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Christopher Sterling Ethnographic Study of Competitive Super Smash Brothers Melee Super Smash Brothers Melee is a multiplayer competitive video game manufactured for the Nintendo GameCube in 2001 that is the brainchild of Masahiro Sakurai and Shigeru Miyamoto. Originally, the game was released with the intentions of being a party game. However, like many other games, it spawned a competitive scene. Unlike other games, the competitive scene for Super Smash Brothers has developed its own subculture. Upon first observing the competitive scene for this game, it became blatantly obvious that it deviated from other popular games from that time period such as Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat. Because of this observation, I became intrigued to research further the ways in which the competitive scene of Super Smash Brothers Melee molded the subculture behind it. Unlike newer games, Super Smash has no online player capabilities and thus must be played in person. However, this did not stop the community from thriving online at all. In fact, the online community catalyzed it to prosper and grow. There are several popular websites where people go to discuss Super Smash. Probably the most popular site is the SSBM(Super Smash Brothers Melee) Reddit page. To better understand what it meant to be a competitive SSBM player I began my research there. I created a forum asking people what they think they need to be a competitive player. I was met with an overwhelming responses varying from serious to comical. Some of the advice I received varied from "Be aggressive", "play Fox", "wombo combo", and "get good," The most common and agreed upon pieces of advice were to "find a rival who you can practice with and try to beat" and "stick to a character and learn them." I then began asking about character selection which sparked a war-like fight within the forum. "Low tier heroes for lyf3(life)" "20XX Fox(1st on the tier list) or pools for you fool" "wombo combo with that Falco Lombardi(2nd on the tier list), pillar them to the skies" "give em a disrespectful up-tilt with Gannon man, get that easy money." These were only a few of the comments that I received from my forum post. Pages were filled one after another by people bickering over which character they thought was better. This made me wonder what caused them to think so differently? What made a certain character more desirable than another? (Pictured above: the tier list for character as of 2015). After pondering this question I had, an anonymous user directed me to the SSBM wikipedia page that had a tier list for the characters. A tier list is a ranking system for the game based on how effective certain characters are in game play. Some of the characteristics that make up this tier list are different hit boxes, extended hit boxes, the speed of move output compared to move input, wave landing & dashing distances, matchup between characters, and much more. While to an outsider this terminology may seem confusing, these are simply terms to describe how the characters maneuver. The development of this tier list created a rift in the community which has spawned a hierarchy involving character usage in the game. With each character there is a set of rules regarding game play that players must abide by. Rules in this game involve only utilizing certain maneuvers for a specific character. For example, number 14 (Gannon) on the tier list has a rule regarding the move called up-tilting. This up-tilting move is extremely inefficient and ineffective but carries a very disrespectful tone with it. Players use it to show superiority in ability during game play. Another example of these specific character rules pertains to the character Sheik as well (number 4 on the tier list). Sheik is considered an easy character that a player can win effortlessly with. Within the gaming community for Super Smash, players who use Sheik are generally considered lazy unless they play as her in a stylish and technical way. These rules are extremely important for tournaments. When I went to a local tournament for research I was able to verify the information I gathered online. During the local tournament I participated in, I played as the character Gannon. During the game I played, I competed against another low tier character called Donkey Kong (number 17 on the tier list pictured above). I won the game but rather than being cheered for afterwards, the room was silent. The lack of disrespectful gamely moves I used appeared to displease the audience. I later asked my friend Andrew why the audience was unhappy and he noted that "unless it's a higher level match then people who play Gannon should try to pull off something disrespectful, even it cost you a life here and there." In between tournament games, I partook in several friendlies. Friendlies are simply matches that don’t affect tournament standing. While playing these matches, I overheard people talking in a parallel manner to what I had read on the online forum. Later in the tournament I played against a highly skilled player who had chosen Falco as his character. He played in an unnecessarily cocky, borderline arrogant manner and I was powerless to do anything against him. After our match I was so impressed I approached him afterwards to inquire as to how he became such an excellent player. He referred me to the Smash Boards, telling me I could become a better player through that website. The Smash Boards contain frame data and other useful pieces of advice. Frame data is a term computer programmers are familiar with. In stripped down gamely called debugged mode, when a character hits another character, the frame data becomes visible. This is beneficial to players because they can see where an attack lands on an opposing character. Also on this website, Veteran players offer rookies players intro level techniques so that they can better themselves when using their respective characters. I personally found the information on this site extremely useful. I studied the frame data for Gannon, a character that I am aiming to be able to play on a competitive level . (Pictured above: Gannon’s uptilt move in debugged mode.) The tier list is not the only hierarchy within the competitive Super Smash community. Players themselves also have a hierarchical standing in this community. At the local tournament that I observed, there was an obvious gap in player skills. I interviewed a high level player named Ted who was able to give me an explanation regarding this hierarchy. He explained that "the idea of the hierarchy really started in 2008 which is referred to as the era of The Five Gods. Rarely do any of the gods lose a match in tournament. If they do lose a set it's to a god or someone who could eventually move into a god seat." His reference to The Five Gods refers to the top five players in the world. These players are highly respected within the Super Smash community. Any tournament that they would compete in it would usually be against each other in the finals. Ted continued to talk about "how people started making up their own ranking systems for players. Many players knew that they would never be able to reach the level that the five gods had attained. Those who accepted this reality began to form a lower ranking hierarchy below the five gods. These feelings sparked the foundation of the hierarchy that is still seen today in competitive Super Smash. I went back to the Reddit SSBM forum to verify if what Ted had said was accurate: it was indeed. Players like myself who may be experienced are still significantly lower ranked than the five gods. It doesn't matter how long you've played or how often you beat your friends, there is a certain plateau that the average Super Smash player reaches that is almost impossible to overcome. In tournaments, there are brackets called pools. It is often difficult for average players to overcome these pools because of the plateau many of them face. I researched several average/high level players that have experience with making it out of these said pools. A player known as Westballz who some have considered a 6th god has experience with overcoming these plateaus in gamely. Westballz is a national level player from Florida that frequently uses the character Falco. In an online interview with VG Bootcamp, he stated that "it was really fun but a pain to get there. [he] remembers when [he] was sitting on the couch with [his] buddies back in high school and [he] used to constantly get beat in games. Just like with most guys [he] used the Smash Boards for frame data." At some point the idea of being a god to him wasn't so unrealistic. He trained until he could advance the ladder and advance out of the pool that he was stuck in until he could play in a national tournament. Not only did I speak with people who are in the higher echelon but I also had the chance to speak with several of the "scrubs", a term for lower level players. At the local tournament I played in I bumped into a friend of mine Alec. He too is considered a "scrub" In terms of the level of game play he competes at. I asked him what his thoughts on the hierarchy were. He remarked that "it's simple, I think it's great. It forces people who are serious about the game to get better.

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