Brawl vs. Melee Research Project

[kirbykid]

Writing for my gaming blog for about 2 1/2 years, I've studied game design and the language used to describe games with more zeal than pursuing my English degree. Throughout my blog, I frequently refer to two game series as foundational examples of quality game design. One is Super Mario Bros (NES) an the other is the Smash series (mainly Melee and Brawl). So naturally, I turn to smashboards and the community here for help.




The long term plan is to get to the bottom of the whole Brawl vs. Melee issue. And by "bottom" I simply mean being able to understand and explain exactly how different the two games are and what makes them different. This is a lot more complicated than it may seem. I believe there's a lot to learn for all smashers and even non-smashers and that clear communication comes from a clear language. So that's where you come in.

BRAWL VS. MELEE SURVEY

That link takes you to the short survey where you can submit your answers to the database. Share the link with all the smashers you know.


I'm also thinking about producing a podcast or video of the final results. I can only get there with your help.

Feel free to ask questions about the project and repost your responses to keep the thread alive.

Thanks

UPDATE. THE RESULTS WILL BE PRESENTED IN A SERIES OF WEBISODES.

GOOD GAME EPISODE 1.

GOOD GAME EPISODE 1 FOLLOWUP

GOOD GAME EPISODE 2.

GOOD GAME EPISODE 2 PART 2


GOOD GAME EPISODE 2 FOLLOWUP

GOOD GAME EPISODE 3

GOOD GAME EPISODE 3 PART 2

GOOD GAME EPISODE 4

GOOD GAME EPISODE 4 PART 2

 

[LLDL]

Finished the survey.

 

[Charlesz]

Finished the survey.

 

[crismas]

Done~

10dones

 

[Geist]

Finished.
I totally wasn't biased at all.

 

[Fly_Amanita]

Neat survey; I'll need to think about some of these.

btw, I like your blog. I used to follow it somewhat regularly ever since you posted something about it on the Sirlin boards, although I did kind of forget about it after you took a long break from it. I'll start looking at it again.

 

[Tee ay eye]

if you report your findings, it's gonna be anonymous, right?

 

[kirbykid]

Neat survey; I'll need to think about some of these.

btw, I like your blog. I used to follow it somewhat regularly ever since you posted something about it on the Sirlin boards, although I did kind of forget about it after you took a long break from it. I'll start looking at it again.

Thanks.

I was really inspired by Sirlin's work so I expanded on his basic ideas greatly. My research into playstyles and skills will be especially useful in sorting out this smash Brawl/Melee language issue.

if you report your findings, it's gonna be anonymous, right?

Yes. I plan on presenting the information so that all the ID's are kept anonymous. And for any other specific use of the info, I will contact individuals directly when necessary.

 

[L/A/W]

finished, I look forward to your results

 

[MikeHaggarTHAKJB]

brawl sucks and melee wins thread over

 

[CloneHat]

Finished the quiz, looks great!.

 

[SpiderBubble]

Fun survey, but didn't need to think much about it seeing as I already knew what Brawl had over Melee and what Melee had over Brawl.

In the end, more characters and more stages doesn't mean better characters and better stages. Melee is more competitive, since it's not Meta Knight only.

 

[CableCho57]

This looks good but youre asking brawl players too right?

 

[ETWIST51294]

Finishhhhhhhhhhhhhhed

 

[Strong Badam]

did it
i'm going to make the prediction here that melee players who take this seriously will seem very intelligent and knowledgeable about both melee and brawl, while brawl players will mostly make generalizations such as "melee is all tech skill, i prefer to think!!" or that Fox is more broken than MetaKnight.

 

[kirbykid]

This looks good but youre asking brawl players too right?

Yup. Brawl players. Facebook smashers. Personal contacts. AllisBrawl'ers. Any and every kind of smasher I can find.

did it
i'm going to make the prediction here that melee players who take this seriously will seem very intelligent and knowledgeable about both melee and brawl, while brawl players will mostly make generalizations such as "melee is all tech skill, i prefer to think!!" or that Fox is more broken than MetaKnight.

That's an interesting prediction.

If anyone has any other predictions or anything else they want me to extrapolate from the data, just leave a post here or add it to the "rant" section of the survey.

Hopefully we're all ready to learn the truth if we're proven wrong about something.

 

[Steelia]

did it
i'm going to make the prediction here that melee players who take this seriously will seem very intelligent and knowledgeable about both melee and brawl, while brawl players will mostly make generalizations such as "melee is all tech skill, i prefer to think!!" or that Fox is more broken than MetaKnight.

This.
Melee scene's been on for a while; people who played it were, what, probably in early teens... Nowadays, they're young adults. You'd hope they'd take a more mature stance on such a matter, if they're still just as hardcore now as they were back then.
(Whereas today, with Brawl trying to appeal to so many scrubs, you WILL see a lot more... "immature" comments, to say the least. Perhaps "ignorant" would be a better word.

Because the funny thing is... I'll bet about 80-90% of this Melee board tried Brawl, didn't like it, moved back to Melee, so they HAVE some valid opinions on the matter... whereas nearly just as many at the Brawl board first got into Brawl, and haven't even TOUCHED the first two Smash games.)

Oh yeah, and, Submitted.

 

[keeper]

This will be interesting to see.

 

[GroovyGreenHat]

Groovy survey; I completed it.

 

[kirbykid]

This.
Melee scene's been on for a while; people who played it were, what, probably in early teens... Nowadays, they're young adults. You'd hope they'd take a more mature stance on such a matter, if they're still just as hardcore now as they were back then.
(Whereas today, with Brawl trying to appeal to so many scrubs, you WILL see a lot more... "immature" comments, to say the least. Perhaps "ignorant" would be a better word.

