Popular Competitive Philosophies
A callout to people who problematise the game they love.
When I say ‘Popular Competitive Philosophies’, I refer to discussions relating to common issues in a tournament setting. To be brief, these are issues relating to rulesets employed in tournaments and the way in which they dictate the strategies commonly employed by players in order to win.
Before I talk about a number of different, popular view points, I wish to address a philosophical issue in general that I feel relates to anybody who has ever posted an opinion on a rule regarding Brawl.
I studied Advanced Literature in my final year of high school, and the most important thing I took away from that class was that everybody’s opinion is a valid opinion. What they teach in a standard English class is rubbish. Teacher’s will present you with a magazine ad and ask you to deconstruct it to find out the author’s intent and to that I say “What does it matter what the author intends when we first haven’t established the audience?”.
By audience I don’t mean ‘Stereotypical Female between 14 and 19’. I mean ‘Anglo-saxon, white, middle class female between 14 and 19 that is heterosexual’ or ‘Middle-eastern, tanned, male between 20 and 25 that plays cricket’. The point being that the authorial intent behind the American advertisement designer’s choices lose meaning when presented to a middle eastern man who may interpret the ad in a different way (to the anglo-saxon girl) due to the cultural and ethnical values instilled in him by his development as a person.
Does that make his interpretation wrong? No.
Roland Barthes posited that the death of the author is necessary for the rise of the reader. What matters is not the intent of the author drawn by popular readings of a text, but, the limitless potential readings that can be drawn from readers of different age, sex and cultural/ethnical upbringing.
So take this scenario:
Person A says: I think Port Town Aero Dive is a viable Counter Pick because a potential 40% death caused by the Cars does not create a ban-worthy imbalance in the stage hazard’s risk : reward ratio.
Person B says: I think Port Town Aero Dive is not viable Counter Pick because a potential 40% death caused by the Cars creates a ban-worthy imbalance in the stage hazard’s risk : reward ratio.
Who is correct?
The short answer is both of them.
The long answer is that they are both correct so long as the opinion each person is asserting is backed up by a Competitive Philosophy that supports it.
“Okay, so what are these popular competitive philosophies?”
Overswarm, and KishPrime before him posited two very popular approaches to competitive smash – Originalist and Constructivist: http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=262937&highlight=originalist+vs+constructivist
I highly recommend reading the whole thread opener, but to quote the main points of the two philosophies (and do no justice to OverSwarm):
However, I’d also like to draw the reader’s attention towards one particular quote.
Past these two all-encompassing philosophies are a number of other ones that borrow elements from one or the other, and set them in a different light, though an important thing to note is that they do not necessarily justify ruleset construction mentality, but rather, reflect their outlook on competitive play as a whole. I will touch briefly on two of them since by now you should get the idea of this article.
There are those that subscribe to David Sirlin’s ‘Play to Win’ philosophy that is generally associated with the idea that players who are seeking to win a game should do so, discounting any moral or ethical dilemmas as long as any strategy or tactic they employ is legal within the rules of a competition. I will posit nothing as fact when it comes to this mentality since these players may be originalist in regards to infinites, but constructivist in regards to stage lists.
One of this vein of thinking’s most important concepts to understand is that ‘Fun is subjective’. This means that regardless of whether you think camping is not fun to watch, it should not be factored into any kind of decision based on a ruleset.
The last philosophical approach I wish to address should actually be split into two veins of thought which I shall name ‘Definitive and Providential’. Which I personally believe has represented an important juncture in ruleset design.
The Definitive reader will strive for a smash game that features as few unpredictable outcomes and elements as possible whilst the Providential reader will oppose the removal of these elements without good reason or evidence.
Essentially, the crux of the Definitive argument is that the existence of random elements in the game makes the game less competitive in term’s of a player’s direct influence in the progress of a match.
However, the Providential reader shall discredit this by acknowledging that the existence of random elements that affect characters on a universal scale helps provide balance rather than take it away.
Item play is a key example of this; whilst the Definitivist will assert that items cause unnecessary, unwanted random elements to influence a match unfairly, Providentialists will assert that the existence of a random, universal set of attacks is actually beneficial to the balance of the cast. Arguments for many stages such as pictochat are also similar.
“So now that we know everybody is right and nobody is wrong, how can we possibly create a fair, competitive landscape for Brawl?”
It’s simple, Democracy. In that regard, the BBR has been the right step to make all along. Even if you have an informed opinion, to vote you should also be eligible to do so within your country.
A callout to people who problematise the game they love.
When I say ‘Popular Competitive Philosophies’, I refer to discussions relating to common issues in a tournament setting. To be brief, these are issues relating to rulesets employed in tournaments and the way in which they dictate the strategies commonly employed by players in order to win.
Before I talk about a number of different, popular view points, I wish to address a philosophical issue in general that I feel relates to anybody who has ever posted an opinion on a rule regarding Brawl.
