“I’m so fucking mad at everything including myself. I’ve never had my mood shot down so fast before.” Rasheen “Dark Wizzy” Rose ranked 22nd, PGRU Season 2

It’s a unique time of year for competitive Smash. One of its most important multimedia efforts just wrapped up. On January 23rd, The Panda Global Rankings for Ultimate – or PGRU – released the last of its second season of player rankings for Smash Bros. Ultimate. In simple terms, the PGRU is a bi-annual ranking made and monitored by a small team. The team uses an algorithm that sorts Ultimate’s top competitors into a top 50 list based on how they performed at various large tournaments over the last 6 months or so.



In reality, it’s so much more than that.

“I am beyond mentally defeated. I don’t know what to say besides the passion I have for Smash has depleted immensely.” Alexis “Goblin” Stennett ranked 42nd, PGRU Season 2

The PGRU isn’t a ranking. The PGRU is the ranking

Finding an alternative to the PGR is not hard. Smash has several ranking systems (OrionRank, statsmash, 1000rank, Athletes.gg scores, etc.) but everyone in the Smash community defaults to the PGR. Writers will reference the the PGRU ranking to put a player’s skill in context. Organizers will put a player’s PGR rank on screen and in their graphics. The Smash community will talk about the PGR more than any other ranking. Teams and sponsors may even take the ranking into account when signing players.

“I’m really happy to be ranked so high[…]” Kengo “KEN” Suzuki – ranked 16th, PGRU season 2. Translated from Japanese.

The PGRU is even more than a ranking.



The PGRU is a media deal with Red Bull, one of the biggest and most prestigious esports sponsors in the world. The PGRU is five articles each with 10 blurbs written and edited by professional writers. The PGRU is five incredible montage videos made by one of the most capable video editors in Smash. The PGRU is 50 player cards, each impeccably designed, each a result of trial and error over the course of five years. It’s not just a ranking, it’s an event.

“I’m so happy for this, I’ve worked really hard the last couple of months and I’m glad it paid off! Aiming for more now!!!” Enrique “Maister” Hernández Solís, ranked 6th, PGRU Season 2

The PGR is also part of the language you need to know to understand Smash. For Luis “suar” Suarez, the head of PGStats and one of the founders of the PGR, language is one of the PGR’s greatest strengths.



“It has defined tournament language for players, for spectators, for commentators. Calling things S-tiers, A, B, and C-tiers. PGR win, PGR loss. Defining the language has been one of the craziest things that the PGR has done because it just transcends the game,” suar tells me. “It goes into all sorts of content pieces, all sorts of speculation, and even people outside of the scene.”

“First time on PGR and I’m very happy with how far I’ve come. Thank you everybody who supported me!” Raffi “Raffi-X” Azar, ranked 31st PGRU Season 2

“Tl;dr – fuck pgr” Eric “Pandarian” Lund, ranked 33rd PGRU Season 2

More than anything else, the PGRU is controversial. For so many players, the PGRU is their happiness or sadness for days after it comes out. For so many fans, the PGRU is the final paragraph of a chapter they’ve spent months reading. For so many organizers, writers, and viewers, the PGRU is quietly some of the best made and most frustrating Smash content they’ll ever see.



PGRU Season 2 would be more of everything – more content, more polish, more reach, and more controversy. The PGRU would whip up pretty much every argument about rankings that the Smash community has ever had. It would thrust relative unknowns into the spotlight and upset some of the biggest voices in the community. And it would end with the biggest change the ranking system has ever seen.

The PGRU rundown

The PGR is controversial partially because rankings are always controversial. The audience loves a ranking. It helps them understand them quickly understand a wider situation and make value judgements. Book readers like the New York Times Best Seller list. Music Listeners love top 100’s and top 10’s at the end of the year. Sports watches love rankings of all kinds.



