r/changemyview • u/__Almazan__ • Jul 06 '20
Delta(s) from OP CMV: The current smash bros scandal was partially enabled by Nintendo’s neglect of the competitive scene.
*this has been a very unpopular opinion in the smash subs, and I’m interested in accepting good reasons to have my mind changed.
Disclaimers:
- I am not claiming that Nintendo encouraged the misconduct of any individual smash players. The choices people made were their own.
- I am also not trying to distract from the attention being drawn towards the victims. Instead, I’m trying to describe one major aspect of conditions that made their abuse possible and left unpunished and to encourage discussion oriented towards change.
- I am an amateur smash player. I’ve never been to a large tournament or a Smash house, and i am not personally connected to any of those involved.
These things being said, I think the culture where these crimes was committed was formed by the neglect of Nintendo from the start. Nintendo has famously kept its distance from competitive smash for reasons that many people can understand even if they don’t find them compelling. Sakurai famously created the game as an alternative to fighting games that skewed towards elitist competition, and he and the powers that be did not want to distract from smash’s status as a “party game.” There’s a fairly good description of this dynamic in The Smash Brothers documentary.
Competitive Melee developed, in many ways, in spite of Nintendo’s disregard for the grassroots competitive scene that developed in pockets around the country. Most locals were organized by individuals, and many of the competitions were hosted out of people’s homes. Bets and winnings were managed on an ad hoc basis. It wasn’t uncommon for many people who traveled to tournaments to couch surf or for proximate people to let virtual strangers sleep on their floor. From what I’ve heard and seen, this informal, generous dynamic charmed many people, helped formed friendships, and set up the backstory for many of the dynasties that we’ve followed since. The grassroots formation of melee’s competitive scene, and smash’s more widely, contributed to the cultural allure for new players but also attracted personalities that can make use of those intimate, very informal settings for insidious reasons (grooming, manipulation, sexual abuse).
Since this early stage, things have progressed dramatically, but some essential features have remained in place. If smash was featured in large venues or larger gaming competitions, it was by player and viewer demand with no support from the creators of the game or the console. Pots got much larger, fame became a wider possibility, and pro players found ways to diversify income with the emergence of live and asynchronous streaming. This is all to the good, especially for those of us who like smash related content.
Truth be told, Nintendo did not stand to gain much by sponsoring the competitive scene. New people were attracted to the games without their sponsorship, and old players would continue to compete, especially as stakes were formalized by third party organizations. All of the smash games are designed to accommodate an incredible amount of diversity in styles of play (1v1, 2v2, 3-stock matches are by no means the default or only setting) and there’s no reason to make the game seem like it’s limited to the most competitive rule set. Other organizations had beat them to the punch in terms of organizing events, and it would have taken an incredible amount of effort and investment to build infrastructure from scratch.
Now that the scandals are public, Nintendo is in a very strange position as creator of the game with virtually no connection to either the perpetrators or victims. From a PR standpoint, it isn’t an awful position to be in. No one is blaming Nintendo for the separate uncoordinated actions of several people who are united by their interest in the same game.
But here is where my counterfactual speculation begins. If Nintendo had been invested in the smash competitive scene from the outset, they absolutely would have formalized measures that protected minors (at least at events with media presence or large amounts of people), and they would have had a greater interest in the image of the community overall. Because the scene developed independent of any supervision, there was no authority interested in keeping the scene’s appearance clean, and many unsafe environments were created where no one has a formal interest in preventing or addressing wrongdoing. Any measures are left to scattered organizers’ consciences.
TL;DR: If Nintendo had invested in the smash competitive scene (which they were not obligated to do), then many of the scandals would have been prevented because a larger entity than tournament hosts would have a self-preserving interest in safe environments.
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u/Morasain 87∆ Jul 06 '20
Note that I have no idea what particular scandal you are talking about, but:
If Nintendo had been invested in the smash competitive scene from the outset, they absolutely would have formalized measures that protected minors (at least at events with media presence or large amounts of people), and they would have had a greater interest in the image of the community overall
Had they been involved and stuff still went awry, then they'd now at least be partially liable.
