esports
Smash Bros. on Switch is on the horizon and the competitive scene is ramping up for it. We chat to one of Smash 4’s top pros, Samuel ‘Dabuz’ Buzby, about his career and his plans for the future.
Sacrifice is a mandatory tenet of success: top players for every game have given up time, money and even friendships in order to achieve their goal of becoming one of the best. Most members of Super Smash Bros. 4’s top 10 have had to give up their education while playing in order to dedicate nearly all their time to playing. Samuel ‘Dabuz’ Buzby has done that and more.
“When starting out I really had to save to get to tournaments,” Buzby said. “I wouldn’t eat lunch at school to save money: that gave me a little more to get outside of my bubble of only playing on WiFi.”
Buzby has been a benchmark of competitive Smash 4, remaining in the top 10 for the entire history of the game. He’s won national events like Civil War and taken down other top players like Gonzalo ‘ZeRo’ Barrios during the 2GGC: ARMS Saga, which you can see in the video below:
Originally from Long Island, Buzby has been mostly separated from the local scene in New York, making it difficult for him to make it out for local tournaments during the Melee and Brawl eras – but thanks to the Wii and Wii U’s online options, he could still compete to a degree. “Brawl was my jam because of WiFi,” Buzby said. “I really decided to commit to playing when Smash 4 came out – it was a big jump.”
Once Buzby, who’s only 24, started to really explore the landscape of competitive Smash, he had to find creative ways to get around his parents to go and compete. “My parents were always worried about me, but I couldn’t let that get in the way of playing,” Buzby said. "I had to lie to them sometimes about where I was going, since they didn’t want me to leave Long Island.”
But after he won US$3,000 at the Major League Gaming’s GameBattles in 2009, his parents opened their eyes to what their son could do in the world of Smash. “Once I won that, they realised that there was more in it then sitting in front of a TV,” Buzby said. “And that money also opened up new possibilities in the future. I could start competing.”
Switching Smash up
Buzby is now an accomplished player who doesn’t have to worry about sneaking away for tournaments. Instead he worries about staying relevant as the scene grows ahead of Nintendo’s next instalment, which'll be showcased at E3 2018 in Los Angeles.
Before Nintendo announced the new game in a recent Direct, many community members had been losing hope for the future of the scene. And even now, after a new game has been announced, some parts of the community believe their efforts are fruitless until it’s actually out.
“We can’t relax now,” Buzby said. “We have a player base, we have streamers, and we even have a structure. Everything will move over to the new game once it comes out, Smash 4 will move to the side – but we can’t stop now or we’ll lose some of that momentum.”
For the longest time, the competitive Smash scene has been viewed as a scattered group of events that are all separately organised. But Buzby doesn’t see it that way, he sees a structure that’s been developing since the first competitive tournament that’s ready for a new surge of players.
“What’s great about the current tournament community is that we have an infrastructure,” Buzby added. “It took a while for tournaments to pop up all over and get consistent, and even though things can get messy, we have a real set of great events that will be ready for a new game.”
A crown that’s up for grabs
The other big narrative surging through the community is the race to be the absolute best, after Gonzalo ‘ZeRo’ Barrios retired only a few months ago. But that may not be on the table until the new game is in the community’s hands.
“There is this apathy now since no one can actually take the throne from ZeRo, so there isn’t a lot of motivation,” Buzby said. “We’re not really sure how it’s going to play out in terms of who’ll be at the top next, but it’s not going to happen anytime soon. The Smash Switch announcement was good, but it kind of drove the nail into the wood. People aren’t as hyped for tournaments right now, but they will be on the Switch.”
On top of that, the schedule for top players like Buzby, Leonardo ‘MkLeo’ Perez, and Nairoby ‘Nairo’ Quezada is already almost ridiculous ,with tournaments happening back to back and essentially no rest for competitors. “Burnout is a real thing and it’s affected a lot of people, myself included,” Buzby said. “There were a huge number events last year and we’re coming off a bit of an off-season.”
Buzby emphasised, however, that these past few months have been a great time for players from all levels to really focus on their local scenes, giving top players a little room to breathe.
A lone wolf on the prowl
Unlike other top players, Buzby is a free agent, meaning he needs to be far more careful when planning which events he attends. “I can’t just go to an event because it’s officially ranked or a popular local one,” he said. “If the first-place prize is 700 bucks, it’s probably not worth it. The cost to get there will be too high, especially if there’s a local event right nearby.”
Even as one of the top players, Buzby still has to figure everything out on his own: he doesn’t have a team or a sponsor to help get him to events, or figure out the best schedule. “Right now for me it's all about budgeting,” Buzby said. “Even though I can afford to go to events, I have to budget tightly, even with some tournament organisers helping me get there.”
Currently, the prospect of playing Smash full time, something Buzby has been doing for a few months, is tough to make sustainable. That’s why he’s starting to look beyond the battlefield to what his future might hold. “I’m thinking about going back to school,” Buzby said “I’ve played full time for the past five months, and while streaming and content creation has been great, I do want to plan my future.”
But Buzby assures us that his plan will always include Smash. “I’m going to continue to grind. I want the Switch version to come out and people to look to me as someone they can learn from,” he said. “I want my name to be out there. I put way too much time into Smash to just drop it. I’ll be here for the long haul.”
