2024 is one of the best years for Super Smash Bros. Melee tournaments. Nine months into the year, we have seen eight open majors (and one hybrid event). Adding onto that, we’ve seen a total of 5,616 entrants at these events. Excluding the Eggdog Invitational – a clear outlier among other majors – we have had an average of 691.5 entrants per major. To give that number context, it’s a larger one than what we have for 2022 (550.8) or 2023 (644.36) under the same criteria (open majors). It’s even more impressive than 2019 (581.8), and shockingly not too far behind 2018 (713.5).
ICYMI, I examined SSBM open major attendance across different ranking periods – 2024 is on track to be our best year since 2017. With a bit of luck, Melee could be due for a new renaissance. pic.twitter.com/kIPVu0pTSx
— Edwin (@edwin_budding) June 25, 2024
I want to be clear: this is something for our community to celebrate. It should not be taken for granted that a two-decades-old video game continues to inspire thousands of people to come out to events every single year. There is no scene like the Melee scene – not even ones for other Smash games – in this regard. Everything I’m about to say is with the understanding that there are many people in our community who are ( successfully) putting in hard work to make it a better place and keep people excited about our game.
However, I really believe that we could be doing a much better job of marketing our game today. Funnily enough, many suggestions I’m about to bring up are already being implemented – just not to a scale that I believe is adequate. In today’s column, I’m sharing some of my somewhat disorganized, yet also somewhat coherent thoughts on marketing strategies for Melee for the rest of 2024 and beyond.
NOTE: Although Melee and Ultimate’s futures and resources are technically aligned, this column is written with a Melee focus due to my interest in the game. In reality though, these suggestions could apply to Ultimate, broadly speaking.
Social Media In 2016 Is Not Social Media In 2024
When most of us imagine the prime of Melee as an esport, 2016 comes to mind. If you were into Smash, you checked the Smash subreddit (or the SSBM one) every single day, and you saw viral clips or streamed moments that you could share with your friends. Maybe if you were dedicated enough, you were a member of your respective region’s Facebook page, with its own sub-community (perhaps even your college scene), and you may even have been part of the Melee it on Me Facebook group as a place for consolidated community discussion (though this happened on Twitter as well).
Every weekend, you’d tune into Melee tournaments that streamed on Twitch and routinely drew thousands of viewers (or a top player who’d stream friendlies). If you missed it, it wasn’t too big of a deal, because most events uploaded individual sets to YouTube, where you could typically watch whatever you weren’t able to catch live. It’s also worth noting another element of the scene that we sometimes forget, if only because it’s obvious: event registration. Most people signed up for tournaments via smashgg, and the people that ran those tournaments were well aware of our social media climate as a whole and the best places for outreach.
Eight years later, our strategies haven’t changed that much, even if some of our locations have. For example, our Facebook pages have been replaced with regional and Melee niche-specific Discord groups, which isn’t necessarily great for outside discovery. Both the Smash subreddits still exist, but the main one is essentially overwhelmed by Ultimate content, and the Melee subreddit itself has become its own niche community rather than one representative of the larger scene. Most of our events still stream on Twitch (though some have experimented with using both Twitch and YouTube), upload sets as they did in the past, and manage themselves via StartGG (smashgg rebranded). X (formerly Twitter) has essentially become the town square in place of the MIOM Facebook group for anyone involved in Smash and who wants to keep up with community news.
NOTE: Let’s emphasize that last part really quickly. Unfortunately, X is a really shitty town square with both terrible referral rates and a psychopathic oligarch running it. Worse yet, while it’s easy to envision a better social hub in theory, that doesn’t necessarily mean those platforms actually exist right now as better or popular alternatives. For now, it seems like we’re stuck with it, though it’s worth keeping an eye out for other potential places in the future.
Melee’s marketing strategies, structurally speaking, are stuck in 2016. We need to catch up with the times and think about what could drive new people to our game. This involves having our events immediately upload sets and find highlights to make into YouTube Shorts, right when the iron is hot and not too long after the event. As far as our stream products are concerned, our most successful individual streamers are still top players or Mang0 and Hungrybox. Simply copying their “play Melee and talk to chat” format is not going to work.
From a distance, it may appear like I am shouting from the rooftops; an annoying keyboard warrior furiously typing at far more important people than myself to do something that I’m too lazy to do myself. Furthermore, I don’t have solutions for all of these issues. But to assure you that I’m not merely chirping from the bench, I think we have people in the scene who are actually implementing some really cool strategies to promote Melee on social media in effective fashion. In addition to shouting them out and encouraging them, I want to explain what makes their work so effective.
The Power of YouTube Shorts
Moky’s “100 consecutive wins” challenge is fantastic. I’ve seen other streamers mimic it, but frankly, none of them seem to understand the real reason for why it’s a compelling challenge. It isn’t merely because he’s the original – it’s because moky can only try it once a day. He has one stream to do it, and if he fails, he quickly uploads an edited short of the footage and himself explaining what happened.
