Den’s Funhouse 4

I’ve hosted four tournaments at my house over the years, and with each one I’ve tried to make it a better experience than the last. And with Den’s Funhouse 4 in particular, I wanted to make it the best one yet — and I think I succeeded.

The production of the stream was the most sophisticated it’s ever been. The stream setup and the commentary area were in completely different rooms; a live gameplay feed was shown on the big TV in the living room; I had a custom layout and an animated background. I wanted the stream to be as professional as I could possibly get it. That was my main focus to improve this time around, and aside from a couple of very minor technical hiccups, it went off without a hitch and I’m stoked about that.

The great thing about Melee players is that I think they’re pretty easy to please. I think the main two things that make a tournament enjoyable to attend are 1) having enough setups (which we did), and 2) being around people that are not only fun to play the game with, but to just hang out with as well. The group of players that showed up this time around meshed together really well as far as vibes are concerned. No one really felt out of place — it really did just feel like a bunch of dudes hanging out and playing Melee. There’s a reason it’s called Den’s FUNhouse. It’s a silly name, of course, but that’s kind of the point. There’s plenty of avenues to play extremely tryhard Melee, and while I (and no doubt everyone else) was trying to play my best, I really wanted the environment of this tournament to be laid-back.

I don’t have that much else to say about this event as far as hosting goes. Everyone seemed to have a good time, which was my goal above all else. But this was also an important tournament to me as a competitor, as well. This was a fairly stacked bracket and I was excited to get into it.

Firstly, the format of this tournament was a bit unique. At a glance it’s pretty typical: round robin pools into a main double elimination bracket. But what was interesting about the pools was that the bottom seeds got to take turns picking one player to be in their pool. Walby and I had determined beforehand what would be the most likely pools to form, but it got funky quickly. Originally Walby wasn’t even going to play in pools — we had 13 expected players and we were going to divide them into 3 pools of 4 players each. But because we had someone drop out, Walby had to take their place, which threw a wrench in things. Add in a couple of weird picks and suddenly I’m in the same pool as him — the 1 and 3 seed in the same pool. Lovely.

In all seriousness though, the results of each pool didn’t have a huge impact on the formation of the final bracket. Remember, this is Den’s FUNhouse. It would have been cruel of me to punish the bottom performers in each pool too harshly. Everyone started in Winners regardless of their pools results. The only thing that pools determined was seeding for bracket, which played out mostly as expected.

There isn’t much to speak of as far as my performance and pools is concerned. I beat who I was supposed to beat and lost to who I was supposed to lose to. I went 2–1 only losing to Walby. I made it into bracket as the 6th seed, but functionally it was the same as being the third seed — start.gg is just a weird site and populated the final bracket in a weird way, but it ultimately didn’t matter.

My first opponent in bracket was FakeSnakeJake, an old friend and someone who, despite having never beaten me before, I always consider to be a threat. I realized early on in pools that I was feeling pretty nervous, and this set with Jake wasn’t much different. I couldn’t quite move or respond to his options the way I wanted to at first, but after narrowly losing game 2, I felt like I had woken up. I won the set 3–1, but my nerves made it much more difficult than it needed to be.

In Winner’s Semis, S+Hiro was waiting for me. I’ve only ever beaten him once, but I’ve been wanting to take another one against him for months now. Unfortunately that’s not what happened this time. I narrowly lost game 1 on Yoshi’s to his Fox, and then he switched to Sheik when I counterpicked him to FD. I’m still not great at juggling Sheik, which is the biggest strength Marth has on that stage, and after losing game 2 I probably should have just picked a different stage. But more than anything I wanted to keep playing his Sheik and I suspected that he would have switched back to Fox if I had gone to any other stage. Game 3 didn’t go too differently and I promptly lost. I might have been able to manage my nerves against Jake, but S+Hiro is on another level entirely. Another set loss to a Sheik.

I went on a tear in loser’s bracket. My opponent in quarters was Oozi, who I have a pretty close lifetime head-to-head with across both my Marth and Falco, and against like, 4 or 5 of his characters. He’s been playing mostly Falcon these days, a character that I feel much more confident against than Fox, who Oozi happens to be very good at. Our set was close at a glance, but I truthfully never felt like I wasn’t in control at any point. I played very well and won 3–0.

Next, in loser’s semis, I had to fight Wigwam, a Peach player who I first met at Collision. Our friendlies were pretty one-sided in my favor at the time, but his skill level has gone up considerably since then. This set was pretty similar to the one with Oozi. Despite it being relatively close the whole way through, I was able to maintain my momentum and not be fazed by being down a stock or two. I won 3–0 but once again, it wasn’t a free win.

And then, my opponent in loser’s finals was S+Hiro’s Sheik once again. This time I had a good momentum leading into the set considering how well my previous matches had gone, so my nerves weren’t as prevalent. I played way, way better this time around, too. I was much more confident in my game plan; my neutral was way more solid; and I wasn’t afraid to scrap with him. I was playing really well all things considered, and I managed to bring it to game 5, when something weird happened.

It’s common to be afraid to lose. No one likes losing, so it’s natural to be averse to that feeling. But I think what I’m starting to realize about myself is that maybe I’m afraid to win. For the first four games of this set, I was able to maintain my focus and my composure (mostly — a cornerstone of my nervous playstyle is to spam the ever loving shit out of Marth’s forward smash, and this set was no different), but once we reached game 5 it felt like something had changed. I couldn’t concentrate on playing. My mind was constantly wandering off. I had to force myself to bring my attention back to the game several times. I wasn’t even really thinking about whether I was going to win or lose, a trap that I feel is pretty easy to fall into. I just… wasn’t really thinking about the game anymore. Suddenly I didn’t really care about winning. I almost didn’t want to win. Part of me just wanted to lose so I could fuck off for the rest of the night. I just wanted the set to be over.

I really couldn’t tell you why this happened, or why this has been happening as of late. It seems infallible to me that I would try my absolute hardest to go the distance against a player (and a character) I want to beat so badly, only to stop caring right at the end. I’ve spent so much time daydreaming about winning these kinds of sets. To feel that emotional catharsis of fighting for my life and actually winning at the end. I know I want to win. I want to win so badly it hurts. I know damn well I’m capable of winning. I’m capable of beating players like S+Hiro and people on his level. I’m so fucking close to getting there. So why do I give up when I’m about to get there? I think above all else, even my own gameplay, this is the most important question that I need to find an answer to. Why am I afraid to win?

Anyways, I don’t want to end this post on a bad note, so I’ll talk about how the night ended. Grand finals between Walby and S+hiro was exciting, and doubly so was the grand finals of the redemption bracket between Ernie and smokeweenr. For the first time all day I got to just relax and watch some Melee. It was a really awesome experience gathering around with everyone and watching those sets. Majors and top level play are always exciting, but more people need to experience the hype of watching your homies go at it, too.

This was undoubtedly the best Funhouse yet, and I’m so glad it went as well as it did. I’m going to keep hosting these things as long as I possibly can. I love being able to put on an event like this, and I love how much everyone looks forward to it every time. To those of you who were there and managed to read to the end of this post: thanks for coming. The next one will be even better.

https://www.start.gg/tournament/den-s-funhouse-4/details