The flip side: value is incredibly hard to judge. For almost everything. Since probably the dawn of humanity. Rich people – particularly rich political people – can game the hell out of the Best Seller list. Music is so naturally subjective that a lot of listeners will just gravitate towards reviewers that will give them an end of the year list they’ll agree with. And athletes of all kinds regularly feel underrated and backhanded by algorithm and panel rankings alike. Not only are all these rankings flawed, they can feel perverse and frustrating for the authors, musicians, athletes, people in the field.



Rankings may be naturally flawed but the particulars of their imperfections still matter. It matters to be a Best Selling author so it matters even more that sometimes you can purchase that distinction. It matters to be All-NBA (sometimes it can shape contract negotiations), so it matters that All-NBA distinctions are determined by panelists with biases towards bigger names and markets.



Going into this article, I wanted to understand three big things: The complaints around Smash rankings, the impact of Smash rankings, and why every end of the system does all this work both ranking and complaining each year. To understand these three things I interviewed five people – four rankers to help me understand how ranking works and one FGC talent scout (and man of many other trades) to help me understand the real bearing rankings have on a player’s career.



You’ll see their quotes throughout the article. Getting at complaints was simultaneously much easier and harder. All I had to do was read a lot of Smash Twitter (and fight Twitter’s interface to find tweets I should’ve bookmarked). To start things off, let’s talk about all the things the PGRU Season 2 did wrong – and if all of it is actually right.

All the things the PGR might have done wrong

This year, the complaints rolled in before the top 50 even begun. They started in Area 51, which is a section published before the rankings that’s basically an honorable mentions. A number of crowd favorites did not make it in, immediately signalling trouble to come. When a relatively unknown Japanese Yoshi main named RON placed above all those crowd favorites, the trouble came.

RON quickly got memed. As a Japanese Yoshi with a very bland name, this was an inevitability, like the change in seasons or the heat death of the universe. As memeable as he is, RON is a great player (ranked 57th all-time in Smash 4). He isn’t known both because he’s a Japanese player and because he only went to four tournaments.

Complaint #1: Attendance and Ron

Ron got on the list with just four strong performances. Dark Wizzy tweets about how easily someone could game this system. “I’d never do this,” he writes, “ but what if I top 8’d Glitch, then stopped going to events for the season. I’d end with top 8 at LMBM and Glitch and be fine. No bad losses.”



Josh “Barnard’s Loop” Craig, the founder and co-runner of OrionRank doesn’t see the same issue. OrionRank is a lesser known Smash ranking that started in 2016. It uses an algorithm like the PGR but it’s different in that it ranks the top 100 players, not the top 50. This will matter later. Barnard’s Loop is also an active member of the Smash community who helps seeding with tournaments and provides tons of useful data like a sheet that measures character performance in major tournaments.



Barnard’s Loop sees attendance as one of the things the PGR did well. “The attendance gap doesn’t seem to be a huge problem anymore. Certain players got on the ranking with the minimum required events – 3. Ron was 50th, Raffi-X was very high, and so on. I think this is an advantage the PGR has over OrionRank – it deals with attendance better.”



When Barnard’s Loop says “the attendance gap,” he’s pointing to the gap between players who can attend tons of tournaments and those that simply can’t. This is a gap that Ron embodies. Ron himself only attends so little because he doesn’t live close to where Japan’s tournaments are held. Even in Smash 4, his attendance was low.



Dark Wizzy is right that someone could try and game the system, but even this isn’t easy. Ron had to beat the 13th and 15th ranked players in the world and pull of two huge upsets to get his placings. If he lost even one of those matches, he probably wouldn’t be top 50. Not to mention, as I’ll discuss later, the lack of community presence could be worse for getting a sponsor.

Complaint #2: Losses, big tournaments, and Goblin

The worst thing a ranking can do is fail the eye test. If a player’s ranking flat out looks wrong, then there will be trouble. Goblin’s ranking looked very wrong. Goblin got 42nd, dropping three places from his last rank despite beating the Gavin “Tweek” Dempsey (ranked 3rd) twice and Ezra “Samsora” Morris (ranked 2nd) once.



