Game Theory - You ARE Your Character! (Super Smash Bros Ultimate)

Episode Date: June 4, 2023

Join Game Theory Host MatPat as he breaks down the science of why you chose your Smash main!

Day 23, I continue to live amongst the Pac-Men undetected. To them, I am invisible. Just another hungry yellow orb with black eyes. Another jaundiced splotch built for one purpose to consume. I like it here. I feel at home. At peace, this is my sister from another mister, a family from another arcade cabinet. This is Yellow Kirby undercover over and out.

Hello internet, welcome to game theory. The show that can't wait to dedicate an episode to Why the Parade. A plan has feet. I mean, seriously, Nintendo, what, what is this? But not only are we the show dedicated to exploring anatomical anomalies of predatory plant life, today, a new challenger has entered the ring, baby, and it is us. It was my hypothesis that this game could be used as a personality assessment of sorts, that the character you choose to play as could serve as a reflection of what makes you. You are beauty gurus more likely to be drawn to pink characters, are either Eastern Europeans attracted to the Gothic stylings of the Castlevania clan are fans of travel videos more likely to pick characters that are popular overseas With so many different characters in this one game it didn't seem like that much of a stretch to me

There's truly one character for every sort of player every personality type every personal preference every play style regardless of whether you're a newcomer or a die-hard veteran of the series So I wanted to put that hypothesis to the test with the help of half a million of you as well as some of my YouTube friends. So what does your favorite Super Smash Bros. Ultimate character say about you? That is what I'm about to explore today. So crank those stocks up to three and keep an eye out for falling beam swords because it's time to smash our way through a lot of data. Oh, so much data. First, let's get ourselves a layer of the land. Of the survey participants about 255,000 were guys, 125,000 were repin for the ladies, 86,000 of you reported that you were non-binary, and meaning that you're not exclusively masculine or feminine, and another 86,000 preferred not to say.

And this question actually became important right off the home run bat. For as much as we all like to think that we've broken down gender stereotypes in 2018, a few things do seem to remain true, the first being that girls apparently still really like to play as princesses. That's right! When asked who you anticipate playing as in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, females were three times more likely than boys to choose strong female mainstays like Zelda or Peach, as well as newcomer Daisy. But when it comes to female role models, apparently no one can topple Rosalina,

who was over six times more popular with girls than she was with boys. In fact, Rosalina was so popular with females that they chose her nearly twice as frequently as most any other character. I mean, I get it! If I had my druthers, I'd probably choose to be a princess of the stars with powers over time and space, too! Females were two and a half times more likely to pick a female fighter than they were a male one.

And, well, that might not seem too surprising, what is shocking is that the female bias didn't apply to characters like Sammas, She, and Wefit Trainer. So, interpreting these results, I would guess that it's a matter of looks. Samus, in her regular suit, was in the bottom tier for girls. Samus, in her zero suit, on the other hand, was one of the top. And it's not because she's one of the overall best characters from previous games either. That's what I initially thought myself, but then I sliced up the data to show only females who reported that they would be first-time players with Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and ZeroSuit Sammas still was in the top tier, which leads me to believe that the differentiating factor here are characters who look quote-unquote traditionally feminine versus those who don't.

Zero-suit Sammas? Obviously traditionally feminine. Sammas in her normal space suit? Not so much. She disguised as a boy. We fit trainer? Creepy Fitness avatar who attacks you with hooops. So then by extension that merits the question are guys more likely to pick fellow dude bros? Surprisingly, no. I mean sure characters like Snake are much more popular with boys than other genders, but according to the data, what guys are really after are monsters Ridley is two and a half times more popular for guys than he is for girls. But the big surprise to me at least was King K.Ruhl who took the top guy spot overall at nearly 5% of all male respondents being excited to get their hands on that crown. Now to ensure that this wasn't just because Ridley and K.R.R.R. were new characters.

