First year and last year for Brawl on the MLG circuit. According to an interview by MLG CEO Sundance DiGiovanni by the vvv podcast, Brawl will not come back to the circuit for the following reasons:
Here’s a link to the podcast, Brawl part starts around 29:30
Losers Bracket: Round 47 - vVv Gaming’s Forum
So what will be the fate for Brawl now that MLG dropped the game?
There are other tournaments, aren’t there?
Brawl is dead. Melee lives.
Seriously, Sakurai said himself that Melee is better. How much worse could it have gotten?
Even IF Brawl does get more tournaments, it will still slowly die competitively, simply because Nintendo really doesn’t give two shits about competitive gaming, and because Brawl needs MLG to stay alive.
The way I see it, Brawl is in cardiac arrest while Melee is still running.
Whoa there. A lot of stuff here is incorrect.
Melee is alive is a farse. From what I’ve seen, Melee isn’t played any more than Brawl. If anything, the number of tournaments is the same if not more for Brawl.
Sakurai never said Melee was a better game, but a “sharper,” game. Here is the quote.
Melee is the sharpest game in the series. It’s pretty speedy all around and asks a lot of your coordination skills. Fans of the first Smash Bros. got into it quickly, and it just felt really good to play.
Him saying “Melee was the best game in the series.” wouldn’t make sense as he is talking about the speed of the game. “Melee was the fastest game in the series.” makes more sense as it lines up with what he said. Also, seeing as how he said…
I had created Smash Bros. to be my response to how hardcore-exclusive the fighting game genre had become over the years. But why did I target it so squarely toward people well-versed in videogames, then? That’s why I tried to aim for more of a happy medium with Brawl’s play balance.
If that is the case, then how could he think Melee was the best? He said that he did something wrong with Melee. What you are saying does not match up with the idea of what Sakurai is saying.
Also, Nintendo doesn’t care because competitive game doesn’t matter. Unless you game is Starcraft 2, then it is just a hobby. So why does Nintendo want to support these small, stagnant communities when they can make more money by making games more accessible (i.e. like Brawl) and make more money. Nintendo is going the right way in that sense.
EDIT: From what he said, the nail in the coffin was the winning splitting. He said it would be hard with the weak showing and no support from Nintendo, but he mentioned it would have been challenging (not impossible). The pot splitting was the big thing.
What he meant by “sharper” is left to interpretation. I can easily interpret that as him saying the game was more hardcore than “casual”.
I still think Sakurai is not giving even “casual” gamers enough credit and not realizing appeal limits. I was nine when Smash 64 came out and eleven when Melee came out. These games were not difficult for me to play. Sure, at the higher levels, things go crazy, but you can say that about any game, video game or not. Heck, my same-aged neighbors didn’t have much difficulty with the game, including my at-the-time seven year old sister.
For appeal, fighting games have always been a bit niche, intentionally or not. It’s the Metroid of game genres: Generally solid or better, but for whatever reason never does a big pull in with the exception of Smash due to its star power (don’t even try to deny that this did the bulk of the work).
And I wouldn’t say he got the balance he was looking for in Brawl. My biggest problem with the series is how unstable the design is (Brawl and even Melee have evidence of this) and the unusual learning curve (though this MIGHT have been unintentional) where some things are easy while some things are hard as you delve deeper into the game.
Genesis 2.
A scene like Brawl doesn’t really fit the MLG atmosphere in my eyes. A lot of the players, even the bigger name ones, are just in high school or freshly out of it. A lot of them don’t have the money to travel and support all of the tournaments and reach that attendance rate that MLG was asking for. The lack of support from the scene comes from the laziness of some of the smashers and just the overall lack of being unable to travel long distances. Not only that, the Brawl competitive scene is far from professional when put side by side with the other events being run by MLG.
MLG was nice for the Brawl community, but come on, it was still very large without it. Melee was dropped from MLG, and still lived on.
