgs but have a justified distrust of Nintendo.
This was the most edited Mogul Mail ever, thank you for the possible conclusion to this crazy drama
Small note about the Hotel situation: Even if they didn't block off rooms Downtown San Antonio and the area surrounding The San Antonio airport both have hundreds of hotels surrounding them anyway. Even if we take Alan's word for it, you're still probably going to get a better deal on a room within walking distance of the event if you booked something on your own.
I used to work for Marriott. We had at least 10 hotels in downtown San Antonio!
@@joywolf83 there’s a reason why Pax South ended up in San Antonio and why briefly SxSW thinking about moving to SA It’s just well suited for large events.
Nobody views themselves as the villain in their own story. In Alan's eyes, everything he did was justified and for the betterment of the community.
He highlights how kindly he talked to people, and how good the deals people were offered were. But if people didn't want to take them, they didn't want to take them, and they had no obligation to. Repeatedly bringing up that partnering with Panda gives you safety and legitimacy would be perceived as a threat/protection racket. Especially when someone has already rejected the partnership.
It's Hubris. It's Light Yagami syndrome. It's thinking you know what's best for the community. How to save it. How to turn it profitable. How to legitimize it.
He views himself as a savior, but others clearly don't agree.
If I were a 35 y/o MD and Owner/CEO of a Multi-Million dollar eSports organization, I'd probably have quite the ego / delusions of grandeur too.
aka ideology syndrome
Aka god complex
Ooh yes this is what I've been thinking too but I didn't know how to express it, thank you
So main character syndrome
It seemed to me like Alan had this big deal going on with Nintendo and didn't want to share the details with everyone else thinking they might either take a slice away or the whole pie from him (taking his idea).
So he went about it in a round about way that didn't exactly put himself in the audience's shoes to understand what he's actually asking of them. Even though in his mind the deal is good because he sees the End Game if they accepted it, but he fails to see what they're seeing, he's too focused on the success of it all that he became blinded.
Was it so much to just tell people or someone trustworthy of your plan? Even in person? It seemed all so rush. Could have been as simple as "Hey, I'm trying to work on commercialising Smash". The fact this guy worked on this for 4 years? Almost feels like he didn't work on it at all, he speed ran the thing to the ground in a matter of days. It was like 1 guy having an idea and 9 other guys not having it, but the 1 guy proceeded with his plans oblivious to the opinions of the other 9.
If conversations are truly smooth I doubt anything like this occurs. It would take a lot to plan a whole event, get within weeks of it, and feel as if there's no other option than shutting it down. At a bare minimum he definitely needs to work on communication
The only thing i've accepted is that Dr Alan is the character with good intentions that became the antagonist because his methods were wrong and as much as he wanted to do good, he ended up as the villain.
Even tho you have to defeat them and bring peace to the land, you can't help to wonder if he's that evil after all, but the damage is already done and there's no going back.
Dr. Alan: I didn't do it guys.
Also Dr. Alan: Now, excuse me while I make this statement with nothing but insinuations and no receipts... and try to get you to infer some kind of evil conspiracy... you know... like a Super Villain would.
Faxx
even funnier considering the "my response (*WITH EVIDENCE*) is coming" tweet
@@ermwhatdaheck He really highlighted the difference between "Evidence" and "Proof!" 😂
Because he is under immense duress of his entire company going under ruin in the span of 5 days and Alan being solely blamed for Smash World Tour being cancelled which he most likely had nothing to do with yet got hit in the cross fire of the blame.
The initial statement of SWT is very clearly him being confused for why the event was cancelled given that he believed wholeheartedly that Nintendo supported the event, but also the fact that VGBC was not going to get a license in the timeframe they set.
Everything with BTS sounds like Alan trying to help the community his own way and the other TO's pushing back against it which just sounds like beef/drama unrelated to SWT altogether.
@@YightLagami you stating he had nothing to do with might not be a 100% true until nintendo makes another statement
I don't know if anyone out there has ever played the game Tales of Vesperia (spoilers incoming i guess), but I think Alan is matching closely to Duke, the game's final boss. Duke is encountered all throughout the story (mainly musing on the flaws of humanity and their destructive tendencies), but he's never painted as the main antagonist until towards the end.
