[Interview] Albion, EVO: Glutonny, as seen through his Smash tournaments

Photo Credit: @XenosMccloud

Tom "G-P" Scott heads up DAT Team, a small organization he founded and chairs and which is responsible for Albion — an annual Super Smash Bros. tournament held in London.

Since its inception in 2016, Albion has become one of the most prominent fighting game events on the calendar, and has grown even bigger since the release of Ultimate. Now, with Albion 4 looming, he is struggling to fit the 1,200-seat York Hall into his plans.

When the Emirates Stadium — home of Arsenal, one of England's most prestigious football clubs — is mentioned by one of his team, he hesitates. As a tournament organizer, just the sight of the estimated cost would usually be enough to make him say "no" on the spot.

However, that's not how it goes. Scott is soon to leave his post as tournament organizer, meaning Albion 4 is to be the last. He knows that it is a fantastic chance to bring the highest level of European Smash to a unique venue and go out with a bang.

Fast forward, and Scott did indeed make it happen — Albion 4 took place at the Emirates on July 6-7. Players from all over the world came to attend an English tournament — one which eventually crowned a French champion.

As Glutonny collapses in his chair, the crowd storms onto the stage. The first thing that comes to mind is the emotion of winning Albion 4, but Belaid doesn't see the situation that way.

"I knew they were all going to jump on me. I saw they wanted to carry me on their shoulders, so the only thing I told myself when I won Albion was 'I'm going to hang onto this chair in order not to get carried away."

Albion has its champion

Albion is one of Glutonny's best memories as a pro player — although he insists not 'the' best. However, everything was perfect: the atmosphere, the wave of support, the minimalist stage almost darkened by the giant 'Gunners' crest hanging above.

"My match was not necessarily the best, but if I take a step back and look at the tournament in itself, all the matches were hype. It was so interesting to watch. The whole of France, the BDE [Bureau des Events, a French collective], were behind us, screaming. We had 150 French people there, so you could see us everywhere. Usually, we practically all know each other, but this time I met people I had never seen. You had people coming from Paris, Strasbourg, Nice, Marseille... from all over France. We were really connected."

Belaid worked hard for his victory, following his gameplan to the letter. In the Grand Final he faced the North American player Samuel "Dabuz" Buzby of Team Liquid.

"Let's say that I knew that I would win if I could play 'my' game and do what I can do. Dabuz was really complicated to face — but considering the last set I played against him, I knew exactly what to do."

Belaid's ability to focus while staying cool with his controller in his hands has taken him to the very top. His mentality makes him question himself all the time; he needs to find even the slightest flaw.

His journey in the competition proves that he's a hard worker and a perpetual apprentice. Albion 4 is the result of ten years' work, and which eventually led him to a series of upsets in London — most notably in the semi-final against Ishiguro "Raito" Tetsuya, a Japanese player who plays Duck Hunt better than anyone.

"You can tell just by looking that he knows his character by heart. He manages to condition his opponent, and he does things you can't even expect because he's too good at using the character's tools.

However, I was a bit lucky, because there is an English player called OwlBBS who knows Duck Hunt pretty well. This guy doesn't play any tournaments apart from Albion, because he lives in England. I knew he would play Duck Hunt, so I went to see him before the match to ask if I could play with him.

It taught me the match-up: in the end, Duck Hunt has quite a few weaknesses. Raito is just unbelievably strong with this character, and I think people don't even know the match-up."

Belaid explains all this like it was a real lesson in Smash — with all the gestures you would expect from your teacher.

"For instance, how to counter his can: when you're off-stage, he loves to launch his can then use his Up-B toward it to create a sort of protection. Actually, while he launches the can, if I Down-Air on it with Wario, it won't explode. That means I can just go through it and hit Duck Hunt. That's a big advantage — especially since Wario is really strong off-stage — and you should capitalize on it.

