English 2089: Intermediate Composition
Summer 2022, Honors Section of English 2089During the summer of 2022 I learned to analysis and recognize discourse communities in the honors section of English 2089. Discourse communities are any group in which communication is centered around a specific goal or topic. Everything from a college course to a basketball team to a group of friends can be considered a discourse community. Discourse communities use specific genres and language to meet their communication needs. Genre is the platform of the communication such as Facetime, Instagram, Socratic seminar, or email. Specialized language are the words the group has developed overtime that often act of shorthand’s for broader concepts. Specialized language can be anything from dense technical language to an inside joke.
Over the course of the semester, I analyzed the discourse community of the Super Smash Bros. Competitive Community. I looked at what makes the Super Smash Bros. Competitive scene not only unique among esports but fighting games in general. Below you can read a copy of that essay. I discovered that the incredibly low prize pools for professional players compared to other esports of similar popularity led to extremes of behavior. Some professional players trained tirelessly knowing the only reward for their victory would be the pride of winning while others used their success to exploit vulnerable members of the community. English 2089 gave me the knowledge and practice to analyze the underlying factors that led to this culture and the language that both results and causes it.
Super Smash Bros is the best-selling fighting game series of all time, but despite that the community has always been unique among contemporary fighting game communities. I began my tenure with the franchise in 2015 and have since followed the competitive and casual community, including a brief stint as a player on my school’s eSports team where we went on to win the state championship. I started getting into the game in middle school after playing at a friend’s house and enjoyed its free flowing game play mechanics. Where other fighting games have strict inputs to execute combo’s, Smash Bros is more about stringing together moves to create your own combo’s. I never went on to play in the actual competitive scene, but I do have several friends who did and have continued to stay up to date with the latest tournements. Through my time with the scene, I’ve come to learn the unique influences that have shaped the community and the positive and negative effects those influences have had. While the Super Smash Bros Competitive Scene holds many similar qualities to other competitive communities it has been uniquely shaped by a lack of outside support, internal schisms, and a devoted online community.
Like any competitive community, The Smash Scene has several defining moments and highlights that belong in the core memory of the community. The history of the game is not one of gradual change, but moments of massive disagreement or consensus. I began my research by cross referencing what I would consider those major moments to be with what people I know in the community and people online say. I found that the most defining moments in the community were not the matches, but the viral clips of funny or controversial moments. When I asked competitive smash player Seth “thepower500” Niemann what moments he believes I should touch on, he immediately responded with “Hungry box getting a crab thrown at him” (Niemann). Niemann is referencing a highly anticipated match between players Juan “Hungrybox” Debeidma and Joseph “Mang0” Marquez where a fan threw a crab at Debeidma after the match had ended (Hbox Crab Throw, youtube.com). The “Crab Throw”, which it has been dubbed in later years, has since gone down in infamy, and overshadowed what was once a highly anticipated match. This is just the beginning of a reoccurring pattern in the Smash community, where often spectacle and drama will grab the attention of the community more than big tournament matches or top play.
Although the Smash Community lacks in diversity of gender, it is a surprisingly diverse community in other aspects, welcoming members from around the world. The community is predominately male with a few rare top female players like Kelsy “SuperGirlKels” Medeiros occasionally breaking the top 100 of ranked players (Smash Wiki). This gender divide in the community is one that has been repeatedly discussed as an issue with the number of female players steadily growing in recent years. Unlike traditional sports, eSports allow for players of any age to stay competitive in lower to mid-level play. It’s not rare for upcoming players to be as young as 12 and some continue to compete in their 30s. However, top 100 players almost always reach the peak of their career in their late teens to early 20s. Niemann reflected in the interview that “I mostly face college aged players, but sometimes a kid will walk in and crush us. But it’s really only the guys that wake up, play, and then sleep that move on to the top levels.” Many leave the rigor of top play behind as they grow older, turning to content creation or commentator roles in the community. For many the dedication of top play can be exhausting, especially when you are competing not only at a national level, but worldwide. Top tournaments, called majors, welcome a plethora of ethnicities and nationalities to compete. While the US has always been the most represented, the official top 100 ranking’s has players from Mexico, France, Japan, The Dominican Republic, Canada, and more (Dashfight.com). Mexico and South America as a whole has famously been dominate in the eSport with two Mexican players, Leonardo “MkLeo” Perez and Edgar “Spargo” Valdez, being the number 1 and 2 players respectively (Dashfight.com). On a final note, the Smash Community has historically been very accepting of neurodivergent players, most notably Jason “Mew2King” Zimmerman who has been a top player for years and is now a major influencer in the community.
