Redline's Smash Blog

At around 7:00 PM EST tonight (January 20 2016) I’ll be hosting the Super Smash Bros. 4 Wii U stream for the Wednesday Couchfest event at Nebulous Gaming in NYC.

There’ll be friendlies, a Singles bracket, and possibly Doubles too, and I’ll be broadcasting nonstop from the Streaming setup and commentating on a bunch of the matches.

Redline’s Smash Log for 1/4/2016

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It seems to me that there are many players int he Smash 4 community who consider it fair and reasonable to withhold, obscure, or otherwise deny the wider playerbase access to matchup and character information that should be public knowledge.

Most infamous is the % window information for Meta Knight's combo options being kept actively secret in order to allow top Meta Knight players to continue with current strategies.

Ulevo said:

The fact is that you guys do not know these %'s (and neither do 99% of the Meta Knights), and we as Meta Knight players feed on this. If this were common or public knowledge then the match up dynamic would change and the Meta Knight player would have to adapt to using a more expansive playstyle, which is exactly what happens against say, Sheik, who has a very marginal window of opportunity to seal the stock. This is also why you will watch Abadongo play matches where he will eat 90% until he lands a dash attack to take a stock when he could have been playing from further ahead by just not being greedy and going for the instant kill.

That this attitude is not immediately and universally decried as the grotesquely poor sportsmanship it so clearly is baffles me. Games should be decided on skill and effort, not on the keeping of secret knowledge.

Some will say to this "you should go to the lab, no one HAS to tell you anything". And it's true that no one HAS to share information. But I would argue that the deliberate withholding of information is malicious and damages the metagame. It's not the right thing to do. Isaac Newton didn't keep his discoveries about gravitational mechanics a secret so that only he could benefit. He published his work for the benefit of the world.

So this is me calling these certain members of the Smash 4 community out. Everything that anyone knows should be made public. Anyone who continues to withold in-game information, framedata, combo escapability, etc. in order to maintain an advantage is putting their own petty successes ahead of the rest of the community. Shame on you, Ulevo. Shame on you, Abadongo.

So this might be a little heavy for a first “real” post, but hoo boy. Here we go.

The fighting game community has always been notoriously prone towards toxicity. Like so many other nerd-type in-groups, it harbors profoundly unpleasant people and regressive, toxic attitudes for the sake of “community cohesion”.

The Smash community is, if anything, more volatile; we’re wracked by intra-community grudges and hostility between game- and region- based sub-communities. Combined with over a decade of ostracization (some real, some merely perceived) from the rest of the FG and esports communities, the Smash community-at-large is a powder-keg of anxieties, insecurity, and resentment. You see the sparks fly off all the time - the announcement that many “top players” will be given massive byes all the way past Pools at Genesis 3 being the most recent example. 

Environments like these are prime spawning pools for hatred and cruelty; they feed off the fear and resentment and work their tendrils into the very fabric of the community. And I’ve become even more aware of this pattern over the past year-and-a-half. I speak, of course, of the hate-plagues - of “Gamergate”, of “Men’s Rights”, of the followers of self-described neo-reactionaries like Davis Aurini and Vox Day.

These “movements” have made me horribly aware of how many “gamers” and “geeks” - people who, just two years ago, I would have been inclined to regard as kindred spirits - harbor or condone beliefs I find abhorrent, or engage in cruel, cowardly, & hateful behavior. And it hurts, because even as I sit down to hone my skills against a new face, and maybe make a new friend, at a local Smash Bros tournament, I can’t easily dismiss the nagging questions in the pit of my stomach.

Has this guy RT’d Adam Baldwin complaining about “feminazis”? 

Do they send cruel messages peppered with dog-whistle antisemitism to Anita Sarkeesian? 

Am I sitting down, and shaking hands with, and offering good luck, to a proud neo-fascist?

And I’m a straight white dude in my 20s. When I walk into a tournament venue, I’m not flagged as an intruder or an undesirable. I don’t feel as though any random attendee might try to threaten or intimidate me. I’m welcomed - of course I am.

But how many of my friends and loved ones can’t afford that sense of safety? How so many of the same people who welcome me with open arms might instead feel safe revealing bigotries, confident that there will be no social consequences? 

Despite these fears, I’m an optimist. And not for no reason. My local “scene”, Nebulous Gaming in NYC, does not condone open expressions of bigotry or hostility. But that optimism must be married with advocacy. The community, and individuals within the community, have to make a commitment towards material social progress. We have to recognize and renounce transphobia and misogyny and racism. We can set an example. We can do the right thing and make a change for the better. 

Hello!

You can call me Redline. I have other names, but when I punch in my nametag at a Smash tournament, that’s what I prefer.

I’m an aspiring Super Smash Bros. tournament player from New York City with a near-exclusive focus on Smash 4.

I main Roy, with Mega Man as a strong secondary/co-main. I’m always striving to improve as a player and I’m always happy to share information and strategies and stuff.

Outside of Smash, I have a passion for things like Doctor Who and Transformers, both of which I discuss not infrequently on my main blog, @brightcoat. Here I’ll be focusing my writing efforts on musings about video-games culture (both on the web and IRL), the Smash community and FGC as I see it, and gameplay discussion related to Smash Bros and Smash 4 in particular.