With Hitbox Olympus fast approaching, the Project M community has been more active than ever in preperation of what could possibly be the largest Project M tournament of all time. With us today is Olympus' head TO, player, commentator, and community leader Giuseppe "Messi" Messina to share his thoughts on the PM community's current state, and what Olympus means for the game and its players.
How Project M Can Benefit from a Change of Mentality
Project M is a Super Smash Bros. Brawl mod that seems to never be out of controversy. As recently as this month, it seemed the community was faced with yet another question that could have possibly divided this small chain of islands into nothing more than a few pieces of land that only a couple of people can inhabit at a time.The controversy over what version of the game should be played and used to represent our community spread around this month like wildfire, reigniting a battle that would show no true victor--one that we thought was brought to rest nearly a year ago when the PMDT had shut down and the makeshift “New PMDT” had shut itself down a few weeks after. Yet the biggest concerns for PM might not be its current version, its legality, its opportunity for funding, or what’s going on at locals, small and large; Project M’s biggest foe might be itself. It’s difficult to look far into Project M without reaching a slew of ****posts, memes, and just the general posts that have good intentions, but aren't well executed. There’s constant bickering on posts that should grow interest and insight, but instead become these war of words over why a specific character is lame or mechanically broken, and how they just shouldn't be in the game in their current iteration.
As a new player, this can be a turn off. This isn't being pointed out to offend or to blame the community, it’s meant to be a wakeup call to all of us, that maybe the information we think is easy to obtain just isn't. Simply wanting to garner information on advanced techniques or watching gameplay footage shouldn't lead you into a comment section that can sometimes rival that of a popular YoutTube page. If you’re determined to give it a try, you weave through the forums that hold a small percentage of useful information in comparison to the trash that could have been saved for another day. You go to your local for the first time and finish up 0-2, your friends who play the other games claim jank. The research you’ve done yourself leads you to the conclusion that every character is amazingly broken and has a 100/0 match up specifically against the characters you enjoy playing. You go home and say, “Whelp. **** that”, and there goes the 1 new player a week a local can hope for. 1 person a week, 1 person a month can double, if not triple at some locals, but why don’t they stick around? Mentality. No, not of the player, but of the scenes around. Since March of last year I have been to about 10 regionals or nationals. They have all been pretty wonderful, and the level of attention given by outside of the close knit community was slowly growing. There are numbers to prove that since joining Hitbox.tv, the “Major” Project M tournaments have grown in viewership. Those viewers even stick around for hours at a time. The few exceptions to this were the occasions in which there were multiple huge events on the same day. This means that PM was alive and well across the regions. When you consider that Project M was virtually lost at one point, not really sure where to go and where to showcase its talent, it’s pretty impressive that the community was able to spread the word and get the dedicated fan to come over. That being said, I still read pretty often “I didn’t know Project M was still streamed” or “There was a tourney this week?”.
I share that info with you to get to the bigger point- The player getting 0-2’d from earlier doesn't know that the scenes can very well be growing or dying, they just know that it’s a game that seemed interesting, and they wanted to give it a shot. When I attended my first ever Nebulous Super Smash Bros. Melee tournament here in NYC, I, for the lack of a better word, was mollywhopped. I caught hands so quickly you’d think Smash featured E. Honda, but EVERY single player not knowing me, my name or how often I came, took the time to tell me how I could improve, asked how long I’ve been playing and took an interest in when I mentioned I played PM. Most of them asked about how their favorite low tiers fared in PM or how their mains were changed and the conversations went on briefly. Now perhaps this is just an anomaly, or NYC Melee is just a friendly group to be a part of, but when I attended the first Super Smash Con, it was more of the same. The atmosphere certainly promoted it, with hundreds of friendly setups and a great vibe overall. Each player laughed, joked, and overall, took an interest in my Project M background. It’s odd that a community that seems to get no love, does seem to garner a lot of attention. Maybe we aren’t doing a good enough job to make the everyday stuff easy to digest? SoCal PM is probably the best example of people just understanding their player base, while in NYC we are pulling our hair out trying to understand why PM is just an afterthought, even though the strength of the average player is up there with the rest. SoCal can go from a week of thanking its players to a week of calling out their top players for not taking the game seriously. They play it perfectly and it pays off every time with good turnouts, hype events, and overall a strong community, but what happens to SoCal if the rest of the community doesn't do its job growing and spreading the game? A region can only be as strong as the entire community around it.
Now this is all on the pessimistic side, but there is a positive, and it’s a positive that I think we should embrace. We haven’t gone anywhere. Our scene is a delicate one, yes, and we have taken our share of blows, being squeezed out by the good ol’ boys and being told that our game isn't acceptable at certain events because we “scare” off sponsors or that people don't want to play a mod. These are fixable issues and they have already been addressed by following a few steps:
Let’s organize our own events ✓
Let’s find our own resources ✓
Let’s partner with sponsors ✓
Let’s host all the games ourselves ✓
Let’s make people remember ✓
The circuit hasn't been perfect, and as someone that has worked on it since its inception and launch, I’ll be the first person to tell you that. But even with some harsh criticism being thrown in my direction, along with people on our small team of maybe 10 people, my answer is simple. We aren’t going anywhere. That is OUR mentality, we as a community were told we didn't belong and no one wants to play. We launched our own events, we were told no one would watch; then we jumped ship and partnered with a different platform, and we grew from the ground up. No one would sponsor us? We seemed to take care of that too, and we want to break the cycle of having these events ostracize a game and its community for not being the same. We want people to come to Olympus and every Smash event regardless of their game. Why should we tell others who grew up enjoying a franchise or picked it up a random day to have fun that they aren't accepted? If the community can follow in this mental shift it may lead Project M into another age of acceptance--we were in a sense tossed aside for the newer shinier thing, but more often than not people remember how great something was or could be and find themselves back where they started. It happened with Melee, and in an ironic sense, it even shows with Brawl’s top players, who are often cited saying how much they miss Brawl and how fun it is to see it pop up from time to time at major events. Well, what if we just allowed those old school and new school players to feel more welcomed? There should be a push for accessibility of information. Our game shouldn't be pushed off to a side event; it should be showcased, but it's our job as a community of passionate and skilled individuals to showcase it.
