The Smash Bros Community Has a Content Problem 

Even with the constructive criticism I gave I have nothing but respect for the content creators mentioned in this video ... Except 1437 Ultimate (how are you still not crediting the streams you take clips from?)

I saw the title as "Smash Community has a Consent Problem" and was like; "So true!"

Okay, you're unnecessarily good at doing a Squidward impression...

Dude you literally hit the nail directly on the head. Thank you for bringing this issue to light. Here's to the future of Smash content!

I feel like finding away to combine Competitive & Casual Smash in terms of content can be a nice fresh take on the genre. *The only problem is that finding a consistent way to keep people interested could be difficult*

I always read Asumsaus as "awesome sauce" whenever I watch his content.

I thought it said, "The Smash Bros Community Has a Problem." On a serious note, that's what I've been feeling for a while and this is a good video for suggestions to grow creativity. Now if you excuse me, I'm going to watch your Min Min video

I'm glad this video was made and that people are bringing attention to this phenomenon; I wholeheartedly agree with your points and I myself have held them for years now. I think the simple truth is that Smash's massive younger-skewing and majority casual audience (like just about any other large fanbase) gravitates to the easy-to-consume content like top 10's/compilations/stream highlights. You touched on the topic of "copycat" types of channels, but I just want to expand a bit on that as I see it as a symptom (and not the disease) of the problem that is the glut of low effort/repetitive/unoriginal Smash content on YT. Anyone is 100% free to make whatever kinds of videos they want, of course, but the sheer amount of channels looking to emulate the format and thus success of much older channels like GRsmash is definitely causing an influx of, well, junk, which is absolutely an issue of sustainability and staleness for the community going forward. Unfortunately I can't find it now, but I recall recently seeing a tweet from one of the top Ultimate players (I've also seen on separate occasions identical sentiments from people who make high-quality edited montages like DMG) lamenting the fact that for full-time Smash players, they more or less have to continually create that sort of content more than anything else because more technical/in-depth and specifically competitive-oriented videos just get a fraction of the views. For top players who put out YT content with any sort of regularity, this kind of content is the point on a graph where the "amount of views" line intersects the "time and effort" line. Those who make the best/unique or long-form kinds of videos (like Asumsaus, or SummoningSalt in the case of the speedrunning community) need months at a time between videos to properly research/assemble/edit their videos, and unless you spend a huge amount of time building a backlog of vids before starting your channel, unfortunately it isn't really feasible for anyone who wants to gather an audience and regularly get the views necessary to make content full-time. You really gotta play to what the majority of people want, and it really does seem like a catch-22 situation when we're in the bind we are today. You touched on the How to Play series, and that's a topic I'd also like to talk about as (in my opinion) the montage/combo video side of Smash content is a prime example of how a flood of unoriginal content negatively shapes the production of that style of content in the long term. As far as I know, Alpharad was really the first to do what I call the "meme-heavy" style of montages back in the early days of Smash4, where the style of those videos (as opposed to montages that focus on editing or the raw gameplay) were more about funny moments punctuated with short jokes/soundbites. At the time it was legitimately funny and original content, and so it blew up to the degree where nowadays, *more than half a decade later*, the overwhelmingly majority of montages/combo videos that get put out still follow (and more importantly, ONLY follow) this meme-heavy format/formula, where you have mediocre (at best) clips with the same 15ish soundbites+beat-to-death "memes" from like 4 years ago overlaid on them. Once again, I want to stress that people can and should feel free to make whatever sorts of videos they desire; however the issue that I run into is that often I simply can't find montages/combo videos for a lot of characters which are well-edited or have even just high-quality gameplay because of the massive amount of repetitive/stale content that's out there. A lot of the time I can't even find decent montages much less combo videos. I of course can not whatsoever blame content creators for doing what people want and doing what they need to do to make money, but channels such as Little Z and King of Skill, who took the How to Play style/formula and made entire channels out of it, are prime offenders in this regard, and massively contribute to this proliferation of people thinking that the meme-heavy style is just how montages/combo videos are done. The miserable current state of montages+combo videos is (again, imo) the most stale and stagnant of any subcategory of Smash video content that I've seen, and I think it's a perfect example of what you're talking about. To anyone who's read this far, thank you; I apologize if I rambled a bit, but I do think that this topic as a whole is important and not discussed as often as it should be. I want to also quickly make it clear that my intention is NOT to come across as snooty or sanctimonious, and I wholeheartedly apologize if I inadvertently did so.