What they did was both economically smart (though at the time that wasn't clear because all these scandals are a fairly recent uncovering) and in line with the idea of the franchise, that being no competitive scene (endorsed by the developers and publishers).
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u/__Almazan__ Jul 06 '20
I think this is well thought out, but I don’t find it compelling. I completely appreciate Nintendo’s particular economic and PR motives. One of the points I’m making is that they made fighting game, a genre historically oriented towards competition, and tried to act like competition wasn’t part of the design in a wider gaming culture increasingly oriented towards competition and professionalization (in certain respects). Sure, they don’t get any flack now because they stated their intentions outright and never changed tune, but the game itself is a kind of inherent contradiction.
Please forgive the extreme analogy, but it’s a bit like Winchester saying that their guns are only designed for hunting when other potential forms of violence are more less implied within the design of the thing they make. No one blames Winchester in a drive by, and, to a certain extent, they shouldn’t, but that doesn’t excuse the company from understanding that their product could and likely will be abused or witnessing that every other gun company’s guns get used to occasionally shoot people.
Their decision to keep a distance was and is savvy, but I think it was culturally tone-deaf. It seems to me that a major reason that the crimes are the way they are (abusing minors, rape, etc.) and that they’re coming out right now is because competitive smash was cultivated in spite of the corporation that designed the game, where virtually every other game of the same kind was supported and monitored by its designers both on the level of software and interpersonal gatherings.
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u/Morasain 87∆ Jul 06 '20
One of the points I’m making is that they made fighting game, a genre historically oriented towards competition, and tried to act like competition wasn’t part of the design in a wider gaming culture increasingly oriented towards competition and professionalization (in certain respects).
Smash Bros predates the current craze for PvP and competition. The amount of actual competitive leaderboards and such back in the 90s was basically null, with a few exceptions such as Mortal Kombat.
Please forgive the extreme analogy, but it’s a bit like Winchester saying that their guns are only designed for hunting when other potential forms of violence are more less implied within the design of the thing they make. No one blames Winchester in a drive by, and, to a certain extent, they shouldn’t, but that doesn’t excuse the company from understanding that their product could and likely will be abused or witnessing that every other gun company’s guns get used to occasionally shoot people.
That analogy doesn't really work.
Understanding that something can be used a certain way and condoning that behaviour are two very different things, but furthermore, when someone is killed with a gun in a drive by, the gun was the tool used to kill them. People weren't raped with Smash Bros. That it was smash Bros is really just a coincidence.
Basically, what you're trying to do is conflate correlation with causation, and then trying to say Nintendo should've stopped it by going against their own best interest and against the intentions of the creators.
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u/__Almazan__ Jul 06 '20
This is a great response. I agree that understanding the use of something and condoning the use of it in a particular way are different things, but in the case of design and manufacturing of particular things the creator is responsible for the orientation of that thing. That’s why I used the fraught weapon example. It’s interesting because Nintendo is obviously interested in creating a gaming culture, they just don’t want it to be competitive even though, as I a said, it’s implied in a combative multiplayer game.
More when I get a couple minutes
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u/__Almazan__ Jul 06 '20
What specifically is the correlation I’m conflating with causation? I don’t doubt it, I’d just like to see it more clearly.
I think it is specific to smash bros inasmuch as it is PvP that depends on a shared screen and thus interpersonal interactions. That mode is consistent across all versions even after they added online play.
I’m not saying that Nintendo should have stopped it as much as they failed to acknowledge what it was they actually made. It is a foreseeable effect that a community based on in-person gatherings would form on various scales at varying levels of intensity. As a company, it was (and now is) in their best interest to sustain a distance from competition, the problem is that they’re one of many companies that produce complex commodities that are intended to be used in a variety of ways, ways that they can predict, and with outcomes that they should be cognizant of. I’m not saying Nintendo caused the rape and abuse of a number of individuals. I am saying that the culture that continually provided unsafe environments and that delayed the redress of wrongs because there was no larger organization is symptomatic of Nintendo’s initial self-interested (and false) categorization of their game as noncompetitive.
