dirtydurrant
Smash Cadet
Nintendo is now sponsoring Apex 2015. A lot of smashers are incredibly thrilled, but I have a lot of mixed feelings.
I find it strange that a company like Nintendo who just released a statement recently stating they were still against the competitive scene of Smash, is now endorsing Apex. Not only that, but someone pointed out to me that Nintendo as of December 14th 2014, has decided to let people use their IPs for their own games. This means that Project M itself is not only now absolved of most legal issues, but is in a way supported by Nintendo since they have given up a lot of legal power they had to stifle it. However, Nintendo is not completely foolish - While they gave up their legal power, they've essentially told the Smash community at large that they could make any game they want, but in the end, Nintendo has all the money in the world to convince TOs to make sure certain games like Project M are never even allowed to be played. This would assure Nintendo's direct products are played as title games more than the community's efforts.
What does this all lead to though? I'm not a fortune teller, and in the middle of this thought process last night, I realized several things. The first is that it could be that Nintendo has another card up their sleeve that they're going to give to the Smash community at Apex, relating to the ability of being able to make our own modded Smash games. Seeing how the PM team has reacted mostly positive towards Apex's decision, it would make sense if they knew they were going to get something more out of it for letting Nintendo have their spotlight this year.
The second thing is that Nintendo could be using this opportunity to prevent PM from being played at all in the future by being a title sponsor of Apex from this point forward. By doing this, Nintendo will continue releasing new Smash games more often with the hopes that the more "competitive" games like Melee and PM will eventually be phased out. This is surprisingly common for developers to do (See: Blizzard's Starcraft transition into Starcraft 2, or Capcom's Street Fighter 3rd strike into Street Fighter 4), and would make sense for Nintendo if competitive Smash is their next cow to milk.
I really hope Nintendo is intending to help the Smash community, but their decisions thus far seem to lead me to believe they're going to attempt to commandeer it. Whether or not they will succeed is a different question entirely, but I for one am shocked that anyone thinks this is good. When has Nintendo played nicely at all? Being glad about Nintendo sponsoring Apex is like being glad your abusive spouse is going to pay for the medical bills you have for going to the hospital after they beat you. "We're going to disown you guys, attempt to stifle your attempts of being broadcasted at the biggest fighting game tournament of the year, but then sponsor YOUR biggest tournament of the year... that is, as long as you tell your good friend P:M to not show up at all."
I may be stupid sometimes, but I sure know what an abusive relationship looks like - the competitive Smash community is now Nintendo's *****. What bothers me the most about this I suppose is not the fact that Nintendo has decided to start sponsoring events like Apex with conditions, but that competitive Smash has stood on it's own two feet FOREVER without Nintendo. Now all of the sudden, it's like the whole community forgot they were able to pick the shambles and make a foundation that most competitive video games still desire (again, see SC2's competitive scene. They don't even charge entry fees... Talk about a crumbling foundation...) as soon as being officially sponsored by Nintendo came into the scene.
One more rant: I started getting into competitive Starcraft back when SC2 had just been announced. I watched Broodwar, and that scene is amazing. They're still going to do this day. Starcraft 2 however is having problems because everyone thought that having Blizzard's seal of approval (where BW did not) would assure SC2's dominance. The fact remains that while SC2 is a fun game, there other competitive games out there like Melee with better foundations that do not require corporate sponsorship. Sure, it would be nice to throw couple hundred grand at some Melee tournaments because Coca-cola is an official sponsor - but at what cost?
A lot of you may not realize this, but right now, we are at a crossroads that has been happened upon before in different instances - We are the start of something big called competitive gaming. We are in a time with this amazing tool called the internet that has allowed things like competitive gaming to blow up. This opportunity however is not just for competitive gaming but an opportunity for our generation to try new ideas out at a time where we can do so with little consequence on the future of those things. I'm not saying we shouldn't let big companies sponsor tournaments. What I am saying however is that instead of modeling ourselves directly after our older relatives, competitive non-electronic sports, we should take this time to explore ideas and one of those should be to consider the effect of big corporate sponsors that demand certain conditions such as prohibiting certain from being played at the biggest tournament of the year.