I sliced out all the veterans of the Super Smash Bros. series and still these two persisted. Just going to prove the classic phrase, boys will be boys, unless they can be scary reptile monsters, in which case they will absolutely choose to be scary reptile monsters. So we definitely see some things falling into classic gender lines, but it gets really interesting when we looked at the group of you who self-identified as non-binary. Where male and female identifiers had clear winners and losers, people outside of these genders had a much more diverse set of choices. It really is fair to say that non-binary players seem to discriminate less. more characters and have fewer attachments to specific types of characters. To prove this, I turned to standard deviation. So when you're looking at a lot of data points, standard deviation is the measure of how spread out the numbers in that data set are. For instance, if you're looking at this height chart of Mario characters, you have some characters like Bowser and PD Pirata who are huge, and others like shy guys and toads who are super short.

It's a broad spectrum and as a result you'd have yourself a pretty large standard deviation. By contrast, character heights in the Super Smash Bros. series have to have a smaller standard deviation, since they're all fighting on the same playing field. I mean, if the memes have taught me anything, that was the reason it took so long for Ridley to join the roster in the first place, the fear that he was just always too big for the stages and other fighters. So when looking at character picks in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, the male and female standard deviation was twice as large as the non-binary standard deviation, Meaning that males and females had a much more extreme difference between their favorite and least favorite characters. There was less of a middle ground.

When looking at earlier games in the franchise, it was even more extreme, six times larger. The same held true for those who preferred not to reveal their gender, a standard deviation much less extreme than those who identified as either strongly male or strongly female. But we didn't just look at gender the whole time. Your country's local culture also seems to play a huge role in who you choose to play as. For instance, see if you can figure this one out. Mexico, Spain, Portugal, Brazil, Chile, Puerto Rico, Italy, and France. All had a much higher than average number of players eager to assume the role of Simon and Richter Belmont.

The new editions from the Castlevania series, two to four times, as likely to pick those characters relative to the rest of the world, in fact. Can you think of why? This would be like the coolest SAT question ever. My hypothesis is that it's because these countries in particular tend to all be very religious. and not just with any religion, but Catholicism specifically. Italy is home to the Catholic Church. France is often called the second daughter of the Catholic Church, and Spain is 70% Catholic, the country's history steeped in this series of religious struggles

between Catholics and Muslims. And that religiosity carries through in the culture of most other Spanish and Portuguese-speaking countries like Mexico, Portugal, and Puerto Rico. So it would make sense that characters from a game franchise all about crosses and holy water and battles against demons spirits would resonate more strongly in those territories. You know what other character is surprisingly popular in Spain and France? Isabel from Animal Crossing? Is it just

because these countries are more enthusiastic about catching fish to work their way out a crippling debt to a thrifty raccoon? I don't think so. Isabel and Isabella are classic French and Spanish names, the equivalent of R. Elizabeth in English. Names that belonged to multiple queens in both countries, including Isabel of Castile in Spain, who sponsored the explorations of Christopher Columbus and one of the most notorious women in English history, Isabella of France, who led an invasion of England that ultimately resulted in the deposition of her husband, Edward II. And pause right there. You see, after I finished writing this episode, I found out that this part of the theory is probably wrong, because Isabelle's name is different in both Spain and France. In Spanish, it's Canella, and in France, it's Marie. So, yeah, the whole name theory, probably wrong in this case. Wouldn't be the first time one of my theories are wrong. back to your regularly scheduled, potentially less wrong theory. Once again, we see that it's all about

representation, seeing a reflection of yourself in a character, whether that be in the form of a gender, cultural history, or simply your name. Speaking of interesting geographic trends, consider Pac-Man. It seems random, but he's actually three times more likely to be chosen in the countries of India and Romania, which warrants the question, what do those two countries have in common that could also contribute to our favorite yellow muncher chewing up the competition? Well, My theory, my games. Yeah, you get the point, is that it's related to these countries' internet usage. You see, both of these are countries where internet connectivity is on the rise, but slowly.

