User:Aidanzapunk/Fanmade Content

This is an essay, a page containing the advice or opinions of one or more SmashWiki contributors. You may heed it or not, at your discretion.

“	Simply thinking about including a character in the game and the act of actually crafting the character and making them work are two entirely different things. It's quite difficult for me because most players only think about whether a character is in the game and fail to consider the difficulties in bringing that character to life.	”
—Masahiro Sakurai

Fanmade content is something that will always find its way into franchises, ranging from art of existing content to creations of entirely original content. Smash Bros. is certainly no exception, as there is a ton of fanmade content, ranging from mods, to Flash games, to even just basic stuff like writing ideas down, the lattermost having gained a surge in popularity across this very wiki back in late 2015, with too many users to list throwing their own ideas up over the years afterwards, though this way of sharing fanmade content is also not exclusive to this wiki. This page is a collection of my thoughts on fanmade content in Smash, and more specifically movesets for characters, coming from someone who was part of that aforementioned surge, has been making loads of content since, and has seen tons of other fanmade content over the years.

Before we begin...

Let me just clarify that this is not something that should be taken as law. I am not here to say, "this is how things should be done, and if you do it any other way, you're wrong." Making fanmade content is a fun process, since you're adding your own little touches to something you hold dear to you. Tons of people pour their heart and passion into content like this, regardless of what form it takes, and to say that they're doing it "wrong" would just be entirely missing the point I just made about things being fun. This is especially true in the case of Smash content, because there's just so much you could do, in an equally high number of ways. However, these are still my legitimate thoughts and criticisms, and while I don't think that they're going to change anything major—I am just some rando on the internet, after all—if you're thinking of making fanmade Smash content and you happen to come across this, I'd at least recommend giving it a read, and taking into consideration my thoughts. Even if these thoughts are considered, however, I do not think it will hinder the amount of fun to be had in the process.

Choosing a character

The first important step to any Smash game, fanmade or not, is picking who should be in it. I mean, what's a Smash game without characters to fight as? But with fanmade content comes one major thing to keep in mind: exactly who you choose to make a moveset for. The real answer is "whoever the hell you want", because Sakurai himself follows this logic, but at the end of the day, I also won't tell you who you should make a moveset for—I've seen movesets made for the most out-of-left-field picks, some of which are still around on this wiki today—but I think the most important consideration that one should make is how realistic their appearance in a Smash game would be. Obviously, given the nature of fan content, I don't mean that in the sense that you should only pick characters that you think Sakurai himself would pick—rather, I think the consideration instead lies in whether or not a character can fight. The term "fight" is, of course, a loose term, given the sizable collection of characters in Smash already that are never actually seen performing a physical attack, and it would be hypocritical of me to suggest otherwise given that I have made my own moveset for that exact archetype of character, but the point still stands: if you can make it work, and you can make it believably work instead of having to justify it, then you're in the clear.

Making a moveset

Once you've chosen a character, you have to ask yourself the big question: what exactly makes a moveset? At the bare minimum, I try to isolate what I consider to be the three main ideas: how a character would generally fight, what their up special should be, and what their Final Smash would be. The first allows the character to exist in the first place, and allows you to create something truly unique; the second allows the character to survive the mechanics of Smash, since it is a platform fighter focused on launching your opponents off the stage; the third allows them to have a finishing move that more solidly references their home series in a way that would otherwise be impossible. This ideology can be seen in all of my characters, but as an example, Professor Layton is a fencer, uses a fan-propelled car (from the movie) for his up special, and has a combination of a puzzle and one of the most action-packed scenes his series has ever seen for his Final Smash. But if you've already deduced how a character fights, recovers, and finishes off opponents, surely it can't be harder than slapping a few special moves together and calling it a day, right? You'd be surprised. The thing that sets apart the characters in not just Smash, but also fighting games as a whole (for the most part), is their individuality, and what unique things they bring to the table. And when you're making a moveset, you should at least shed some light on how that individuality is shown. Do you have to be super technical about it? No. Some people choose to, and some people have the time and effort to take that technical information and turn it into a fully functioning end result, but you don't have to do any of that if you don't know the ins and outs of the series—I don't, so I choose not to. But if you're wanting to show off some fanmade movesets, you'd theoretically want people to understand your vision. Some characters may even have specific abilities unique to them that would help them stand out more from the rest of the cast. That said, you don't need some wheel-reinventing gimmick for every single character—often times, I've found that a character just doing what they do best is all that you really need. With that in mind, what is perhaps the most important thing is to have a complete moveset. Many times, both on and off of this wiki, I've seen a moveset with just special moves listed out, and while special moves are an important part of a character's moveset, as they are some of the main things that set characters apart from one another, they are not the only thing involved in a moveset, and they shouldn't be. I've never been a fan of just doing something for the sake of having something, and even if it's just a little, I try to put effort into anything I do, which includes fleshing out the whole of the moveset so that whoever's reading has the clearest idea of what I've envisioned. Many people also try to throw as many references as possible into non-special moves, even if it is not befitting the attack slot that the reference is attached to. While I personally will make as many references to the source material as I can, references don't just make the character, so you should be able to make your character realistically "fight" and not just simply use something from their series just because it's a reference. Obviously, however, Smash is different from your average Street Fighter, so you also shouldn't make a character strictly a physical fighter either, especially if it's not befitting them—you're taking them from their home turf and putting them into Smash, so you have to fit the fighting game around the character instead of fitting the character around the fighting game. Characters like Mega Man and Simon feel like they're straight out of their home series, while other characters like Robin and Olimar feel like they've been adapted to fit the series—it's a delicate balance that even I sometimes struggle with. Often times, though, I do see movesets with purely original content that, to me, only seems to exist just to check off the boxes, particularly with the special moves, with no real connection to the character. Now, sometimes, you do have to play around a little, especially if the source material you have offers very limited options in the grand scheme of things, and there's even times when the source material itself is very scarce and leaves you having to come up with nearly entirely original stuff. Believe it or not, though, plenty of Smash stuff has that already—characters like the Ice Climbers and Little Mac, while almost entirely original in terms of abilities, still function as the characters in question and fill the holes left by the source material. You also shouldn't let the fact that someone else has done a moveset stop you from making your own moveset, whether said character is on the wiki added by someone else, or is already in a Smash-like game. Like I said before, there's tons of ways for people to go about this, and you shouldn't let the fact that someone else "beat you to it" stop you from sharing your own ideas.

Final notes

While it's encouraged to have less of a focus on stuff outside of characters (Assist Trophies, stages, and the like) on SmashWiki itself, to quickly address them here, I think it's fair to say that they follow the same logic as the previous two points: be smart about it, and make it stand out. Fanmade content is a form of art in a community, and you definitely want to leave your own impact on the collection by making something to call your own and show it off. And like I said, you don't have to follow any of this—I'm just sharing my opinions based on what I've seen and what I've come to think about it all. So go out and make your fanmade content (within reason, of course), and remember the most important rule: have fun with it!