Duke isn't really a villain - he's an antihero. He wants to guarantee the safety of the world he lives in, but thinks the only way to do it is to end all of humanity so nature can find its own way again. The main protagonists fight him to keep that from happening and show him their resolve that there is another way.
In the same way, I do think Alan wants what is best for "the world" of Smash - but he wants it in the way that would kill off everything the smash community has become. He's an antihero. He got a little too caught up in the dream and actually believed that Nintendo would operate the smash community in the way other major esports corporations regulate their games. Knowing Nintendo, they'd over-regulate everything. They'd suck the life out of what has made smash tournaments so special. They're not a competitive esports type of company by nature. I feel sorry for Alan, reps from PG that have decided to quit, and for SWT. There's no good that's coming out of this really (except for Ludwig's Scuffed World Tour event).
At the end of the day, smash has been around for 20+ years and no matter the fact that people can't make a living on it, they continue to play and watch and run events. Alan decided to believe in the wrong thing and handled everything so abysmally. I believe in the people and players of the community to keep the game alive, even if they have to play for $25 in someone's garage (to paraphrase Mang0). These games won't die as long as we don't let them.
We know from pokemon tournaments that nintendo is really really good when it comes to professional worldwide events and their regulation is never that strict. I honestly think that what you are saying is true, but alan/panda isn't in the wrong as they are kinda just trying to improve how the tournaments work and want more money and sponsors for all, including the smaller county-wide tournaments. In a perfect world, alan is completely in the right, but we know that the world isn't perfect and it all went poorly and alan promising something wasn't going to happen because it wasn't licensed wasn't him threatening, just informing and trying to tell everyone that they have to do things through nintendo now.
It seems like he was just too optimistic about the whole thing when in reality no one liked the fact that they would have to report directly through nintendo for Smash (Which again, has never been an issue for pokemon).
@@Jacknorrington Pokemon is sort of unique. Nintendo has some say because they are part owners of The Pokemon Company.
However, the Professor Program (judges) and tournaments are done through Play! POkemon, a branch of The Pokemon Company International, while in Japan The Pokemon Company has direct involvement in those tournaments. Notice if you go to large Regional or International tournaments you will see Nintendo and Pokemon Company EMployees incognito keeping an eye on things, such as mods, a bullet proof briefcase with a special Switch/3DS/DS, or other issues and they report the TO back to the company. Usually, it turns out well, other times ... well there was an intense controversy.
@@Jacknorrington That's actually an interesting point and I appreciate you sharing that. I guess why I have such a pessimistic view of how Nintendo would handle Smash is because they clearly _don't_ want it to be the flagship competitive IP. They've never even expressed a hint of interest in operating it at that kind of level. They don't even like the rule sets tournaments run on (I'm pretty sure the rare Nintendo-sponsored Smash event always had items?). Either way, it's a mystery why they resist Smash so much, but not Pokemon.
hotbid has been part of every community I've been in and he's incredible and loved in all of them. All the way back to when TeamLiquid wasn't even a team but still just a brood war message board.
yeah that was SUPER sus. Hotbid is ANCIENT. He's been around since 2003. Like pretty sure if he had been sus at all in the past people would have known.
Hotbid is the original homie, you can't come in here and slander decades of dedication gtfo
Hot_Bid has been around since the BW days!~~!~! more than a decade ago!~!!~
Why can't he be both? People can be incredible and loved yet still be capable of being mean or rude to others that they perceive as different.
@@Chris-qh5tz Occam's razor. hotbid had been in the esports scene since 2003 and has worked with MLG, ESL, WCS, IPL, DreamHack, TL, Valve, BeyondTheSummit, and more as high ranking positions. There has never been any bad rep about him, and all of the projects hes done have been very good for their respective communities. He has done things across multiple major games, including Brood War, Starcraft 2, DotA2, and most recently Smash. Hotbid isn't just a "smash guy". His resume is huge. He's bigger than smash and he's been everywhere. If he was a bad person to work with, we would have heard about it from at least one of the scenes he's been apart of.
With all these different moving parts, absolutely crazy. My big takeaway (besides Alan’s involvement of course.) and how I’ve always felt about Nintendo, is they are flat out antiquated. I just cannot for the life of me understand why they make everything so difficult.