If I didn't know that, I wouldn't have been ready to fight him off-stage, and I would have let him come back on-stage every time — instead of going for him while not letting him come back on-stage. Thanks to this knowledge of the match up, I managed to win. A lot of characters have big flaws such as this one — and most people don't actually know them."

Glutonny 'is' Wario, they're one and the same. Everyone knows that he's incredibly strong with the character. Obviously, he knows pretty well what the tier list says about Wario — he sucks — but seeing him play Wario proves the opposite is true. If you ask him, Wario belongs in the top five characters — or at least the top ten.

In the end, Belaid doesn't care: he will keep saying the character is trash "just to make sure he doesn't get nerfed."

"I'm not interested in the design, but rather the way he's built. Ok, he farts on people; it's fun, but that's the character I match with most. He really has all the tools in order to counter every game style. Wario is a character with very high mobility, and I love that. I like to be free. I love being able to do everything I want with my character, coming with my own combos according to the situation.

It's not only 'your character is made for this, you need to do this and that's all'. I don't like that at all. There are tons of possible options: you can fight off-stage, he has a bike, a projectile — all of these are really important. You can force your opponent into checkmate with that projectile.

For instance, you say to yourself 'I'm launching him in that direction, he will jump to dodge' so I anticipate that move. I love doing that. Fighting certain match-ups is really hard, but I've trained so much that I know exactly what to do each time. I think I can win any match-up with my Wario."

Farts, motorbike launches, can dodges — even before he considered becoming a professional player they were helping him win, and have since guided him to victory in a few major tournaments, too. Albion, Respawn and Valhalla may all be big tournaments, but the competitive Smash scene seems to obey a systemic rule: tournaments are organized by passionate people.

Few of these tournaments are actually capable of copying industry models, and its one major has struggled to win peoples' loyalty across several editions of the game. The Smash scene is split between amateur events commonly short of resources, smaller associations, and passionate people such as Scott — who throw themselves into their projects without considering the time or costs involved.

This tournament culture is quite widespread in Europe, and Belaid can hardly remember all the tournaments he has played.

If you come, you need to stay

However, he does highlight two tournaments: Albion 4 and Syndicate, a Dutch tournament. According to him, the best way to see the birth of a new generation of Smash players is to make sure that every country has is own major.

"We're trying to get on in Spain with Tech Republic — a big rally of roughly 300 players, which is not that bad. It's less than Albion and Syndicate, but it is starting to grow more and more. In France, it's a bit more complicated as we don't have one official major tournament, but several 'big ones' instead.

The Wanted tournament might not have the popularity it deserves, but it is already a must-see in France. At first, roughly 50 people attended. After two seasons — around twenty editions — registrations are sold out in two hours, there are three times as many participants, and people come from all over the world to play against Glutonny.

"As expressed within the name, some players are "wanted" for each tournament. Different players, and each time a specific theme. Sometimes it's people from Lille or Bordeaux, other times it could be Snake players, Zelda family players. Each time there is a theme and, according to it, people will be invited to be 'wanted' — meaning they will have their own wanted poster and people will earn rewards when defeating them.

For instance, we had a "Wanted orKs" where all players from the orKs team were 'wanted'. There was Homika, Elexiao VinS, and myself. I think Elexiao had a €50 bounty on his head in winners' bracket, and €70 in losers'. I had a €100 bounty for both winners' and losers'.

The thing is, if the Wanted doesn't get eliminated, he needs to upset someone according to the seeding in order to get his bounty back. If you are Wanted, and if you beat someone stronger than you, you get your bounty back. Since I was top seed, it was mandatory for me to win the tournament if I wanted to get my bounty back. That's what happened."

Glutonny doesn't count his Wanted victories anymore. According to the French champion, the real power of this competition is to gather the entire Île-de-France Smash community. It 'embodies home,' as he puts it. Above all, he decided to get involved in this specific tournament to help new players. Not all players started playing Smash with Melee or Brawl, and one can't deny that most participants are living their first "hard" experience with Wanted.