Goblin had clearly improved from Season 1 to Season 2 so his dropping three ranks looked horribly off. The algorithm ranked Goblin lower because he took a lot of bad losses to players he was expected to beat and he had bad placements at big tournaments. The bigger the tournament, the more a win or loss there matters. The idea goes that the competition is much tougher at EVO than at a local. Goblin got 129th, 33rd, and 49th at 4 different s-tier events. Couple that with 12 set losses to non-ranked players and the algorithm drags Goblin down.



To players, the loss penalty felt incredibly punitive. It was like dropping a whole grade for missing a single question on a test. Players who went to tournaments often felt they would slip up eventually and that slip up could cost them several spots in the rankings. To make matters worse, a loss to a non-ranked player hurts even more and the talent pool in Ultimate has erupted, making those losses more likely than ever. However, bad losses weren’t the only reason Goblin’s ranking dropped.

Complaint 3: International competition

Rising up the ranks does not just mean improving your skill. It means improving your skill more than your competitors do. In the second season of the PGRU, Goblin had gotten better, but so had the entirety of Japan.



In Season 1, only nine Japanese competitors made the rankings. In Season 2, there were nine Japanese competitors in the top 20 alone. The change in rankings gave way to a bigger – and uglier – complaint.



Japan has long been one of the best regions in Smash Bros. Japan’s low rankings in Season 1 didn’t just come from the region’s slow start, it also came from the way the algorithm weighted tournaments – by attendance. Japan’s tournaments have attendance caps that hold down one of the biggest numbers the algorithm looks at and makes most Japanese tournaments compact but hyper competitive experiences.



To rectify the algorithm’s latent bias to US players, Andrew “PracticalTAS” Nestico added in an international multiplier. International tournaments would now have more weight.



When Season 2 came around, Japan became the primary target. American players alleged that Japanese players were unintentionally farming points in the algorithm by winning and then losing to each other. Once more Japanese players get ranked, their wins against each other matter even more and they could theoretically keep doing this until they fill the rankings.

just got an letter that says because of my excelling academic performance i am eligible for the study abroad program



might stay in tokyo for a quarter to farm some pgr wins — Pandarian (@Pandarianssb) January 17, 2020

Suar disagrees and sees this as the system evening itself out. “Historically, Japan has always had the stronger playerbase but the US has always had the biggest events,” suar told me. “However, in Japan they have to travel to make those results come true.”

Once Japanese players get their international results, the gap between the two regions start to close naturally as they go home and get beaten by other top Japanese competitors who just can’t afford the thousand dollar plane ticket to the US.



Or, as suar puts it, “Zackray comes here, slaps everybody, goes back to Japan and gets slapped himself. That tells us, ‘Okay, there are people over there that can definitely trash some of our players.’”



The anger US players have is understandable, given that the number of Japanese players doubled. Any savvy player could read the ranking and see that they were being knocked down the list by Japanese competitors. The lack and then sudden appearance of Japanese player made PGRU Season 2 fail the eye test repeatedly.



“The A-listers – or even A-listers – from North America are getting edged out,” suar says, but he sees it as a good thing. “Now both regions have to defend themselves […] and I think it’ll make for a very exciting Season 3.”



Suar is far from alone in thinking this way. In truth, the American players and their fans are more alone in thinking the PGR overstated Japan’s talent. Ramin “Mr. R” Delshad, a long time top competitor and one of the biggest voices in European Smash, was quick to call the slight downfall of NA a step in the right direction.

Funny thing about the whole PGR thing is that EU players who get shafted the most arent even upset about the amount of Japanese players. We know its a step in the right direction. Literally all just NA ppl upset cause they got so used to it having mostly people from their country — Ramin (@Mr_RSmash) January 18, 2020

Barnard’s Loop outright praised the international multiplier. “I think the PGR’s international multiplier is a good idea and it mostly hits the mark. Some potentially important events that didn’t hit the 160 attendee cap were missed, but it’s allowed Europe to have three majors.” On Twitter, he spoke even more incisively.



