There has been a lot of discussion swirling around the topic of alternative controllers for SSBM lately, and I do believe a lot of well thought-out arguments and points have been made by both sides. From my perspective, however, it seems that there are some core ideologies at work here that either often go overlooked or are misunderstood by one side or the other. In this post I am going to attempt to outline this underlying philosophical debate going on about Melee as a competitive game, and frame in it such a way that helps to make the different sides of the debate more easily understandable.
First, I think its a good idea to get a couple of things out of the way before we go further into this discussion. And one point I would like to make is on the nature of competitive sports in general. At the end of the day, all competitive activities, at least from what I can gather, boil down to an arbitrary set of rules designed to make completing a simple task unnecessarily difficult. You then hold a contest to see who is the best at completing this arbitrarily difficult task. Sports also tend to have very narrow and specific regulations for the equipment that is used to play the game. This not only ensures a level playing field between competitors, and ensures the best safety possible for the particular sport, but it also helps define the specific skill sets the sport is trying to test.
Now, I think the biggest sticking point for a lot of the discussion going on around the Smash Box and other alternative controllers actually comes down to, essentially, the subjective opinion of what an individual thinks is important to be tested within a competitive match of Super Smash Bros. Melee. And where you lie within this ideological spectrum is going to influence your opinion on what types of controllers or mods should and should not be legal. I think it easiest to deal with the extremities of this spectrum first so I will now try and tackle that.
There are essentially two components at work during any match of Melee, the physical/mechanical part, and the mental/strategic part. The decisions you make within the game would obviously be the mental aspect, and how you actually input those commands into the game via your controller would of course be the physical aspect. Now lets say for the sake of argument that we decide, as a community, that the mechanical part of Melee, the physical use of the controller, is of zero concern to us in a competitive environment. We do not think this is a skill that should be tested in any capacity. We would of course be moved to legalize any and all controller modifications and macros. Since we are not concerned at all about the mechanical controlling of your character, or the method with which you input commands, it wouldn't matter if someone has a button on their controller that inputs a series of perfect waveshines. All we care about is the decisions the person is making within the game. In fact our end goal should ideally be some contraption we could hook up to our brains to remove the need for physical controllers entirely. Now I think most people are not within the camp of believing that the mechanical aspect of the game holds zero importance to us. But if you do happen to feel that way, and you are totally allowed to, then maybe you could be the person to bring Mind Melee into reality.
So if we decide that the physical inputting of commands to the GameCube holds some importance within our community then we need to figure out exactly how much importance we place on it. Gravy gave a specific example last night during the Melee It On Me podcast that I think nicely highlights the difference between the Smash Box and a gamecube controller. Of course as we all know by now, the Smash Box has no analog input. It maps the four cardinal directions to its four main directional buttons and then has a set of four modifiers that alter these cardinal inputs. Now if I get any of this wrong feel free to correct me. But from how Gravy described specifically the operation of the Smash Box when you want to drift with an aerial, I think we can form a distinction between the two types of control methods. On a standard analog stick, on the second to last frame of your jump squat, the x,y value of your control stick is read and this is what determines the trajectory of your jump. And with the Smash Box, if I understood correctly, you have 16 possible button combinations, using the cardinal direction buttons, and the modifiers, and each of these combinations gives you a different spacing for your jump. You still need to hit these combinations within the timing window to successfully get the trajectory for your jump that you want.
Now these two methods of controlling your character are inherently different. I am not saying either is better or worse, just that they are different. One method relies on moving an analog stick to a specific coordinate that you cannot physically feel on the controller, within a specific timing window, while not over or undershooting said coordinate. The other method requires you to memorize several button combinations and then choose the correct one for your spacing, while also inputting this combination within the correct timing window. These are two very different types of tech skill. The specific movements you are doing with your fingers to achieve your goals are physically different. And these two different types of tech skill translate into all other aspects of the game involving your characters movement.