Because of this, most people play games on their mobile phones, and that means a focus on classic titles like the fighter formerly known as Pac-Man. And that's not all. Studies have also concluded that in India, quick-thinking or reflex-driven games like Pac-Man are also particularly popular, with 22% of the total population playing those sorts of titles, So with limited game availability within the boundaries of the country, you skew in the direction of familiarity, i.e. Hackman. One last regional trend that I can't actually quite figure out, and I'd love to hear your theories on,

Greninja. He was the number three pick in the Philippines, the number two pick in Singapore, and the number one pick overall in India. Three to five times more likely to be selected in those countries relative to any other in the world. Why would a ninja Pokemon be so much more popular there? Especially when you consider that Nintendo doesn't even have an official presence in India. And the anime is really the only way the country has experienced the Pokemon franchise. Give me your thoughts. I seriously could not figure this one out.

And finally, we didn't just look at demographics. The last big part of the survey was to break down how online creators and online viewers play the Super Smash Bros. Games. Do educational creators play the smartest characters, like Fire Emblem's Robin? Are food channels more likely to pick Kirby for his voracious appetite? Are vloggers picking Greninja because he looks like he's dabbing on them haters half the time? Well, not exactly. Beauty gurus who took the survey showed an even more pronounced version of the female preferences that we talked about earlier. Heavily favoring characters that were women, pretty, or cute, by a factor of two to one,

with Daisy and Bayonetta as their top tier choices, but jigglypuff and Pechoo also having a strong showing. And if Pechoo is being chosen, you know it's gotta be because he's cute, because it is definitely not for a strategic person. Meanwhile, the beauty gurus definitely stayed away from the quote-unquote ugly characters as they were the only group of all the group's question to really not want to play as King K. Rule or Ridley, about 75% less likely to pick either of those characters. Meanwhile, creators who do travel content also yielded some surprising results. Though they weren't all Fire Emblem characters, like I expected, they were the only category to actively pick playing as Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong. It's actually surprising. For as popular as King K Rule is, Donkey and Diddy just aren't, for some reason. Looking at the data, even dating all the way back to the original Super Smash Bros. for the Nintendo 64 and Super Smash Bros. Melee, DK has always been rounding out the bottom of character lists since the beginning. Coming in Dead Last, or at the very least, bottom 10% of selections for all the games that we asked about.

Maybe gamers just have a thing against ties? Or, more accurately, my theory, maybe these characters appeal to old. You see, travel content tends to attract older creators and viewers. Older because they have much more money to spend on things like plane tickets, hotels, international experiences, as such, they would be much more likely to gravitate to some classic arcade favorites like Donkey Kong. In this case, being three times more likely to choose this member of the Kong family. Supporting this hypothesis is the fact that travel creators also skewed more towards duck hunt dog, pit, and Rob, all classic characters, while underpicking more modern game characters

like Inklings and Greninja. They were also twice as likely to pick Weepit trainer, so yeah, like I said, older audience. And finally, for all of us self-identified gaming creators, our picks coincided with our experience in the franchise. The longer we've been playing the Super Smash Bros series, the more likely we were to pick the newer characters. And this makes sense, right? If you've been playing Mario and NAS since the game's first release in 1999, on and off across six games for the next 20 years, Playing them yet again in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is going to be a little less spicy than getting your hands on some new characters with some new dynamics. That's why Bayonetta, Isabelle, the Belmont's, Cloud, K-Rule, and Ridley were all at the top of the experienced gamer list.

Now, all we need is Waluigi for the meme crowd, and we've got ourselves everyone covered. But if we can put our differences aside for a moment, there's one last thing I want to point out about the data, the characters that brought us all together. In a game filled with so many options and a ton of popular new faces, two stood out as the all-around winners. Characters that topped literally every list, no matter which way I broke down the data. Can you guess who they are? Link and Kirby. Across all generations of Super Smash Bros. Games, across all genders, across all content genres, and levels of experience with the franchise, Link and Kirby were always, always, always the number one and number two picks.

Always. And they did just squeak by, it tended to be by a significant margin. It seems like the pretty blonde elf boy from a retro game with a huge arsenal of weaponry, and the cute pink puffball that can literally become anything, appeal to literally everyone. Trust the data. But hey, that's just a theory. A game theory! Thanks for watching!