For many the most important genre of communication and the root of the community are local tournaments or “locals”. Locals are where many budding players first begin to play. Often players will first become known in their local scene before a top performance at a major will put them on the map as a top player. For many, locals are not only a place to play, but somewhere people develop friendship, rivalries, and coaches. When asked about his experience at locals Niemann remarked “a lot of the guys are pretty nerdy, like you might expect, but there’s also pre-med students, and parents, and middle schoolers…These people would never be in the same room if it wasn’t for the game”. Being a global community, however, much discussion also takes place in online spaces. Twitter and reddit, like most sports communities, are the place that most member-to-member communication happens. After updates to the game or the results of a major or even community drama, members typically take to reddit or twitter to debate about the results. These platforms are the most conducive to debate between fans. For communication between the players and the fans it’s more often YouTube and Twitch where the discussion happens. As we will get into later, professional smash players receive incredibly low compensation even at high levels of play which leads many to start creating YouTube and Twitch channels to monetize their success.
Like many skill-based activities the Smash competitive scene has numerous short hands and phrases unique to this community. There are hundreds of these terms and many that are region specific, but we will focus in on a specific group of phrases. The Smash scene has several phrases specifically to discuss and incentivize not just winning, but winning with the most flair and style. Terms like “Zero-to-Death”, “JV-4”, and “Wombo Combo” are all terms created specifically to fill in this need (Wombo Combo, youtube.com). “JV-4” for example describes when a player not just wins but wins without taking a single point of damage. In competitive play players have 3 lives so if you win without taking any damage you didn’t just beat them by 3 lives, you basically beat them by 4, hence the name “JV-4”. I attribute the focus of the community on extravagant and exciting victories to two factors: amateur commentators and game balance. When the Smash scene was first developing in the early 2000s there were no experienced commentators so players would simply volunteer with no experience (The Smash Bros. Documentary, youtube.com). This led to excited, but overzealous commentating that focused more on the thrill of the victory than a traditional breakdown of gameplay like you may see during an NFL game. Commentators weren’t paid or sponsored so they had no reason to censor themselves. They could say whatever they wanted. Unlike physical sports, the characters in a fighting video game have hard coded stats. Some characters are simply better than others or have exploitable move sets that allow for an easy victory. These over-powered characters were naturally the choice of most professional players, but they were boring for spectators to watch. Spectators and commentators began to gravitate towards players who used underdog characters or played in a riskier way. They didn’t want to see someone win with the same character, they wanted to see people be so good they could win with interior characters. Today, Smash commentators are just as professional as any other sports commentators and the game is much more well balanced, but the language developed during this time period is still a staple of the community today.
One of the largest influences shaping the Smash Bros. competitive community is the lack of outside support. Although eSport athletes may not earn as much as traditional athletes, they spend just as much time training and can expect to earn more than enough to go full time off tournament winnings. Take for example Dominique “Sonic Fox” McLean. McLean is a top preforming Mortal Kombat player who has earned upward of $192,000 and averaged around $127,000 per year pre-COVID (esportearnings.com). This number is not including sponsorship deals either. Compare that to MkLeo, largely considered the best modern day smash player, who with a near perfect record only averaged about $50,000 per year (esportearnings.com). Looking at other top 50 players that number drops significantly to unsustainable levels. A player we mentioned before, Mew2King, has played the game at the professional level for 17 years, yet his life-time earnings from the game only total around $280,000 (esportearnings.com). The typical prize pool for a popular eSports tournament can reach upwards of 7 million dollars while the largest ever prize pool for a smash tournament was around $160,000 (usatoday.com). These sorts of abysmal prize pools for top players leave little incentive for winning than to do just simply that: win. Top smash players put in the hours because they want to win, not because they want fame or fortune. Juan “Hungrybox” Debeidma is one of the most recognizable smash players with a style of gameplay unique to only him. Rising through the rankings in 2015, Debeidma, who was working as a chemical engineer, decided that nothing was more important to him than being the best (espn.com). He quit his job and recentered his life to playing Smash full time. Despite a massive drop in earnings between his two jobs, Debeidma went on to be considered one of the best players to ever touch the game with many tournaments wins and a massive online fanbase.