This distinction between input methods and whether or not a person thinks the distinction is important is what has been causing a large portion of the dissonance within the discussion. For 15 years, as a community, we have been solely testing the first type of tech skill. Every player and commentator understands how easy or difficult a particular thing is within the game because we have all been interfacing with the game in the exact same way. Introducing the Smash Box, or any controller with analog to digital conversion inherently changes how the player physically interacts with the mechanical aspects of the game. The argument can be made that people hold a gamecube controller in different ways, which changes how you interact with the mechanics, but a similar thing could be said for tennis rackets or golf clubs. What is important within those sports is that the equipment is the same, and how to interact with it is up to the competitor. Again, how much value each individual places on this is going to depend on what they think is relevant to our game as a competition between players. The way I see it, deciding as a community whether or not we care about the particular type of tech skill used to interact with the game is as important as deciding whether or we think that Smash Box gives any kind of competitive advantage.
My personal opinion is that the unified control scheme we've always had with the gamecube controller holds a simplicity and elegance that helps Melee stand out as a competitive game. Its not that analog is inherently better or worse, although arguments could and have been made from the standpoint of analog being the intended control mechanism, as the game was designed for gamecube controllers. I place more importance on everyone using the same control scheme, whether analog or digital, as to keep the parameters of competition as narrow and objective as possible, assuming of course you place heavy importance on mechanical skill being part of what should be tested within Melee, which I do. In the same way, I would never want to play against someone using a baseball bat for tennis, even if this makes him far worse at tennis. My opponent and myself would no longer be testing the same kinds of physical skill.
I know the gamecube controller is not perfect. It could certainly use help in the areas of ergonomics and consistency. But if you place significant importance on the kinds of tech skill tested within Melee, I do not know that introducing an entirely different control method is the best solution for our particular problems.
TL;DR: SSBM is a game played by physically inputting commands via a controller. The movements you have to make with your hands and fingers change when you introduce a different controller. Traditional sports tend to have very specific regulations for the equipment used to play the sport. This keeps the skill sets that are being tested as narrow and objective as possible. Currently, with only a single controller available, Melee is close to a sport in its approach to equipment rule sets. Introducing a new controller may make it more difficult to accurately and objectively test the physical skill portion of SSBM within a competitive setting. This is only important if the community decides it values the specific mechanical skills used to play Melee with a gamecube controller.
edit: fixed a typo. added TL;DR.
First, I think its a good idea to get a couple of things out of the way before we go further into this discussion. And one point I would like to make is on the nature of competitive sports in general. At the end of the day, all competitive activities, at least from what I can gather, boil down to an arbitrary set of rules designed to make completing a simple task unnecessarily difficult. You then hold a contest to see who is the best at completing this arbitrarily difficult task. Sports also tend to have very narrow and specific regulations for the equipment that is used to play the game. This not only ensures a level playing field between competitors, and ensures the best safety possible for the particular sport, but it also helps define the specific skill sets the sport is trying to test.
Now, I think the biggest sticking point for a lot of the discussion going on around the Smash Box and other alternative controllers actually comes down to, essentially, the subjective opinion of what an individual thinks is important to be tested within a competitive match of Super Smash Bros. Melee. And where you lie within this ideological spectrum is going to influence your opinion on what types of controllers or mods should and should not be legal. I think it easiest to deal with the extremities of this spectrum first so I will now try and tackle that.
There are essentially two components at work during any match of Melee, the physical/mechanical part, and the mental/strategic part. The decisions you make within the game would obviously be the mental aspect, and how you actually input those commands into the game via your controller would of course be the physical aspect. Now lets say for the sake of argument that we decide, as a community, that the mechanical part of Melee, the physical use of the controller, is of zero concern to us in a competitive environment. We do not think this is a skill that should be tested in any capacity. We would of course be moved to legalize any and all controller modifications and macros. Since we are not concerned at all about the mechanical controlling of your character, or the method with which you input commands, it wouldn't matter if someone has a button on their controller that inputs a series of perfect waveshines. All we care about is the decisions the person is making within the game. In fact our end goal should ideally be some contraption we could hook up to our brains to remove the need for physical controllers entirely. Now I think most people are not within the camp of believing that the mechanical aspect of the game holds zero importance to us. But if you do happen to feel that way, and you are totally allowed to, then maybe you could be the person to bring Mind Melee into reality.
