Top 1024 — Upper Week 1 — Poll 23

[This Old Neon]

Welcome to the #BGE2020 Elimination Round of 1024!

Each game is seeded based on its performance in the two opening rounds of pools, and there are no stragglers here! Every game in the Upper Bracket has defeated another game in a 1-on-1 poll to get to this point.

Polls are updated weekly, typically on Sunday or Monday. Check back throughout the week to make sure you don't miss a vote!

HOW TO VOTE

This is easy. You only get one vote per poll. The game with the most votes wins. In the event of a tie, the higher seed advances.

[Claytone]

I would be very upset at this spite vote split if I hadn't cast a few of my own throughout this contest.

(Melee is an incredibly good, deep game with a thriving 20 year old community and home-spun online play, and I'm sorry that's lost on you mfers!!!!)

[Kong Wen]

I would be very upset at this spite vote split if I hadn't cast a few of my own throughout this contest.

(Melee is an incredibly good, deep game with a thriving 20 year old community and home-spun online play, and I'm sorry that's lost on you mfers!!!!)

I don't cast spite votes because I don't think it's in the spirit of the contest. If I dislike one of the games and am indifferent towards the other, I generally abstain.

Anyway, nothing about Melee is lost on me. I think it's a slightly worse fighting game than DDS2 is an RPG. Community longevity and ingenuity are sometimes important factors in my BGE decision-making, but in this case the relative merits of the two games on their own are enough for those other factors not to need to come into play.

In short, Melee got a bad matchup here for someone who's lukewarm on it.

[Claytone]

I don't cast spite votes because I don't think it's in the spirit of the contest. If I dislike one of the games and am indifferent towards the other, I generally abstain.

To be clear, any votes I have cast truly out of spite have been for games that I genuinely think are better. I would not vote for ET or whatever over such targets of my ire as Fallout 4, but I would vote for many other so-so games because I genuinely think that Fallout 4 is very bad, and I want to vote for the best game.

My feelings surrounding, say, the free passes that every god damn Mario Kart game gets to later rounds are a little more complicated because they are games that I genuinely like but I know are carried so deep largely by virtue of name recognition. I may vote for a scrappy underdog game over a Mario Kart game that I had a lot of fun with (maybe even *more* fun with) just to try to shake things up.

Hope that makes sense even if you still think it's against the spirit of the BGE project!

Edit:

Just as an addendum; I think the reason my gut reaction to the result of this poll was to perceive it as spite-driven is because I detect an undercurrent among TONe's members that they feel similarly to Smash as I do Mario Kart, actually. That is to say, good but overrated. Moreover, there's some antagonism toward Melee players in general because of their undying loyalty to that particular entry (which can be expressed in annoying/pompous ways). All I've got to say is that Melee's Captain Falcon is the best feeling character I've ever controlled.
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Well, it's actually Project M's, but the foundation was in Melee.

I've experienced hype levels watching Melee tournaments every bit as exciting as my favorite "real" sports moments.

So, respectfully, I do think some of that is lost on you. You haven't experienced everything Melee has to offer because you've never participated meaningfully in its community or dived deep into its systems. Obviously, far far more players haven't done that than have, as is the case for any competitive game. But ultimately there's a "you had to be there" element that unfortunately I can't convey as a superfan of the game if that makes sense.

Just makes me a bit crestfallen to see such a large part of my college life and competitive gaming "career" go down in such an early poll, yknow?

But again, maybe the same sentiment is shared by folks who wore out control sticks playing Mario Kart in their dorm rooms that I'm shrugging off as voting by name recognition!

[Kong Wen]

Ah, man, first, thanks for taking this in the spirit of good conversation and not as an accusation!

My feelings surrounding, say, the free passes that every god damn Mario Kart game gets to later rounds are a little more complicated because they are games that I genuinely like but I know are carried so deep largely by virtue of name recognition. I may vote for a scrappy underdog game over a Mario Kart game that I had a lot of fun with (maybe even *more* fun with) just to try to shake things up.

I think, with a smaller community, the issue of name recognition is probably exacerbated because there are some great scrappy underdog games that might miss out on the 1-2 votes they'd need to beat a different game that 1-2 others here just happen to have played. But this is one of the reasons the BGE is the BGE—the criteria are so wide open that just having fun with a game might not overcome other legitimate criteria like influence or nostalgia or good music, etc.

Just as an addendum; I think the reason my gut reaction to the result of this poll was to perceive it as spite-driven is because I detect an undercurrent among TONe's members that they feel similarly to Smash as I do Mario Kart, actually. That is to say, good but overrated. Moreover, there's some antagonism toward Melee players in general because of their undying loyalty to that particular entry (which can be expressed in annoying/pompous ways).

There may be some antagonism towards Melee and/or the Meleebase at large, but I have a hard time believing it's here to any significant degree. Maybe I'm wrong. But it doesn't seem like a backlashy game here.

I've experienced hype levels watching Melee tournaments every bit as exciting as my favorite "real" sports moments.

So, respectfully, I do think some of that is lost on you. You haven't experienced everything Melee has to offer because you've never participated meaningfully in its community or dived deep into its systems. Obviously, far far more players haven't done that than have, as is the case for any competitive game. But ultimately there's a "you had to be there" element that unfortunately I can't convey as a superfan of the game if that makes sense.

That's going to be the case with hardcore followings of pretty much any game, right back to old Atari classics. The hardcore people who were there at the time, loved the game, got into the community, played and discussed with other likeminded hardcore people who love the game. I'm not saying Melee's not special. You having that diehard experience with the game is a great reason to vote for it. But other people not having that experience doesn't exactly mean they're unqualified to vote against it.

Just makes me a bit crestfallen to see such a large part of my college life and competitive gaming "career" go down in such an early poll, yknow?

But again, maybe the same sentiment is shared by folks who wore out control sticks playing Mario Kart in their dorm rooms that I'm shrugging off as voting by name recognition!

Mario Kart isn't my personal counterexample, but Destiny is. It's one of the biggest games of all time with a huge, passionate fan community, strong competitive scene, etc. and it constantly tanks here just because a handful of people haven't played it and/or it's not a genre that's up their alley and/or they prefer other games in the genre.

Anyway, even if Melee does lose this round (which isn't guaranteed to be the ultimate result yet), it still gets to brawl against the rest of the lower bracket. As long as seeding is kind, it seems like the kind of game that could do very well there.