Welcome to Smashboards, the world's largest Super Smash Brothers community! Over 250,000 Smash Bros. fans from around the world have come to discuss these great games in over 19 million posts!
You are currently viewing our boards as a visitor. Click here to sign up right now and start on your path in the Smash community!
No matter your view on character trailers and marketing, it's absolutely wrong to call playable fighters "cameos." You not liking characters being the main attraction doesn't suddenly make them not the main attraction.
I am not criticising Smash getting cinematic trailers on its own - I am criticising INDIVIDUAL Smash CHARACTERS getting cinematic trailers while other games get no cinematics at all on average (and those that do being essentially short silent B-roll made for viewing in the background of commercial/retail environments like the Mario Wonder CGI ads). Maybe characters should inherently be the main draw, I dunno, but ultimately INDIVIDUAL characters make up a small amount of the total experience, and that is true for basically every game with more character options than Atari RealSports Boxing. There is a direct comparison in the form of Arms' reveal trailer (bad CGI on barely-seen live actors in a black void) and Min Min's reveal trailer (detailed CGI animation featuring Arms' entire game cast). It is not that the bigger game is getting more attention than the smaller games alone, it is that a small part of a game is getting more attention than most entire games, sometimes even the same game. Even if Smash lives and dies off of characters, and that means something to other franchises, there should not be more budget going into unveiling Scrumbly the Sea Otter's addition to Smash than the actual ****ing Scrumbly games that make up a whole product. Perhaps it's a bit more justifiable if the budget for Smash trailers is coming out of the game budget and not the marketing (which I think Sakurai has said things maybe alluding to?), but then that just raises questions about both the Smash team's priorities and Nintendo's stability for wider marketing.
This is still being mad at something for unrelated reasons and trying to go "I question Nintendo's priorities and stability for wider marketing" is very, very weird when the big budget game in question is also the best selling game of it's genre. Big wellknown game gets big budget, gets to blow more cash on trailers than small unique game with small budget that doesn't have a pre-existing fanbase. This isn't that hard to comprehend, especially not when ARMS had to sell how you played it to get the point across, using the motion controls to throw and aim punches. A game reveal trailer showing off how the game being revealed works when the DLC character trailer only has to show off the DLC character and not the game where the DLC character is also from and how it plays to sell you on game where the DLC character came from is not some massive injustice you need to fake being upset about
Again, you are continuing to ignore that I'm not taking issue with Smash getting more attention than smaller games, that's fine on its own (even if whole-game-devoted E3 presentations were an utterly horrible thing) I am taking issue with CHARACTERS getting more attention than smaller games. Arms' trailer is fine on its own, and I think I did in part underplay it (I had forgotten it had a legit animated segment when I posted that) - the problem is Min Min's Smash trailer being of such a higher budget - more animated characters, more minutes of animation (if admittedly choppier), backdrops, original voice acting - and getting such a fanfare and anticipation built around it, with a devoted livestream (as opposed to being sandwiched between Zelda and Mario reveals) and pre-emptive "ooh get ready, this is what we're gonna do, get guessing!" game - when Min Min is a single character and not a full game. Let's look at this from a "characters are the main draw of Smash" perspective: let's compare to theme park rides, the most obvious example of something that overshadows all other elements of a product in cultural view and marketing.
You're being deliberately obtuse here and I do not wish to argue with your Ben Shapiro methods of saying so much blatantly false or wrong statements that it takes over 20 minutes to dissect it all, hence why I only now saw your edit on the previous post saying the most blatantly false thing I've seen
This simply does not happen but thank you for making me realize I'm talking to someone who's not simply misguided, but is either genuinely unaware of how anything in the gaming industry works while wondering why you aren't seen as the most important customer on the planet or you're deliberately trying to be wacky and quirky and goofy and loony and kooky and zany while coming up with bizarre things you don't actually believe for the sake of being a funny weirdo contrarian on the internet. Have a nice day
OK, so somehow, Subway employees memorising an oft-repeated order is an unrealistic situation. OK.
i don't really consider Terry as a obscure third party character, SNK franchises as The King of Fighters and Metal Slug are very known on latin america, as Sonic is very known on US except on japan
My guess is it might be a regional thing. In America, the fast food experience is so impersonal on both ends that I can't imagine this happening at a chain restaurant, but maybe it's different in other countries.