However, none of these complaints are the biggest point of controversy for the PGR. None of them even come close.

The mind of the ranking machine

Suar sends me the audio file of the interview right after he and PracticalTAS announced the largest change the PGR has ever seen. I asked him about the chief weakness of the system and he gave an answer I should’ve seen coming. “[T]hat is algorithm-based – which is also a strength.”



PG Stats used an algorithm to rank players going all the way back to the founding of the PGR in the Smash 4 days. However, the Melee side of the community had long since used a panel formed by Melee It On Me. Whenever the rankings get heinous, the mob forms and demands to see the mind of the machine.



It’s not just that the PGR runs off of an algorithm, it’s that the algorithm is a secret. The nature of content means PracticalTAS can only ever reveal parts of the algorithm. If he revealed the entire thing, math savvy members of the community could plug results into the system and calculate and reveal the entire PGR before Red Bull got the chance too.



Another ranker, stu2b50, disagrees. “Personally, I would prefer that they just publish the algorithm and then document changes more stringently. There is a worry that they can have the thunder stolen from them, but in my experience everyone is far too lazy to care.”



Stu2b50 speaks from experience. He runs Statsmash.io, a ranking site that, in many ways, does all the things the community wants rankings to do. Statsmash updates frequently and shows real-time shifts in the ranks. It published its algorithm for all to see as well.



However, Stu2b50 runs a smaller, less high stakes operation. No one publishes his rankings out from under him because there would be little reward. Publishing even one PGR player’s rank out from under the PGR could yield so much attention, so many likes, retweets, and followers, that it could make an unknown person’s voice deafening, if only for a moment.



The fallout of Goblin inputting and finding his own placement before the PGR published would be massive and the controversy could easily snowball into every player finding their own results. Red Bull loses an insane amount of web traffic, maybe enough to make them reconsider the partnership. PGStats has to defend itself before it even makes a statement. The system collapses in an instant. One of Smash’s biggest events and content pieces could die right there.



It’s a worst-case scenario, but a believable one. PGStats has every reason not to take the risk.



As heavy as that risk is, it shows a unique strength the PGR has as a content piece: hype. The regularly updated rankings don’t have the same hype as one that builds up across the season, even if it has the same legitimacy.



However, the hidden nature of the algorithm strengthens every criticism of the PGR. If RON got top 50 when he only went to a handful of tournaments, it’s because of faults in the algorithm. If Goblin didn’t break the top 30 despite beating the 3rd best player twice and the second best player once, it’s because of something hidden in the algorithm. The algorithm cannot show its work and defend itself, so it loses a lot of these arguments by default.

A hundred mechanical arms

Even without secrets, any algorithm will be flawed. We readily see the mind of the machine as a calm, impartial object whose strengths and flaws come from a lack of humanity. HAL, GLaDOS, Data and every sci-fi computer in any story shows how we view the algorithm.



In reality, the algorithm has all the biases of its builder. Even the most complex mechanical minds rely on human input and are more like a hundred mechanical arms hovering over a hundred calculators than an actual mechanical mind. If you look closely, you can see the flaws in algorithms in nearly every facet of modern day life.



You can see it in how visual algorithms in self-driving cars regularly jolt to such unnatural stops that they get rear-ended. Or how Tesla’s autopilot mode couldn’t differentiate between the bright sky and the white trailer of truck, resulting in the death of the driver.



For a less dramatic but more relevant example, consider Google’s search algorithms. Efficiently communicating with Google means talking like a robot just learning language. Don’t bog the search query down with grammar, just slap keywords in. You’ll often get better results. In the world of content, we understand the algorithm all too keenly. I vividly remember a client telling me to write only odd numbered list-based blog posts because the SEO algorithm liked odd numbers more that month.



