The Smash Community Dynamics
The article above gives a brief history of the competitive atmosphere for the Super Smash Bros. series of games. In short, the player base in the super smash bros community is noticeably split. While one section of players has transitioned to the newer games, another portion has refused to move on, and continues to play super smash bros melee instead. This division is largely due to the fact that some players feel that the older game is better than the newer versions. Now, with a new smash game due to hit stores in December, people can only speculate how the community will react.
We can represent the current player environment by drawing a network, where each node represents a player and the edges connect players that compete against each other. Melee players play against each other without ever interacting with players from the newer game, Smash 4, and thereby create two isolated components. However, these components are not completely isolated. Some players, like Mew2King and Zero, have moved from Melee to Smash 4, thereby creating a local bridge between the two components. If the community had 2 separate components, the atmosphere would feel more like 2 individual communities that didn’t have much in common. Instead of this, the local bridges allow the two groups to come together by looking and have a greater sense of unity. Players and spectators of both games can look to these local bridges as icons of the community. In this case, having one component instead of two is better for the community’s morale.