Nintendo hates positive PR and their fans apparently. It frustrates the hell out of me because their games are special and special to me as well. Thank you Lud, and to Charlie as well, for keeping these tournaments alive. I have a really fond memory of my first Smash tournament at my high school, and that thrill of getting 2nd is something I won’t forget!
The whole "why won't you work with me" just sounds like the adult version of "why won't you be my friend". I think its obvious Alan is oblivious to how he comes off.
Those ending statements from Ludwig were absolutely beautiful
So before I watch this video, I really tried to understand his points. I understand why he is so emotional right now, but that really reflected in this document. Like his apology to BTS was very passive aggressive, and it felt like he wasn't taking any accountability for his part in that situation because he was too focused on his grudge with Ken. Most of the evidence also didn't seem to hold much weight. I think he probably would have been better off having someone help him write this, it seems like his emotional state resulted in this document lacking comprehension and focus.
I think that's a trap many people without PR reps fall into when making personal rebuttals to drama. It takes a long time, and multiple sets of eyes to look over what you've written and poke holes into it until it coherently tells the story you're trying to share. I understand that this was a rush job for him, but the general tone of him being the indignant, wronged party is the wrong approach to take to a community banging down your door no matter how vindicating it might feel. If he felt he was right, he should've taken enough time to engage with the staff he still had and his friends to give him honest feedback on where he fucked up so he could take ownership of it. But now the damage is done, and it started with his petulant 2 sentence summary accusing everyone else of lying. It sets the tone for everyone else replying to him in kind.
@@Astertane Because he basically got fucked over already and PandaGlobal is basically completely ruined. It is hard not to be emotional when from his perspective, the community basically self imploded on Panda for no reason other than TO's not liking Alan
@@YightLagami I recognise that it's tough not to act on your gut immediately, but the better statement for the company was the second one put out directly by Panda. There are clearly talented people working there who could've helped him save face, because the long-term success of the brand could have been rebuilt if it was handled in a way the Smash community could feel sympathetic to. Ludwig has done a far better job of making Alan look sympathetic than he did himself - which is a credit to Lud as a person for always waiting to hear someone out. If an effective game plan was put in place immediately for Alan to take a step back and for someone else to take control of company communications whilst he reflected and tried to rebuild his image then who knows what could've been possible.
Now THIS is journalism... Thanks, Lud.
Alan basically decided he wanted to completely change the existing community to fit his vision and then got upset when people didn’t want to go along with it and couldn’t understand why. People like that are dangerous to community.
Good video! I honestly believe Alan did what he thought was best, what he thought was necessary to save the smash scene. As you said, the idea of a big umbrella licensed by Nintendo, to get proper sponsorships, is the right idea. The only mistake that he made, was thinking he was the only person who could do so. *it's not his decision to make!* the smash scene is so much bigger than just Panda, and to get to that point, you need a big collaboration between them, VGBC, BTS, and some others. He wanted to make it his own thing, where he alone could make the decisions. I genuinely believe it came from a good place, and he had good intentions, but the way he went about getting there was terrible, and he deserves to lose all trust of the community. (Not to be threatened tho, please keep things civil)
Man as someone who's been in smash for a while the last speech gave me goosebumps
I only had 28 minutes to read that and it left me at a huge cliffhanger. I’ll never know how this story ends now.
Really appreciate this take. Not dogpiling for the sake of the east dunk but actually trying to understand one’s actions not in the lens of a cartoon villain but a real person who believes he’s doing the right thing. I can see where dude was coming from but given the history of the community that kinda of relationship with nintendo isn’t ready yet and he tried to force it a lil. Don’t think he’s a bad guy but maybe a bit over in his head. He’s like the relatable anime antagonist crine ima still laugh at da jokes tho cuz they’ve funny
thanks for this update mr mail.very comprehensive! shits crazy
I think after reading this and SWT’s response, I’m starting to see exactly what everyone’s role in this was.
The way TOs have been talking about Alan it seems like he was super aggressive to get them to work exclusively with Panda Cup, but it makes sense why - they were the licensed Nintendo event and likely had Nintendo breathing down their necks to make tournaments exclusively Panda Cup events.