Stu2b50 is a data junkie. He cites FiveThirtyEight’s data-driven analysis as a big part of why he started his own algorithm. His approach to the algorithm is pragmatic. “The thing about these [algorithms], is that they can’t be wrong, because they’re inherently subjective. For example, if one ranking algorithm favors consistency and the other favors peaks, neither is wrong, because there is no objective metric by which to judge them.”



Stu2b50 gets to the heart of the matter: algorithms are subjective, as is any ranking. It’s not about the algorithm as much as what you tell the algorithm to focus on.

For suar, the subjectivity and focus aren’t the issue. The data is. “One of the weakest parts about the PGR is that it relies on data and this data has to be within a six month period and that really cuts our options short […] past top 50.”



The Melee PGR (MPGR) is top 100 in no small part because it runs on a panel. The PGRU, suar insists, would get much uglier if it produced an algorithm-based top 100. However, both statsmash and OrionRank use an algorithm to make a top 100.



“For my purposes, there are players have very consistent performances in the 50-100 rank,” stu2b50 tells me.

Mathew “Freezie” Aliotta, the other brain behind OrionRank, agrees. “I do believe players that made it into the top 100 [of OrionRank] are deserving to be there. Although, he admits, “They are definitely a bit harder to rank due to how large the scene is.”



At the same time, no ranking in the business has the attention and the criticism the PGR does. OrionRank and Statsmsash don’t have to deal with several players complaining about several parts of the algorithm that get them placed 80th instead of 60th. For suar and the PGStats team, the criticism matters. As does the ability to expand to a top 100 when there is more talent in Smash than ever before.



Weighing the data, the MPGR panel, and just how important the rankings are to Smash, the PGStats team made a game-changing decision.

Throw out the algorithm.

It’s time for a panel. Predictably, this would be its own controversy. If there is one truth in rankings it’s this: it’s controversy all the way down, baby.

The prejudices of the people

Most sports have a panel rank of some kind. Basketball has a particularly hot button panel ranking system called All-Defensive (and All-NBA) teams. The NBA forms a panel of various VIPs in Basketball and asks them to rank how good a player is overall. The NBA uses those scores to determine if players get a serious honor that can result in a big payout.



This panel was part of the reason why Indiana Pacers player Myles Turner got snubbed. Joel Embiid, a popular superstar playing on a much more televised, larger market team nudged Turner out of a spot. The two players were very comparable on defense and even a notable Pacers-centric blog admits either was a good choice. However, for small market fans, it felt like Turner never stood a chance because most people on the panel didn’t even get a chance to watch him since his games were aired less often and he had much less star power.

Do you think the PGRU should be panel based? No, it'll be biased 83%, 62 votes 62 votes 83% 62 votes - 83% of all votes

Yes, it'll make it more accurate 17%, 13 votes 13 votes 17% 13 votes - 17% of all votes Total Votes: 75 Voting is closed Poll Options are limited because JavaScript is disabled in your browser.

Still, a panel system has some serious advantages that an algorithm system doesn’t. An algorithm only works off of data and it can’t see certain nuances. What if a player’s worst performance came when they felt horribly sick? What if a player lost to MKLeo five times, but took him to game five every time? The algorithm doesn’t see the nuances and the panel (ideally) does.



The other advantage of the panel is that it’s harder to make than algorithm.

“In some sense, I think it’s a good change,” stu2b50 says of the move to the panel. “Making an algorithmic ranking system does not have particularly high barriers of entry. Any dude can get the data, from my site for instance, and make their own. But, getting and vetting a massive panel of busy people to rank 100 players is kinda hard. So, in a way, PG’s clout is better used.”



However, a lot of viewers, analysts, and players fear the change to the panel. Mr. R, Coney, and Barnard’s Loop all voiced worries about the move. Mr. R fears how panelists will ignore Europe, given how overlooked the scene is. Zak “Coney” Zeeks fears players will romanticize new talent and hidden bosses over veterans and foreign players.