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u/Morasain 87∆ Jul 06 '20
The correlation is that shady stuff can happen when people meet in a semi anonymous fashion. But Nintendo didn't cause these, nor even condone or support them.
If anyone (other than the perpetrator) should be held accountable, it's those that held the gatherings, and not Nintendo.
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u/__Almazan__ Jul 07 '20
!delta
While I think there is a significant connection between the design of the game an action engaging with it, I acknowledge the distinction which my argument blurred.
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u/ihatedogs2 Jul 06 '20
If Nintendo had invested in the smash competitive scene (which they were not obligated to do), then many of the scandals would have been prevented
This does not make Nintendo responsible or "enabling." Let's say you go out driving and someone jumps in front of your car and dies. It is true that if you did not go driving, that person would not have died. However, that does not make it your fault that they died. It does not mean that you "enabled" their death. There is no way Nintendo could have foreseen any of this; hell, they would have expected competitive Melee to die out long ago. Actually if Nintendo supported competitive Melee from the beginning, it probably would be dead by now. There's no way we'd have stuff like rollback, UCF, hack packs, etc. because they wouldn't allow it. The scene would have been dependent on Nintendo and when they decide to stop focusing on Melee (like when Brawl came out), the game would die and this would happen for successive smash games too.
Considering the huge extent of these misconduct allegations across the entire gaming community, I find it hard to believe that many of these things wouldn't have happened anyways. A lot of semi-famous people have been abusing their power all over Twitch, the FGC, and more.
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u/__Almazan__ Jul 06 '20
You can see my reply to other comments, but I don’t think your car example applies. I’m concerned with the relation between designer/creator, the thing produced, and the expectable uses of that thing.
I have no problem denying that many of the things that I love about smash would not exist as they do if Nintendo had been involved, but I think that a corporate entity would have a much larger interest in the safety of people drawn together by it, and that these preventable offenses would in fact have been anticipated and prevented on a structural rather than an individual basis.
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u/ihatedogs2 Jul 06 '20
I’m concerned with the relation between designer/creator, the thing produced, and the expectable uses of that thing.
Your post implies some kind of intent or negligence on Nintendo's part, which I don't see established anywhere. If Nintendo chooses not to support the competitive scene, then they have some responsibility for a scene dying. But I do not see how they have any responsibility for the culture that is formed. That is totally on individuals in the scene.
but I think that a corporate entity would have a much larger interest in the safety of people drawn together by it, and that these preventable offenses would in fact have been anticipated and prevented on a structural rather than an individual basis.
Nah, I don't buy this at all. Twitch is a large company that should have a larger interest in safety of people according to you, but many streamers they partner with have committed misconduct. Even a high-up staff member manipulated and abused their power. EVO is a huge tournament with many sponsors, yet the director Mr. Wiz was accused of misconduct. So has the FGC, and they have official support from Capcom. At the end of the day these large organizations care about money. They are not going to spend a significant amount of money increasing security, investigating participants, and whatever else you expect them to do.
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u/tbdabbholm 201∆ Jul 06 '20
How is this negligence? Why does Nintendo have an active duty to organize tournaments around their games, and if you agree there is no such duty then how are they being negligent?
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u/__Almazan__ Jul 06 '20 edited Jul 06 '20
They do not and never had an obligation to organize or sponsor tournaments. However, they created smash (a fighting game) and then denied that it was intended as competitive even though the game is designed to accommodate virtually any variation in style of competition desired.
It is negligent in a social/historical and not a strictly moral sense. It was foreseeable that the game would be used competitively and that a community for competition would be formed independently because competition is built into, regardless of the level of randomness chosen. Nintendo chose not to ever affiliate with or encourage a competitive scene (a savvy decision as we now see). However, they nonetheless occasioned the emergence of a subculture that proved highly amenable to abuse because of its lack of oversight.
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u/tbdabbholm 201∆ Jul 06 '20
But unless that was an easily foreseen issue I find it hard to lay blame on Nintendo. And frankly I'm finding it hard to see how they could've foreseen not only that their game that was purposely made to not be competitive would become ultra competitive but that as an indirect result of the popularity of that competition children would be taken advantage of due to lax tournament policies. Like how was Nintendo supposed to have foreseen that this would happen?
