Hello darkness my old friend…
I’ve come to talk to you again…
I’m actually not much of a fan of that old song, which is annoying because it pops into my head every time I watch gamers willingly taking control of the hype train completely on their own, driving it straight into a wall, then getting furious at developers after it crashes.
This time, it’s because of (*sigh*) another Fire Emblem character in the Smash Bros. series. And hoo boy is every loud mouthed aggressively online gamer east of the International Date Line pissed about it.
Let’s get a few things squared away first.
- I’m not excited about the addition of Byleth myself. I enjoyed Fire Emblem: Three Houses a great deal, but I’ve never really been all that much of a FE fan, and have played absolutely zero of the FE characters in Smash Bros. That… almost assuredly is not going to change this time.
- Like it or not, Sakurai and Nintendo consider Fire Emblem to be a tentpole IP for the Nintendo brand. Considering it is 14 exclusive games strong, and Three Houses released to critical acclaim, stunning sales worldwide, and multiple awards, it doesn’t seem like that is an incorrect sentiment. No, the IP is not particularly strong in North America (though Three Houses sold extremely well even here), but at some point, you have to accept that it’s going to receive considerable representation, on par with the Mario series, Pokemon, and Legend of Zelda. Gamers in the west are just gonna have to deal with it.
- The rage, in my opinion, really isn’t about “another Fire Emblem character.”
See, gamers have a problem. We love to be hyped. We love to shoot for the moon. That, in and of itself, wouldn’t necessarily be a problem… if we didn’t get furiously angry at everyone but ourselves when our moonshot falls short.
In this case, Smash fans had convinced themselves that the fifth DLC character was going to be Dante from Devil May Cry. They were duping themselves with a bogus scam account of one of Capcom’s lead developers. They clung to a Capcom announcement happening the same day as the Smash fighter announcement as incontrovertible proof that Dante was going to be the guy. This was a stone cold lock, guise!
Did Nintendo hint at any such thing? Nope! But hell if we didn’t convince ourselves they did! Did anyone actually at Capcom make such a connection? Nope! But we were damn sure of it nonetheless!
Did we get mad at ourselves for duping ourselves yet again? HA! Of course not! We got righteously irate at the developers who didn’t promise what we decided they promised!
Again.
It’d be funny if it wasn’t so damn toxic.
Gamers are what’s wrong with gaming.
TKO Creations 