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Fans gather at Belasco Theater in Los Angeles for the Super Smash Bros. tournament. 2018 Nintendo Invitational. (Jordan Strauss / Invision for Nintendo)
LOS ANGELES – The opening day of the biggest annual congress of the video game industry, fans lined up for hours and ended up side by side in the huge Nintendo showroom. anticipated versions of the games in 2018, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. A little more than a kilometer into the Belasco Theater, some of the best professional players of Smash Bros. in the world have participated in a rare invitational tournament organized by the company. Together, the events became the main topic of discussion at the Electronic Entertainment Expo, better known as E3, an exhibition that hosted more than 69,000 video players at the Los Angeles Convention Center during its three days of racing .
Tournament represents a huge Nintendo promotion for the final episode of its Smash Bros. series, a fighting game that puts some of Nintendo's most memorable characters like Mario, Link and Donkey Kong in a battle to crush opponents of the screen. It also illustrates one of the most intriguing problems of the company: how will Nintendo reconcile the opportunities offered by the rise of esports with the company's long-standing apprehension towards the games competitive?
As the FIFA of EA or Call of Duty of Activision, the competitions use the latest versions of the franchise. And yet, the Smash community is divided
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The main competitive story of the game revolves around Super Smash Bros. Melee, a more aggressive technique version that was released in 2002 on the Nintendo Game Cube. This title has attracted most of the most famous professional players of the game because of its more complex movements, which reward the most qualified players. Super Smash Bros. for Wii U (called Smash 4 by most fans) is a slower and more defensive version of the game that has been adopted by a younger crowd of players.
Fans play Super Smash Bros. Ultimate on Nintendo Switch at E3 2018. (FREDERIC J. BROWN / AFP / Getty Images)
As a result, Nintendo has failed to maximize its opportunity to promote its new title through the competition circuit – as with others Game titles such as Street Fighter and Call of Duty did. The practice is pretty much the same as sporting goods companies showcasing their latest innovations through sponsorship contracts with athletes in more established professional sports leagues. Melee's dynamic would be similar to Nike introducing a new high performance basketball sneaker only to see its top athletes instead. At this point, however, Nintendo has been relatively indifferent. While some companies have piled into a hedge market projected by the Newzoo analytics firm to reach a $ 1.5 billion valuation by 2020, Nintendo has been reluctant to fully embrace the competitive game. Even though Smash Bros. is one of the world's leading esports titles
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The release of Ultimate, scheduled for early December, represents the latest Nintendo album. On the occasion to unite the competitive circuit with its casual audience, a challenge that fell to renowned game designer Masahiro Sakurai, who directed every episode of the Smash Bros. line. Should it address the competitive circuit by increasing the tempo and complexity of the game, or favor the more robust audience by making the game more accessible?
"When you talk about audience, I do not really think about the audience per se," Sakurai told the Washington Post via a translator before the game's unveiling at E3. I feel like a game, at the end of the day, is playing the game. But if we focus too much on top players – or the public – then the game is a bit too technical. "
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The revered status of Smash Bros. among his fans stems from the fact that it's easy to learn, but difficult to master, and Sakurai has always adjusted the scales between ease and difficulty. were more technical than others, causing a split in the competitive community, but both sides posted strong scores:
In 2017, in terms of the number of spectators and participants, the Melee and Smash 4 were comparable According to Newzoo, Melee and Smash 4 rank respectively 11th and 12th in terms of audience, with a total of 16.8 million hours viewed on the streaming platform of its own. Amazon Twitch. [Note: The Washington Post is owned by Jeffrey P. Bezos, CEO of Amazon.] If these audiences were actually combined, the Smash scene would rank 9th, well above Capcom's Street Fighter V, and below the Psyonix, Rocket League football game.This would also make Smash the best fighting game at world in terms of the number of viewers.
Nintendo of America has slowly rallied to the Smash competitive community in recent years, associating with tournaments to cover various costs and organize invitations to the E3. Even then, Nintendo did not go as far as Capcom with Street Fighter embracing esports. There is no tournament circuit sanctioned by Nintendo and the company does not contribute to the prize pools of the tournament.
