Welp, it's that time of the Melee community's conversation life-cycle when we all despair on our game's financial opportunity. Or lack thereof.
Time to crack my knuckles and cautiously enter the fray yet again, and yes, I'm overtly aware of my position in all of this. Not as invested as top players, not as visible as top commentators, not nearly as committed as the top TO's. But I have opinions dammit, and I've covered/thought about the topic enough to at least give some insight.
So what's the problem here?
Melee is a difficult game to love, sometimes. We all know its intrinsic value, everyone inside the community has no trouble understanding why we love it so much, and what draws us to competition and large events. The game, the community, the energy, all of it. It's engaging and big and feels important, and the bonds I made within its borders are some of the strongest I've felt in my entire life.
There has been a common understanding that the finances are hard to pull off, damn near impossible for 99.9% of players. And, opinion time, that's kinda where most Esports are right now. We all see the big Fortnite and Dota 2 prize pools hitting the news, breaking records and confusing our relatives, and every time those winners hold up their seven figure checks the Melee world breathes a collective sigh into their bowl of Captain Crunch. "Why can't Nintendo support us like that?" we ask ourselves, before slurping down the remains of our dinner.
It's true, our developers don't support us. There are paths to this changing, feasible business strategies that rely on Nintendo fundamentally changing their views on Esports and 'Gambling', but most of these outcomes are a Pipe-dream. We know this. Most conversations, then, don't become about finding a million dollar meal ticket, but rather about survival. How do we keep our game alive, as we wander through the desert in the fruitless search of a promised land?
When players like Fiction and iBDW are pushing the game to it's limits, taking sets off of the absolute elite, yet can't seem to find a sponsor, what does that tell us? If players of that caliber are struggling to find stability, hell, even a stipend, then that's as much of a canary in a coalmine as I can imagine.
Financially speaking, our community is in the wilderness. Personally, I'm happy that I've never became a top player, since their struggle exceeds that of a local PR. To reach the top echelon of play requires sacrifice, both time and money, and when there are bills to pay it starts to become a question of "is this worth it?" Right now, we don't really have the answers.
As I've said in a previous post, aimed at Moky and iBDW, the best bet is for our rising stars to buckle down on brand and do everything in their power to market themselves. Slime puts it simply in a tweet, saying "Your job is to ultimately sell doritos, by being a god gamer, that's how the ecosystem works. any time you do something online or appear [sic] ask yourself "how will this help sell doritos"
Melee won't bring in money, but attention will. Our most important KPI is not exactly viewership, which is great for big tournaments, but rather our returning viewers. We have a strong following, a committed community, and that is 100% marketable. Maybe Doritos isn't elbowing through Bugals and Lays for a spot on our stream, but there are absolutely opportunities out there. The question is, how do we get them in on the action? Smashers in the marketing world, this is your time to shine.
There's an incredibly important point that always gets lost in these arguments, and that's the TO's and other people working in the background for these events. They are the liver of the melee community, misunderstood, critical to life, and constantly dealing with problems caused by alcohol. The TO's are running a thankless gig, and frankly I don't have the capacity to speak their truth right now. I reached out on Twitter to hopefully find someone that can shed light on their side of all of this, but from what I understand, they aren't exactly rolling in dough themselves. The Tournament Organizers might be the most important part of this solution, because guess what, if Taco Bell approaches us with a million dollar deal, It'll be Juggleguy handling negotiations before Mang0 does.
Let me end off with my personal experience, with my fledgling melee podcast and a short history of traveling. The greatest thing financial opportunities in Melee are likely outside of the game itself. Networking is brought up a lot, and although there might be some semantic satiation that renders the word meaningless, it's undoubtedly true that a wider network will help you find a good job. A job you don't hate, and one that can support your melee endeavors as we wander endlessly through the desert. Getting a part-time gig is not losing, it's called making a living. Every artist, comedian, singer, etc. has supported themselves this way. It needs to be considered.
For the top players, building a stream if of course important, but I'll stress that distribution is much more so. Look at Ludwig, he doesn't just stream, he has a YT channel and twitter accounts that puts his content out frequently. He gets commercials and sells merch. His commitment to content has gotten him to where he is today. Brand yourself. Marketing is the way out. Sell those Doritos.
"cool ranch will lead you to the promised land" - Slime
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