Our meta has grown at a pace that is almost incomparable. We took what we learned from previous generations and iterations of Smash and have matched benchmarks that many people thought would have taken years to hit. The community is less than 9 months from when it learned that 3.6 would be the gold version and the standard, and we have blown away those expectations. There are players like Alex "Hyperflame" Mireles who are pushing the imagination of what could be done in a technical sense. Storylines are slowly writing themselves: Whether it’s regions growing rivalries by having the must go-to showcase events like SuperNova and BigBalc, which had some of the largest crossover entrants for events on the other side of the country Project M has ever seen. These events caused an uproar over what region and what coast holds the crown. SoCal pleads their case with Jake "Venom" Hefner’s Supernova run, while NYC claimed a crew battle with a decisive victory. A strong showing at the Big Balcony showcased East Coast talent with Arjun "Junebug" Rao, Flipp and Phresh taking home all three top spots. Regardless of which region ends up on top, it was the first time we were able to sit and watch coasts battle it out over multiple tournaments at multiple events, with Singles, Doubles and a Crewbattle all showcasing the remarkable regions they represent.
Then there are the players like Flipp, who seemed to have stormed onto the scene, and Gallo, where his losers run at We Tech Those 2 saw him going on to beat HyperFlame, BaconPancakes, Phresh, Max "Zubat" Guerrero, SonED and capped it off by 3-0’ing Junebug for a 3rd place finish.
Speaking of MDVA, they aren’t something to be slept on. It is the home of Junebug, who can be argued as the number one player around. MDVA also has Hyperflame, a player that, at the beginning of the circuit, was an up and coming “fun to watch” kind of player, and has now become a threat to win any tournament he enters. His Lucas continues to push what is thought to be possible with just a single set of hands.
The stories don’t end here, either.
In the same boat as HyperFlame, you have Malachi (or just plain Bob), a Peach and Sheik main that had seen his first out-of-state action at Shots Fired 1. He has now developed himself to near perfection, having top opponents simply stating that playing against him sometimes just feels like you aren't allowed to play your character. Being consistently tech chased with unmatched reactions or dealing with his Peach that make recovering a simple 100-0 match up. The ceiling is being pushed further and further every event. The unbeatable Titan that is Junebug has been challenged time and time again, and is no longer an unrivaled God on his own mountain top. He’s been brought down several times, losing to Malachi, Sosa, Lunchables, and Xayya Thomas "ThunderzReign" Thammavongsa. Something that a year ago was thought unimaginable; the Melee veterans Darc and Jaden "Jaden" Carr (formerly known as Vanz) have become some of the most entertaining players to watch. Whether it’s in a bracket or a Money Match in All Star random, they take their swiss army-like skillset and expand their roster on a near weekly basis. Old faces playing new characters are emerging. Emukiller, the Mewtwo who never seemed to stay in one spot, has become a Meta Knight whose patience is practically unchallenged.
This is all just on the East Coast; over on the West Coast side of things, Venom took the entire scene by storm with his dry humor and flashy Falcon. A player who has never left his own sunny region of SoCal came to New York City and took 2nd at SuperNova, running a rampage through bracket and beating the likes of old school legends like Trent Michael "Zhime" Moss. Those players have, for the most part, been brought down to Earth with the rest of us because as the events pass by, it’s nearly impossible to predict what will happen next and that's because the game was built to showcase that. It was built on the showcase of viability, and sure, characters are finding their spots on the tier list low and high, but the players that have become specialists aren’t backing down yet. ThunderzReign has made NorCal a region to fear practically on his own, harkening back to the times when Bum took Melee DK to its own level on his own. Dirtboy has slowly come along on his own, solidifying himself as a top contender, winning events both on and off of the circuit with a character that people can’t seem to agree on.
These things have happened in such a short period of time with the Project M you remember might actually be dead. The memes and posts about the dead game might actually be true because that game was left behind a long time ago. This isn’t your dad’s Project M. The expectations have been pushed, the ceiling raised, and the ideas and imagination behind characters is beginning to become a reality. Perhaps this is why our mentality should change: We should be prouder of what we have built, rather than be so quick to want to change everything. We should also be more accepting to outsiders of the community because the Project M they remember is long gone and away.
Olympus has as many top players confirmed in Smash 4 and Melee as we do for Project M. Who are we to force out a group? And finally, lets just make people remember, because that is where our mentality can change. Let us showcase the talent we have grown from the ground up on our own. Let us change the storyline and thought process from “Remember that game?” to “Remember that event? I can’t wait for the next one.”
If you're still interested in entering Olympus, sign ups close tonight (October 19th, 11:59)!
For more information on Hitbox Olympus, click here.
If you'd like to sign up for the event, you can do so here.