Prior to either of us knowing about the move, Barnard’s Loop spoke to both worries. “You’d really need panelists from all over to make a truly good panel ranking. The coordination and gaps in scene knowledge or in-region bias could quickly make a project infeasible.” Trusting the panel means voices from all over the globe and ultimately trusting the community.

i understand why PGR would go to a panel system but i still fundamentally disagree with it



obvious implications for non-NA players



even in NA, less-visible but highly skilled vets like Scatt, Yeti, Pelca, Dill, etc may as well be invisible (not that they'd care prob lol) — CONEY (@CONEY) January 23, 2020

The leap of faith is a tough one to make and it comes at a terrible time. Right as suar announces the change to the panel, the MPGR’s panel releases one of the most controversial top 10’s Melee has ever seen. MPGR’s top 10 neatly emphasizes the flaws in the panel system, first in form of legacy bias.



Jason “Mew2King” Zimmerman, one of the gods of Melee, gets 10th place over Shephard “Fiction” Lima, despite having been inactive for half the season and not having near the wins Fiction had. If you know Fiction, you already know he’s yelling about this Twitter.

M2k didn't have better results than you, but since he didn't attend, we simply "extrapolated" his results and assumed he's better than you. This was the most objective decision and isn't legacy bias hehe — Fiction (@FictionIRL) January 23, 2020

Fiction has as much right to complain as Goblin or Dark Wizzy. Much like Myles Turner, him being even slightly comparable to his more known rival mean he was doomed from the jump. What’s Fiction to a god?



In the top 10 itself, Joseph “Mang0” Marquez and Zain “Zain” Naghmi both vent about being underrated because they attended too many tournaments and took too many losses. If that complaint sounds familiar it’s because it’s the exact same attendance complaint the algorithm got.



At the same time, Eric “Pandarian” Lund decided to take the PGR out of the equation and make a panel ranking of his own – The Global Smash Power Rankings. Reddit, and even some twitter, users quickly pan the list for wide inaccuracies, bizarre choices, and blatant favoritism. Pandarian couldn’t have known it at the time, but putting out a very volatile panel ranking wouldn’t help the reception of the PGRU’s new panel system.



However, many players and community voices laud the change. Multiple commentators, tournament organizers, and top players replied to PGStat’s tweets with pure support. The panel is controversial, not unpopular – as was the algorithm. Many voices in the middle meet the panel with cautious optimism.

After all, the Smash community hasn’t seen what the panel can do for Ultimate and the MPGR panel did get more of the list in line with expectations than the PGRU did. The problem is, the MPGR has a much simpler tasks. Melee has only two hyper-relevant regions – Europe and NA – and NA is clearly the most relevant. That means the MPGR panel doesn’t need to be as carefully balanced with international voices.



Melee has also been around for nearly two decades. Ultimate’s comparative novelty adds another layer of difficulty to analyzing skill.

“I think it’s been a good first year as a spectator,” Barnard’s Loop says of Ultimate, “but it is incredibly jarring to create & keep track of rankings/records when years of Smash 4 conditioned me to expect certain players to do well or poorly.”



“People are figuring out the game,” suar sighs. “What’s rough is that while people are figuring out the game they’re also getting ranked for what they do or don’t do. […] There’s high turnover in the first couple rankings, just like we saw with Smash Wii U.”



The novelty of Ultimate isn’t the only thing making it unpredictable – it’s the size, too. Ultimate has higher attendance numbers than Smash has ever seen. As a result, the same players don’t go head-to-head in Ultimate as often as in Melee.

Barnard’s Loop illustrates the point in two neat examples. “We have only seen MKLeo versus Zackray twice in 13 months despite both being top 10 players. We only just saw Marss vs. Zackray at Summit a couple of months ago.” Ultimate is an esport that spans the Pacific and Atlantic and breaks attendance records.