Not every smash player has taken such an earnest and devoted approach to the game as Debeidma. Like all communities, the Smash competitive scene has several issues which most notably came to a head in 2020. Prior to the pandemic the Smash community was getting ready for the largest tournament series to date, a global tournament circuit culminating in a world championship. This was going to be the largest organized Amash event ever held with some of the biggest prize pools. With the massive popularity of the most recent game in the series, Smash Bros. Ultimate, many fans were hoping that this circuit would be just the first of many record-breaking tournaments to come. When the pandemic hit, plans for the tournament were put on hold for the next year, but when smash player “Puppeh” tweeted about his experience with sexual assault in the community on July 1st, 2020 many followed suit, putting forward allegations of sexual assault and grooming by many top players (Smashwiki.com). While the vast majority of the community came forward to support the victims and the abusers were stripped of sponsorships, it was clear that the community needed significant restructuring and reflection. The reasons for the proliferation of these issues were attributed to the lack of oversight by a parent company and the grassroots nature of the community (wired.com). Unlike other popular eSport publishers, Nintendo, the company that publishes Super Smash Bros, has been uninvolved in the competitive scene of it’s game. Where a company like Riot, that publishes multiple popular eSport titles like League of Legends and Valorant, will host their own tournaments and pitch in money to the prize pool, Nintendo keeps a hands-off approach. This places the burden on players to organize their own tournament who often must stretch resources thin. With less regulation and oversight some players began to take advantage (wired.com). When I discussed this topic with Niemann he said that “I was shocked when the allegations came out. Those were some of the top players and then to hear what they did felt very gross. When you play locally everyone knows each other, you see the same faces. There’s a sense of community that can lend some protection. But when you drive two hours away to a big tournament then, boom, suddenly there’s no accountability”. Niemann went on to discuss how the allegation have changed the focus of the community in recent years. Top players were not held in the same high regard and many people choose to focus instead on just playing locally. Slowly, the top tier of play has made a comeback, but this time with a new generation of players.
Now in a post-pandemic world, the Smash Community has entered a new era. The pandemic created a break of major tournaments that led many of long running top players to step back into content creation roles. A new generation has taken over the top mantle and tournament organizers have scaled back the size to create safer environments. The Smash Competitive scene will likely never reach the prize pools that its top players deserve, nor will it ever get the global tournament circuit it was once promised, but today the community is still thriving with devoted players doing anything it takes to stay at the top.
Words Cited
D'Anastasio, Cecilia. “The 'Super Smash Bros.' Community Reckons with Sexual Misconduct Allegations.” Wired, Conde Nast, 10 July 2020, https://www.wired.com/story/super-smash-bros-sexual-misconduct/.
Glhf. “7 Biggest Esports Games by Prize Money in 2021.” USA Today, Gannett Satellite Information Network, 29 Dec. 2021, https://ftw.usatoday.com/lists/esports-games-prize-money-2021.
Khan, Imad. “Smash 'God' Hungrybox Quits Job to Pursue Esports Full-Time.” ESPN, ESPN Internet Ventures, 13 Oct. 2016, https://www.espn.com/esports/story/_/id/17782753/super-smash-bros-melee-player-hungrybox-team-liquid-quits-job-pursue-professional-gaming-full.
“MKLEO - Leonardo Perez - Smash Player Profile :: Esports Earnings.” MKLeo - Leonardo Perez - Smash Player Profile :: Esports Earnings, https://www.esportsearnings.com/players/29570-mkleo-leonardo-perez.
Niemann, Seth. Personal Interview. 28 June 2022.
“Pound 2019 - Mango vs Hungrybox Ending Crowd Footage (Crab Throw / Audio Included).” YouTube, Google, 22 Apr. 2019, https://youtu.be/AS578kfxa4o.
“The Smash Brothers: Documentary Full.” YouTube, Google, 4 Dec. 2020, https://youtu.be/CiodltLYwj8.
