In 2016, Panda Global made a foray into the realm of statistics for competitive Smash Wii U by establishing the PGstats division. This team of statisticians, writers and graphic designers aimed to give the scene a more in-depth look at the game, providing interpretations of numbers important to the big picture. Their Panda Global Rankings, revealed in the May of last year, used statistics to determine the top 50 Smash Wii U players in the world.
In light of its second iteration releasing on January 15, we sat down with PGstats director Luis "Suar" Suarez to give readers an idea of how PGstats started, challenges they faced along the way and more.
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Good day everyone, Popi here for Smashboards. I'm here today with Luis "Suar" Suarez of Panda Global. For those of us that don't know you, would you mind giving us a short but sweet introduction of yourself?
Hiya. My name is suar and I lead the team that's responsible for the bi-annual Smash Wii U gloabl rankings, #PGstats. I'm also a free Sheik main that lives in New England and occasionally competes when work and schedules allow.
What got you into statistics?
I first came into contact with statistics in high school, taking AP Stats along with a boatload of unfortunate souls.
It was in college that I worked more thoughtfully with them in classes like International Developmental Policy in which numbers and facts concerning disparities and income gaps around the world became kinda haunting.
Being in this scene for two years, however, it was the interactions and histories of the players themselves that prompted me to want to create a means to legitimize those interactions in ways that would normalize our scene as, at least in part, an eSport.
How did this lead to you starting PGstats?
An e-mail.
There's a saying that goes around in the business world that says, "Be first, be smarter, or cheat." Well, I hadn't seen any sort of global ranking for our scene yet and I couldn't exactly "cheat" one out by making some sort of arbitrary point system by myself so I decided to reach out to one of the only orgs I thought would bite into such an idea.
That's when I met Bear. I told him I wanted to make rankings for the scene and that I couldn't do it alone, I needed a team.
He bit.
A few months later we were the first ones out with rankings the Wii U community had never had before which featured both objective and subjective metrics of which were derived from nearly 40 panelists -- top players, TOs, and community leaders.
How did you form the team? What was your mentality going into the first PGR?
The team was actually all tapped with Bear being approached by Dom from Tristate and Zan from SoCal expressing interest in similar endeavors.
From there we made a group chat and a few weeks later along with nearly 40 excel tabs we had the PGRv1.
Going into the first set of rankings I was thinking a lot of people would be confused at first, some happy, and some angry.
What were the biggest challenges you faced during the first PGR? How did you address them for the second iteration?
Where to set our parameters.
We had a game with over 15 patches (at the time), a year and a half of tournaments, loose bracket interactions between North America, Europe and Japan, and rules that changed every other season. We even had a tournament of 2,000+ people feature custom movesets, EVO 2015, if ya remember.
It was pretty jarring to take all in but we need we had to start with Apex 2015. We knew that for the first one it was important to take in all the tournaments of a particular scale and factor them in so that no one could say we cherry picked our results. But, again, we still had people criticize for not starting after EVO or this that and the other so I quickly, instantaneously, immediately knew that you can't make everyone happy.
For the PGRv2, 6 month seasons saved us. Regardless we stilk had to factor about 50 events, a mix of Tier 1, 2, and 3, and analyze about 1600 or so bracket interactions. Oh, and we didn't do this PGRv2 by hand like we did the first since we had scripts our Lead Systems Engineer, Giant graciously supplied us with.
That saved a couple of sheets of paper, haha.
What's new in the PGRv2?
Well just about half of the competitors.
We saw the whackiest season in Smash Wii U from this past summer until now and the rankings definitely reflect that.
Apart from that, Giant has created a variety of scripts that pull from smash.gg's API and delivering set counts and bracket runs on anyone that has a smash.gg account.
This all guarantees time and saves us about a million headaches or so.
Apart from that we've assembled a core group of writers that are curating the bios and articles on the Top 50, ensuring consistency throughout.
Basically, we've leveled up a bit.
In terms of content, what does the PGStats team aim to produce after the PGRank? What's PGStats' role in the development of Smash Wii U?
The long and the short of it is we will be offering detailed coverage on Tier 1, 2, and 3 events from around the world on our website -- which is still under construction. We also have a secret project we intend on collaborating streamers with through collaboration with Unrivaled Tournaments so be on the look out for that!
And to answer your prompt, we intend to actualize and direct the momentum our scene has been generating for quite some time now in a manner that is worthy of the title "eSport". We really take the rankings seriously though we work with an imperfect system due to lack of a league, and we strive to be transparent in our methodology so that our findings can be reproduced.
We feel that our role will be that of an enabler. Commentators should be worried about commentating, we send fact sheets to them. Streamers should be worried about streaming, we give them the PGstats ticker for the stream overlay. TOs want to handle tournament contracts and logistics, we get consulted for proper seeding and pool make-ups.
We'll be the water that runs the Smash windmill.
In your opinion what else does the Smash Wii U community need in order to grow? On that note, how is the Smash Wii U scene looking going into 2017?
To mince niceties, we need corporate sponsorship support.
We're approaching a situation in which the good will and graces of many are being tested against the expectations and glam of an up-and-coming eSport. We're working with a system of grassroots unpaid volunteerism that will eventually give out to the pressures and scale of some of the events we hope to hold. We have people taking time off their jobs to work for this community without any recompense in the capacity of a second job.
We need money to be honest with you.
But, Beyoncé wasn't built in a day or so they say so we're definitely on track for some pretty amazing times with orgs like 2GG in SoCal launching a circuit, the 2GGC.
We are in the best possible shape we could be for 2017 without developer support.
2017 will be the year the world hears and sees us.
What's next for PGstats?
Well, the PGRv3.
With each season ending a new one begins so here's to an exciting season! I just wanna see a new #1 for once to be real. I'll probably give that person their own PGR trading card or something nice, heh.
But really, we're always up to something and we're always looking to collaborate so if you're reading this, feel free to reach out!
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Author's Note: If you enjoyed this interview, be sure to follow Suar on Twitter. He and the PGstats team will be releasing the PGRv2 on January 15, which you will be able to find via the team's Twitter or website.Stick around on Smashboards for more in-depth Smash Wii U content.
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