I studied Advanced Literature in my final year of high school, and the most important thing I took away from that class was that everybody’s opinion is a valid opinion. What they teach in a standard English class is rubbish. Teacher’s will present you with a magazine ad and ask you to deconstruct it to find out the author’s intent and to that I say “What does it matter what the author intends when we first haven’t established the audience?”.
By audience I don’t mean ‘Stereotypical Female between 14 and 19’. I mean ‘Anglo-saxon, white, middle class female between 14 and 19 that is heterosexual’ or ‘Middle-eastern, tanned, male between 20 and 25 that plays cricket’. The point being that the authorial intent behind the American advertisement designer’s choices lose meaning when presented to a middle eastern man who may interpret the ad in a different way (to the anglo-saxon girl) due to the cultural and ethnical values instilled in him by his development as a person.
Does that make his interpretation wrong? No.
Roland Barthes posited that the death of the author is necessary for the rise of the reader. What matters is not the intent of the author drawn by popular readings of a text, but, the limitless potential readings that can be drawn from readers of different age, sex and cultural/ethnical upbringing.
So take this scenario:
Person A says: I think Port Town Aero Dive is a viable Counter Pick because a potential 40% death caused by the Cars does not create a ban-worthy imbalance in the stage hazard’s risk : reward ratio.
Person B says: I think Port Town Aero Dive is not viable Counter Pick because a potential 40% death caused by the Cars creates a ban-worthy imbalance in the stage hazard’s risk : reward ratio.
Who is correct?
The short answer is both of them.
The long answer is that they are both correct so long as the opinion each person is asserting is backed up by a Competitive Philosophy that supports it.
“Okay, so what are these popular competitive philosophies?”
Overswarm, and KishPrime before him posited two very popular approaches to competitive smash – Originalist and Constructivist: http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=262937&highlight=originalist+vs+constructivist
I highly recommend reading the whole thread opener, but to quote the main points of the two philosophies (and do no justice to OverSwarm):
These two ideologies represent the most common approaches regarding competitive ruleset design and validate most, if not, every single argument I’ve ever seen for and against every stage and questionable tactic in the game.
However, I’d also like to draw the reader’s attention towards one particular quote.
Specifically, the fact that no one competitive mindset can truly ever be called the correct one. This essay of sorts seeks to not only present a number of popular competitive philosophies relating to Brawl, but to disempower the idea that your reasoning is any more sound than that of others (unless you both subscribe to the same philosophy), and empower the idea that everybody’s opinion matters.
Past these two all-encompassing philosophies are a number of other ones that borrow elements from one or the other, and set them in a different light, though an important thing to note is that they do not necessarily justify ruleset construction mentality, but rather, reflect their outlook on competitive play as a whole. I will touch briefly on two of them since by now you should get the idea of this article.
There are those that subscribe to David Sirlin’s ‘Play to Win’ philosophy that is generally associated with the idea that players who are seeking to win a game should do so, discounting any moral or ethical dilemmas as long as any strategy or tactic they employ is legal within the rules of a competition. I will posit nothing as fact when it comes to this mentality since these players may be originalist in regards to infinites, but constructivist in regards to stage lists.
One of this vein of thinking’s most important concepts to understand is that ‘Fun is subjective’. This means that regardless of whether you think camping is not fun to watch, it should not be factored into any kind of decision based on a ruleset.
The last philosophical approach I wish to address should actually be split into two veins of thought which I shall name ‘Definitive and Providential’. Which I personally believe has represented an important juncture in ruleset design.
The Definitive reader will strive for a smash game that features as few unpredictable outcomes and elements as possible whilst the Providential reader will oppose the removal of these elements without good reason or evidence.
Essentially, the crux of the Definitive argument is that the existence of random elements in the game makes the game less competitive in term’s of a player’s direct influence in the progress of a match.
However, the Providential reader shall discredit this by acknowledging that the existence of random elements that affect characters on a universal scale helps provide balance rather than take it away.
Item play is a key example of this; whilst the Definitivist will assert that items cause unnecessary, unwanted random elements to influence a match unfairly, Providentialists will assert that the existence of a random, universal set of attacks is actually beneficial to the balance of the cast. Arguments for many stages such as pictochat are also similar.
“So now that we know everybody is right and nobody is wrong, how can we possibly create a fair, competitive landscape for Brawl?”
It’s simple, Democracy. In that regard, the BBR has been the right step to make all along. Even if you have an informed opinion, to vote you should also be eligible to do so within your country.
But we shouldn’t be voting on ‘Ban X stage’ yet.
We should be voting on ‘Adopt X philosophy’.
And if you disagree with any of this, remember, it's okay
The point is that you're allowed to
We should be voting on ‘Adopt X philosophy’.
And if you disagree with any of this, remember, it's okay
The point is that you're allowed to