A little unorganized, but I wanted to get my thoughts across. Hopefully I'm completely wrong and crazy.
I find it strange that a company like Nintendo who just released a statement recently stating they were still against the competitive scene of Smash, is now endorsing Apex. Not only that, but someone pointed out to me that Nintendo as of December 14th 2014, has decided to let people use their IPs for their own games. This means that Project M itself is not only now absolved of most legal issues, but is in a way supported by Nintendo since they have given up a lot of legal power they had to stifle it. However, Nintendo is not completely foolish - While they gave up their legal power, they've essentially told the Smash community at large that they could make any game they want, but in the end, Nintendo has all the money in the world to convince TOs to make sure certain games like Project M are never even allowed to be played. This would assure Nintendo's direct products are played as title games more than the community's efforts.
What does this all lead to though? I'm not a fortune teller, and in the middle of this thought process last night, I realized several things. The first is that it could be that Nintendo has another card up their sleeve that they're going to give to the Smash community at Apex, relating to the ability of being able to make our own modded Smash games. Seeing how the PM team has reacted mostly positive towards Apex's decision, it would make sense if they knew they were going to get something more out of it for letting Nintendo have their spotlight this year.
The second thing is that Nintendo could be using this opportunity to prevent PM from being played at all in the future by being a title sponsor of Apex from this point forward. By doing this, Nintendo will continue releasing new Smash games more often with the hopes that the more "competitive" games like Melee and PM will eventually be phased out. This is surprisingly common for developers to do (See: Blizzard's Starcraft transition into Starcraft 2, or Capcom's Street Fighter 3rd strike into Street Fighter 4), and would make sense for Nintendo if competitive Smash is their next cow to milk.
I really hope Nintendo is intending to help the Smash community, but their decisions thus far seem to lead me to believe they're going to attempt to commandeer it. Whether or not they will succeed is a different question entirely, but I for one am shocked that anyone thinks this is good. When has Nintendo played nicely at all? Being glad about Nintendo sponsoring Apex is like being glad your abusive spouse is going to pay for the medical bills you have for going to the hospital after they beat you. "We're going to disown you guys, attempt to stifle your attempts of being broadcasted at the biggest fighting game tournament of the year, but then sponsor YOUR biggest tournament of the year... that is, as long as you tell your good friend P:M to not show up at all."
I may be stupid sometimes, but I sure know what an abusive relationship looks like - the competitive Smash community is now Nintendo's *****. What bothers me the most about this I suppose is not the fact that Nintendo has decided to start sponsoring events like Apex with conditions, but that competitive Smash has stood on it's own two feet FOREVER without Nintendo. Now all of the sudden, it's like the whole community forgot they were able to pick the shambles and make a foundation that most competitive video games still desire (again, see SC2's competitive scene. They don't even charge entry fees... Talk about a crumbling foundation...) as soon as being officially sponsored by Nintendo came into the scene.
One more rant: I started getting into competitive Starcraft back when SC2 had just been announced. I watched Broodwar, and that scene is amazing. They're still going to do this day. Starcraft 2 however is having problems because everyone thought that having Blizzard's seal of approval (where BW did not) would assure SC2's dominance. The fact remains that while SC2 is a fun game, there other competitive games out there like Melee with better foundations that do not require corporate sponsorship. Sure, it would be nice to throw couple hundred grand at some Melee tournaments because Coca-cola is an official sponsor - but at what cost?
A lot of you may not realize this, but right now, we are at a crossroads that has been happened upon before in different instances - We are the start of something big called competitive gaming. We are in a time with this amazing tool called the internet that has allowed things like competitive gaming to blow up. This opportunity however is not just for competitive gaming but an opportunity for our generation to try new ideas out at a time where we can do so with little consequence on the future of those things. I'm not saying we shouldn't let big companies sponsor tournaments. What I am saying however is that instead of modeling ourselves directly after our older relatives, competitive non-electronic sports, we should take this time to explore ideas and one of those should be to consider the effect of big corporate sponsors that demand certain conditions such as prohibiting certain from being played at the biggest tournament of the year.
A little unorganized, but I wanted to get my thoughts across. Hopefully I'm completely wrong and crazy.