Should MLG include smash 4 if Nintendo asks for it? Absolutely. Even knowing nothing about the game, who wouldn't love to see it at least for one season? Should it be promoted over Melee because "Nintendo says so," though? Absolutely not. If nothing else, we've learned that although Nintendo can block streams and youtube channels, they can't tell us what game to love.
If MLG has to decide between running Smash 4 with Nintendo support and Melee without it, which do you think they will choose?
Personally, I'm banking on Smash 4 being impossible to run at tournaments because of no wired controllers or some other ridiculous oversight. I know people looking forward to Smash 4 will find that statement petty and similar to the usual barlw hate, but as far as I'm concerned, there is not enough room in the FGC for 2 Smash games to coexist. 64 and P:M are great, but they don't have the potential to be mainstream like Melee does. Which game MLG decides to support may very well determine the future of Smash as a whole. We may have (at best) a somewhat decent Smash 4 that lasts for a couple years, or we can continue the legacy of Melee for as long as I can imagine any competitive game can last. Melee will either fall to the wayside as "just another old competitive game that was replaced with an inferior sequel", or it can be the one revolutionary game that is actually able to withstand the test of time and become something that lasts for decades, coming to resemble major sports like basketball and football that people grow up with their entire lives.
Personally, I choose the latter. If that means sacrificing the short-term population boost a mediocre Smash 4 could provide, then too bad for Smash 4 players. If you are dead set on Melee for life, you have to get it into your head that Smash 4 is not going to be another barlw repeat. The game will probably be much more polished and at least slightly more competitive (I don't doubt the general techniques working well, but who really knows how balanced it will be or what kinds of glitches may crop up to wreak havoc). If you combine that with support from MLG and Nintendo, you'll be hard pressed to find people who'd still rather play Melee even if it's obviously the better game. Unfortunately, MLG is, at the end of the day, a business. I'm not sure the staff can truly understand the repercussions their future decisions will have on this community or if they even care enough for it to influence their decisions. It's not even clear where AlphaZealot's loyalties will lie as an old MLG employee. For all we know, the forums could get a massive overall to promote Smash 4 while they try to leave Melee in the dust. The
same **** happened with barlw, which was a much easier force to resist because of how blatantly awful it is. I'm not trying to be all pessimistic, but I'd rather this inevitable conflict not sneak up on the community so at least think about what your priorities are concerning the series and what direction the community should go in.
If you think this kind of thing can't happen, then all you need to do is look at the Halo community. Starting with Halo 3 (and some diehard players that competed in the original would argue Halo 2), gameplay began to get watered down and worse and worse for competition. Halo: Reach showed record-breaking inactivity not long after launch, and Halo 4 was even worse. The community lost their spot on MLG, and a much more poorly recognized league had to replace them. Just a couple of weeks ago, the league tried to host a Halo 3 and Halo 4 tournament, and it ended up getting something ridiculous like 8 teams total for the whole event. There is one last hurrah for another Halo tournament (they're begging for donations to use as a prize pool), but so far only 3 teams passes have been sold, and no one's talking about it at all. Bungie/343's ****ty game design the past few games has literally killed competitive Halo, and hope for Halo 5 is at an all time low. If we accept Smash 4 as the new status quo, you are putting Nintendo in full control over the future of competitive Smash. If Smash 4 is decent enough to stick around for even a full year with most of the community's support, players will not decide to gradually switch back because there will be nothing to switch back to. barlw was so bad that people switched back to Melee super quickly after release. If Smash 4 gets MLG+Nintendo+community support, it could be barlw-level awfulness and still last a year. If that's how it plays out, I don't see any way there will ever be a RoM 7.
