Back in the old days, like before the year 2012 or so, there used to be a few top level pros who were that level in several games. Justin Wong (Street Fighter, Marvel Vs Capcom, Capcom Vs SNK), Fatal1ty (Quake, Unreal Tournament, Painkiller) and Mew2King (Melee, Brawl) are 3 of the best examples I can think of and there were several others near/at the top among their multiple games too. But these days, the competition is so well established and the player skills from entry, to highest, are just so much better in every game than before. The super tops make reliable livings from competing in tournaments and these players play 10-14 hours/day every day. If a player or team can't dedicate that much focus into their 1 game, they're not going to place well in tournaments anymore. Some players are veterans who've been playing the game/genre for a decade or even longer. Entering tournaments is just so difficult. You have no idea until you try competing. When I started back on January 2, 2009, I didn't win my 1st tournament set until July 10, 2009. It took me another 6 months to win my 2nd. Imagine playing against the super tops
Fame was a great replacement for friends. It's a feeling unlike anything else. I never got tired of it and people have told me in person that I'm fun to play games with. Nothing has ever made me feel better
The cost of $12,000 that I estimate comes from driving to so many tournaments, buying so much equipment, paying for tournament and venue fees, paying for food, paying for hotels, and how often I'd pay for each of these things. At 1 point in 2015, I was entering 3 tournaments every week. I captured so much content for my Youtube channel that I had to buy a $1,050 custom PC to help me render everything. $300 of the cost was spend on just the CPU
Melee's metagame is dictated by character choices. There is a noticeable portion of players who'll preach to main a character and have a 2ndary to cover those characters' weaknesses. The game's balance is atrocious, even among the tournament viable 8, and there are simply things that better characters can do that worse characters can't handle. Fortunately, a little bit more side on the ideology that it's better to focus all of your efforts into perfecting the 1 character you can play at a time and just fight through the unfair character disadvantages. It'll make them improve faster and there's a psychological benefit to it of preventing players from entering any degree of learned helplessness
5,000 subscribers for a fighting game wouldn't be considered pathetic if the year was 2012, but 2013 happened and now it's pathetic. Getting 50,000 subscribers is the accomplishment that 5,000 was a few years ago. I remember the days when the most subscribed to channel in Melee had only 9,000 or so and he was the unrivaled king of tournament Melee on Youtube. It took several years for others to even get to his level. He stayed at that count because he suddenly unfortunately went inactive because work enslaved him just so he could afford to live
My Youtube channel is about me making funny moment videos. I play to troll rather than to win. Unfortunately, Melee's tournament scene only likes competitive content. They don't like casual gaming. I've experienced the unfortunate side of this from some of my best friends