I treat Smash like other fighting games because at the end of the day, it shares a number of similarities with other fighting games. Sure, it's more casual & party-based. But it has a colorful cast of characters, it has a focus of fighting others, it has a bustling competitive scene. There are differences, true. But there are also similarities. Smash may be a different breed of fighting game, but it's still a fighting game. And more than that, it's the best-selling fighting game ever. We should be asking more of Smash to do better when it comes to representation, not excusing the lack of either. Even if Smash was so far removed from the rest of the fighting game genre that it's something else entirely, that still doesn't excuse the lack of representation. Again, they should be striving to do better, not settling on their flaws.
Likewise, I'm not saying that Smash can & should create new fighters. It should capitalize on the options that exist. "Sakurai's vision", while he very clearly prioritizes protagonists & mascots, is (as I said) a restrictive one. It's him tying his hands together & claiming "Sorry, no diversity, my hands are tied". It's, again, a stubborn way to look at things (him, not you). Even if we don't go for characters like Elma or Nakoruru, there are still characters like Jill & Lara Croft to choose from. Again, options exist, but they aren't using them.
I meant more so in regards to how Smash characters work than it's individual characteristics of gameplay. But the gameplay is a big part of how it differentiates itself too, but the void is the biggest when it comes to the primary subject of your criticism; characters. And that's where I find making the comparisons a lot more complicated and less obvious. I think this sort of "lack of representation" is built into the DNA of Smash by being built into the DNA of "video games." It has a ton of barriers because of how it's structured (a crossover with 20+ series, that also can't invent original characters) to being able to more easily flow into representation and diversity. I think that key difference between it and other fighting games is something that should we should be forgiving of in terms of accepting those flaws. It's much, much harder for Smash to achieve any sort of balance, and while there's a list of great candidates, it's a short list before you get into increasingly niche and specific options that also don't satisfy as many people.
I guess that's where my split with you really comes in. The female characters I support more heavily and think are the best options for expansion in the roster all still play by Sakurai's rules without much issue at all, so I don't see a reason to go against the whole "only protagonists and mascots rule" when it actively fits the one I call upon people to accept and consider. I think most of the other options are generally either A. Significantly less popular with general gaming communities or the communities specific to their titles; B. Less important to their games; C First parties in an era where third parties are more of the focus, and significantly less popular than other first party options at that; or D. All of the above. Like the only real exception that comes to mind is ARMS with Spring Man being less popular on average than his female counterparts... but for other series? I just don't see many options that wouldn't just be kind of blatantly choosing "diversity" over fan demand, importance, etc. Maybe Resident Evil if Jill is not the one chosen (I still think a Hero type character makes the most sense and satisfies the most people, but that's me).
The only place I really could maybe see a bias is in the third parties... but again, I think most of the ones chosen were generally for kind of obvious reasons and it's probably more of a Japanese bias than a male bias... and even then, you again see people much preferring other franchises to the handful of female ones (such as Sonic over Arle or Mega Man over Jill). I don't know, I don't envy Sakurai having to make these calls with so much pressure from so many different fandoms and fans and corporate interests, and I'm not sure if I'd be able to do much different in a similar position. And I really think the focus on 30% is the issue when I do think context really,
really matters in regards to how we're determining how "good" or "bad" Smash's representation is compared to other games, particularly when I think Smash has some of the least problematic sexualization and such at this point...
And the new president is sometimes announced before the polls close in California.
Nintendo deciding to work on Bayo because she did very well in the first week and a half of the polls (likely by far the most active time) doesn't mean she didn't win. You've only provided evidence that they started early, not that they lied when they said she won.
/v/'s enormous Bayo push was right when the polls opened (I remember, I was there and voted for her because of it), so she was probably comfortably ahead at that point. If Ridley had crept past her in the ranking over time, then there's no reason to believe they wouldn't have added him too, or at least not lie to everyone and still say Bayo won.
That's not even remotely close to this situation. The Presidential elections have a very clear end point, I.E. when the Electoral College officially favors one candidate over the other (which is fucking stupid, but here we are). An open poll like the Smash Ballot doesn't remotely have the same thing and we know for a fact that there were only 1.8 million votes, less than half the number that played Smash for Wii U, and not even a quarter of the Smash for 3DS population (and that's assuming you only make some sort of call based upon the existing Smash population at the time out of arbitrary recognition, whereas Brawl's 13 million is even further from
that...). I'm sorry, this doesn't make a damn bit of sense that you would choose that early into the ballot, and even if you did, you were ensuring that one recognizable trend in the early data was only identified versus months of information you could piece together a more comprehensive standard for. Choosing a result from such a little section of your data either indicates incredibly poor judgment from a data analysis standpoint, or a vested interest in making a certain outcome happen. Bayonetta's data was in the game by April 15th, which means, she had been worked on prior to the 15th and the Update releasing. Choosing after two weeks is not a reasonable decision to make from a greater five month poll. To take your analogy it'd be like announcing the President at 8:00 AM the morning of Election Day as opposed to announcing before California was completely closed in the polls (which keep in mind, California's polls are also some of the
latest in the country to close as well). There can be different pushes at different times of a ballot and there can be late stage pushes.
Her having a push at the beginning doesn't mean much in the context of such an open poll, and I certainly don't expect to give /v/ the credit to actually be a sizable enough portion of the population to somehow make her happen (/v/ is one of the smallest and least action oriented places of Smash fandom). They made a call to end Smash 4 development before the DLC was released, so there was no room to add any more characters (and ironically the only slot they added was Corrin in July I believe). By the time the ballot ended, Smash 4's life was at an end and Ultimate was being conceived of. Keep in mind, Ultimate was Sakurai's last promise to Iwata, who died in July 2015, so we know the earliest dates of conception were from around that period. There was no chance the ballot winner was ever going to be added when you keep that in mind.
The best case scenario for Nintendo is that they got extremely lucky with the voting, all the options above Bayonetta were "not realizable" such as Snake or whoever else (Confirmed by Sakurai), Bayonetta legitimately had this massive early push, and then Nintendo made that call within two weeks of the ballot opening because it was... somehow clear... on an open poll for 5 months... that there would not be a more popular character or things would change...
No, I think it's pretty clear Bayonetta was someone Nintendo/Sakurai wanted in. I know fans did too, but the developer intentions were never completely pure or honest from the moment she was added before April 15th, 2015. And again, there had to be significant leg work done before that to ensure she was licensed and conceived of to be based off of Zero Suit Samus.
Any poll announcing a winner at less than 3% of the overall run time of such an open idea would be thrown out by everyone in the statistics community.