So if we decide that the physical inputting of commands to the GameCube holds some importance within our community then we need to figure out exactly how much importance we place on it. Gravy gave a specific example last night during the Melee It On Me podcast that I think nicely highlights the difference between the Smash Box and a gamecube controller. Of course as we all know by now, the Smash Box has no analog input. It maps the four cardinal directions to its four main directional buttons and then has a set of four modifiers that alter these cardinal inputs. Now if I get any of this wrong feel free to correct me. But from how Gravy described specifically the operation of the Smash Box when you want to drift with an aerial, I think we can form a distinction between the two types of control methods. On a standard analog stick, on the second to last frame of your jump squat, the x,y value of your control stick is read and this is what determines the trajectory of your jump. And with the Smash Box, if I understood correctly, you have 16 possible button combinations, using the cardinal direction buttons, and the modifiers, and each of these combinations gives you a different spacing for your jump. You still need to hit these combinations within the timing window to successfully get the trajectory for your jump that you want.
Now these two methods of controlling your character are inherently different. I am not saying either is better or worse, just that they are different. One method relies on moving an analog stick to a specific coordinate that you cannot physically feel on the controller, within a specific timing window, while not over or undershooting said coordinate. The other method requires you to memorize several button combinations and then choose the correct one for your spacing, while also inputting this combination within the correct timing window. These are two very different types of tech skill. The specific movements you are doing with your fingers to achieve your goals are physically different. And these two different types of tech skill translate into all other aspects of the game involving your characters movement.
This distinction between input methods and whether or not a person thinks the distinction is important is what has been causing a large portion of the dissonance within the discussion. For 15 years, as a community, we have been solely testing the first type of tech skill. Every player and commentator understands how easy or difficult a particular thing is within the game because we have all been interfacing with the game in the exact same way. Introducing the Smash Box, or any controller with analog to digital conversion inherently changes how the player physically interacts with the mechanical aspects of the game. The argument can be made that people hold a gamecube controller in different ways, which changes how you interact with the mechanics, but a similar thing could be said for tennis rackets or golf clubs. What is important within those sports is that the equipment is the same, and how to interact with it is up to the competitor. Again, how much value each individual places on this is going to depend on what they think is relevant to our game as a competition between players. The way I see it, deciding as a community whether or not we care about the particular type of tech skill used to interact with the game is as important as deciding whether or we think that Smash Box gives any kind of competitive advantage.
My personal opinion is that the unified control scheme we've always had with the gamecube controller holds a simplicity and elegance that helps Melee stand out as a competitive game. Its not that analog is inherently better or worse, although arguments could and have been made from the standpoint of analog being the intended control mechanism, as the game was designed for gamecube controllers. I place more importance on everyone using the same control scheme, whether analog or digital, as to keep the parameters of competition as narrow and objective as possible, assuming of course you place heavy importance on mechanical skill being part of what should be tested within Melee, which I do. In the same way, I would never want to play against someone using a baseball bat for tennis, even if this makes him far worse at tennis. My opponent and myself would no longer be testing the same kinds of physical skill.
I know the gamecube controller is not perfect. It could certainly use help in the areas of ergonomics and consistency. But if you place significant importance on the kinds of tech skill tested within Melee, I do not know that introducing an entirely different control method is the best solution for our particular problems.
TL;DR: SSBM is a game played by physically inputting commands via a controller. The movements you have to make with your hands and fingers change when you introduce a different controller. Traditional sports tend to have very specific regulations for the equipment used to play the sport. This keeps the skill sets that are being tested as narrow and objective as possible. Currently, with only a single controller available, Melee is close to a sport in its approach to equipment rule sets. Introducing a new controller may make it more difficult to accurately and objectively test the physical skill portion of SSBM within a competitive setting. This is only important if the community decides it values the specific mechanical skills used to play Melee with a gamecube controller.
edit: fixed a typo. added TL;DR.
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