What's weirder is immediately going to profile posts to backtalk someone for reasonably pushing back on an "Unpopular Opinion" with 1984 gifs
I'm not an American and eating at the same smaller place for a week, seeing the same 2 employees, did not get anyone ask about the usual. People I know who work in customer service are not encouraged to do this at their jobs and nobody I've spoken to about this have experienced it. And yes, I firmly believe someone who says stuff like "Erm, Epona over Zelda in melee would make PERFECT sense" and claiming to say it without a shred of irony is at least slightly dishonest.My guess is it might be a regional thing. In America, the fast food experience is so impersonal on both ends that I can't imagine this happening at a chain restaurant, but maybe it's different in other countries.
But nah, definitely safer to imagine he's just making stuff up to troll. Totally.
People on this website are weird, man.
My mom goes to the same two places frequently enough that she can just say "the usual" and they get her what she always gets. It's not impossible.
I have no reason to doubt you so I stand corrected but that does not change how "It's bad that the biggest game of that year from a high profile company gets a bigger marketing budget than significantly smaller games." That's not an opinion, that's being devoid of common sense which I can only assume is being done deliberately
I mean
You still need to actually advertise the new stuff even in a game that sells itself. Doubly so in a fighting game where the characters are the draw and people need an idea as to how each new character works
I'm really trying not to engage here, but I literally adressed that Smash's modern marketing relative to other games makes logical sense from a business standpoint. That does not make it right, if anything it just makes it extra wrong.
Thing is, this is also a nothing statement. Like yeah, it's a big game from an outright famously successfully series. But they're not gonna choose not to advertise a game just because they're confident it'll sell well, it's like the saying if a tree falls in the woods and nobody's around to hear it, did it really fall? I've seen loads of games I was looking forward to turn out to release a while ago simply cause of a lack of publicity, only those games generally aren't multimillion dollar companies that have existed for over a century like Nintendo
So maybe I'm misunderstanding but it seems like this whole argument is "Nintendo wouldn't do this" when like, nobody said they WOULD, nobody said this was a realistic thing, Wario Wario Wario was just stating like, a personal want?
Basically I appreciate different opinions and perspectives, I only really respond to posts here I don't understand or find the logic questionable cause I want to understand it. Hell, just the other day, when we talked about Flicky, that was a lack of understanding and I felt "Alright this sounds believable" and hey, there was an understanding that came from a as of then unknown perspective to me which I appreciate! I mistakenly believed this would be the same thing only for it to not be the case but to instead be a nothing statement with no meaningful discussion
There's definitely merit in that! Sakurai himself agrees that it's a bad practise and outright said "Only buy the fighter pass if you're confident in it's contents", I believe I mentioned this not being unpopular at all, especially in fighting game communities. I just don't believe that this was the argument being made judging by similar remarks made by the person saying this
I actually agree with this. I feel more initial Brawl reveal trailers that showcase a set of veterans and newcomers at a time would be ideal.
all at the same presentation, except have them all showcased within one trailer.
This I disagree with, it's not Smash's responsibility to make certain people calm the hell down from a weird level of devotion, those people simply need to get over themselves, it's like saying idk, Steven Universe is bad because one person took the show as saying "Hey kids, nazis aren't that bad". That's just ****ty people chosing to be ****ty
I feel like it’s a “have your cake and eat it, too” situation where, really, the main benefit is indeed, more to discuss, rather than one individual pop-off. Also seems slightly more practical and could possibly alleviate budget to have fewer trailers but with more in them. Take that list bit with a grain of salt, though.I actually agree with this. I feel more initial Brawl reveal trailers that showcase a set of veterans and newcomers at a time would be ideal.
