Scandal in the Smash Brothers world! A 10 year old girl has beaten some of the greatest Smash Bros. pros out there, sometimes without even losing a life! Is this magic? Is she a prodigy? Or is this all just a huge publicity stunt by Gamestop to show us that maybe we shouldn’t take games so seriously? If so, it’s certainly backfiring as the internet, especially the professional Smash Bros. community, is up in arms about the very possibility that top levels players were paid by a corporation to throw matches.
Recently, footage cropped up on the internet of a ten year old girl named Karissa playing against some of the best Smash Brothers players in the world at a Gamestop. They were using the Wii U version of the game, which was available for playing by the public before it even hit store shelves. The unit was set up in front of a huge lighted stage, specifically for the event.
Karissa didn’t have a perfect record, but she put up a fantastic fight against some of the best Smashers out there. More specifically, she absolutely destroyed a couple smashers, including noted smash pro D1. For a while, people were calling here a prodigy, and were hoping to welcome one of the newest up and coming pro smashers into the pro community. We have seen similar stories in the Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and Street Fighter IV worlds, so why not in Smash ?
Well, unfortunately, some things seemed a little fishy. In one of the recorded videos, we can see that Karissa takes her hand off the controller as she plays. She takes her hand off the left side of the controller, the one with the analog stick, but her character, Diddy Kong, continued to move, specifically dodge roll twice and attempt a shield grab. Technically, this is possible using the right side of the controller only. The C-stick allows you to roll out of shield and the A button allows you to grab, so she could have taken her hand off the controller to rest her head on it, in the middle of a match with a pro, continued to fight, and get her hand back on the controller all without getting hit. However, this seems a little unlikely.
Later, a posting was found on talentcasting.com, made by Gamestop, which calls for gamers to participate in a “hidden camera job.” For $350, these gamers would sit around and play Smash with a crowd for 10 hours, but whenever they came up against a “little girl” not mentioned by name but called a “ringer” in the ad, they would proceed with their performance. Of course, one could assume this means losing.
Believers say that this post could have been photo shopped as it popped up on Reddit and can’t be found on talentcasting.com anymore (obviously since the shoot date is over.)
Later, a facebook post by Sky Williams, another pro Smash Bros. player, was made saying that he figured out how the supposed hoax was carried out. The post made it VERY CLEAR that D1 did not tell him anything, and that none of the other Smash Bros. players were “in on it.”
But, he says that he started suspecting something about the girl when he saw certain “impossible” things being done, such as impossible inputs and combos, specifically combos that she performed without looking at the screen.
He did some detective work and looked behind the stage, where he saw that the Gamecube controller converter had three wired hooked up to it. Two went to the front of the stage, while one went backstage and had a special sticker on it. However, the whole time, the Wii U only ever showed 2 controllers connected.
Later on, Sky waited just a tiny bit away from the GameStop while people were exiting it after the event. There, he saw a Smash Bros. pro, which he refuses to name in order to not get anyone in trouble. The thing was, this pro was NOT in the store playing the game. No one had seen him until the event was over and when he was approached, he simply walked away quickly without saying anything.
The theory, of course, is that a professional player was playing the game behind the stage, and controlling Karissa’s character through another monitor feed. He made the losses to the planted character look convincing, and against the rest of the pros he could put up a good fight.
The final piece of this theory, comes through the fact that Karissa herself is supposedly a part time child actor, according to the same snoops who found the casting call. While it’s possible that she is a child actor AND a Smash Brothers prodigy, it puts just a bit more doubt on the legitimacy of her skills.
At this point Gamestop, D1, and Karissa herself continue to profess that everything was legit.
However, Sky also doesn’t particularly think it matters. “Honestly? the real people who got ‘beat by a 10 year old’ are all of you who are seriously that upset that Gamestop tried to make something cute happen, to remind our players that we shouldn’t take things like this too seriously. Who cares if some of the players there were paid? Who cares if they were trying to pull the wool over our eyes? It’s a f*cking CHILDRENS GAME THAT WE MADE COMPETITIVE. NINTENDO’S GOAL ISN’T THE SAME AS YOURS SO STOP BEING SO PRETENTIOUS INTO THINKING THAT YOUR MINDSET IS ABSOLUTE,” he said.
Because this is the internet, Sky, D1, and anyone else even remotely attached to the Gamestop event have received death threats.
Not everyone is as OK with this as Sky is. Some people think it’s very bad policy to pay people to throw matches. Granted, this wasn’t a tournament setting, but couldn’t it be possible then that pros would throw matches in legit competition for money? Still other fans seem to claim that this undermines the legitimacy of the pro Smash Brothers community, or the legitimacy of the pro-gaming community in general, a community that is constantly looking to make “eSports” more legit in the eyes of the mainstream. If something similar was done with, say, a professional football player, people would be up in arms as well.
For me personally, I’m not sure how I feel. As a pro-gamer I feel like its in particular poor taste to accept money for match losses. As a progressive, I don’t think the best way to get kids and girls into the professional gaming community is to lie about their skills or try to scam other players. As a skeptic, I accept the fact that all of this info is hearsay and not a single primary source has confirmed anything. Even the Sky Facebook post comes to us via a re-post on Reddit. So I’m not sure if it’s true or not, but if it is true I can say “I don’t like it.” I’m not sure if I would go as far to say it is morally wrong, but I will say it bothers me. If it is true, I think Gamestop should come forward and let us know it was all a stunt. If it isn’t, well then I’m happy to welcome Karissa into the world of pro-fighting games.
What do you think? Was Karissa a hoax? Were the YouTube videos just viral marketing? If it was a hoax, was it wrong to do? Would you accept money for match losses? Do you think this de-legitimizes professional gaming, or is it all just a children’s game to you? Let us know in the comments.