“Supergirlkels.” Liquipedia Smash Wiki, Team Liquid, https://liquipedia.net/smash/SuperGirlKels.
“Wombo Combo!!!!” YouTube, Google, 8 Dec. 2008, https://youtu.be/pD_imYhNoQ4.
Over the course of the semester, I analyzed the discourse community of the Super Smash Bros. Competitive Community. I looked at what makes the Super Smash Bros. Competitive scene not only unique among esports but fighting games in general. Below you can read a copy of that essay. I discovered that the incredibly low prize pools for professional players compared to other esports of similar popularity led to extremes of behavior. Some professional players trained tirelessly knowing the only reward for their victory would be the pride of winning while others used their success to exploit vulnerable members of the community. English 2089 gave me the knowledge and practice to analyze the underlying factors that led to this culture and the language that both results and causes it.
The Super Smash Bros. Competitive Scene
Super Smash Bros is the best-selling fighting game series of all time, but despite that the community has always been unique among contemporary fighting game communities. I began my tenure with the franchise in 2015 and have since followed the competitive and casual community, including a brief stint as a player on my school’s eSports team where we went on to win the state championship. I started getting into the game in middle school after playing at a friend’s house and enjoyed its free flowing game play mechanics. Where other fighting games have strict inputs to execute combo’s, Smash Bros is more about stringing together moves to create your own combo’s. I never went on to play in the actual competitive scene, but I do have several friends who did and have continued to stay up to date with the latest tournements. Through my time with the scene, I’ve come to learn the unique influences that have shaped the community and the positive and negative effects those influences have had. While the Super Smash Bros Competitive Scene holds many similar qualities to other competitive communities it has been uniquely shaped by a lack of outside support, internal schisms, and a devoted online community.
Like any competitive community, The Smash Scene has several defining moments and highlights that belong in the core memory of the community. The history of the game is not one of gradual change, but moments of massive disagreement or consensus. I began my research by cross referencing what I would consider those major moments to be with what people I know in the community and people online say. I found that the most defining moments in the community were not the matches, but the viral clips of funny or controversial moments. When I asked competitive smash player Seth “thepower500” Niemann what moments he believes I should touch on, he immediately responded with “Hungry box getting a crab thrown at him” (Niemann). Niemann is referencing a highly anticipated match between players Juan “Hungrybox” Debeidma and Joseph “Mang0” Marquez where a fan threw a crab at Debeidma after the match had ended (Hbox Crab Throw, youtube.com). The “Crab Throw”, which it has been dubbed in later years, has since gone down in infamy, and overshadowed what was once a highly anticipated match. This is just the beginning of a reoccurring pattern in the Smash community, where often spectacle and drama will grab the attention of the community more than big tournament matches or top play.
Although the Smash Community lacks in diversity of gender, it is a surprisingly diverse community in other aspects, welcoming members from around the world. The community is predominately male with a few rare top female players like Kelsy “SuperGirlKels” Medeiros occasionally breaking the top 100 of ranked players (Smash Wiki). This gender divide in the community is one that has been repeatedly discussed as an issue with the number of female players steadily growing in recent years. Unlike traditional sports, eSports allow for players of any age to stay competitive in lower to mid-level play. It’s not rare for upcoming players to be as young as 12 and some continue to compete in their 30s. However, top 100 players almost always reach the peak of their career in their late teens to early 20s. Niemann reflected in the interview that “I mostly face college aged players, but sometimes a kid will walk in and crush us. But it’s really only the guys that wake up, play, and then sleep that move on to the top levels.” Many leave the rigor of top play behind as they grow older, turning to content creation or commentator roles in the community. For many the dedication of top play can be exhausting, especially when you are competing not only at a national level, but worldwide. Top tournaments, called majors, welcome a plethora of ethnicities and nationalities to compete. While the US has always been the most represented, the official top 100 ranking’s has players from Mexico, France, Japan, The Dominican Republic, Canada, and more (Dashfight.com). Mexico and South America as a whole has famously been dominate in the eSport with two Mexican players, Leonardo “MkLeo” Perez and Edgar “Spargo” Valdez, being the number 1 and 2 players respectively (Dashfight.com). On a final note, the Smash Community has historically been very accepting of neurodivergent players, most notably Jason “Mew2King” Zimmerman who has been a top player for years and is now a major influencer in the community.
