Defining Gaming Communities: A Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Case Study

The document outlines a research study aimed at defining the main characteristics and social dynamics of the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (SSBU) competitive community. The study, conducted by four graduate students in communications, seeks to understand how this community is qualified, how it appropriates the game's culture, and how its social norms and "appropriate" behaviors are developed. The research proposes a definition of a community as an entity organized around an object of interest, which both acts upon and is acted on by a videogame company, and through which power relationships guide the evolution of the game's culture.

The study emphasizes the dynamic relationship between game companies and community members, where companies guide player actions and interpretations, while players actively reinterpret, appropriate, and "poach" the videogame. It also highlights the role of certain members or leaders in gaining and consolidating influence within these communities, thereby guiding the game's cultural evolution through their legitimized discourses and actions. Knowledge sharing, including interpretations, playing styles, and social norms, is identified as a fundamental operational basis for gaming communities, with a continuous interplay between "in-game" and "out-of-game" spaces (forums, Twitch, YouTube) in legitimizing behaviors and shaping the "meta."

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate was chosen as a case study due to its established competitive community, known as "smashers," who have historically worked to legitimize Smash as a "real" fighting game by creating specific rules, terminology, and codes of conduct. The methodology involves a discourse analysis of the community's communication at two distinct periods: the game's launch and following the 2.0 patch. Data will be collected from Smashboards and the game's official subreddit, focusing on the ten most popular threads concerning the metagame and/or code of conduct until data saturation is achieved. Additionally, a semiotic and discourse analysis of videos from the three most popular SSBU competitive streamers on Twitch and YouTube will be conducted for both periods. These platforms were selected as primary out-of-game gathering spaces for the community. The research aims to contribute new insights into the nature of contemporary gaming communities.