And with the broadcasting rights, Nintendo was sinking a decent amount of money into this partnership (as Alan said) and wasn’t just going to let BTS stream the events for free. They wanted to own the tournament/broadcasting scene and they were going to do anything to get it.
And then at the last second, they tried to eliminate Panda’s biggest competitor SWT by claiming they don’t have a license. They just misjudged how hard the blowback would be to Panda Cup.
TL;DR I don’t think Panda was maliciously trying to hurt the Smash scene, but their existence was a threat due to being Nintendo’s vehicle to monopolize the Smash tournament scene
i think it’s important to note that, though it might not be outright malice, there is definitely negligence / naivety on alan’s part. It seems like he entered a scene and ignored all of its history (Nintendo’s track record of interference) and concerns from TOs and other established community members who had more context. At best he was naively optimistic about Nintendo’s involvement with the Smash scene
This. This is what i have been thinking since the first statements came out. Nintendo has always wanted to have absolute control. But i want to add something. I think nintendo was actually trying to use panda to just end Smash competitive. Maybe panda tried to get to a point where that couldnt happen? In the end, panda could have done things properly or not, but nintendo would have done whatever the fuck they wanted. SWT closing down isnt panda's fault entirely cause they cant tell nintendo what to do. As simple as that imo. Over all the situation is so fucking weird, but so sad everything came out so bad.
what i i dont understand is why alan became the big bad guy here. he def is wrong for threatening people and trying to use inside knowledge to gain an upper hand, but at the end of the day nintendo is the one that actually caused SWT's cancellation. alan was just an opportunist who knew nintendo's plan and used it to push the panda cup
@@maneskinned he got nintendo involved with the scene when historically the scene has always tried to stay out of nintendo’s radar / active communication knowing this would happen
@@eded94 fair, but it’s worth noting that Panda/Alan have been around for a long time (2017 IIRC). It’s not like he jumped into this whole mess without any idea of what he was getting into.
The one thing I’m still struggling to understand is, what was Nintendo’s game here? Surely buying out the broadcasting rights for all these tournaments would be a drop in the bucket for them. So why go through all this trouble with Panda when they could buy the whole scene themselves?
Well said. Alan was about to let Nintendo sneakily take over everything…..EVERYTHING. It’s a difficult situation.
This is pure caos and I'm here for it
Honestly I think that him believing the Nintendo shit was inevitable led to him having a bit of a savior complex and inflated his ego way to huge which is so terrible because it means that he probably doesn't even understand that he did anything wrong.
Damn, so Allan became Emperor Palpatine from the comics. Forcefully trying to unite everyone because he thinks its the only way to survive against outside threats.
Cant be said enough how Important Mogul Mails are.
These statements are Made TO CONFUSE the audience, & so many ppl are believing Alan and Doubting those in good faith.
We’re lucky that Mogul Mail, Ludwig, & others don’t just summarize, but also call out BA
This is another grassroots vs E-sports issue. You can't fully have both. Some wish to push the game in one direction over the other. Nintendo doesn't care about competitive smash. Companies that do care about their competitive scenes exert greater control over the community.
Important to note that Dhir the TO that Ludwig referenced a few times in this video was set to be the head TO for Panda Cup. The fact that he is siding with Ken over Alan should tell you a lot
I'll make sure to tune in for the chessboxing event in march
TL;DR for everyone's rationale behind what they did in all this drama:
- Nintendo feels "competitive" smash is antithetical to what they believe SSB is: a party game for fun, and they are highly controlling of how Smash events are put on if they are going to be associated with the Nintendo brand directly.
- Alan thought he needed to save smash (make it more commercially viable top to bottom) by taking it corporate and mainstream with Nintendo, believing conceding some control to Nintendo was worth keeping competitive smash afloat long term.
- TOs and BTS thought going with Alan and Nintendo would rob the scene of its soul and wasn't worth the infusion of money, and the pushy, pressured experience they had of working with Alan confirmed their worst fears about what a Panda/Nintendo-led Smash scene would be like.
- VGBC went the middle road of cautious but optimistic trying to work with Nintendo, maybe looking for a world where Nintendo could be involved but grassroots TOs wouldn't lose creative control of events.
It all comes down to different groups having different beliefs about what Smash is and should be. Its a bunch of horses all hitched to the same cart but pulling in different directions because they have different destinations in sight.
