I’m Ken Chen, Creative Director at BTS. In addition to leading our creative department and strategy, I am in charge of all of our first party smash events, our smash studio, and our BTSsmash stream.
I wanted to write a bit about our Smash events, as well as tell a story about my own journey in Smash.
I do not think events should be measured by whether their TO loses money to earn some invisible “cred.” Your TOs should not have to sacrifice or rely on volunteer work, but sometimes that’s what happens. Smash Summit didn’t always make money. Neither did Mainstage. In fact, the first iteration of these events often lost money. A lot of money. But our company kept doing them because a) we were passionate about the games and b) we thought we could eventually make them profitable.
We are able to now run our Summits at a profit. We do so because that is the healthy, sustainable way to pay our team. There is no hidden agenda, it is always right there on the Smash gg store page. We work just as hard on an event with a $5,000 prize pool (see SCL) as one with $150,000 (SS11). We have never, ever set a contribution minimum. If fans bought 0 merch, we’d still run the event. If fans didn’t think the event was worth it, they’d tell us. But the overwhelming feedback has always been, “good show.” Our entire company takes great pride in that.
Our philosophy has always been, if you can’t afford to support the event with purchases, just tweet about it. Tell your friends. Or simply just watch. That’s enough for us. The process has always been open and transparent, and we’ve had extensive dialogue with community figures, top players, and fans about why the system is what it is. I think there are plenty of people out there supporting us, so I don’t think I need to repeat too much of what is being said.
What I do want to talk about is the ridiculous idea that we are “not a part of the smash community.” BTS is a small company, of which I am one of the leaders. We have hired seasoned smash TOs and production line people that have been going to locals for decades.
But I don’t really want to talk about BTS or the people who work for us, I want to talk about ME and how I got into Smash, and what made Summit happen. I want to do this because I take great personal offense at the suggestion that I’m not a part of this community, especially at the idea that I created an event simply to profit off a game I deeply care about.
I first played Smash 64 with friends in college, and when Melee released, I ran a big college tournament each semester at NYU. I would give $50 best buy gift certificates as prizes. It got 50–100 entrants. We didn’t know shit about the game and we were terrible. I remember a random Sheik player asked me, are you THE Ken. I said who the fuck is that? So I googled.
I remember poring over 240p bomb soldier videos with my friends and going to Neutral Ground in NYC, where my roommate landed a full charged downsmash on Mew2king to barely avoid getting four stocked. We cheered like he won a major.
I graduated, went to law school, and that was that. Esports and smash were behind me… or so I thought.
In 2010, I took the bar in New York City and passed. I was ready to become a lawyer. Instead, I moved to the Netherlands to work for Teamliquid. Following my own esports dream.
In 2013, the Smash Bros documentary was released on YouTube. I watched it so many times, and linked it to all my old smash friends. I told Victor (the CEO of TL) to watch the doc. He said he’d get to it. I sat him down and forced him to watch it. He did, and we decided to get some players. So TL picked up Ken and KDJ, even though I said they weren’t top players anymore. Hey, I was just happy we picked up anyone.
I remember being on a Skype call with PPMD, trying to sign him to TL, and he told us he was going with EG. Then we watched him win SKTAR 3 a month later.
The doc made me take a multi-hour train to go to locals in the Netherlands. It made me seek out people in NJ to play with when I visited home. I sucked SO bad. I remember making a bet with Adam Apicella that I’d be able to win one set at MLG Anaheim 2013, so shoutout to the random fox who couldn’t l-cancel that let me win my bet.
I remember getting food with Tafo at Apex 2015 and talking about how I was going to find a way to make a big invitational event happen in melee. Even though he didn’t know me, I want to thank him for taking me seriously, and driving to my apartment in Glendale to play friendlies with me after work.
In 2015, I was working for ESL in LA. I helped produce events for them, including huge stadium ones for Dota 2. I was the lead creative on stadium events in Manila, Frankfurt, and even in Madison Square Garden in NYC.
At ESL, I pitched so many Smash events. None of them ever got greenlit because “Smash doesn’t make money.” I remember lamenting to Blur about this at SSS, which ran super late again, of course.
So I left ESL to join a grassroots org where I could do ideas that I wanted to do. I joined BTS’s leadership team on the condition that I’d have the creative control and freedom to run events in games we felt deserved them, games we were passionate about. And for me, that was concepting and running a truly unique Smash event.
I remember writing every single skit at SS5, for players I had never met. I was a huge fans of all these guys and pretended to play it so cool. I spent 100 hours by myself locked in office trying to digitally recreate S2J’s smirk and have Wizzrobe crawl around in WWE 2015.
I remember the excitement of seeing fans and players finally come around to love our event. It was never easy, immensely stressful, and always worth it. I remember writing a thousand jokes with Slime that we could never air.
I remember me and Aiden basically forcing SCL to happen despite it costing way too much. I remember feeling so happy when the top players would tweet nice things about our events.
I’m in my thirties. I’m out here fighting for smash every chance I get. I funnel sponsor money into as many smash events as I can (don’t tell our sales VP) and I pretend that taking trips to Genesis and Big House are business expenses. I organized a BTS internal tournament and forced all my old Starcraft friends to play melee. I have tens of thousands of games played on Slippi, and keep bugging Fizzi for friendlies even though I know he needs to work on ranked.
I’ve grinded my entire esports career to be in a position to create a memorable event for the game and community I’ve loved for years. I’ll do this even if BTS disappears tomorrow and I get a cushy job at Amazon. I’ll make sure Genesis gets that sweet Bezos money and Boback can buy a Ferrari. I don’t care. I produced SS11, I’ll always have that one. I’ll run smash summits until I die even if we have to do it with 3 people and a webcam.
PS when I’m producing SS40 and Mangos kid is in grand finals I’ll come back and retweet that dumbass thread.
