@CoolkiddVids 2/3:
Another part of the lens is a somewhat understandable viewpoint; Nintendo is watching and may think less of the community as a whole due to the things that occurred, sure. The problem with that is it's ignoring many of the victims are fans of Smash and competitors themselves, and not only is justifying Nintendo painting a broad brush over an entire community, one that has made extreme efforts to remove bad actors, completely counterproductive, the scandals are arguably irrelevant to this discussion because the whole C&D of The Big House Online that sparked #FreeMelee & #SaveSmash is but a single occurrence of aggressive IP "protection" and community control of dozens that have taken place over the years in terms of just Smash Bros. alone.
It is within Nintendo's right as they're the owners, sure, but I would like to argue that in terms of an online tournament for a 20 year old game that they are clearly not planning any modern re-release of, on a console discontinued around a decade ago, being played with Slippi, a community mod for the Dolphin emulator to be able to play with excellent rollback netcode (which by the way at the time I'm typing this in the United States, you can completely legally rip your own ISO ROM off a Melee disc you own to run on Dolphin as with any game), it's ridiculous. Even without considering the fact of the global pandemic preventing in-person events, and with other companies reactions to projects like Fightcade and/or competitions for their older less available titles being played online with that or Parsec. It's a night and day difference; people have been literally invited to work at ArcSys over community developed netcode projects for older games. Don't even get me started on fangame & mod creators getting hired for their dream jobs with other IPs or contributing to the things they're fans of, while Nintendo stamps out anything of the sort, just look up Valve before it's primary cash producer was Steam, or Sonic Mania, list goes on.
From the very subtitle, there's a total disconnect from the greater Smash community in this article, if it wasn't written in bad faith or with a blind eye to the efforts we've made, and among many of these comments.
Firstly for those willing to consider another point of view on the more recent happenings, I will link a few archives and threads here (many of them work-in-progress) summarizing & detailing the C&D of The Big House and the occurrences over the past decade and further for anyone to do their own personal research on the exact context of #SaveSmash and #FreeMelee:
In reply to the main points of the article now and some of the comments about what happened earlier this year:
There was an IMMENSE unified public outcry equal if not greater to #SaveSmash regarding the summer revelations, and event organizers, content creators, leaders, competitors alike, of all genders and walks of life no less, came together to support the victims, take action against abusers (ALL of them are banned permanently from any and all legitimate events) and catalogue their actions, and (among those that already existed and improving them) create panels/committees and contact lines dedicated to handling matters like these in the best manner possible and develop global community guidelines to address all concerns and more easily take action in the future.
We just didn't have a Smash/FGC specific #MeToo hashtag to name the movement (which arguably sounds like it would trivialize the events that affected many lives) and we're not a massive singular organization or corporate board like the NFL or Overwatch League. Everything is grassroots, with an occasional miniscule "partnership" from Nintendo. The author seemingly decided to pay more attention to a more extreme sample size they were seeing on Twitter and Reddit that spoke far more ill of the victims beyond initial caution/understandable amount of disbelief after years of knowing of the accused, and partly developed the lens the article was written through based on that. (1/3)
Comments 2
Re: Soapbox: If The Smash Community Wants To #SaveSmash, It Needs To Start From Within
@CoolkiddVids 2/3:
Another part of the lens is a somewhat understandable viewpoint; Nintendo is watching and may think less of the community as a whole due to the things that occurred, sure. The problem with that is it's ignoring many of the victims are fans of Smash and competitors themselves, and not only is justifying Nintendo painting a broad brush over an entire community, one that has made extreme efforts to remove bad actors, completely counterproductive, the scandals are arguably irrelevant to this discussion because the whole C&D of The Big House Online that sparked #FreeMelee & #SaveSmash is but a single occurrence of aggressive IP "protection" and community control of dozens that have taken place over the years in terms of just Smash Bros. alone.
It is within Nintendo's right as they're the owners, sure, but I would like to argue that in terms of an online tournament for a 20 year old game that they are clearly not planning any modern re-release of, on a console discontinued around a decade ago, being played with Slippi, a community mod for the Dolphin emulator to be able to play with excellent rollback netcode (which by the way at the time I'm typing this in the United States, you can completely legally rip your own ISO ROM off a Melee disc you own to run on Dolphin as with any game), it's ridiculous. Even without considering the fact of the global pandemic preventing in-person events, and with other companies reactions to projects like Fightcade and/or competitions for their older less available titles being played online with that or Parsec. It's a night and day difference; people have been literally invited to work at ArcSys over community developed netcode projects for older games. Don't even get me started on fangame & mod creators getting hired for their dream jobs with other IPs or contributing to the things they're fans of, while Nintendo stamps out anything of the sort, just look up Valve before it's primary cash producer was Steam, or Sonic Mania, list goes on.
Re: Soapbox: If The Smash Community Wants To #SaveSmash, It Needs To Start From Within
From the very subtitle, there's a total disconnect from the greater Smash community in this article, if it wasn't written in bad faith or with a blind eye to the efforts we've made, and among many of these comments.
Firstly for those willing to consider another point of view on the more recent happenings, I will link a few archives and threads here (many of them work-in-progress) summarizing & detailing the C&D of The Big House and the occurrences over the past decade and further for anyone to do their own personal research on the exact context of #SaveSmash and #FreeMelee:
https://twitter.com/i/events/1333920912639311872
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Zu59msdck5jD9_1eSAq6oAtt_faI6VjP-CWZHdzwrDU/edit
https://twitter.com/HitBoxCameron/status/1223156216529993729?s=20
In reply to the main points of the article now and some of the comments about what happened earlier this year:
There was an IMMENSE unified public outcry equal if not greater to #SaveSmash regarding the summer revelations, and event organizers, content creators, leaders, competitors alike, of all genders and walks of life no less, came together to support the victims, take action against abusers (ALL of them are banned permanently from any and all legitimate events) and catalogue their actions, and (among those that already existed and improving them) create panels/committees and contact lines dedicated to handling matters like these in the best manner possible and develop global community guidelines to address all concerns and more easily take action in the future.
We just didn't have a Smash/FGC specific #MeToo hashtag to name the movement (which arguably sounds like it would trivialize the events that affected many lives) and we're not a massive singular organization or corporate board like the NFL or Overwatch League. Everything is grassroots, with an occasional miniscule "partnership" from Nintendo. The author seemingly decided to pay more attention to a more extreme sample size they were seeing on Twitter and Reddit that spoke far more ill of the victims beyond initial caution/understandable amount of disbelief after years of knowing of the accused, and partly developed the lens the article was written through based on that. (1/3)