Smash's competitors in Japan are facing more obstacles, with Japanese laws on games preventing prizes from being distributed in competition. To navigate these laws, Japanese game industry organizations have banded together to create official licenses of esports players. Players holding these licenses are allowed to compete for serious cash prizes. However, Nintendo prevents Smash and its other properties from being part of this licensing program.
Nintendo did not provide any comment to The Post when it was asked for its official position regarding the esports. Although Sakurai is not a Nintendo employee and his thoughts do not represent the company, as the supervisor of all the episodes of the Smash Bros. franchise, he had his own views on why the company does not It is not shown competitive. I think the philosophy behind them is not in line with Nintendo's philosophy that some of these players are playing to make money, "said Sakurai." They're coming to a point where they play the game for money, and I think that kind of direction does not coincide with Nintendo's vision of what games should be. "
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Nintendo / Nintendo)
Sakurai is also a fan of Street Fighter, a game produced by a Capcom company that has fully embraced the esports.The publisher has a world tour of tournaments dwarfing with the Cup Capcom, where the winner takes more than two hundred thousand dollars in prizes Sony PlayStation is the title sponsor of the Pro Tour, but Red Bull, as well as sponsors of tournaments around the world, have all jumped in. Sakurai does not see the close links with esports as problematic, but he believes that his Approach with Smash opens the game to a wider audience compared to the more complex gameplay of Street Fighter.
"That does not mean that Street Fighter fails [by more fully embracing competitive gaming] by all means, but personally, I think that any game with commands is difficult.The creative side is trying to raise people who do that" Sakurai said, "He does not beat a game where you press a button to create a special movement. I think it's very easy to find for many people.
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This philosophy has been rewarded on the sales front, and even with Capcom's committed efforts on the esports scene, which has increased its visibility on streaming platforms and in the media, Street Fighter V n Has managed to sell only 1.9 million copies since its release in February 2016. This is nothing compared to Smash 4, in which the Wii U version is sold at 5 , 07 million since September 2014, with the 3DS version adding 8.15 million .This is also probably the reason why it was easy for Nintendo to fill the Belasco Theater during the E3. The company's main exhibition at the LA convention center, the line reserved for casual gamers to taste the new version stretched far from the main floor and overflowed behind the Nintendo showcase for the entire time. duration of exposure Twitter reported that Smash Bros. was the most tweeted issue of E3, which generated nearly 15 million tweets including the E3 hashtag. The buzz culminated at the Nintendo press conference with about 890,000 tweets for an hour on June 12.
This robust audience is why, while Sakurai has increased the tempo of the game in Ultimate, he has refrained from reinstating the more popular advanced mechanics that resonates so well with the professional Melee crowd. This includes wavedashing, a technique that gives the impression that a player's character slips, allowing the characters to quickly change positions, even while backing up, while facing their opponent . Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. (Jordan Strauss / Invision for Nintendo)
"I think a lot of Melee players like Melee, but at the same time, I think a lot of players, on the other hand, have dropped Melee because that's "It's too technical, because they can not keep up," Sakurai said. "And I know that there were players who had tendinitis and who played so much with the controller … it's really hard for the player and I think that a game should really be focused on what the target audience is. "
Nintendo hopes his competitive scene will consolidate around the new title, helping turn the Smash circuit into a top 10 esports property.
"Our future hope with what we unveiled in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is that we would like "Super Smash Bros. Ultimate will be the new title of Smash Bros. "Reggie Son-Aimé of Nintendo of America entrusted ESPN to E3
The invitation tournament of the E3 was one of the games the Nintendo's more open-minded, competitive scene.And no surprise, everyone – from media to Nintendo employees – asked the best players what they thought of the new game.
"It's definitely a not in front of Smash 4 in motion, "said Joseph" Mang0 "Marquez of Cloud9.Mark – two-time tournament champion the most prestigious of the fighting game circuit, Evolution – is considered one of the best players "I think they're going in the right direction, which is great."
But most players wanted to reincorporate some of the more advanced moves that make Melee special.
I think some extra techniques are hurting the bottom line of the game occ asionnel [players] playing with objects and the like, "said William" Leffen "Hjelte, of the SoloMid team. "The thing I always say – Melee is kind of what really started Smash in this multi-million dollar franchise, and people play it casually." Almost all the Melee players who are pro today started as casual fans. "
