I'm sorry, did you just compare being homesick to NEEDING TO EAT TO SURVIVE?
I'm gonna need you to just stop right there.
I don't care if it's a game mechanic or not. There is a difference between missing your home and family and NEEDING TO EAT TO LIVE!
They are not comparable in any other form than being game mechanics. One is an actual trait of a person, and the other is basic needs.
Remember when I said it seems like you always pick the weak argument? This is what I mean. There is actually no argument here.
As for 'Steve' someone already said it best earlier: I think that his inclusion as a playable character isn't the best way to rep the game in Ultimate. I think MineCraft's impact on gaming easily qualifies it for representation in Smash and I've gotten over not wanting him because I've gotten over thinking Minecraft is for kids. If he shows up I won't be mad, and if he doesn't but we get a stage or a Mii Costume I think that will be perfectly good enough. I like the possible moveset that could come with him, but a lack of his inclusion will not bother me.
Also, there is no argument here about whether 'Steve?' is a character or not: he's not, end of story. He is nothing more than an avatar the player uses to play the game. He has no personality nor backstory/lore. You needs those to be a character. Villager has both backstory and personality. So does Ness, Link, even DQ protagonist...hell Game and Watch is an amalgamate of personality! Steve is to Minecraft as everyone's avatar in Gaia Online was to the user: most of them had no lore and were just there to look cool/pretty and represent the person behind the screen...until the MMO came out where your character had dialogue and a story.
If Mojang/Microsoft comes out tomorrow and releases a game starring Steve and there is an actual narrative to follow, even if he stays the same with no emotion, I would consider him a character over an avatar at that point. Until then, I think Minecraft should have representation, but I don't believe 'Steve?' is the only automatic go-to choice.
They're both glorified resource bars. That's my comparison, those are obviously different things, but I mean they're mechanics you have to manage or they negatively impact you in the game and your basic ability to do the things you need. So calm down.
I'm going to be honest, there's no good reason to exclude any character from discussion and there's especially no reason to go around telling people their favorite series or characters should only be in Smash as less than a playable character. And especially not from literally the best selling video game of all time. There is no "best way to represent" anything. We have ROB, Duck Hunt, Wii Fit Trainer, and Mr. Game & Watch as fighters, you can make characters out of anything and they'll work super well to represent whatever they come from. Minecraft is no different. I advocate for a Tetromino to be playable, because, hey, let's make a really creative and interesting moveset. I don't think Steve would really be all that different.
Video game avatars are still referred to as characters. Link is an avatar. Master Chief is an avatar. Avatar purely refers to the concept of graphical representation of the user in an electronic media and all player controlled beings are avatars. Scholarly gaming literature refers to avatars and characters interchangeably for reference, and character can at its simplest mean, "an imaginary person represented in fiction." There's no requirement as to depth of that character, or well how much "character" (the other definition of character is "one of the attributes or features that make up and distinguish an individual" and the type of character you're referring to for the most part) that imaginary person represented has. Steve is a defined being (he has a clear and set attire, sounds that he naturally makes in response to certain actions, and need to be fed; I think that qualifies enough) that exists in fiction, and therefore he is a character. Not a deep one and not one that has
character, but still a video game "character." The problem is that definitions have not really evolved to fit the proper terminology for video games, so we're reliant on the limited body of video game scholarship that exists when approaching this issue. I recommend reading Mark Wolf's works on this subject because he's got a great eye for detail in his scholarship. For example, everything around you in a video game, regardless of how well they're defined, is considered a NPC or
Non-Playable Character, which then implies that you are the
Playable Character. Character has become standard nomenclature for all user controlled avatars. Steve is a
playable character without
character in the distinguishing sense. Zach Waggoner also wrote a really great book examining avatars in video games that perhaps gives some more insight into this issue in an even more academic and enjoyable way:
https://books.google.com/books?id=uf9QosYeuX4C&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false. It touches more on how video game avatars reflect our ideas and thinking, but I think it does a good job of laying out several ideas and concepts.
Including known titans of the video game industry Ice Climbers and Corrin from Fire Emblem
Not all the characters in Smash have to be all-stars, but we've clearly moved on from Smash as a Nintendo crossover these days. It's a video game all-stars extravaganza now that was originally born of a Nintendo crossover. I think it's appropriate to define it as a Video Game All-Stars crossover given what the focus has shifted towards, the old grandfathered in characters don't change that label.
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