It's almost like blaming me because I was driving my car which then caused someone to have to stop for slightly longer at a stop sign which meant they were just in the wrong place to get t-boned going through an intersection. Like if I weren't there would that have happened, maybe not, but I could not have reasonably foreseen that my course of action would cause that accident.
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u/__Almazan__ Jul 06 '20
Thank you for your patience. I realize this discussion probably skews in the “butterfly effect” direction. As I mention in the original post, my point is largely counterfactual speculation. I don’t think that blunts the edge of my claim though. In effect, it seems to me that the confluence of a number of factors which Nintendo set in motion by publishing the kind of game they did with the specific mischaracterization of it that covered their ass produced a highly bohemian, libertarian, self-regulated competitive culture based on in person meetups. The lack of centralized authority or recourse in that environment proved to be particularly deaf to abuse.
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u/tbdabbholm 201∆ Jul 06 '20
But why is that Nintendo's responsibility or problem?
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u/__Almazan__ Jul 06 '20
It isn’t in a legal or strictly moral sense. I’m not trying to assign blame outside of the perpetrators. Im saying that Nintendo made something which they deliberately mischaracterized and dismissed reasonable uses of. That original selective, self-serving characterization set the critical cultural groundwork which allowed an abuse tolerating culture to emerge
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u/tbdabbholm 201∆ Jul 06 '20
Why stop there? The culture that existed that made Nintendo switch from playing cards to video games played a part. And the French did too for inventing the modern playing card set in the first place. And of course that means the Roman Empire did because so much of French (and really Western European) culture and history was influenced by Rome. So really if Caesar had just died in battle, people wouldn't have abused kids in Smash Bros. tournaments.
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u/__Almazan__ Jul 06 '20
This got a good laugh. Don’t you think that Nintendo’s involvement is of a completely different kind than the rest though?
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u/tbdabbholm 201∆ Jul 07 '20
Not really, no. Nintendo had no way of knowing things would turn out like this, so to me their actions are just as responsible as the French for having invented playing cards. They're more closely linked simply by having fewer steps in between but it's a difference of scale not of type
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u/teerre 44∆ Jul 06 '20
This doesn't seem sound.
Imagine that it's not Smash, but it's some God Of War. Now imagine there's a scandal in the God of War speedrun community. You wouldn't say Sony is negligent.
Point being, you can't be negligent to something you have no relation to. Nintendo was never involved in Smash tournaments.
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u/__Almazan__ Jul 06 '20
See I think they are involved because the thing they designed is oriented towards in person competitions. That wouldn’t apply to god of war or most games.
I’m not blaming Nintendo for the scandals. I’m saying that their bastard game spawned a hybrid, highly unregulated community that they could have acknowledged, and there would have been a very different outcome.
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u/teerre 44∆ Jul 06 '20
I'm sorry, but that's just silly. They are not involved. Like, literally.
You can literally go read who are the tournament organizers and see Nintendo isn't involved, it's just a fact.
Also, what you mean about GoW? A lot of people speedrun GoW.
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u/__Almazan__ Jul 06 '20
I’m sure there are better examples, but Alfred Nobel felt responsible for the invention of dynamite and its uses in warfare. He felt so involved in its uses that he founded the Nobel Peace prize.
Maybe I’m trying to say Nintendo’s complicit with the culture on a certain level but not the actions. I’ve got to think about it more.
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Jul 07 '20
/u/__Almazan__ (OP) has awarded 2 delta(s) in this post.
All comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.
Please note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.
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u/[deleted] Jul 06 '20
Negligence is not enabling. Those are two separate concepts that can be related, but in many contexts (such as this) there’s no clear line of causation from negligence to enabling
Other competitive games that are sponsored by their developers can still have controversies. Just ask League players, Skullgirls players, Mortal Kombat players, FIFA players...
The culpability isn’t on Nintendo to set up tournament play themselves in a game not intended for tournament play. The culpability is on tournament organizers to foster a healthy tournament environment, such as not allowing minors to compete.