That doesn’t mean the panel is a pipe dream, it just means it will take more work and probably make mistakes. Some of those mistakes may even be the exact same as the ones the algorithm made, but there’s hope. “If the PGStats team can get a nice regional balance for the panel, as well as people who have strong knowledge about the international scene,” Freezie says, “I can see the system working pretty nicely for them.”

Money on the line

If you’ve read this far, you’ve gathered that there’s a whole world to Smash rankings and this world is sustained by pretty much everyone in the Smash community caring about these rankings. But why do players care about rankings? Why don’t more players just make their own rankings or use any of the many alternative rankings that put them higher? Why do fans (and sometimes competitors) harass PGStats people to the point where tweets like these are necessary?

Seeing all the hate @PracticalTAS is getting over the MPGR/PGRU is honestly so scary.



It's ok to disagree, I encourage discussion around the rankings. But when people spam him saying he's biased, clueless, or call the rankings "a fucking joke", a line is definitely crossed. — Teroz (@TerozHS) January 25, 2020

Some of the stress comes from money. The higher the rank, the better chance a player gets a tier 1 sponsor, like Team Liquid or Team SoloMid. These teams don’t just pay for flights and hotels, they pay a stipend. The tier 1 sponsor lets Smash players live a rare dream – surviving off of their craft.



So a big dip, say Goblin being the in the 40’s instead of the 20’s could be messing with a player’s money. However, that’s all speculation as to how an esports team does scouting. To cut through speculation and into fact, I talked with one of my colleagues at Team Liquid – Jeff “Crms” Anderson.



Crms has been a part of the FGC for a while and he helped build the scouting reports for Team Liquid’s biggest FGC signings – Nemo, John Takeuchi, and Gen. Of anyone I could reach out to, he would know best how much rankings really mean to a tier 1 sponsor.



“Player rankings and how important that is can vary wildly based on the needs of the organization. I would say generally you need to be at a very competitive level (consistent high rankings in major events).”



As tough as reaching that “very competitive level” is, Smash players ranked in the 20’s and 30’s manage it. Even before Dark Wizzy got Top 8 in back to back majors, he had consistent enough high rankings in major events that sponsors would take notice. It’s worth noting that “consistent” point, too. Upsetting a top player is good, getting in top 20 of the PGR is better, getting to the top 16 at every S-tier you go to is the best.

Basically, as suar says, the PGR is “results based, not skills based.” It’s what suar calls a report card and stu2b50 calls a reward. Either way, it’s evaluating and averaging out highs and lows over 6 months, not saying who would come out on top right now.

Statsmash is a counterexample of an ELO based system that’s more predictive. “It’s really aimed at the question: at this moment in time, what is the likelihood X player will win over Y player?” Stu2b50 says. He explains to me that you could use his system to generate precise odds of victory for specific matchups. The distinction between results and skills based is one the audience and even players can miss, but talent scouts and sponsors probably won’t.

If tier 1 organizations were outsiders to the FGC, they might have trouble seeing the difference. But according to Crms they aren’t outsiders. “FGC teams generally have staff that are knowledgeable of the scene and then have dedicated community members they work with for advice.” Tier 1 scouts are in the community enough to see more than the rank.



And tier 1 teams often don’t need a high-ranked superstar. “When TL picked up John [Takeuchi] he had some solid results but he was not a top 10 player on any sort of ranking metric. We already had Nemo who is an established ‘superstar’ so pairing the old guard Nemo with a new potential star in John worked well for us.” (John ranked 32nd at the end of the 2018 season)



The truth is that rankings only mean so much. Much of what moves a player forward in the ecosystem comes from two things: personality and luck.



Crms makes that first point very clear when I ask him what matters outside of skill. “Personality, personality, personality! Very important. If you aren’t literally just winning everything, you have to be able to bring something to the table.” Crms stresses that this can be good or bad buzz. Dark Wizzy said trans rights or Saleem “Salem” Akiel Young said Mang0 is dangerous. Both can help build a brand.



