Social Media and Smash

[Venus of the Desert Bloom]

During the time of Melee, there were various messaging boards and chat rooms set up for fans of Smash to discuss and speculate. However, Sakurai, Nintendo, and the developers of Smash weren't too involved with the fans. Save for the official Melee site, there wasn't much connection between developers and fans. This can be attributed to a lack of social media. The only true connection was a interview in one of the gaming magazines such as GamePro or Nintendo Power.

During Brawl, message forums, bulletin boards, Youtube, and Facebook as well as the Dojo kept Smash fans connected with the developers. However, Facebook was gaining popular but was never utilized by either Sakurai or his development team to promote Brawl.

Now with Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and 3DS nearing the end of its production life and entering the phase of post-release, what ways have Sakurai, Nintendo, and fans used to connect with each other. How has the development team promoted the game through social media? In what ways can they further Smash Bros. developer-to-fan connectivity through Social Media? Currently, Sakurai and Nintendo are using MiiVerse, Youtube, Twitter, and the site to stay connected to fans and release new information and development pictures. In what ways can they further or expand on this? What lies in store for future generations?

In this thread, let's discuss the possibilities of Social Media and Smash Bros. How can Facebook, MiiVerse, Twitter, and Youtube be expanded to further promote Smash Bros and connect the development team to the fans? How about other potential social networking/media/popular sites such as Google+, Tumblr, Instagram, PinInterest, etc be used for Super Smash Bros. And lastly, does the increase of social networking connectivity make message boards and forums, such as Smashboards, obsolete? How can sites like Smashboards avoid this?

This discussion is not only for developers and fan connectivity but also for other social media applications and smash such as fan connectivity, tournament promotion, etc.

 

[Rocket Raccoon]

If Smash had a social network...

the Heaven of it all

 

[Artsy Omni]

Hmm.... Mario Kart TV comes to mind. I feel like a good way to bring Smash and the Wii U to the forefront of people's minds would be to let users easily share content from matches on YouTube or something.

I don't think Social media poses a threat of rendering the Smashboards obsolete, simply because the nature of social media is that it's segmented. The Smashboards are a focused community. Maybe it'll get smaller or less active, but I don't think it'll ever be obsolete. The Smashboards are like a staple in the Smash community.

EDIT: Just had another thought.

It would be cool if Nintendo had an API for developers to be able to pull data about Nintendo Network users regarding various games and whatnot. That way, it would be easy to integrate real-time game statistics (such as Global Smash Power) in places like these very forums.

So for instance, if you provide your NNID under your account info, then you could display your GSP under your profile picture.

It's probably not likely to happen, but it'd be neat.

 

[Rocket Raccoon]

If Sakurai checked his Twitter he could interact with his fans. (& reply to me.)

 

[Sehnsucht]

Google+ Hangouts with the dev team.

 

[Dr. James Rustles]

Super Smash Bros. is a game that is meant to be played in person so Nintendo could continue promoting and sponsoring events like the Invitational and tournament partnerships and announcing them through Facebook. Facebook is the reigning God-King of social media anyway.

I think it is time the Super Smash Bros. competitive community gets branded. Nintendo can funnel users interested in playing competitively through their existing channels (Official Smash and Nintendo pages) into a new page that brands the competitive community (will probably need a moniker like the Smash DOJO!! has) that is owned by Nintendo but is run through partnerships with Shoryuken and Xyelot, Inc. and so forth.

Posts on Facebook can be regionalized. The BBC does this. Sometimes you live in the U.S. and see oddly specific U.S. news that would never make it to the main BBC page. The page can do the same thing for events so that the tournament goers always see something relevant. Here events can get announced, passed around, bumped. They would make their way to the official competitive community page through the people and corporations that whom with Nintendo is in partnership (a bit of quality assurance for Nintendo, or at least letting them believe that). So for example the people in partnership that help run the page could give TO's with reputation posting privileges for tournament annoucements. The post would naturally include the externals for registration, though it would be more acceptable that it takes you to a Facebook event page.

The main issues with this is the question of whether the events must host Smash 4 or if any title or mod is acceptable. If it is the latter, Nintendo would have to officially acknowledge Project Melee. The other issue is what external links are permitted - an event can be announced anywhere. Is it okay to redirect to the Smash Club from X university/school website even if it isn't in partnership with Nintendo or the official competitive community page? I would rather there be either the Facebook event listing mentioned above or a new website or Nintendo/partnership portal to register so that facebook integration could be worked in. This would all serve as a new annoucement platform.

I don't Sakurai will personally ever take an interest in promoting the game or its community outside Nintendo mediums. He has very specific priorities.