For many the most important genre of communication and the root of the community are local tournaments or “locals”. Locals are where many budding players first begin to play. Often players will first become known in their local scene before a top performance at a major will put them on the map as a top player. For many, locals are not only a place to play, but somewhere people develop friendship, rivalries, and coaches. When asked about his experience at locals Niemann remarked “a lot of the guys are pretty nerdy, like you might expect, but there’s also pre-med students, and parents, and middle schoolers…These people would never be in the same room if it wasn’t for the game”. Being a global community, however, much discussion also takes place in online spaces. Twitter and reddit, like most sports communities, are the place that most member-to-member communication happens. After updates to the game or the results of a major or even community drama, members typically take to reddit or twitter to debate about the results. These platforms are the most conducive to debate between fans. For communication between the players and the fans it’s more often YouTube and Twitch where the discussion happens. As we will get into later, professional smash players receive incredibly low compensation even at high levels of play which leads many to start creating YouTube and Twitch channels to monetize their success.
Like many skill-based activities the Smash competitive scene has numerous short hands and phrases unique to this community. There are hundreds of these terms and many that are region specific, but we will focus in on a specific group of phrases. The Smash scene has several phrases specifically to discuss and incentivize not just winning, but winning with the most flair and style. Terms like “Zero-to-Death”, “JV-4”, and “Wombo Combo” are all terms created specifically to fill in this need (Wombo Combo, youtube.com). “JV-4” for example describes when a player not just wins but wins without taking a single point of damage. In competitive play players have 3 lives so if you win without taking any damage you didn’t just beat them by 3 lives, you basically beat them by 4, hence the name “JV-4”. I attribute the focus of the community on extravagant and exciting victories to two factors: amateur commentators and game balance. When the Smash scene was first developing in the early 2000s there were no experienced commentators so players would simply volunteer with no experience (The Smash Bros. Documentary, youtube.com). This led to excited, but overzealous commentating that focused more on the thrill of the victory than a traditional breakdown of gameplay like you may see during an NFL game. Commentators weren’t paid or sponsored so they had no reason to censor themselves. They could say whatever they wanted. Unlike physical sports, the characters in a fighting video game have hard coded stats. Some characters are simply better than others or have exploitable move sets that allow for an easy victory. These over-powered characters were naturally the choice of most professional players, but they were boring for spectators to watch. Spectators and commentators began to gravitate towards players who used underdog characters or played in a riskier way. They didn’t want to see someone win with the same character, they wanted to see people be so good they could win with interior characters. Today, Smash commentators are just as professional as any other sports commentators and the game is much more well balanced, but the language developed during this time period is still a staple of the community today.
One of the largest influences shaping the Smash Bros. competitive community is the lack of outside support. Although eSport athletes may not earn as much as traditional athletes, they spend just as much time training and can expect to earn more than enough to go full time off tournament winnings. Take for example Dominique “Sonic Fox” McLean. McLean is a top preforming Mortal Kombat player who has earned upward of $192,000 and averaged around $127,000 per year pre-COVID (esportearnings.com). This number is not including sponsorship deals either. Compare that to MkLeo, largely considered the best modern day smash player, who with a near perfect record only averaged about $50,000 per year (esportearnings.com). Looking at other top 50 players that number drops significantly to unsustainable levels. A player we mentioned before, Mew2King, has played the game at the professional level for 17 years, yet his life-time earnings from the game only total around $280,000 (esportearnings.com). The typical prize pool for a popular eSports tournament can reach upwards of 7 million dollars while the largest ever prize pool for a smash tournament was around $160,000 (usatoday.com). These sorts of abysmal prize pools for top players leave little incentive for winning than to do just simply that: win. Top smash players put in the hours because they want to win, not because they want fame or fortune. Juan “Hungrybox” Debeidma is one of the most recognizable smash players with a style of gameplay unique to only him. Rising through the rankings in 2015, Debeidma, who was working as a chemical engineer, decided that nothing was more important to him than being the best (espn.com). He quit his job and recentered his life to playing Smash full time. Despite a massive drop in earnings between his two jobs, Debeidma went on to be considered one of the best players to ever touch the game with many tournaments wins and a massive online fanbase.
