Hi! Day 23. I continue to live amongst the Pac-Man undetected. To them, I am invisible, just another hungry yellow orb with black eyes, another jaundiced splotch, built for one purpose: to consume. I like it here. I feel at home, at peace. This is my sister from another mister, a family from another arcade cabinet. This is yellow Kirby undercover, over and out. (Game Theory Intro) Hello, Internet! Welcome to Game Theory: the show that can't wait to dedicate an episode to why the Pirhana Plant has feet. I mean seriously Nintendo - what... what is this? But not only are we the show dedicated to exploring anatomical anomalies of predatory plant life today a new challenger has entered the ring, baby and it is us. Speaking of new challengers entering the ring just in time for the release of Super Smash Brothers Ultimate, Right now, TODAY, New theory wear has entered the ring just in time for the holidays. We're calling it holidays in the hood because It's cold outside. So we wanted to keep everyone cozy warm by attaching a hood to literally everything You want a long-sleeve t-shirt? Great. Make it better with a hood You want a reversible jacket? Awesome idea, but throw a reversible hood on that. How about a sleek sweater dress for all you gals. Boom! Hoodie dress. Game theory and film theory socks? Well, we all know that socks are just hoods for your feet This game theory ski cap? Hood on-the-go Even this film theory hoodie has a hood Which would be ironic if it didn't Hoods on hoods on hoods on hoods! Hoodseption... (Dramatic Sound Plays) Something giving one of those moments were like to say a word so many times and it just loses all meaning Hood, Hood, Hoodie... But don't leave the rest of your body out in the cold What's better in the winter than curling up on a cold night with a cup of hot chocolate some video games and being all snuggly warm in your game theory pajama pants! Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached the altitude of peak comfort So wrap yourself in a big old cocoon of warm theory goodness this holiday season Whether you want to look hot out in the cold or just bundle up and disappear into your own personal hooded wonderland Theory wear has you literally covered You know where the links are! Down in the description below And if you order in the next few weeks, it is guaranteed to arrive before Christmas because remember, (singing) there's no gift like hoods for the holidays in the last Super Smash Brothers episode I asked you to take a survey covering your favorite Bros and sis's from the franchise and over half a million of you responded five hundred and fifty one thousand five hundred and thirteen total responses to be exact thereby making that survey and this Episode the single biggest data set that we've ever dealt with on this channel Do you know how jealous normal researchers would be of us they would kill to get this sort of sample size, but don't worry I've got my star rod and I'm ready to keep them at bay. No No, you don't this is my incredible audience data and you can't touch it bad researcher. No Throw my star rod at you So the question I needed you to help me answer was the psychology of Super Smash Brothers Ultimate. It was my hypothesis that this game could be used as a personality assessment of sorts that the character you choose to play as could serve as a Reflection of what makes you, you(that's me!). are beauty gurus more likely to be drawn to pink characters or Eastern Europeans Attracted to the Gothic stylings of the Castlevania clan are fans of travel videos more likely to pick characters that are popular overseas With so many different characters in this one game. It didn't seem like that much of a stretch to me There's truly one character for every sort of player and free personality type every personal preference every play style Regardless of whether you're newcomer or a die-hard veteran of the series So I wanted to put that Hypothesis to the test with the help of half a million of you as well as some of my YouTube friends So what does your favorite Super Smash Brothers ultimate character say about you? That is what I'm about to explore today So crank those stocks up to three and keep an eye out for falling beam swords because it's time smash our way Through a lot of data. Oh So much data first, let's get ourselves a lay of the land Oh the survey participants about two hundred and fifty five thousand were guys one hundred and twenty-five Thousand were repping for the ladies eighty six thousand of you reported that you are non-binary meeting that you're not Exclusively masculine or feminine and another eighty six thousand preferred not to say and this question Actually became important right off the homerun bass for as much as we all like to think that we've broken down gender Stereotypes in 2018 a few things do seem to remain true the first being that girls Apparently still really like to play as princesses. That's right when asked who you anticipate playing as in Super Smash Brothers ultimate females were three times more likely than boys to choose strong female mainstays like Zelda or Peach as well as newcomer Daisy, but when it comes to female role models, apparently no one can topple Rosalina who was over six times more popular with girls than she was with boys In fact, Rosalina was so popular with females that they chose her nearly twice as frequently as most any other character I mean I get it if I had my druthers, I'd probably choose to be a princess of the stars with powers over time It's based to females were two and a half times more likely to pick a female fighter than they were a male one,and well that might not seem too surprising What is shocking is that the female bias didn't apply to characters like Samus, Shi and Wii Fit trainer So interpreting these results I would guess that it's a matter of looks samus in her regular suit was in the bottom tier for girls Samus in her zero suit on the other hand was one of the top and it's not because she's one of the overall best Characters from previous games either that's what I initially thought myself But then I sliced up the data to show only Females who reported that they would be first time players with Super Smash Brothers, ultimate and zero suit samus Still was in the top tier which leads me to believe that the differentiating factor here are characters who looked quote-unquote Traditionally feminine versus those who don't zero suit samus obviously traditionally feminine Samus in her normal space suit Not so much. Shi disguised as a boy Wii Fit trainer creepy fitness avatar who attacks you with hoops