The BTS/Ken stuff isn't going to go anywhere. It was a conversation where each party will have negative accounts of the other. Any person "corroborating" Ken or Alan wasn't in the call and is just a friend of theirs trying to support that their friend is not who the other party paints them to be. I don't give any real weight to anything that a BTS member besides Ken has stated because realistically they are just repeating what Ken probably told them months ago.
That's what I've seen. Most of the corroboration is coming from them believing Ken's word about how he perceived the situation
Phenomenally thought out, and Eloquently stated. I just wish you would’ve showed the hole in your ceiling when you said “you know I’ve been Swatted a couple times” that is all.
Coming from the smash community I really didn't know much about this channel or the main channel in general besides finding out about it after the tournament you hosted. But honestly, I'm really impressed by the quality of your content and your style of journalism. You got yourself a new fan 👍
I'll keep saying it, if neither party confirms they banned the tournament, just go through with it, if someone speaks up, we know who wanted it to be shut down
so much happening, so much more that we have to find out first before this whole situation can be put to an end.
when the bad guy actually has a good reason for doing what he's doing
This is a very good and nuanced take, I'm glad you took the time to get as much info as possible and give the benefit of the doubt to all sides
You know it’s finna be a crazy video when he has 1000 tabs open
That closing statements are badass! I'm here for it
I love how the last 4 minutes of this video was Ludwig anime protagonist monologuing
Ok, from what i got: Alan had a plan to make the Smash scene legitimate, but went about it in the wrong way, in multiple ways, and that got us to where we are at rn.
So overall i think Alan had a good cause and a good idea but a terrible way of going about it.
The Dr. Alan tweet lost me the moment he started questioning the legitimacy of the San Antonio event and coming up with a 3-part 'gambit' as to how VGBC created a can't-lose scenario out of the drama. I could only see Charlie Day up against the document wall.
I'm not sure what to think anymore; Alan seems more like a human being than a cartoon villain now that he's spoken, with "why" answered, I do not really think that he was too far in the wrong, he just went extreme to make sure that Smash could go further, and got caught before he could reel it all back in.
I've seen several videos from many takes on this drama, and this has been the best one that sees it mostly objectively from all sides involved. Kudos to you.
We should have a collab on journalism and news between Lud and Charlie, something along the lines of "the moist mogul report"
My takaway is that Alan essentially wielded Nintendo as a club, trying to get good deals and wink-wink-nudge-nudge saying 'Nintendo might want to talk to you about those streaming rights if you don't agree to a deal that is favorable to me...'
Now after all is said and done, he can of course claim he didn't **really** threaten anyone, he didnt **really** control Nintendo, etcetera. Which is of course technically true, but it completely ignores the fact that in these kind of negotiations, implications and wink-nudging is the norm and legal action is a last resort. He definitely isn't giving the full picture in his response.
the thing I come back to is that there were people who came forward and specifically mentioned that Alan was pulling a *wink* and *nudge* about Nintendo shutting things down.
Well, I did read the whole thing earlier today, and he does sound like an extreme narcissist to be honest, his vision was perfect, everyone is wrong except him, it's quite pathetic
Yeah, but the other takeaway is that there really isn't an obvious greedy or nefarious personal gain for doing this. In essence Alan motive could be that Nintendo holds the keys, Nintendo very well be clamping down all these unlicensed events regardless, and the only way forward is through a unified Panda umbrella of licensing and broadcasting control that legitimizes the professional scene to ad investors and Nintendo has say in. Smash gets to be elevated to other esports and he gets to be a defacto commissioner.
@@arcc4 ye, but it only works if you agree with the fact that the community needs nintendo, which it didnt for 20 years at this point. Basically he/panda created that concept by pushing to involve Nintendo, and it fucked everyone else
@@isthou The community DOES need Nintendo if they decide to start nuking every event that they don't sanction.
I like that Mogul Mail is using their journalism degree, doing private interviews and actual reporting for a RUclips video. Mogul Mail really seems like a smart guy!