Not every smash player has taken such an earnest and devoted approach to the game as Debeidma. Like all communities, the Smash competitive scene has several issues which most notably came to a head in 2020. Prior to the pandemic the Smash community was getting ready for the largest tournament series to date, a global tournament circuit culminating in a world championship. This was going to be the largest organized Amash event ever held with some of the biggest prize pools. With the massive popularity of the most recent game in the series, Smash Bros. Ultimate, many fans were hoping that this circuit would be just the first of many record-breaking tournaments to come. When the pandemic hit, plans for the tournament were put on hold for the next year, but when smash player “Puppeh” tweeted about his experience with sexual assault in the community on July 1st, 2020 many followed suit, putting forward allegations of sexual assault and grooming by many top players (Smashwiki.com). While the vast majority of the community came forward to support the victims and the abusers were stripped of sponsorships, it was clear that the community needed significant restructuring and reflection. The reasons for the proliferation of these issues were attributed to the lack of oversight by a parent company and the grassroots nature of the community (wired.com). Unlike other popular eSport publishers, Nintendo, the company that publishes Super Smash Bros, has been uninvolved in the competitive scene of it’s game. Where a company like Riot, that publishes multiple popular eSport titles like League of Legends and Valorant, will host their own tournaments and pitch in money to the prize pool, Nintendo keeps a hands-off approach. This places the burden on players to organize their own tournament who often must stretch resources thin. With less regulation and oversight some players began to take advantage (wired.com). When I discussed this topic with Niemann he said that “I was shocked when the allegations came out. Those were some of the top players and then to hear what they did felt very gross. When you play locally everyone knows each other, you see the same faces. There’s a sense of community that can lend some protection. But when you drive two hours away to a big tournament then, boom, suddenly there’s no accountability”. Niemann went on to discuss how the allegation have changed the focus of the community in recent years. Top players were not held in the same high regard and many people choose to focus instead on just playing locally. Slowly, the top tier of play has made a comeback, but this time with a new generation of players.
Now in a post-pandemic world, the Smash Community has entered a new era. The pandemic created a break of major tournaments that led many of long running top players to step back into content creation roles. A new generation has taken over the top mantle and tournament organizers have scaled back the size to create safer environments. The Smash Competitive scene will likely never reach the prize pools that its top players deserve, nor will it ever get the global tournament circuit it was once promised, but today the community is still thriving with devoted players doing anything it takes to stay at the top.
Words Cited
D'Anastasio, Cecilia. “The 'Super Smash Bros.' Community Reckons with Sexual Misconduct Allegations.” Wired, Conde Nast, 10 July 2020, https://www.wired.com/story/super-smash-bros-sexual-misconduct/.
Glhf. “7 Biggest Esports Games by Prize Money in 2021.” USA Today, Gannett Satellite Information Network, 29 Dec. 2021, https://ftw.usatoday.com/lists/esports-games-prize-money-2021.
Khan, Imad. “Smash 'God' Hungrybox Quits Job to Pursue Esports Full-Time.” ESPN, ESPN Internet Ventures, 13 Oct. 2016, https://www.espn.com/esports/story/_/id/17782753/super-smash-bros-melee-player-hungrybox-team-liquid-quits-job-pursue-professional-gaming-full.
“MKLEO - Leonardo Perez - Smash Player Profile :: Esports Earnings.” MKLeo - Leonardo Perez - Smash Player Profile :: Esports Earnings, https://www.esportsearnings.com/players/29570-mkleo-leonardo-perez.
Niemann, Seth. Personal Interview. 28 June 2022.
“Pound 2019 - Mango vs Hungrybox Ending Crowd Footage (Crab Throw / Audio Included).” YouTube, Google, 22 Apr. 2019, https://youtu.be/AS578kfxa4o.
“The Smash Brothers: Documentary Full.” YouTube, Google, 4 Dec. 2020, https://youtu.be/CiodltLYwj8.
“Supergirlkels.” Liquipedia Smash Wiki, Team Liquid, https://liquipedia.net/smash/SuperGirlKels.
“Wombo Combo!!!!” YouTube, Google, 8 Dec. 2008, https://youtu.be/pD_imYhNoQ4.