Mmmmmm video hits too close to home, it's just so true! Most people (competitive ones anyway) just want the content you mentioned in the video and nothing else, and it shows. So as someone who does mostly scripted content, views are so hard to come by. And that's on top of dealing with being a smaller channel vs bigger channels. Thanks for the video! Well done and gives some food for thought too!

Your channel does a solid job of balancing casual and competitive players. I'd love to see more channels follow suit one day! Little Z has shown that you can make it big doing both

I definitely agree! I hope smash tubers can all be just as creative as Little Z and Alphrad.

I completely agree. Smash content has been in recession ever since July 2020. It's a shame since when there's something promising that comes up, there's always something else really gross holding them back like Marss's arrogance or ESAM bring up politics randomly...

Someone finally said it. Smash bros content creators are slowly becoming dark luigi. You could make an AI that generates the content that’s put out today

This just reminded me that my ledge trapping guide has been on hiatus for the past 3 months god dammit

One of the problem is definitely a fear that a unique video will flop, making any expenses sunk into that video a loss. Not saying fear is the right way to create content or that streamers shouldn't try to be more creative, but the largest content creators found a formula that works and they're comfortable with, so they don't have much reason to change... and then copycats see that success and imitate it. One of the best ways to make changes going forward is probably to try to support content that is off-brand or doesn't match what they're doing, even if you don't particularly like it, in the hopes that off-the-beaten-path videos might come out more often [hopefully some of which you DO like]. Whether that actually works is another story entirely, but it's the best start idea I've got so...

I think PKBeats does a great job merging the casual and competitive scene together with his insane item combos and pointless facts about the game. To a casual perspective, you learn more about the game with every video exploring tournament illegal items and new stuff that characters can do, but from a competitive standpoint pushes the game's limits even further with how much you can find in a character.

You’re so good at making great quality videos with a great personality. I hope you get the recognition you deserve :)

I WAS LITERALLY TALKING ABOUT THIS LAST NIGHT. Ultimate's still a really young game so I understand this isn't a fair comparison (plus the pandemic screws us over rn), but GOD melee content is so fantastic compared to ult content. Stuff like Turndownforwalt/Melee Stats documentary-type videos, Allston Melee's top 10s, The Reads/Scar and Toph Show, the new golden guardians stuff, Mang0 and the 6-4 Podcast, it's all so good. I really hope that as time goes on, we get more of that style of Ult content creators

this is actually a really good analysis of the content meta lol

Raise your head if you were scared by the title- 0_0

Thank you for the vid!

I plan to make Smash content when I get equipment similar to Introspecktive's old videos; goofy appreciation showcases of the roster's personalities with some light analysis and constructive criticism. I know he doesn't like Ultimate as much as Smash 4, so I would like to supplant the lack of Smash comedy analysis.

I love how nothing has changed still.

Every smash player who streams or makes videos at all needs to watch this. Also your videos are consistently great, loved this upload

You definitely have the smash community's reaction to DLC fighters right. One minute everyone's saying "oh my god that's BROKEN! That's actually kinda busted tho... Probably like top 5 to be honest" and the next it's "yeah this character fell into mid tier DLC hell. Next reveal when?" Lol

As a casual Smash player who always likes watching Smash content, the competitive side hasn't really interested me to much. Sometimes I'll watch a more competitively oriented video or watch a bit of competitive play because of the skill on display but overall I am not watching the 60th tierlist video cause it's just not something I'm interested in. As you said in the video I really like Little Z's diversity with this game. He really tries to make very interesting and engaging Smash content. I really hope more Smashtubers try to do more stuff with this game because Smash has so much stuff to work with.

my favorite smash content in youtube is the YoVideogames Crew playing Ultimate, and theyre not even a Smash dedicated channel.

Alright AngrySharter43 got me.

Honestly this is true, a ton of the content is incredibly samey and it gets old very quick. Problem with the Smash Community is that they're so focused on making competitive content to the point where I feel they don't even try to make anything else unless it fills that niche, even making a video with a casual as fuck match would be a massive breath of fresh air.

Really sick vid, there's been a similar bit of samey content in the FGC sphere as well as of late, and a lot of this applies towards those vids too, I'd imagine it probs extends even further. Thx for the vid!