This creates a connected ecosystem around this story of moky trying to get 100 consecutive wins on Slippi: you tune into his stream, which is only around for a limited bit of time, you see the recap on his YouTube, and you follow his socials to see his journey develop, as well as learn more about moky himself. Other streamers have smartened up to the power of YouTube Shorts, but moky is the one who demonstrates an actual understanding of the format, its reach, and its versatility within the social media landscape. I’d like to also give props to Galint Gaming for taking highlights from the Eggdog Invitational and gradually uploading them into YouTube Shorts. It frankly should become the standard for any YouTube channel actively involved in Melee today.
NOTE: I mention moky because he’s an active competitor who’s also trying to build a larger presence as an entertainer of sorts within Melee. I’ve seen successful shorts from turndownforwalt, Melee Moments, and AsumSaus as well, but moky’s long-term investment in Melee and the way his YouTube Shorts series connects to his brand is what fascinates me here. Zetts’ series stands out too, although he is no longer active in Melee.
In fact, I have a plea to whoever runs the Beyond the Summit channel right now, or even VGBootCamp: if you have the time or funds, it would be wise to look at old footage from past events, re-upload them as YouTube Shorts, and integrate them into a larger series. It could be something as simple as compiling highlights of every Melee grand finals ever, legendary commentary or funny moments; obviously I’m spitballing here. The larger point is that we probably have thousands of hours of notable Melee footage that just exists in long YouTube videos and hasn’t been properly honed for the Shorts format. We would be fools if we did not re-use/re-package/hone this footage in a new format that’s honestly perfect for Melee. In fact, I should probably do that for Melee Stats documentaries. Shit.
NOTE: You could consider this point for TikTok as well, as Melee TikToks have clearly succeeded in the past. However, because of the forced sale leaving TikTok’s future in jeopardy within the United States, I’ve dedicated this segment to YouTube Shorts.
Considerations For Future Shifts
There are a few adjacent considerations to remember when implementing any of these suggestions. First off, the live-streaming space has also changed from 2016, and it’s crucial to understand how. It’s not just the fact that Twitch has multiple other competitors now – it’s that Twitch itself is becoming largely insular as a platform. Most people who use Twitch nowadays already know the specific game or category that they’re looking for; it’s far less useful as an entry point for newcomers. YouTube itself is a bit more friendly in this regard, but its categorization methods are a bit different than Twitch – you have to manually search for events vs. having them filtered by game or category in the same detail as Twitch. There’s other differences too; these ones happen to be the ones that stand out to me though.
When it comes to events though, it’s not a secret that Melee doubles hasn’t been given the same buy-in among top players or tournaments as it had in the past. I do wonder – is it worth considering changes to how we schedule content for the mainstream and side streams of events? Are there better ways to capture viewership at Melee events outside of just putting matches on stream? I wouldn’t be opposed to more On a Tuesday live shows at events or The Reads Live in place of round one pools or Melee matches that could go to a dedicated quad stream or side setups.
We also have to start envisioning what a post-StartGG future looks like for our biggest tournaments. If I were to guess, locals and even regionals can return to Challonge, but running majors through Challonge is hardly ideal, given the fact that it’s harder to integrate into existing workflows that StartGG used to automate for tournament organize in the past (such as splitting brackets, seeding players, and even promoting events on social media). I’d also mention StartGG’s convenience for payment methods – PayPal and other non-Stripe methods are available through StartGG, which isn’t necessarily the case for other platforms. For what it’s worth, many StartGG competitors already exist. Some are under development by community members, and most major organizers are already planning for a post-GG future (a “GG GG” one). Time will tell which ones fit the needs of major events best.
Cross Community Integration
God, remember Evo? We were such spoiled babies for ever thinking Melee was “above” Evo. I would give anything up – even Bo5 before top eight – if it meant we got to hit Las Vegas every summer and see our game on the biggest stage. It’s not a surprise that the most viewed Melee grand finals ever was Evo 2016. Smash continues to be big, but I think it’s never too late to ask for help.
You might expect me to start ranting at you about how Smash needs to return to tradition and run back to the FGC. For any of you who personally know me, you’ve probably heard my rant about how badly I miss Evo. That is indeed true, and in addition to that, Melee players should probably start attending annual events like Combo Breaker and CEO, if only to demonstrate our interest. However, we should probably think beyond the FGC too. There are craftier ways of getting Smash back in the limelight outside of running back to our older brother. In fact, there’s an alternative option: gathering our little brother in the platform fighter community. The PFC. Is that a thing? I’m making it a thing. Or maybe Dhir did it first.
If I was a supermajor TO for 2025, the first thing I’d do is reach out to Offbrand to see if we can work a deal together to bring Rivals of Aether 2 to the big stage on Sunday, preferably right before Melee top eight. Although I don’t think it would necessarily bring more viewers in the short-term, it long-term would benefit events to drive community interest toward another platform fighter, as well as give a better build-up experience to eventual top eights for Melee. At the very least, the event can work a deal; supermajors in general should have very strong professional relationships with developers and publishers for any of the large multimedia platform fighters.
Remember: for those companies, this is a chance to advertise their game in front of potentially tens of thousands of people, to sell cool merch, and benefit from partnering with a large grassroots brand. Not every developer or publisher is going to be as equally reliable or necessarily worth it for an event, but it’s on the organizer to figure this out on their own. For smaller regional events and maybe even some majors, it may not be as important.
