House M.D.
Smash Apprentice
have you ever gotten together with a bunch of friends, and taken turns throwing a ball into a circle, elevated 10 feet off the ground?
sounds dumb, right? of course. it's also basketball, and people play it, because it's fun.
with the exception of playing a game to make money (which, for the most part, doesn't apply here), most people play games because they're fun. they get good at those games because it's fun. the melee community grew out of mutual love of a fun game and each other.
then new melee, brawl, arrived. and people have argued about whether to continue playing melee or to play brawl. everyone agrees that, at the surface, brawl is quite fun. but many people (but not all) don't find getting good at brawl to be fun.
at the end of the day, it's not about whether brawl has depth, competitiveness, or whatever quality we may project onto it. what matters is if we enjoy getting good at it together. those who do enjoy getting better at brawl have smashboards, wifiwars, allisbrawl, and whatever resource they want to use to develop their community.
but remember that melee vs. brawl is not a binary decision. there can exist separate (and probably overlapping) brawl and melee communities, united by smashboards. doubtlessly there will be bickering (like the casual vs. elitist fights), given that we are on a forum frequented mainly by teenage boys, but that can be minimized by our trusty moderators.
here's the important point. i suspect that if there's sufficient interest in keeping the brawl tournament community alive, it will happen. however, it is awkward to justify to the layperson why we should continue having a melee tournament scene given the existence of a newer (and presumably better) version of the game. so please, smashboards users, continue to organize both brawl and melee tournaments, and let the invisible hand of our collective interests direct the future.
we all agree that trying to be the best we can possibly be at melee is fun, but if we aren't careful, we may end up with no melee tournament scene, and that would be sad.
sounds dumb, right? of course. it's also basketball, and people play it, because it's fun.
with the exception of playing a game to make money (which, for the most part, doesn't apply here), most people play games because they're fun. they get good at those games because it's fun. the melee community grew out of mutual love of a fun game and each other.
then new melee, brawl, arrived. and people have argued about whether to continue playing melee or to play brawl. everyone agrees that, at the surface, brawl is quite fun. but many people (but not all) don't find getting good at brawl to be fun.
at the end of the day, it's not about whether brawl has depth, competitiveness, or whatever quality we may project onto it. what matters is if we enjoy getting good at it together. those who do enjoy getting better at brawl have smashboards, wifiwars, allisbrawl, and whatever resource they want to use to develop their community.
but remember that melee vs. brawl is not a binary decision. there can exist separate (and probably overlapping) brawl and melee communities, united by smashboards. doubtlessly there will be bickering (like the casual vs. elitist fights), given that we are on a forum frequented mainly by teenage boys, but that can be minimized by our trusty moderators.
here's the important point. i suspect that if there's sufficient interest in keeping the brawl tournament community alive, it will happen. however, it is awkward to justify to the layperson why we should continue having a melee tournament scene given the existence of a newer (and presumably better) version of the game. so please, smashboards users, continue to organize both brawl and melee tournaments, and let the invisible hand of our collective interests direct the future.
we all agree that trying to be the best we can possibly be at melee is fun, but if we aren't careful, we may end up with no melee tournament scene, and that would be sad.