So then by extension that merits the question are guys more likely to pick fellow dude bros Surprisingly no, I mean sure characters like snake are much more popular with boys than other genders But according to the data what guys are really after are Monsters Ridley is two-and-a-half times more popular for guys than he is for girls But the big surprise to me at least was king K rool who took the top guys spot overall at nearly 5% of all male respondents being excited to get their hands on that crown now to ensure that this wasn't just because Ridley and K rool were new characters I sliced out all the veterans of the super smash brothers series and still these two persisted Just going to prove the classic phrase boys will be boys unless they can be scary reptile monsters in which case they will Absolutely choose to be scary reptile monsters So we definitely see some things falling into classic gender lines But it gets really interesting When we looked at the group of you who? Self-identified as non-binary where male and female identifiers had clear winners and losers people outside of these genders had a much more Diverse set of choices. It really is fair to say that non-binary players seem to discriminate less Try more characters and have fewer attachments to specific types of characters to prove this. I turned to standard deviation so when you're looking at a lot of data points Standard deviation is the measure of how spread out the numbers in that data set are for instance If you're looking at this height chart of Mario characters You have some characters like Bowser and Petey piranha who are huge and others like shy guys and toads who are super short It's a broad spectrum and as a result You have yourself a pretty large standard deviation by contrast character heights in the Super Smash Brothers series have to have a smaller standard deviation Since they're all fighting on the same playing field I mean if the memes have taught me anything that was the reason that took so long for ridley to join the roster in the First place the fear that he was just always too big for the stages and other fighters So when looking at character in Super Smash Brothers, ultimate the male and female Standard deviation was twice as large as the non-binary Standard deviation meaning that males and females had a much more extreme difference between their favorite and least paper characters There was less of a middle ground when looking at earlier games in the franchise It was even more extreme six times larger The same held true for those who preferred not to reveal their gender a standard deviation much less extreme than those who identified as either Strongly male or strongly female, but we didn't just look at gender the whole time Your country's local culture also seems to play a huge role in who you choose to play as for instance See if you can figure this one out Mexico Spain Portugal Brazil Chile were taco Italy and France all had a much higher than average number of players eager to assume the role of Simon and Richter Belmont the new editions from the Castlevania series two to four times as likely to pick those characters relative to the rest of the world In fact, can you think of why this would be like the coolest SAT question ever? My hypothesis is that it's because these countries in particular tend to all be very religious and not just with any religion But Catholicism specifically Italy is home to the Catholic Church France is often called the second daughter of the Catholic Church And Spain is 70% Catholic the country's history steeped in the series of religious struggles between Catholics and Muslims and that religiosity Carries during the culture of most other Spanish and Portuguese speaking countries like Mexico Portugal and Puerto Rico so it would make sense that characters from a game franchise all about Crosses and holy water and battles against demons and spirits would resonate more strongly in those territories You know what other character is surprisingly popular in Spain and France Isabelle from Animal Crossing Is it just because these countries are more enthusiastic about catching fish to work their way out of crippling debt to a thrifty raccoon I don't think so Isabelle and Isabella are Classic French and Spanish names the equivalent of our Elizabeth and English names that belonged to multiple queens in both countries Including Isabella Castile in Spain who sponsored the explorations of Christopher Columbus and one of the most notorious women in English history Isabella of France who led invasion of England that ultimately resulted in the deposition of her husband Edward the second and Pause right there. You see after I finished writing this episode I found out that this part of the theory is probably Wrong because Isabel's name is different in both Spain and France in Spanish It's Cannella and in France, it's Marie So yeah the whole name Theory Probably wrong in this case wouldn't be the first time one of my theories are wrong and now back to your regularly scheduled Potentially less wrong theory. Once again. We see that it's all about Representation seeing a reflection of yourself in a character whether that be in the form of a gender cultural history or simply your names picking up interesting Geographic trends consider pac-man It seems random But he's actually three times more likely to be chosen in the countries of India and Romania which warrants the question What do those two countries have in common that could also contribute to our favorite yellow muncher chewing up the competition? Well my theory my game Yeah, you get the point is that it's related to these countries internet usage You see both of these are countries where Internet connectivity is on the rise But slowly of of this most people play games on their mobile phones And that means a focus on classic titles like the fighter formerly known as puck man and that's not all studies have also concluded that in India quick thinking or reflex driven games like pac-man are also Particularly popular with 22% of the total population playing those sorts of titles so with limited game availability within the boundaries of the country you see you in the direction of familiarity ie One last regional trend that I can't actually quite figure out and I'd love to hear your theories on greninja He was the number three pick in the Philippines the number two pick in Singapore at the number one pick overall in India three to five times more likely to be selected in those countries relative to any other in the world Why would a ninja Pokemon be so much more popular