That webisode seems biased toward Brawl. You pretty much took all the bad arguments for melee and against brawl and refuted them with really one-sided responses making melee supporters look bad in the video. I think if someone who didn't know about the scenes of each game saw the video they'd think melee players were all whiny jerks, and that brawl was just as good or better than melee in every way. I know bias elimination is very difficult, and you did an excellent job of covering your bias until the "mythbusting" segment. I agree with you on most of the points, it's your choice in bad anti-brawl/pro-melee points, and how you use them to make supporters of melee seem dumb that creates the bias.
This is all of course just my opinion, I'm not trying to start a debate over which has more depth but rather pointing out the implications, and trying to help you out on your podcast. I couldn't put any of this in the "rant" section because I watched your video after I filled out the form XD.
I want to say that I appreciate all the feedback on this thread. I'm trying to address each point, so if I don't specifically address a comment here, know that I've read it and am working on some kind of response.
I felt that those arugments/statements were "bad" as you say. But I also felt that they have nothing to do with what either Brawl or Melee is. Genre classification and the old "uncompetitive" angle are supposed to be extreme statements that are easy to see why they fall apart. The bottom line is, both have to do with language. As an English major I deal a lot with very specific language. So sometimes it'll be easy to bust a statement even though it may have more accurate, honorable, or complex intentions behind them.
And I kept all the name anonymous. If you assume that a lot of melee supporters make those statements, that's probably your bias. Some people really like both games a lot and still made statements like the ones from the video.
And yes, based on the results I got there are far more attacks against Brawl (like the ones addressed in the video) than against melee. So I just wanted to start things off easy and get those out of the way.
Also, Kirbykid you need to work on being more unbiased. You weren't disproving anything, you were being dismissive.
I address the genre classification system as it applies to all fields. I said you can call it a party game if you want, but that's not the most accurate classification. I said Brawl is very similar to melee, so it doesn't make much sense to call one a party game and not the other. If you call that dismissive, then you should explain how much more I could have addressed that myth.
The same with myth 1.2. It's really a simple concept. If you think there are other deeper issues behind a myth like "brawl is an uncompetitive game" then there is exactly where I see a problem. People tend to communicate or try to communicate a lot of meaning in a little statement. The statement means what it states. I addressed the issue that players bring the competition. Anything else that not explicitly stated will most likely come up in a later video.
Yeah... I was definitely expecting it to be more objective and professional, but it kind of just did exactly what the Brawlers did in the debates: Take a pro-Melee argument, raise a half-argument against it, claim you won. Very clearly biased, and struck me as unfair.
I'm starting slow. Besides, as I've said above these arguments were really pro-Melee. They were strictly anti-brawl. There was no attempt to make a comparative analysis. Plus, they were obviously extreme, yet obviously necessary to address because of how frequently they appeared in the responses.
Also, like I explained before, I didn't raise a half-argument on myths 1.1 and 1.2. These first myths are mainly language issues involving genre classification, where the competitive spirit comes from, and design intentionality.
Just the usage word itself makes the video feel like it was made in the defense of Brawl, not as an analyzation between the two games.
You didn't touch on the melee player's side of the arguments, which was disappointing. You practically took a condensed paragraph, sometimes taken out of context, confidently said 'myth busted' simply by refuting whatever the argument was and went along your merry way. I hope you revisit some of these arguments with less bias, or at least touch on some of the arguments that were in favor of Brawl.
Though I can generally agree with two of the three 'myths', it feels to me like you were misinterpreting the 'accident' debate.
While the advanced mechanics were intentional, and wavedashing was known during development, the goal while creating smash wasn't to create a game targeted to a competitive audience. I do agree with the unexpectedness of the Smash community becoming so strong and competitive, but it only became so after making over half the content in the game banned.
There isn't a Brawl side and a Melee side of the argument. I preset the ideas anonymously and address the concepts directly. I didn't think these first 3 myths were strong arguments at all. I don't think there's anything left to revisit with these myths (except the bulk of the 3rd myth that I left to bring back up in later episodes).
1) I don't think the goal of Melee was to create a non-competitive game meaning one that people can't practice at to get better. And even if it was (like I stated in the video) authorial intent doesn't matter.
2) All long lasting competitive communities tweak, remove, and add rules to their competitions. This is nothing special for Smash. So what if we've removed items and lots of stages. Also, we've been taking Melee competitively since 2002 playing free for alls with items. Just because that style of play didn't last, don't mean that the game was any less competitive when back in the day.
3) Smash is a game that appeals to a huge range of people. Some love Giant melee. Some love invisible melee. Some love (like me) single button melee. A lot of content was put into the game for people who like to "goof off" (no offense to that kind of play) and for people who want to compete.
None of this was an accident.
I found the tone of the video to be pretty condescending. Pointing out those 3 supposed "myths", and throwing out very basic rebuttals to them, as if none of the people who had made those arguments had either considered them, and then asserting that those "myths" had been busted during those 1 minute (each) rebuttals. I hope that the next few videos are less subjective, I had high hopes for the survey.
By the way, I don't particularly agree with the 3 "myths" presented. They sound very similar to the more common, far more reasonable arguments which more people likely submitted.
Again, read what I've said above. I've explained that my rebuttals aren't basic. The initial arguments are pretty simple. Also, they ready don't address game design so I didn't want to spend a lot of time on it.
When we only had melee, we spent a lot of time fighting to convince the world that it's a legitimate fighting game experience. What's sad is there are many (brawl and melee supporters) that claim Brawl is a party game. After spending so long fighting that fight, now we turn around and harm our own community.
Don't worry though. Things are going to get a lot more objective from here. You'll get numbers. You'll get data. And you'll even have to use a bit of math logic.
Kirbykid hasn't discussed them yet. Why? Well, it's his project.
Remember, this is only the first webisode. More to come for each game, please wait.
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Very true. I'm just getting started. I had to spend a lot of time working on the format. Naturally, there's a lot of things to say but not a lot of time. Besides youtubes 10m cut off, producing video is very time consuming. The idea is to present the information in a condensed fashion and then provide links to more detailed information.
Getting the first episode out the door was rough. Believe that the next episodes will be a lot smoother and a lot more interesting. If anyone wants to contribute more let me know. I might even do simpler follow up based on these forum conversations.
A lot of the myths that were "busted" were too extreme.
It's not that Brawl isn't competitive. He was right, any game can be competitive. However, the real argument is that it's LESS competitive than melee.
As previously said, you also represented the Brawl community as a victim of some sort, even though the melee community is just as much "victims" are they are.
The whole video just seemed one-sided.
I don't think you'll have an easy time measuring the competitive spirit of Brawl vs Melee gamers. So when you say "LESS competitive" you probably mean something much more complex/deep. Part of the reasons I busted the whole "competitive game" language is because it doesn't work. If you mean something else, I'll try to get you the language to explain what you mean exactly.
Just give me a bit of time. For now, I hope you can see that saying a game is "not" competitive or even "LESS" competitive doesn't say much.