Not because "individual trailers bad" or "marketing one character bad" or "hype bad", or whatever else nonsense, but because showing off more at a time gives more to talk about between reveals and keep a more steady flow for speculation.
Something like how we got
The way Smash goes about a lot of their market feeds into it and exacerbates a lot of those mentalities. Alleviating that in some ways would be for the better. If this is a game where the director doesn’t wanna do in-game cut scenes any more because they just end up on YouTube, other responses to the fan community that could be deemed more constructive wouldn’t be too bad.
There is a difference between art and advertising. There is an overlap, yes, and Smash trailers are within that overlap alongside something like McDonaldland or the Trix Rabbit's schemes - however, the whole concept of advertising is to influence how people behave and think through both unsubtle and subtle messaging - "the engineering of consent". We can interpret Sonny the Cocoa Bird as a wacky cartoon guy or a tragic addict, but ultimately the message sent by his commercials will be "eat Cocoa Puffs, they taste good".
Again, disagree. Hell, Assist Trophies and Mii Costumes are made to be little extras yet a lot of people choose to see it as a personal insult instead of a fun little extra thing like intended. People being weird isn't something one can simply address and change. I agree that Sakurai seeing the SSE cutscenes going online and chosing not to do that again is hella dumb, but that's because of his mindset that the cutscenes are a reward for story progression, not because of how fans reacted to the cutscenes. Hell, we have limitless examples of books, movies, tv, games, comedy, plays, etc saying for example, "Discrimination is bad" only to have loads of people experience those stories and go "Haha I love this. Anyway, I hate people who are different from me and like yelling slurs or death threats at them". Some people are just idiots, and trying to say "Hey don't do that" won't change their minds
At the same time, why never consider alternative ways of doing things instead of “it has to be this way”? Smash has a “hype culture” because of, well, how its marketing has developed over the years.
Ok so let's say Sakurai gets even more upfront with openly telling people not to become big babies. After all, for Ultimate, he had already said "Hey, don't buy the fighters pass if you're uncertain of it's contents". For Ultimate, he had already said "We may have shown too much too quickly, so don't expect many more newcomers". In general, he already said "I don't like how whenever I talk about a game on social media, people assume it's Smash related". When the series director says this openly, be it through posts on social media, his magazine column or even during one of these Directs and people disregard it, choosing to believe he's this masterful troll and that there's secretly gonna be like 6 more characters to be shown a month before the game comes out or whatever, is that the fault of the guy saying "Hey, cool it" or the fault of the people ignoring that and taking it as a sign that their favourite character is totally happening and will react badly if it turns out to not be the case? It's not the responsibility of a director to make badly behaving fans get over themselves. Claiming otherwise is just flatout wrong
Smash's commericals are COMMERCIALS. The intent of a commercial is to send a specific and unambigious message, if a commercial sends an unhealthy message to even one viewer, that is the fault of the commercial, and unlikely to be an accident, because that's how effective commercials work. Make you obsessed and infest your mentality.
Sakurai does not practice what he preaches. These problems he "wants" to stop are a direct result of not being upfront about the contents of the game from day 1. This happens with games that don't exploit hype culture in such a way too, but because Smash makes such a big deal of reveals/characters and trains fans to seek validation through them, it is even worse. Sounds like crocodile tears to me - "Oh boo hoo, nobody likes the new character, all I did was make them stay up into the middle of the night to watch a livestreamed Pixar-quality CGI commercial in hopes they'd start screaming in excitement, following off of a trail of characters specifically chosen for that purpose and basically nothing else! How could this have happened?".
All you are doing here is victim-blaming people - primarily children - who partook in unregulated gambling. Famed sender-of-death-threats-to-16-year-olds Reggie Fils Aime outright stated he wanted people to buy the Fighter Pass based off of Joker alone. If Sakurai truly had no choice in the fighter pass, the only right thing would've been to call it quits and burn the prospect of DLC down. Gambling for kids is not negotiable or something you just "take with the good".