Yeah, the content and thumbnails has gotten annoying and boring. But there's something I keep thinking about with the community, with of course a lot of it can be toxic, but I remember when Zero attempted suicide and was hospitalized, the community was not on his side and made smash puns toward the serious situation, such as "he tried to SD" or other disgusting things along those lines. A reason is because he allegedly sexually messaged a minor and people haven't forgiven him, but what they were doing is just making it worse instead of helping him improve on himself

I have a good suggestion for a smash RU-vidr Turndownforwlat he makes Melee documentaries/ history videos about moments in competitive melee

OK so legitimately I love this video a ton, because you're spitting straight facts that a content drought in innovation from within the Smash Community exists & whilst I do agree, I believe I can offer an explaination as to why this is the case. So as seen with Little Z, Panda & Aplharad, Casual & Competitive Smash are 2 entirely different entitles that juggling your own brand around with can be quite troublesome for many. Both groups are simply 2 different audiences that are attempting to consume 2 different types of content & due to both possessing a vast disparity between the 2, you generally see the 2 sides of the same coin stay away from 1 another in content creation. As a result, most content creators will choose to align themselves on 1 of these sides (whether casual or competitive content) & won't really deviate from that path. The reason being is that the RU-vid algorithm really desires consistentency in content creation, on the basis of the style of 1's videos to remain similar to each other. This is because we as consumers generally prefer something in our standards & will want to see more of, or something similar to that of which matches our tastes & desires. Because of this, the algorithm of YT works against innovation on styles of videos, so creating an essay video to then creating highlight reel will damage your videos performance, not just from an algorithm standpoint on recommending your work off to others, but to consumers who aren't interested in that type of content, they simply won't watch it. In fact this is why a ton of viewers on YT channels don't regularly subscribe to the channel (because they desire consistentency & are unsure about it) & why the content creator telling the viewer to subscribe ACTUALLY boosts the subscriber count by a significant amount on average. Basically we as consumers on YT, when watching content have shaped what the algorithm searches for, because at the end of the day, repetition in content exists due to consumer habits & this is a standard in the entertainment industry, so content creators are forced to work WITH the algorithm in-order to succeed, as working against YT & its algorithm REALLY screws over content creators, because the initial consumer habit that the algorithm is shaped around isn't being adhered to. It's only when you've grown your brand & identity around that you can truly mix up your content & innovate much more freely, because your content will most likely have refined quite significantly over time & most viewers will watch for you, the content creator & not so much the content itself, so if you receive a decline in viewership & subscriber count, it's unlikely you'll be too badly impacted commercially & financially. This is further concerning however when you consider Casual & Competitive Smash, because Smash mostly exists as a party game to have fun & relax with & there's SOO MUCH you can do with Casual Smash & this easily reflects with content creation, in that innovation is much easier & even working alongside the algorithm, because the bar is much more wider & the conditions are looser & this is REALLY easy to judge from just how unique & different Panda, Little Z & Alpharad's content all are, however with Competitive Smash, the line shrinkens quite a bit & the conditions to meet become much more stricter as rules ensure freedom in content is harder to execute. Think of it this way. We're both competitive players & take Smash seriously, so consider how Smash Ultimate's secondary genre is a competitive fighting game & how much smaller the content library pool is. Also consider that being a Smash player is financially unacceptable, in that you cannot expect to sustainably survive from Smash Tourney Prize Pots, unless your win consistentency is in league with MKLeo in 2019. Because of the lack of funding in our community, we are forced to resort to content creation as an alternative source of income in-order to survive financially & have created numerous brands to associate ourselves around & have heavily monetised tournaments as an alternative means of supplying content to your viewers. So I'm subscribed to your YT channel & I follow you on Twitter. I love your content & listening to what you have to say, so imagine if in Tourney's, your sets got showcased on stream, even in pools. I'd check them out, because I wanna watch content that features YOU in it, hence how & why Smash Players at High & Top Level Play perform & monetise content creation. My view is that those in the community that have created exceptional brands for themselves & can afford to innovate, even despite the financial & viewer numerical value consequences (less or losing viewers, whether regulars or not) should be the 1's to light the way forward. I say this, because these larger brands have popularised Tier Lists, Mu Charts, Fighter Analysis Essay's ext. because these are indepth & serious approached styles of content that resonate with consumers of Competitive Smash & so as most of us are on a similar path of content creation & are likely to do what works, in-order to please the algorithm, newer content idea's that Top-Level Smash Ultimate players create can help bridge the overabundance & excessive resuage in similar content archetypes that plagues content creation in the Competitive Smash Ultimate Community. As you mentioned yourself, Tweeks podcast's are a breath of fresh air & perhaps overtime, more Smash Ultimate Competitive Players will create podcast's too. These are just my thoughts btw & I apologise for the essay length response. If you couldn't tell, I LOVE to talk lmao & this topic honestly interests me. I love analysing stuff lol.😅😂

