Adam Lindgren · @ArmadaUGS
2nd Mar 2020 from TwitLonger
Hey guys!
I will try to keep this as short & respectable as possible.
Every day since I decided to stop competing in Melee at least one of those things have happened and I will start with responding to them before we continue
1: People ask/demand me to come back
2: Telling me I'm scared to play in the current era
3: "Made fun of me since I give up to much"
4: Sometimes even get private messages that are straight up mean
1: I know many people mean well but it honestly gets rough to every day wake up and in a way feel like people don't respect my decision
2: I imagine/hope most people are trolling but if you honestly believe this you are really silly. Truth to be told, Melee has not changed much since I stopped competing and playing friendlies at Summit made me even more positive of this. I competed for a super long time against practically all the current top players. I'm also not saying this to discredit the great players, just natural that a game like Melee that's been out for so long wont change THAT fast these days. I guess people often default to "scared" when they have nothing else to say. Maybe these people should attend a tournament themselves, I promise you, it's not that scary =)
3: This one will be included a lot in the longer text below so read that instead.
4: No comment needed
When I decided to stop competing I was 100% upfront with why I stopped playing, how my motivation kept getting worse and worse and how I still gave it a full year "just to make sure".
That last year honestly sucked for me in so many ways but instead of accepting reality I did fight back just on the off chance that I was hella wrong. People that knows me well were very likely not surprised by my decision, not cause I had really said much but cause they could see & feel that passion disappear.
When I went to my first tournament in early 05, at a time some of these reddit/twitter keyboard warriors were not even born, I went there with a passion. I kept playing for well over a decade with a burning desire not only to compete but to win.
It's no secret that Melee as a whole have been "poor" when it comes to money but I would say that we have been very rich when it comes to passion and love for the game, that passion and love is exactly WHY I kept playing for as long as I did. I had goals I wanted to achieve and I did everything in my power to reach those goals.
Now the Smash World Tour got announced and don't get me wrong, I'm super happy that such a project is finally happening but a lot of people either seem to confuse money with passion or simply don't care. Not saying money can't be the main motivation for some people but that was never the case for me.
I'm happy such a prize pool will be up for grabs, I'm happy that players with a passion that are great at the game have great chances to live of smash BUT I NEVER COMPETED FOR MONEY.
Some people probably have a hard time to believe it but for me money never was the reason I competed so a circuit having a lot of money does not mean my passion & love returns cause money was never what motivated me in the first place. I know my passion is not there and to me Melee means so much more to me than money and I guess in the society we live in today that's almost like a lost concept and I know I'm "weird" here but I would rather stay weird and honest to myself than trying to make my decisions based on what other people tell me too.
Also, despite knowing many people mean well (sadly far from all) I gotta say that stuff like streaming/YT/attend events have gotten harder than I expected cause I can never do ANYTHING Smash or even gaming related without daily going through this. I still try to push those plattforms and attend events once in a while cause I enjoy commentating/see & help many of my friends. Many days I feel like not streaming/YT or even attend an event cause I feel like people can't let go. I know this is my battle to overcome though.
With this all said and done I don't expect all those requests to disappear but I hope it can reduce it and give people additional information so maybe they can understand me better.
Thanks for reading!