Smash smashed: The results

Season unending. 

The heart of the community is a powerful and influential commodity whenever you are in the entertainment industry. When your starting out, the community around your products might be the only lifeblood still keeping you waking up to the gruelling tasks of the job at hand, when you're growing, the community will tell you with informed passion where their excitement wants to see you evolve next, and when you've made it, the community remains to humble you. A powerful community is steadfast and self-renewing, and the Super Smash Bros. community ontop of that has the tenacity of a cockroach. So whereas recent events make it look very much like the competitive Smash scene is on it's last legs, that couldn't be further from the truth. Smash has been squabbling in the dirt and having the time of it's life for decades now, recently it seemed that papa Nintendo had a reverse of opinion and was reaching down to help them out the gutter, but it was an illusionary truce from which they've dropped the community back where they started. But Smash will go on, no matter what Nintendo does.

When I last touched on everything that was happening with competitive Smash, it was all a veritable mess of information. The CEO of Panda was facing accusations of strong-arming tournament organisers to his own dubious ends, Smash World Tour had just been issued an ultimatum by Nintendo implying the obliteration of grass-routes tournament circuits, and just about every party involved was waggling it's finger saying that 'the widely shared narrative is incorrect, let us tell you the truth in a hot second!' Now with some time everyone has had the chance to share their truth and the largest take-away I currently have is thus: Ain't nobody was lying as definitively as some are saying. Dr Allen was throwing about meat with nothing to back it up, and The Smash World Tour might have fell on it's own sword a little bit to make a larger point. Which I think is hardly a surprise, to be honest. That's about what I figured.

Firstly, the cancellation of Smash World Tour; the very popular finale to a year of circuit events run by independent tournaments all over the place, pulled it's plug after Nintendo, having themselves signed a partnership deal with the Smash Panda cup, contacted the team directly on the eve of thankgiving. SWT weren't just callously tempting fate with this one, their Nintendo contact had informed the team that Nintendo would allow the Smash World Tour to be hosted alongside the Nintendo sponsored Panda cup, they were just waiting to receive their own official licence before the grim correspondence that led to the cancellation. Now, however, it's becoming clear that SWT were not told to close, at least not explicitly. They were denied a licence after months of deliberation based on some vague health and safety guidelines, which feel like a little bit a straw man excuse once you hear that Nintendo also pre-rejected their 2023 application before it was even issued; because, I guess, Nintendo looked into the future with their crystal ball and found next year's events to be equally as 'unsafe'. SWT also said they were told in a follow-up conversation that 'grass-routes' tournaments would be 'a thing of the the past'; which certainly gave off the impression of a crackdown, but not in explicit terms.

As it just so happens, Nintendo actually wanted the event to go forward because they knew what a terrible inconvenience this would cause to everyone; at least that's what they're claiming. Which sort of clashes with their other thoughts about the abolition of all non-licenced Nintendo tournament events, but what can you expect from a multimillion dollar international video game company? Consistency? Perish the thought! Still, this does paint the impression that SWT did play the fainting possum for publicities sake, perhaps to illustrate the attempted assassination of the Smash grass-routes competitive scene with an actual sacrifice, rather than allowing it to be quietly smothered over the next year. They threw themselves on the blade and died loudly, letting the community know of the dagger hovering over all of them. Whether that is noble or pretentious really falls to your own use of interpretation.

Former CEO of Panda, Dr Allen, certainly has very obvious views on the matter. Disclosed in a twitlonger, Dr Allen announced both his stepping down from the Panda Esports company, mid it's collapse that he sparked, and went off on a full blown slap back at all who he perceived as 'wronging' him. He targets were wide, mostly at Smash World Tour for which he constructed a wide conspiracy theory wherein SWT deftly finagled themselves a win-win situation for public relations. A position where they pushed Nintendo's strict limits with planning their unlicensed event despite being told to wait until Nintendo's go ahead and either got away with it and launched their show or suffered the ban-hammer and consequently received a rush community support, goodwill and, most importantly, clout for their next venture. My man might have been playing a few too many Yakuza games, however, because SWT had both their current and future events pulled. They have no backup to funnel the recent community outpouring of support towards. For a conspiracy, this seems to have been a pretty lazy and ill-thought out one. Or maybe SWT are instead playing the multi-year long-con... which would also be weak as these situations only really flare up for a couple of weeks at the most. If they were going to capitalize, they already would have.

Dr Allen also slightly contradicts his own perceived narrative of events by implying that SWT never intended to host the planned live event in the first place. Because his 'inside sources' relayed onto him that the apparent hosting venue had no slot booked for the supposed event! Oh, that is scandalous! Except Allen might want to check his sources, it took less than five minutes for people to track down the defunct landing page for the venue slot literally entitled 'Smash World Tour: contestants and family'. So... that's just plain incorrect. Allen also made the very inspired move to attack the one organiser who outright confirmed that the doctor had tried to strongarm him into exclusive broadcasting rights for the Panda Cup despite their pre-existing history with Smash World tour, by calling his contact an extremely unpleasant individual who shouted him off the phone. How could he know that his target just happened to be a beloved stable of the community, renowned for his calm manner, who was loved by everyone?

All in all; Doctor Allen tried to go out swinging with the sorts of 'mic drop' statement that Mick Gordon put out to clear his name not so long ago. Unfortunately Allen came out without any relevant receipts, (Proving he contacted and held conversations with some organisers actually proves none of his points) half-baked conspiracies and outright incorrect accusations that fizzled before his very eyes. For an apparent Doctor, he really didn't put in much of the diligence to dot his I's and cross his T's. But at the very least, in the height of his infamy, Alan let the mask drop and revealed the method behind his madness. Every competitive video game scene has outright support and involvement to some degree with the publishers and right's holders; except for Smash Bros. When Nintendo finally came to shut down the people playing their game without permission, Allen wanted to make sure someone who 'cared' about the Smash team was guiding their hand and preventing them from crushing everything the community was in their stupid zealotry. He wanted to be the saviour of the Smash scene. He was the Handsome Jack of this story. 

Of course, that assumes that Nintendo have the power to crush the Smash scene. In truth, Nintendo hates people taking their games competitively and actually always have, but somehow the N has never managed to stamp out grass route Smash competitions entirely, despite their best efforts. People have been playing Smash in tournaments for decades and they are determined to keep enjoying Nintendo's games no matter what the big N has to say on the topic. Regardless of draconian policy, the Smash scene is just that cockroach that will never be burned into nothing or wither and die. So yes, in Allen's fatalistic perception of the future of the community, he is the hero that the Smash scene needs right now; but in the reality that Smash resides, he is the deluded tyrant strangling the very life out of the thing he claimed to love. So next time you see a formulaic Anime with the 'I was the hero in my head' villain; you can tap your nose and say, "that ain't so contrived and unrealistic afterall!"