If you'd like to help me go through a character's video section and order the videos from best to worst, send me a private message. The help would be greatly appreciated. The only section I can go through with any sort of in-depth knowledge is the Sheik section. So...yea, I need 25 or so more.
Thanks in advance for the help I'm sure will come. Let's get rid of the bad videos so we can watch the best ones!
Asking the people of SmashBoards to rank combo videos based on quality is so incredibly subjective that it's just asking for needless controversy. As much as everyone on these boards loves to make their tier lists and power rankings and all that, I just don't think it's a good idea to start grading every video alongside every other video and selecting which one's best, when in fact, a well-made combo video may have creative elements that differ only in appeal instead of quality.
This thread is a good idea, but I've always felt that it needs to be
more comprehensive and encourage people to watch
more videos, not less. I don't think you should even be highlighting the supposed "best," because while it may be a great combo video for that character, who's to say that the second best video isn't worth watching? Nobody, of course, but the guy who made the second best video probably feels a little shafted being listed amongst all these low-quality, shoddy old videos that deserve to be removed, all the while nobody viewing the thread is the wiser. I don't even know where to begin with watching Captain Falcon videos because there's just so many, so naturally I'll pick the "best" video because at least someone else agrees that it's worth watching. But in the end, I still don't know what I could be missing in the other offerings from the community, nor is there any indication of what they are beyond what the video's title implies.
There's already enough negativity and complete lack of respect for creativity on these boards to make me sick and I think I've figured out why. What I didn't realize when I got into this Smash video-production gig was that the term "combo video" has a surprisingly strict historical definition, dating back to the 2-D fighters. In the earliest combo videos, the definition was strictly literal, showcasing nothing but combos, being defined as sequences of uninterruptible attacks. These videos were marketed to a very particular audience, namely the competitive players of the game who wanted to explore the boundaries of its engine by challenging the strengths of their fingers.
As games themselves became more elaborate, both in gameplay and in graphics, the subsequent recordable footage became more interesting to the viewer's eye. As the internet phenomenon of
YouTube can attest to, any time that videos become more interesting to the viewer, the audience inevitably expands and all of a sudden, these tech-heavy combo videos are being watched by people who only play casually and can hardly tell what's going on. Time went on and the interested audience continued to grow which meant that the footage had to stay fresh and appealing to allow the community to flourish. I watched an old Guilty Gear video today that opened with a clip of a very rapid one-hit KO immediately after the "Fight!" announcement. I don't know anything about the game or whether it was technically difficult to pull off or not, but it was five seconds of my life that I do
not consider wasted. As simple as it is, footage of a one-hit KO in a game I've never seen before is still kinda cool to watch. That said, long-time players of the game have likely seen it many times and if there was GuiltyGearBoards.com, I'd put twenty bucks on several people questioning why it was in there.
"Uh, isn't this supposed to be a combo video? That's not a combo." Great, thanks for the feedback, *******.
And so now we are in the technologically magnificent generation of video gaming and there's this well-established community of 40,000 strong occasionally watching some Smash videos. As I said, with improvements to graphics, gameplay and, indeed, even the latest in video editing software, recording hardware and filesharing, creating your own video and uploading it to the internet for the masses is just too easy. And since practically anyone with an e-mail address can do this, the master library of videos is going to take a pretty sharp decline in overall quality (the same thing happened to fan fiction, I'm sure some of you writers know). However, the advent of technology also allows for a whole lot more creative wiggle room for those people who choose to put effort into the combo videos that get lost in the mix. SSBM, in particular, is a wonderful game to be capturing exciting footage from and I suspect that those who haven't really explored the field probably don't realize how versatile Camera Mode can be. Thus, the concept of an
artistic combo video came to be, whether it was meant to exist or not.
Now, the first
artistic combo video I saw was
Mariotality 2, and at the time, I was still unaware of the difference between an artistic combo video and a technical one. In fact, I'm fairly certain that
silversh4dow himself was unaware of the difference as well. Which is fair, because it seems that whether or not your video demonstrates "tech skill" is decided by the audience, not you. It is now clear to me that most people do in fact make their combo videos to try and demonstrate their technical ability in the game. However, whereas
most people create videos under this pretense, it seems that
ALL videos are watched with the expectation that the gameplay is going to be impressive. I should also mention that these concepts of artistic videos and technical ones are certainly not opposites; Mariotality 2 features technically sound gameplay (despite some disagreement amidst the obligatory "noob DI" comments) but the only reason it truly outshines the other Mario videos is all in presentation. It is viewable at the full 60 frames per second, features tastefully synchronous background music, a flashy high-energy Camera Mode/AR-produced introduction and even a live-action video sample from a feature film.
And then there's
this.
Any hack can cut and glue footage together and put it to some music, but it takes time to put together the entire thing as a cinematic (for lack of a better word) production. The real problem is with viewer mentality. As I mentioned in another thread, it's as though everyone in this community is so hung up on technical skill that you're forgetting about the fact that this is the only game where you can capture footage of an ape in a necktie driving his foot into the chest of an elven child whilst riding a giant floating sea lion; that's a helluva story and you can bet that the National Enquirer doesn't care about DI.
That said, I don't want to sound as though I am belittling a
technical combo video, but at the state of the game right now, if you're good enough to post a video that will
actually impress people, there's just no excuse for it not to be at least decently-produced. There's a whole class of Smash video producers that I haven't mentioned up to this point who don't star in the videos themselves, but instead just compile footage from uploaded matches. If your gameplay is actually exciting and revolutionary enough to rock the socks off the community by simply posting a low-quality montage of black-and-white combos with static for background music, I'm sure there's someone in the community who would be willing to help clean it up a little. My true belief is that the technical combo video is a dead medium for SSBM, but I would not discourage anyone who thinks otherwise from making their own.
I got off on a bit of a tangent there, but getting back to your thread, compiling a list of all combo videos does give you some minor control of the aforementioned broken viewer mentality and if you want to overhaul it properly for the better of the community, these are my recommendations:
- Drop the "best of character" highlighting entirely.
- Each video should have this information included:
- Video Title
- Who produced the video.
- Who is featured in the video.
- A link to the original thread (if applicable).
- Link to streaming videos. (YouTube, Google, etc.) ((if applicable))
- Link to video downloads. (FileFront, Rapidshare, etc.) ((if applicable))
- Ensure that the list is formatted for easy viewing and navigation.
If you were extremely ambitious, you could include file size and brief summaries of the video and all that, too, however most combo videos don't really come with a lot of information. Nevertheless, I think the most important thing to include is at least the names of the players in the videos along with their titles, because that at least may give the viewer
some idea of what they're going to be watching.