"At first, NtK [fellow Solary teammate] and I were afraid that people would be really hyped by Ultimate and would attend the tournament without coming back for the next editions. So, we asked ourselves 'how can we keep them?'. The answer was that we needed to organize interesting tournaments where no one gets bored.

In other words, we knew that newcomers would attend the tournament and finish with a 0-2. For sure. They will straight up lose. In that situation, most will tell themselves 'I ended 0-2, I lost the tournament, I'm going home' or worse — they're disgusted at the tournament and won't return.

We tried to make sure people would have free-play booths within a dedicated room. You need to explain to people that even if you have finished your tournament or your bracket, the tournament isn't really over yet. You can play with other people, have fun, meet the community, make friends... We really need to keep players.

That's why each time NtK sees new faces he asks 'who's playing his first tournament here?' Some people raise their hands and he explains the concept to them. 'When you have lost, you can go there, play freely with everyone.' A lot of people that we've never seen before become our buddies, join our group. Some people are disgusted by the game. It happens — but they still attend the event!

Actually, you cannot leave. You're friends with everyone, you're having fun, you watch matches, it's hype, you can play just to have fun. You can't leave. Once you come once, that's it."

The Smash community has kind of become Belaid's second family, and he wants to spread the message that everyone accepts everyone. "Even if you're a bit weird." During one of these events, he met TriM — a fifteen-year-old French player who made headlines at Albion 4. and whose face is well-known within the Wanted scene. Belaid can't stop praising TriM, because he's sure the young Parisian is one of the great players of tomorrow.

"TriM has the spirit. I saw him playing and he's constantly in his opponent's head. At Albion, during the last game, he managed to come back when he had one less stock. What's really impressive with TriM is his patience. Then, when he feels he's disadvantaged — meaning when he gets hit once — he won't get caught out, except by a really strong combo.

He will easily reset to a neutral position because he knows what his adversary wants. He won't panic, he won't limit himself to jumps and air-dodges: he's always going to change his options. It's really hard to predict what he's going to do, and it's one of its strengths. He has everything necessary to become a great player. You can see it in his mentality, his skill cap, his habits, the way he trains... He has everything he needs to reach the top."

With his first team, orKs GP, Belaid discovered Europe. However, the United States was still a bridge too far — especially because he didn't have a regular income at the time. However, everything changed one day. Belaid cannot forget — it was 2019, in Copenhagen, and he was competing at Valhalla II.

A plane to Vegas

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate was released in December 2018, meaning Valhalla II was the first major Ultimate tournament in Europe. The event had a lot of media coverage, especially since Leffen — a famous Swedish player currently representing TSM — was in attendance.

However, against all odds, Glutonny defeated Leffen. His 3-0, three-stock reverse against the "God Slayer" made a really big impression. A few days after winning the tournament, Glutonny received a message from the founder of Solary, LRB.

"It made a lot of noise, and he noticed me thanks to it. I think he was already interested in Smash, but he knew that Smash 4 was dead; that exposure wasn't enough. With Ultimate, everything changed — he absolutely wanted the best European player."

In Solary colours, Glutonny finally crossed the Atlantic and discovered the selective North American scene. GENESIS 6, Summit, CEO... All these events are designed to entertain, with meticulous stages and highly-colored broadcasts. In the US, the objective is to reach a mainstream audience, something relatively new for a franchise such as Smash Bros. With Solary, Belaid also found heavy support in helping people discover Smash.

"What's really important is the fact that they're not only supporting me, they're also supporting the French Smash scene. It's really perfect — they organize tournaments with NtK, they bring financial support, they broadcast tournaments, they create a lot of content... It's a lot of exposure for the Smash scene in France.

I couldn't ask for more. LRB watches all my tournaments, he loves Smash and also plays the game. He's always behind me, cheering me on. That doesn't mean he's constantly following me, saying "you need to perform!" He trusts me, and lets me do whatever I want. When I lose, he says "that's ok, I saw you, I know you will remedy it next time, I know you." I've seen other teams who constantly have their manager behind them. I would hate that, you're under pressure for nothing."