People are passionate about games, but death threats are just so cringe
Man that comment of trey lugging a crt to a tournament really got to me. It really brought me back to my college days in Australia. Smash will never die
XD okay thank you so much for that final bit, I get it was lack of sleep but seriously that joke at the end was so needed after all the drama
Glad that you clarified that people should read and come to their own conclusions because you know there was a score of people who didn't even read the fucking response that they demanded from alan that were waiting for this video to come out so you could make their opinion for them
Such is the way of many sheep in today's society unfortunately.
I mean why should any 1 care or give a fuck about Alan the guy who is ruining smash events enough to read a 33 page statement full of lies...
@@muzikmuzik3693 Because it's always important to hear both sides of a story and realistically just blindly trusting everyone who says it's full of lies without reading it yourself and coming to that conclusion yourself is hella sheep mentality and isn't healthy for the scene imo
@@rishi280I don’t think I need to hear hitler’s side of the story…
@Super Mega Foxy Awesome Hot my guy it's a video game not fucking World War 2 it's not like Alan is trying to kill anyone y'all need to chill the fuck out
I think 2 things can be true. Allen could genuinely want to improve the smash tournament community, and want to put himself at the head of it. The why is always up for question marks, and since we cant read his mind we will never know if it was altruistic as he is claiming or greedy as its being viewed.
As presented, I think it lies more on the greed side personally, though I don't think it was about the money at all. I think he wanted the POWER of being the "head of Smash community tournaments". A lot of his actions make way more sense from the perspective of he thinks "greed = money" and that's it. He doesn't seem to recognize that to a lot of people the power he was clearly trying to amass is just as greedy as if he was strong arming people into paying him "licensing processing fees" or whatever. Even if he never abused it, and it's debatable if his "discussions" about buyouts and Nintendo licensing was already abusing it, it makes a lot of people wary.
I think his hurt and confusion over this are justified, but its the same as when you have a cat that's hurt and confused you threw away the mouse it brought you. He can't seem to process he did anything wrong, or even that other people could objectively think it was wrong if you don't want to go as far as to say he is wrong himself.
You should join with some other creators to buy a majority stake in panda and completely rebuild the company from the group up as a smash tournament organizer that works with ALL other tournament organizers.
You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain
You know it's bad when mogul mail is 30 minutes 0-0
keep the mogul mails coming please 🙌🏼
You know it’s a good video when Ludwig has million tabs at the top
Looking at it reasonably, it does seem like Alan wanted to be the man Nintendo used to regulate Smash meaning he would have a lot of control over how the scene was (or wasn't) changed. If he had been a bit less uh... up front about things, he could have slowly taken over the scene by buying out failing events that couldn't get licensed and started getting C&D's from Nintendo. If he had done things slowly and leveraged his license advantage properly, he would have ended up looking like the community's savior in a few years when other events were dying off and Panda was there to pick up the pieces and keep things going (as long as he didn't completely change the way the scene looked).
Instead, he tried to get the TOs on board with his idea (not realizing that it sounded like he wanted the Esports equivalent of a Hostile Takeover) and managed to piss off the entire community while simultaneously torpedoing his company.
It really doesn't sound like Alan had bad intentions (unless he is a spectacularly inept businessman). Rather it sounds more like the TOs just weren't on board with Alan's ideas, and they were (probably rightfully) worried that Alan would leverage his official license and connections with Nintendo against them to force a buyout or a shutdown.
Alan does kind of have a point that being officially licensed would bring a lot of money to the scene. However, I think he has a fundamental misunderstanding of the scene and he personally values that influx of cash much more than the actual players and fans.
So yeah. In short: Two totally different ideas for which direction the Smash competitive scene should take clashed, and the corporate-approved officially-sponsored direction lost. Very very badly.
Alan reminds me of those video game villains with good intentions, where the bad empire is taking over your land anyways I may as well be the leader to shelter you from them by taking you over so I can act as an in between
The journalism degree actuallly coming in clutch rn story was covered very well and non-biased esspecially for someone so embeded and with so many smash conections.
That "rise up" speech at the end give some chills not going to lie.
If anyone would be a good face for smash tourneys, it would be ludwig (even though we all know hes a little bit of an asshole)
Regardless of how this was done, you smashed breaking down a nuanced situation with a level head and giving everyone their fair shake. Regardless of how this all goes to be, you pointed at us, the players, and told us to remember why we do it all.
o7