Many competitive players that call themselves active tournament players never attended a MLG; there’s always something else being hosted.
Yes, Melee is still pretty big, Brawl is bigger since there’s a nice flood of new players.
No you can’t. I used Sakurai’s words to derive meaning. You can only interpret it based on what was said.
Funny you said that
Melee fans who played deep into the game without any problems might have trouble understanding this, but Melee was just too difficult.
I have seen many people struggle with Smash (namely women). It’s not as easy as you say it is.
Incorrect. Street Fighter was very popular upon it’s release and was a big reason to get an SNES. It was only later that they declined. Smash, of course, is also a big series.
Could you perhaps provide examples of this.
Brawl is dead now. The game was a flop and doesn’t have the enduring quality that Melee had. It never should of been on MLG to begin with because it’s simply not a fighter. Ridiculously unbalanced, next to no hit-stun which leads to virtually no true combos, tripping, slow physics turns it into a camp fest, ect.
Brawl on MLG was also removed because the Brawl community was a disgrace with bracket manipulation (M2K and ADHD) and the Doritos incident. That wasn’t the sole reason but it most certainly didn’t help.
I’ve been to a recent Brawl tourny (PHASE X) and it’s pretty pathetic now. Lots of good players (myself included) don’t enter singles anymore because they are fed up with the horrible rulesets… mk not being banned (look at his frame data, dominating tourny results and match ups if you don’t understand how ridiculous he is. He’d make SF4 Sagat blush), ect.,
Pretty much all the people who are left are mk mains/ tier whores. Awhile ago SWF held a poll to ban MK and he was voted to be banned but the BBR overrided the majority which tore the community to shreds. And go figure, most of the so called “good players” in the backroom are nearly all MK mains.
tl;dr: this is why Brawl is dead:
(fairly recent results of a tourny)
http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff309/snipernightowl/mk.jpg
the lil blue symbol is a meta knight user. Pathetic. Well, their pot money keeps getting smaller and smaller as more and more players drop Brawl each day…
LOL.
Brawl is far from dead. HAHAHA. I don’t care about arguing about any of the other stuff, but I can find a Brawl tournament with MINIMUM 30 people every weekend in my region.
Was Third Strike dead just because of Chun Li? Was V-SF4 dead because of Sagat?
not good
I expected competitive Brawl to be gone by now. I’m surprised that it’s still alive. Alive and kicking, actually. Some people like defensive play I guess.
It doesn’t matter to me. As long as Melee and the hacks have a strong community I’m happy.
I personally don’t find Brawl to be exciting enough to warrant the status of an “MLG-level” fighter…
I always cross my fingers that Melee won’t die down
Ban MetaKnight
Ban MetaKnight
SF players have been doing this for as long as I have been playing sf games and its been over 5 years now. I don’t see whats so disgraceful…would losing purposely just to ravage the easier losers bracket fall under the same frowny face? Competitive play in MLG has always been about the money. Shifting one’s focus from the majority of the competition (the filler players) to just the only one’s that might present even a slight challenge and then figuring out a way to work your way through the tournament without dealing with them until you really have to is something I’d recommend to any bracketed competitor. Then, keeping in mind that the money is still the ultimate objective, finding out a way to guarantee yourself as much money as you possibly could without that guaranteed win would in bring your plan to its conclusion and the money you earned scheming this up would definitely be an appropriate reward for such outside of the box thinking. I do agree with you guys when you say you don’t like what they are doing but even I, a fellow dissenter, would concede that to my being unable to do it as well and profit from it the way they do.
It might make the final match that much less exciting because the pressure of getting 1st place is gone, considering the money is still the main goal, but to be honest most championship matches, unless they’re marvel 2, are boring as shit to watch because of all the camping and run away.
brawl still has a huge following, MLG was just the mainstream validation most of the kids playing it needed, brawl ain’t going anywhere. I played in two tournies this past month alone.