Overall, what impressed him most is seeing the community support him on his first steps into this international scene. The Summit episode affected him a lot because it was an invitational — meaning players who got the most votes from the community would attend the event alongside other top players.

"Solary recruited people. LRB said 'vote for Gluto', and people said 'OK'. Thanks to that, I managed to get a lot of points — I had more than the second and third players combined. You could also get points from buying products from organizers. This was a bit more complicated — I was not aware and I hesitated. 'Should I keep going?' I needed the points, but I didn't want people to pay for it.

In the end, I got 37,000 points, the equivalent of $6,000 worth of purchases. I have to say, I was really surprised. I know the Solary community is really solid, so I wasn't surprised at their clicks. However, the fact that people had paid that much for me surprised me a lot. I also started a personal stram to get some donations. I collected $2,500 in three hours — thanks to this, I managed to get enough points to attend."

Through appearing on-screen, Belaid has became a full member of the group of elite players. We've seen him attend more and more majors, his face has become familiar to everyone. People head to France to go up against him.

Competing against the top Smash players finally led him to meet Leonardo "MkLeo" Lopez Perez. At the age of eighteen, the Mexican player is the number one Smash Ultimate player in the world. They often show up together to tournaments, because they get along really well. This was especially true a few days before Evo, which is hosting Smash Ultimate for the first time this year.

"Actually, he's a bit like me, he's a kid. We're a bit the same in life, we have the same personality. We always hang out together when I'm there.

In concrete terms, I can't see anyone stronger than me except Leo. For now, I can't touch him. He understands the game better than everyone else. He's in everyone's minds, and he has reached a psychological state that took me years to achieve when I was in Europe.

He's so confident that he can do anything — he knows he's going to win. This sole fact puts him in a mental state where he cannot be unsettled. He really has so much confidence right now. Obviously, he has the skills and talent, but he's also a hard worker. A lot more than people think."

For fighting game players, Vegas is unmissable. The Mandala Bay Resort and Casino has hosted the biggest and most prestigious event in the world — the Evolution Championship Series, or Evo — for four years now.

With almost 3,500 participants, Smash has more competitors at Evo than Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition and Mortal Kombat 11 combined. In a nutshell, it's the biggest Smash tournament ever organized. This might cause a lot of players to break out in a cold sweat, but not Glutonny — who is still aiming for first place.

"Each tournament I attend — even a tournament where everyone is stronger than me and I'm the lowest seed — my goal is always the same: win. I won't get first place if I aim for tenth. I don't even see why it would be a disappointment to rank tenth.

Of course, I would like to win, but my ultimate goal isn't to win once: it's to win all the time. So, losing once to win all other games is fine by me. There are tournaments where I just say to myself 'I want to lose', just to force me to learn. When the people I face are not strong enough to beat me, I am disappointed. I need to lose. If one day I become so strong that people aren't able to beat me, I won't have anything to learn anymore and I'll just feel very bad."

Evo gave him what he asked for — but almost reluctantly. Belaid finished third, being sent out of the tournament by MkLeo. Despite losing to Takuto "Kameme" Ono in Winners Round 1, it felt like the Mexican player was in demonstration mode — he dropped just one game on a five-match losers bracket run to the final singles bracket.

Even TSM's Tweek — second seed in the tournament — had no answer to Leo's Joker. With more than 250,000 watching online, Leo introduced a new standard to Smash Ultimate.

"I am really happy that Leo is here. I know him, it's impossible for me to beat him easily. Even in ten years, if we're the two best players in the world, it will be side-by-side."

Evo ended with possibly one of the best chapters in Smash history. Raito failed in his attempt to get revenge for that Albion loss, LRB and the whole Solary community cheered so much at ungodly hours, and TriM — who finished 129th at Evo — is already dreaming of the big stage.

Written by Alexandre "lovesic" Chabaux. Translated from the French by Thomas "Calo" Sauzin.