Finally, there’s dumb luck. Right place. Right time. Sometimes a player just has to wait for a window to open. Samuel “Dabuz” Buzby had to wait for Salem’s contract to expire. Justin “Wizzrobe” Hallett had to wait for Envy to decide to expand into Smash. John Takeuchi happened to build his brand and be young and promising at the time a tier one sponsor needed a young, promising player with a good brand.



However, I don’t think that everyone in Smash makes so much of the rankings just because of money. A big part of rankings, and all things in Smash, is passion.

Pure passion

Half on a whim, I asked every ranker except suar if this made them any money or if it was a passion project. Here’s what they said.

“Neither I nor Freeziebeatz make money off of this; we do this as a passion project.” Barnard’s Loop, OrionRank

“There are no ads (which I intend to not have), so I make a small negative amount of money in server costs. And very negative if you include opportunity cost. It’s definitely just something I do for fun.” Stu2b50, Statsmash

“TAS and I, we don’t receive a salary but the publishing deal from Red Bull – that is what essentially pays for us to do this stuff. Employed proper? Not really a thing. TAS and I have our own full time jobs […] it’s like a passion project of sorts.” suar, PGStats

Throughout suar’s interview, I can hear kids talking and playing in the background. He’s recording during a break in his work day as a teacher.

If you spend time in the Smash community, whether it’s through competing, whether it’s through writing, whether it’s through interviews, or whether it’s just through watching things closely, you learn that passion builds everything. Every tournament you watch, every competitor you root for, every single ranking you love or hate – passion makes all of that. If it were about money, we would all be playing a MOBA right now.



The rankers make lists that will inevitably be attacked, the experts work as panelists, and the players fight for (and against) their rank for far more than just money. They care about all this for the pride in having their skill affirmed. They care about it for the love the people have of their mastery of the game.

Suar gave me a more succinct version: “If people are gonna say anything at all, whether it’s positive or negative, it’s because they care.”



“It’s talked about by everybody, whether you’re going to blast it, right?” suar chuckles before moving on, “Or praise it because your favorite player’s finally ranked. It involves everybody in a unique way and if it wasn’t as important as it was then people wouldn’t talk about it. And that isn’t necessarily me patting myself on the back, it’s more so, it’s taken a life of its own. People are so sensitive to it because it matters.”



The rankings matter, sometimes for sponsors, sometimes for visibility, sometimes for pride, sometimes as a way to employ writers, video editors, and designers to make one of the most polished products in Smash. It involves everyone, so everyone sees it. The rankings hit players viscerally because they can mean and say so much.



In turn, the players and fans respond with their hearts on their sleeves. Then the more detached viewers and analysts hit back at the players and fans for getting hot headed. All of it goes down on Twitter, Reddit, Twitch, and YouTube, platforms that exacerbate the extremes in ever interaction.



As the screens blur lines, every party can forget that all this happens only because passion. The PGR exists only because suar and PracticalTAS sink their free time into it. The same goes for stu2b50 and Statsmash – one of Smash’s main live ranking systems. The same goes for Barnard’s Loop and Freezie and OrionRank – now Smash’s main algorithm based seasonal/annual system. The same goes for the narratives the competitors create for themselves.



Whenever anything great happens in Smash, it happens off of the backs of overworked, underpaid people chasing a passion. Between interviews, writing, rewriting, planning, editing, and so much more, I don’t know if I’ve learned a good way to rank athletes. I don’t know if I’ve learned what to do about algorithms or panels. In some ways, I left my research agreeing with every party less than I had before, but empathizing much more.

It takes so many kinds of passion to build an entire scene, an entire esport. It takes so much passion to make something matter. And passion isn’t always pretty.

[Full disclosure: I wrote four blurbs for PGRU Season 2 and worked with suar, Justin “Popi” Banusing, and other members of the PGStats team. Over the course of several interviews and interactions with rankers, I’ve been treated with nothing but kindness. If you take literally anything from this article, it should be that subjectivity is inevitable.]