Today I’m feeling genuine remorse about not shutting up and listening more to Mike Ross when I had the privilege of sharing a mic with him
— Bobby Scar (@bobbyscar) July 20, 2022
Broadly though, one of the good things MIOM did was give Melee a presence in other communities. This will be a lot harder to do nowadays since Melee is currently big enough to be its own comparable community, and it’s also harder to organize people together when the dream of esports is not really the same as it was eight years ago. Individual tournament organizers are already taking huge risks to run their events, typically at a large loss. For some TOs, maybe they just want to manage a fun tournament for Melee or Smash attendees, and it’s not worth thinking beyond that. If that’s the case, then that’s totally fine, but I still think this would still go a long way toward making events and Melee, in a sense, more fun. The nice thing too is that we already have a lot of sway and connections within the platform fighter community, and from what I know behind the scenes, many major organizers currently have this in mind.
What’s Missing In the Melee Content Ecosystem?
On a different note, one thing that I definitely think Melee could use is a weekly or semi-regular recap or community news show. Right now, most people get their Melee fix from X, their friends on Discord, or their favorite streamer, and I think that’s a shame. While there is a role for each of those elements in a community, the lack of a good, centralized place for community-wide news and storylines is a bad turn we’ve taken as a scene over the last few years. And no; while I love Fourside Fights, am a happy Patron of the show, and think its members are doing a great job, it’s not the same thing I’m talking about.
In the 2014 to 2018 era, Scar and Toph mostly fulfilled this role in one way or another. Initially, it was through Melee It On Me, then the Scar/Toph Show, then The Reads, and nowadays, the retirement home. After MIOM, it was Off the Sticks, in a sense, for Beyond the Summit. In fact, at one point, I think even the original Melee Stats Podcast fulfilled this role, as did SaveAsUntitled’s The Ranking Show, as bizarre as that feels in hindsight. Later on the role of community podcast, in a sense, went to Radio Melee, which itself was incorporated into GG Melee’s larger, overreaching Melee content ecosystem: a model I’ve spoken about quite favorably before. We also had the fish series from DarkGenex, since that counts too.
The success of GG Melee also proves that a consolidated multimedia channel of sorts for “Melee variety” content can work. I don’t think it will happen to the same degree, simply because GG had a ton of money, access to top personalities, and resources to plan their type of content, but on a smaller scale, it could be doable, especially given some of the current avenues for Melee content that are still relatively untapped.
NOTE: To hold myself accountable, there’s simply no reason other than time and effort that I don’t convert these columns into podcasts with guests or YouTube uploads with my friends in the scene. In a sense, maybe I should look in the mirror. At the same time though, I’m also not Toph or a large personality in the scene; I don’t think I’m necessarily the best messenger for it, and it’s much more comfortable and manageable for me to write my thoughts down than say them on camera. I’m being vulnerable here: would anyone actually follow me if I did this?
Advertising Via Slippi
This one is by far the most unrealistic suggestion and note I have. However, if we’re talking about marketing, I do want to acknowledge the most important contribution and potential funnel for new community members that we’ve had for the last four years. Although I don’t have access to the exact number of Slippi users (nor would I snitch), we can’t understate the importance and reach of it, as well as its unexplored potential as a means of getting people to tournaments. It could be something as straight-forward as a large banner for an event, with its stream or registration information, integrated into a part of the Slippi Launcher.
To be clear, this is not Fizzi’s problem. In general, when you think of any product and ask yourself why it doesn’t have any set of features that you want, ask yourself if that feature will make the developer or provider of that project any money. Once you start doing this for tools that you use every day, you’ll slowly realize the difference between nice to haves and essentials for products. In other words, money talks.
All this is to say that events could wise up and invest in any type of structured funnel from Slippi to their events. Maybe it’s not something as overt as an advertisement on the Slippi Launcher, but it could be anything else. Granted, I would not expect any of this to happen in the short-term, given the immense workload he and his team are already dealing with. It’s also possible that maybe this is not really in the scope of what Fizzi wants to accomplish with Slippi. In fact, he may intentionally want to distance his product from real events. However, any type of “funnel” from Slippi to Melee tournaments, or the community at large, is worth discussing between tournament organizers, contributors to the scene, and Fizzi himself. For all I know, this could already be happening in a manner I’m not privy to. If so, then that’s great.
Conclusion
Reading this column, you might agree with all of my ideas, or hate all of them. In a way, I can understand why it may come off as me sounding like a spoiled brat. Ultimately, they are only ideas and observations I’ve had as a relatively informed member of the community and someone who wants to see the gospel of our game spread to as many people as possible. More than that though, I really just want our scene to be fun, and I think these things would accomplish that.
If you’re seeing what I have to say, have something in mind that you want for the scene, but have any doubt about putting yourself out there, remember that the barrier for entry is low. Most people in the scene appreciate hard work and enjoy seeing people share their love for Melee in one way or another. Be the change you want to see (or try your best and then, like me, try to tell other people to do it – preferably nicely).