I'm not even mad about Brawl. I wasn't there when it came out, and even now that it's out, the Melee community is going as strong as ever.
I feel like Brawl hate simply trickled to our base culture as Melee players. It's one of the sure-fire ways to connect with other Melee players and lots of Melee players (myself included) have time spitting on Brawl's design in our group Melee sessions. It's great that it gets Melee players to bond together, but it sucks when we offend Brawl players and create a rift between people that really shouldn't exist in the first place lol
Even if I make fun of the game brutally among Melee friends, I admit there are still great elements that make the game competitive and interesting at higher level play and I have no actual beef with the Brawl community (who in all honesty should be praised for making a game with which I see nothing positive about and turning it into something good LOL).
In all seriousness, mad props to the Brawl players who went above the divide and donated to bring SMASH to EVO. You guys definitely don't deserve the hate some ****tards decide to give you for playing a different game.
You know I've heard this before and I don't get it. How can a community consciously bond over hatred or belittling other communities? Even when I visit sites like SRK, it doesn't seem like anyone is bonding over putting people down (even though its something they do often enough).
You know what? Ill be that guy. A lot of the hate that gets tossed at melee comes from people not knowing the difference between ssbb and ssbm. The hate that some melee players have isn't the same as the FGC's. The FGC are borderline illerate when comes to what makes a smash game good. Melee players that do hate brawl have at least a small amount of knowledge on it. Still the hate needs to stop. After the help we got I'm pretty much done brawl bashing and would like the community to come back together.
Nah, there are plenty of people in the FGC who know as much about Melee as Melee players know about Brawl. I think its pretty ignorant to think people can only dislike you guys because they don't understand you. Melee community (and smash in general), needs to accept that maybe people understand you and
still look down on you and don't want you around.
Surely we can all relate this to our every day lives. There are people you
know all about and for those reasons you don't like them or want to deal with them.
Brawl sucks though. Along with most of the players.
Oh snap, looks how mad you made me on your first day. You really know how to upset a sensitive Brawl player. Ouch, give us a break.
The split probably occurred partially (and I really mean partially, this isn't the main reason) because a lot of the new players Brawl brought in were... well, younger than the community that had been brought up from Melee. Soooo... that's quite an impact, because all those new players probably never experienced competitive Melee at the time so when they see Melee players like... 3-4 months later saying Brawl is ****, younger players could... get more easily sensitive to it and thus, not want to be in the same venue as Melee players.
Not trying to point fingers, but yeah... age was probably somewhat of a factor. And I'm also not saying Melee players at the time weren't at fault either.
Doesn't matter who was right/wrong, it's all in the past anyway.
In any case, there's still a lot of work to do. I still think there's a ton of Brawl guys who, no matter what, will hate people who play Melee even if you try to speak about unity. There's no convincing stubborn people or people who hold grudges. If they didn't take part in the drive, it's likely they don't want to see a future where we're all in the same venue playing every Smash game there is in multiple tournaments or almost every tournament.
People are pretty set in their beliefs. I said it before the massive donations hit for Melee and I'll still say it now. Being at EVO will not make them like you. Brawl doesn't need the love of the Melee community and Melee doesn't need the love of the FGC (tho Melee could apparently see some measurable benefit from acceptance).
I already see people on SRK defending Melee by bashing Brawl, almost as if this is some kind of gang initiation where you have to prove you can be as big a bully as anyone else.
Personally I like Melee a hell of a lot more than any traditional fighter (they genuinely bore me to death). If I cared about EVO at all, I'd definitely only have eyes for Melee and maybe PSAS. I think the vid posted earlier just sums up what everyone needs to learn more about. If you don't like something, thats perfectly okay. No one should be trying to force you like or try something. This isn't Green Egg and Ham. Just don't be a **** about it (in all honesty though, Sam I Am was being a total **** in that book).
I honestly think it might just be from insecurity in the Melee community after a decade of people looking down their noses and this "party fighter". Maybe they just need to remind themselves (and anyone who will listen) that there is something worse than Party Fight 2001 (which is apparently Party Fight 2008).
Whatever the cause is, you are in the spotlight now, so don't make yourselves look like a bunch of hypocrites. Don't get baited by trolls and try to keep this next era as classy as any professional sport would.