Because the funny thing is... I'll bet about 80-90% of this Melee board tried Brawl, didn't like it, moved back to Melee, so they HAVE some valid opinions on the matter... whereas nearly just as many at the Brawl board first got into Brawl, and haven't even TOUCHED the first two Smash games.)

Oh yeah, and, Submitted.

Not to give anything away too early, I can say that so far the rudest comments have come from heavy melee supporters. By rude I mean derogatory language such as cursing.

Food for thought.

 

[Steelia]

You'd hope they'd take a more mature stance on such a matter, if they're still just as hardcore now as they were back then.

Well, there goes that.

 

[INSANE CARZY GUY]

This.
Melee scene's been on for a while; people who played it were, what, probably in early teens... Nowadays, they're young adults. You'd hope they'd take a more mature stance on such a matter, if they're still just as hardcore now as they were back then.
(Whereas today, with Brawl trying to appeal to so many scrubs, you WILL see a lot more... "immature" comments, to say the least. Perhaps "ignorant" would be a better word.

Because the funny thing is... I'll bet about 80-90% of this Melee board tried Brawl, didn't like it, moved back to Melee, so they HAVE some valid opinions on the matter... whereas nearly just as many at the Brawl board first got into Brawl, and haven't even TOUCHED the first two Smash games.)

I just think mel;ee players are just F***ing full of themselfes to be truthful. really age isn't the only factor, take rednecks they won't be any more mature from the age of 15 as the age of 51. also i'm 17 and i'm more serious than a fair amount of people. I didn't swear in mine becuase I have a bigger voc than that.

 

[Anth0ny]

Finished the survey. Great stuff.

Coming from a former ranked Brawler who saw the light and now plays Melee competitively.

 

[Arty]

You should put this survey in the Brawl discussion too to get a more varied opinion.
If you did already then ignore this post

 

[Rappster]

ssb64?
that would have been an interesting option

 

[KevinM]

It's because most melee players of a lower skill base are mainly mad that as their local rankings began to rise brawl took over. They are now bitter and can't just realize they are two separate communities that play equally fun games to the respective parties.

holy ****, isn't that hard to understand?

 

[jugfingers]

I think a good idea is a stickied anti brawl thread in melee discussion where people can go to just rip on brawl and how garbage it is compared to hot sweaty glorious erotic sexiness of melee that gives everyone boners all the time...don't lie


just for fun and stuff.


yea yea I know smashboards isnt' thaat cool.


well I thought I'd mention it anyways.

 

[Strong Badam]

cussing is not derogatory, sir. now, if I were to use a term such as "brawl***" or something, that'd be derogatory.

 

[theunabletable]

Answered the survey. Hope you like my answers, I guess.

And you will show us all the results of your survey, won't you?

 

[kirbykid]

cussing is not derogatory, sir. now, if I were to use a term such as "brawl***" or something, that'd be derogatory.

Of course I wasn't referring to any specific contributor.

And of course not all uses of curse words are derogatory. There are comments that are in the submitted answers. But I'm glad you cleared that up with such a incriminating follow up response.

Answered the survey. Hope you like my answers, I guess.

And you will show us all the results of your survey, won't you?

I plan on presenting the results in a very entertaining and educational manner. (video perhaps)

 

[Melomaniacal]

When will we see the results?

 

[chaindude]

done, I look forward to how you use the info.

 

[edgeluca]

Finished... I wasn't too detailed, but w/e

 

[Nintendude]

Good survey. As others have said, I'm expecting Melee to look better in the results. A big factor is because many Melee players gave Brawl a shot for at least a few months before going back to Melee, so they have experience playing both games at a tournament level and can give a more informed opinion. This is not true for many Brawl players. Yes, the Brawl metagame has changed considerably, but I feel like Brawl's fundamentals have remained somewhat static.

 

[SpiderBubble]

The only advantage Brawl has over Melee is Zero Suit Samus. For the rest, Melee>Brawl. ZSS is the only thing that I miss in Melee...

 

[joeplicate]

Not to give anything away too early, I can say that so far the rudest comments have come from heavy melee supporters. By rude I mean derogatory language such as cursing.

Food for thought.

god yes
melee fanboys are the worst ****ing thing ever

I just think mel;ee players are just F***ing full of themselfes to be truthful.

****
good **** icg

 

[SpiderBubble]

Though it IS true that most of us here played Brawl and hated it. I played Brawl competitively then switched to Melee, so I can relate. We disliked Brawl so we went back to Melee. Simple as that.

 

[joeplicate]

filled in the survey

there were a couple of times where i would've like a "both" option
hopefully my responses help


^^about that, i remember the reason why i didn't like brawl as much is because i couldn't play it (with the intent of improving) without getting frustrated. i wonder if that's because the competitive "wall" just came a lot sooner; like a year later when i started improving at melee i got frustrated in the same way.

initially i blamed it on game mechanics, but it could've been my own problem too, and i could've been getting frustrated because the point where i was forced to start improving on my own came a lot quicker. (getting serious/dealing with johns/thinking about improvement all came a lot faster because the game was still very young)

 

[o-Serin-o]

I lol'ed at the survey asking me which is more complex.

But overall, this is going to be heavily biased because of where this thread is.

If you haven't already, put this in Brawl General Discussion.

 

[Tee ay eye]

out of curiosity, is this "experiment" for school or some sort of community (aside from Smash)?

also, is the conclusion going to focus more on the semantics and emotion used by both groups or evaluating the actual similarities/differences/elements of both games?