Playing with the script: Super Smash Bros. Melee. From a casual game to a competitive game.

Abstract

This thesis studies the interaction between developers and players outside of game design. It does so by using the concept of ‘playing with the script’. René Glas’ Battlefields of Negotiations (2013) studies the interaction between those two stakeholders for a networked game. In Glas’ case of World of Warcraft, it is networked play, meaning that the developer (Blizzard) has control over the game’s servers and thus can implement the results of negotiations by changing the rules continuously. Playing with the script can be seen as an addition to ‘battlefields of negotiation’, and explains the negotiations outside of the game’s structure for a non-networked game and how these negotiations affect the game series’ continuum. Using a frame analysis, this thesis explores the interaction between Nintendo and the players of the game Super Smash Bros. Melee as participatory culture. The latter is possible by going back and forth between the script inscribed in the object by developers and its displacement by the users, in which the community behind the game, ‘the smashers’, transformed the casual nature of the game into a competitive one.