After taking a 2 year hiatus from competitive smash since Big House 4, I have been having fun with the game again and decided that I will be playing regularly again, especially since I'm currently not doing any speedrunning stuff at the moment.
For those of you who don't know, I got into competitive Smash in 2010 (playing both Melee and Brawl) and have been a very active member of my local community in Michigan since 2011. I used to upload local recordings of matches to YouTube, I've been a part of Juggleguy's TO staff for a number of his tournaments including Big House 2 and 3, and I've even hosted a couple of my own local tournaments. However, I've always been a very weak competitor when I was active, but I always had a desire to improve. However, that desire to improve was too strong for my own well being, and it was what lead me into a serious long-term burnout with the game.
My biggest hurdle in Smash has always been my mindset, and at the time it seemed near-impossible for me to overcome that hurdle. To go off on a personal tangent, I've always been a mentally weak person. Ever since, I think middle school, I was dealing with a severe depression with a side of social anxiety. I've never been good at anything I did and I never fit in with my classmates, especially since my main hobby was video games. *gasp*
Playing my favorite games, including Smash, at a high level has always been interesting to me and it added a new enjoyment for me. However, because of my depression I wanted to use games as a way to prove my self-worth as a person. This was red flags #1 and #2 (I will get to the 2nd one later). This caused me to take Smash way too seriously, focus on playing only my best character, pressure myself to improve, and beat myself up when I would play poorly and place poorly in tournaments. One thing about pressuring myself to improve was that I would overthink about fundamentals and conditioning my opponent. Especially since I wasn't able to go out and play people outside of tournaments since I didn't have a car. I would analyze videos and constantly ask overly complicated questions that didn't make sense. This was red flag #3. I could not handle this pace of learning. It would cause me to get overwhelmed, and frustrated in-game when things don't work out. There were times during 2012 and mid-2013 when I wanted to quit, but I wasn't able to because at the time I didn't have another hobby to fall back on. I wasn't having fun. This was red flag #4: I kept playing even though I wasn't having fun.
During late 2013, I was in the process of picking up Ocarina of Time speedrunning. I needed a change of pace from Smash. I wanted something that's completely execution based. I wanted a hobby where I compete against myself. Not against others. Even though speedrunning does have competition involved, it's not the entire portion of the hobby. I had a lot more fun with speedrunning, and it was a breath of fresh air to me. This was when I started to truly move away from Smash. I still played it a bit and entered tournaments from time to time during 2014 just to see how I felt, but I still wasn't having fun. At the same time, this is when I wanted to learn the 100% category of OoT and eventually take it seriously, since at the time there was an enormous skill gap between the world record holder and everyone else. And of course, the category looked like a ton of fun and there was so much depth and variety to it. This put the nail on the coffin. Big House 4 was my last tournament for a while, and afterwards my main focus was towards speedrunning.
Along with starting my hiatus from Smash, I also dropped out of college. At that time, this was when my depression and anxiety was at its all time worst. This was when I realized that I needed help, so I returned home and started seeing a therapist and taking medicine for my depression. As time went on and as I was making more progress in OoT 100% (and eventually getting 2nd place with a time of 4:50:22), the category started to get more and more competitive, especially with people like Glitchymon, ClintStevens, and Jodenstone who were on the come-up. With the nature of spectators, the viewers blew the competition out of proportion and make it bigger than it really is. Fans of Clint and Joden would go into other people's chat talking about how good they are, and it made me not have fun with streaming. I eventually felt inferior as a runner because the other runners got so much better, so I went back to the same mindset issue that I had when playing Smash, except not as severe. I was using speedrunning as something to prove my self-worth as a person. I talked to my therapist about this issue, and he gave me very eye-opening advice. He told me that qualities as a person when it comes to how you treat people, has way more value than how good you are at something. He also told me that life is a lot more simple when you just have fun with the things you do.
I took my therapist's advice into heart and applied it for all of the issues I had with competition. It made it a lot easier for me to focus on myself and not let competition get to my head. Approaching my hobbies with a light heart made it a lot easier for me to relax and have fun with whatever I would do. However, when I would try out Smash again, I still wasn't having fun. I would play it for 30 minutes, then stop having fun afterwards. Fast forward to the present. I decided to go to the Michigan Arcadian to see old friends and try the game out again. Before the day of the tournament, I went to my friend's house and played Melee with him. He's always been fun to play Melee with because he likes to have fun with the game. There is also the fact that I haven't seen him in a while, so it was good to hang out with him. At the time, I realized that I love learning new things within my interests and gaining new experiences. This is why I started to lose interest in doing speedruns, and why I was more interested in finding new tricks, strats, and routes. It was also why I've been into playing games casually, because I really enjoyed gaining new experiences. While I was playing with my friend, we eventually messed around with random characters that we don't use in a competitive level. All of a sudden, a spontaneous realization. I remembered how much there is to learn in Smash, especially with the wide variety of characters. It made me reflect on how I would only play my best character and not branch out to other characters, but when I did I would do absolutely horrible (this was red flag #2). This made me see a new light to Smash. It made me want to learn more about the mechanics of the other characters. It made me want to have a goal of being technically proficient, not tournament proficient, with all characters.
The final realization I had was also a spontaneous one, and it set the deal for me to feel better about playing competitively again. I suddenly remembered someone on smashboards telling me that I overthink things, and you simply improve your fundamentals by playing more people. This was when all of the pieces added up. Everything made sense to me. In speedrunning, I understood that you get better by playing more. It's the same thing with Smash. It's the same way with everything in life. You get better at something by doing it more. That's how you get experience. Experience is key. The person on smashboards was 100% right. I used to overthink about things way too much, and it made me feel overwhelmed, especially since I cared way too much about getting better. I didn't even focus on improving and optimizing my basics, and character-specifics, and then eventually climb up to the detailed stuff. All I had to do was stop overthinking, and PLAY THE F***ING GAME.
These lessons I learned throughout my hiatus helped me get rid of all of the negativity about Smash in my head, and I could finally breathe. It made me look forward to playing again, and next thing you know it, I found myself playing Smash for 2 hours and enjoyed every bit of it. I haven't had that in a long time. It made me feel good that I finally overcame the grueling hurdle that seemed near-impossible for me to overcome a long time ago. It made me feel good that I can finally enjoy an old hobby again. It made me feel good to know that it's safe to say that I will be playing Smash regularly again, and hopefully meet new people in the scene and gain new experiences. I look forward to see the new journeys I make with Smash.
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