Thanks for the video!

you make really good points and i love that you made a video about this! i've seen some comments talking about pro players not needing to branch out... but with the way the smash community is currently set up financially the only way to make this a long term investment is to branch out and grow your content outside of just doing low effort resells of their stream. they should be thinking for the sake of their brand and career because once they're no longer a part of the community as a player, what do they have? other games have a benefit of being able to allow competitors that luxury.. this one doesn't. can't wait to see what you come up with next time!

I like mockrocks videos they're usually creative and thoughtful

Naw I agree I say this to my brother top player isn't fun to watch when i just want to lay back and chill. I want to see something new

I literally made graphics today for my twitch streams to have first to 10’s with players and I was really excited about it and then I watched this video and now I feel lame lol. But you are right. Smash content isn’t easy to make because this audience wants certain things and if they don’t see those things, they don’t care. I’m just playing smash the way I want to and hoping to just meet cool people along the way, which I have so that’s cool

Imo. I feel like wayyyyy to many people focus on sole gameplay and nothing else. No ones going to tune into your stream if it’s just gameplay. The only person that can succeed with that is tweek. You have to have something else going for you weather it’s knowledge about the game. Personality viewer interaction etc. the reason so many ppl tune into Nairo/ wadi is cause they have a very funny personality. If wadi was solely focused on gameplay he’d get nowhere near as many viewers had he has rn. You need more then just gameplay is the main thing I’ve noticed

"I think the problem is that top smash players are also the top content creators" That's not a problem, its a consequence of the top smash consumers being at-least-somewhat competitive players. "You can be a top smash players and make unique content" It's hard. First, being a top player doesn't necessarily mean you have the natural charisma to entertain, nor the willingness to develop it. Those who do end up having to chose between producing, "unique, high quality content" and "competing at the top level", we've seen it countless times. Good for those who end up being successful content creators. Those who are competing at the top level and producing "low effort, repetitive content" care more about the former and there's nothing wrong with that. Actually, from my point of view and I think many other people, almost every tourney run, stream highlights, FT10 video is unique. There's enough characters and players giving their own personality to the characters to produce a decade of content. For me, it's interesting to watch pro players face off and I couldn't care less if it's their 3rd FT10 video this week, I'm not there for the title. The skits and podcasts are fine, but I'm personally more interested in gameplay, and so are most people. I mean you said it, Tweek's podcast is great; but look at the views compared to his latest stream highlights video; It's no contest, people want to see gameplay and it hardly gets stale. Don't really care for reaction vids, skits, Little Z style content. They have their audience, but top players just being top players has its audience and *it does not need to do anything different*. There's no problem here.

Smash Streamers could take the other route Play World of light

This was a great and constructive video. Personally, I find the most success when I create montage videos, as I put a lot of effort and editing into those. With that said, I just see uploading RU-vid videos as a hobby, and I like to experiment with what kinds of Smash videos I upload. Asumsaus is definitely one of my favorite Smash content creators for similar reasons, as his videos ooze in effort and experimentation.

PowPow algorithm moment

I just realized you dressed like Shaggy

I wanna stop watching this vedio after watching it once but the quality is too good to make me leave.

Msc is a based smash youtuber

good vid.

Great video

Pow pow why u speak da truth

Pfff 1 dislike the moment it was posted lol that's cringe

I gotta be honest in saying that I don't like this video at all because it completely misrepresents who the burden of cleaning up the content in the community is on. People watch ft10s and tierlists and those 4numbers ultimate videos, so why should we expect pro players who have been thrust into the spotlight to want to innovate? Pro player content right now is perfectly good at doing what it should. If everyone wants the community's content to be better, they can just watch better content. It's out there