So You Want to Be a Professional Smash Brothers Ultimate Player?
At this point, I’m not going to attempt to tell you the risks of focusing too much of your life on becoming a professional Super Smash Brothers player. You’ve made the decision, and you’re scouring the internet looking for people who have had major success in the scene to help get you there or drop any nuggets of wisdom. So that’s what I’ll do. So, you want to be a professional Super Smash Brothers Ultimate player?
There are some things you’ll need to understand going into your attempt. Your social life outside of the gaming world is going to take a huge hit. If you already have a significant other, kids, and a job, this is already going to be a hard task. Nearly all of your free time is going to need to be invested in getting better, especially early on before you reach the point where you can win tournaments. Let’s move on to the game specifics.
One of the first things you need to ask yourself is how badly do you want to win? Do you have undying fan loyalty to one of the characters in the game and want to win despite tier lists, or are you willing to play strictly the best characters in the game to give you the best chance to win? There are some differences depending on the route you take here.
If you want to get sponsored, there are two fastest ways to do so. Simply beat really good players on stream and start building your brand as a really good player, or by carving your niche as using a non-top tier character. There is branding that can be done when you are one of the few people who main a character, especially if they’re a low tier or mid tier. Personally? My suggestion is to explore early on in the game and be willing to switch characters. Top tier characters provide more options as they have frame and moveset advantages, which to me always made them lucrative to play.
You’re going to need to compile preferably multiple practice partners that are your current skill level. Are you a former competitive Smash Brothers player and are coming back for Ultimate? Are you not new to the series, but are new to the competitive scene? You need to find some practice partners whether that’s online or from your local competitive scene. You won’t gain much from playing people too far above or below your skill level, even if it’s a professional player playing vs you. I would also opt against paying for coaching from a professional player unless it’s them analyzing your matches. You won’t gain enough to directly apply to your game just by playing a pro for an hour.
You’ll want to get engrained into your local competitive scene. You’ll want to look around on Smashboards.com or look for their group on Facebook. A lot of the competitive scene migrated to using Facebook groups when specifically talking about a single rallying point for the local scene for your region. Introduce yourself, offer to drive to their house and play some matches or offer people to come up to yours.
Now that you’re settled into your local scene and learned their tournament schedule, you need to play the game. A LOT. Make no mistake about it, going from new to the competitive scene to a high level player will take a lot of hours. You’ll need to keep up with the current meta and see what top level players are doing, how they punish players, and how to apply that to your game. You need to be playing, studying and trying to create your own techniques and setups that work for your character. With Ultimate having so many characters, you’re going to need to learn a lot of matchups, and you need to be experienced vs every common character you will face.
Something an aspiring professional esports player needs to consider in any game is their marketing. Every professional player can be helped greatly by marketing. What is being marketed? Well, you! You will want to have social media and use it actively, especially Twitter. Facebook and Instagram aren’t as necessary, but they still have advantages to them. Twitter is the most common one for esports players to use. You have a decision to make on how you are going to use it based upon your personality. Are you creating a personality to embody yourself by to garner attention and traction? Are you going to just be as professional as possible to ensure you don’t offend anyone? You will need to decide how you’re going to use social media. You’ll want to engage with the Smash community and not just in a selfish way. Having a sponsorship not only increases your exposure but makes going to tournaments less of a financial burden as sponsors will help pay for your finances. Read the contract before you sign though, preferably with someone experienced in law.
You need to be actively thinking while you play and not just falling into auto-pilot. It’s a trap a lot of people fall into. You need to not just be falling into a systematic formula type auto-pilot, you need to be actively thinking in every split second situation what is going on, how your opponent is trying to beat you, and how you can best punish them. This won’t come naturally, this will come from hours and hours of playing and understanding how the game works and how certain characters are played on a competitive level.
There will be ups and there will be downs. You won’t get there quick. If you want to be a professional Super Smash Brothers Ultimate player, however, this is the life you’re going to have to endure. It’s going to be late nights, lots of studying, and lots of playing. You’re going to have to enter tournaments understanding you want to win, but ultimately need to learn as the priority. You’ll have to sacrifice most of your social life for this, which is a hard sacrifice for a lot to make. The payoff can be huge if you are serious about this. It can change your life.
