A tournament organizer’s perspective on the NoCo Smash Brothers Scene
Super Smash Brothers Ultimate is the competitive breakout hit of 2018, with a massive audience at tournaments like EVO, I wanted to check in on the local northern Colorado presence. I was able to sit down and have a talk with the Smash Brothers Ultimate Tournament Organizer for CSU Smash, one of if not the biggest weekly smash tournaments in Northern Colorado. Tom, who also goes by the tag Koma when he participates in the tournaments, was able to speak to me during a weekly Wednesday tournament.
Q: How long have you personally been in the smash scene?
A: I’ve been in the smash scene for 3 years now, I started coming here when I started at CSU as a freshman. I came here the first week, saw a flyer for the club, and went to the meetings, and I’ve been coming here ever since!
Q: How popular would you say your tournament is?
A: Average attendance is usually around 55 to 56 entrants every time, lately people have been showing up less though because of the weather.
Q:What’s the biggest crowd size you’ve had?
A: I promise this isn’t a joke, but 69 entrants.
Q:Nice. What would you say is the draw of this tournament?
A: The main draw is one: it’s at a university so it can be a general meeting place for people, but also we can have a space regularly available, and it can act as a central hub of northern Colorado, where people can come here from all over to play smash brothers.
Q: what would you say is the draw of smash brothers compared to other fighting games?
A: The biggest thing smash has in its favor is that it’s a platform fighter. Most fighting games, you’re locked in 2D, there’s no real additional factors, and even in smash brothers we try to limit that to an extent, like turning off items and stage hazards so that RNG cant skew the match in anybody’s favor, and have a cemented balanced stage list to ensure its based off player skill as much as possible. But with that said it gives people a very unique experience with fighting games, more interesting things you probably wouldn’t see in a 2d fighter.
Q: Would you say that the local smash brothers scene is lively or is it more smaller and niche?
A: I’d definitely say the local scene is very lively. CSU is definitely northern Colorado’s “Big” tournament but there’s definitely other tournaments around northern Colorado, there’s tournaments in Greeley, there’s ones in boulder, and then there’s the big local, called “Elite smash fridays” down in Denver, and ESF is what everybody considers “The” smash local, you go there to prove you’re good at the game.
Q: Some people think smash has a large barrier to entry, would you say that’s true?
A: It depends, when it comes to competitive smash, there’s a big difference in mindset that you have to have, because you can’t go into a tournament, thinking “I’m the best person in my friend group i’ll do fine” because most people like that will enter the tournament, go 0–2, and think “welp, i don’t wanna do anything else, I’ll just leave.” So you have to be ready to lose, but you also have to be ready to not admit defeat. It’s definitely something you have to build a mentality for, and you’ll have to recognize constantly where you need to improve. There’s obviously things like advanced tech you can use on different characters, but it really is just as long as you keep trying to improve, the barrier isn’t a real issue.
Q: Would you say this tournament’s vibe is in terms of newer players?
A: when it comes to newer people, we try to make it as open of an opportunity as possible. We’re not gonna take it easy on them, it’s a tournament after all, but we do make sure people who want advice they can get as much of it as they want, there’s plenty of extremely good players, we have the best players in the state come to this weekly, and in general we make sure people know if you’re not playing in the tournament, you’re still allowed to hang out and participate in the community. Because that’s how i started, initially I didn’t start playing [super smash brothers melee and super smash brothers ultimate] competitively, i just played friendlies with people, then i developed a competitive drive, and now I’m on the other end, taking a competitive break so I can make sure things can go well for the new people who come in!
Q: What would you say is the retention rate for this tournament in terms of people who come in then begin coming regularly?
A: It’s definitely easier to get people to start coming back if they already have friends who are regulars, because they can be like “Better luck next time, I can help you out, you can bounce back.” I do notice that it’s the people that come alone or when somebody comes with a buddy, the two of them don’t do too well and they’re like “Whelp, we don’t wanna spend our night getting bodied, so why not just stay home and play against each other?” The easiest way I would say helps with retention with a player base is what we do well, and that’s making sure community is emphasized, and making sure people know they’re welcome to hang out.
Q: For my final question, do you think smash ultimate has a lot of longevity? Because there’s some fighting game scenes that died out after one or two years like Injustice 2 for example.
A: I think it realistically will have a long lasting lifespan, mainly because not only are we getting additional DLC up till the end of 2021, but the game is constantly being updated and balanced. In general, with the fact that Nintendo is being a bit more supportive of large scale tournaments, they’re trying to make this game last as long as possible. With games like [Super Smash Brothers for Wii U] and Melee, their lifespans lasted a long time, and with melee it’s still going despite being released in 2001.
Q: So you think getting invested in smash ultimate is a safe bet?
A: Yes, its definitely the most new player friendly game in the series, because it has its advanced sides, but it also got simple mechanics that let you build your way up.