there? Especially when you consider that Nintendo doesn't even have an official presence in India And the anime is really only way the countries experience the Pokemon franchise. Give me your thoughts I seriously could not figure this one out. And finally you didn't just look at demographics the last big part of the survey was to break down how online creators and online viewers play the Super Smash Brothers games do educational creators play the smartest characters like fire emblems Robin? Are food channels more likely to pick Kirby for his voracious appetite? Are vloggers picking greninja because he looks like he's dabbing on them hater is half the time? Well not exactly. Beauty gurus who took the survey showed an even more pronounced version of the female preferences that we talked about earlier heavily favoring characters that were women pretty or cute by a Factor of two to one with Daisy and Bayonetta as their top tier choices But Jigglypuff and Pichu also having a strong showing and if Pichu is being chosen, you know It's got to be because he's cute because it is definitely not for strategic purposes meanwhile the beauty gurus definitely stayed away from the quote-unquote ugly characters as they were the only group of all the groups questioned to really not want to play as King K Rool or Ridley about 75 percent less likely to pick either of those characters Meanwhile creators who do travel content also yielded some surprising results, though They weren't all Fire Emblem characters Like I expected they were the only category to actively pick playing as Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong It's actually surprising for as popular as King K Rool is,Donkey and Diddy just aren't for some reason looking at the data even dating all the way back to the original Super Smash Brothers for the Nintendo 64 and super smash brothers. Melee DK has always been rounding out the bottom of character lists since the beginning coming in dead last or at the very least Bottom 10% of selections for all the games that we asked about maybe gamers just have a thing against high form Accurately my theory maybe these characters appeal to older players You see travel content tends to attract older creators and viewers Older because they have much more money to spend on things like plane tickets hotels international Experiences as such they would be much more likely to gravitate to some classic arcade favorites like Donkey Kong in this case being three times More likely to choose this member of the Kong family supporting this Hypothesis is the fact that travel creators also skewed more towards duck hunt dog. Hit and Rob all classic characters while under picking more modern game characters like Inklings and greninja They were also twice as likely to pick Wii Fit trainer So yeah like I said older audience and finally for all of us self-identified gaming creators our picks coincided with our Experience and franchise the longer we've been playing the Super Smash Brothers series the more likely we were to pick the newer characters And this makes sense, right? If you've been playing Mario & Ness since the games first release in 1999 on and off across six games for the next 20 years Lang um yet again in Super Smash Brothers ultimate is gonna be a little less spicy than getting your hands on some new characters with some new dynamics that's why Bayonetta Isabel the Belmonts Cloud K rool and Ridley were all at the top of the Experienced gamer list now. All we need is waluigi for the meme crowd and we've got ourselves everyone covered But if we could put our differences aside for a moment There's one last thing. I want to point out about the data the characters that brought us all together a game filled with so many options at a ton of popular new faces, two stood out as the All-around winners characters that topped literally every list no matter which way I broke down the data Can you guess who they are link? And Kirby across all generations of Super Smash Brothers games across all genders across all Content genres and levels of experience with the franchise link and Kirby were always always always the number one and number two pics always and they did just squeak by it tended to be by a significant margin It seems like the pretty blond elf boy from a retro game with a huge arsenal of weaponry and the cute pink puffball that can Literally become anything appeal to literally everyone trust the data. But hey that's just a theory. A GAME THEORY Thanks for watching. to make sure that you understand what the story mode of Super Smash Brothers ultimate means and what the world of light Symbolically represents well then you're gonna want to make sure that you smash that subscribe button. So you're notified of when that video comes out
Petition to make the data public. We all worked towards a great episode of game theory, but since the nature of these episodes is that the video is compact and entertaining we couldn't get a glimps of all the data. Imagine the possibilitys. What could lurk underneath this thick pile of votes? What misterys are yet to be solved? Isn't that what this is all about? Mat Pat. Please make it happen.
So the Greninja bias is probally because those places have such wet environments. For example monsoon season in India. Therefore they see frogs a lot and therefore they tend to pick Greninja.
This isn't a slight against non-binary.
But I do wonder. Does Matpat have that much of an absurd non-binary presence that the percentage of non-binary takers of the survey were THAT HIGH or is that people memeing and put that in as their choice even when they aren't that?
Because well, 20% is an absurdly huge percent when you remember how very small amount of people are non-binary compared to male/female.
BTW... that “México and other countries are religious which explains why they chose this character” thing is absolute bs. Here in Mexico there’s a lot of poverty, there has always been a lot of social segregation. Poor childs use to play in the arcade games on any local grocery rather than getting that new nintendo console at the time because they just couldn’t afford it. Guess what game was one of the predominant in those arcade machines; Castlevania. Economy is growing fast and internet is now accesible to more “poor” people. So those that grew up spending the spare of their money on Arcades are more likely to play with those characters.
Please... I know Occam’s razor and all, but do a bit more research before assuming “Mexicans are Catholic so they are gonna choose a damn priest wanna be (ha! se what I did there?) to play as in Smash.
ps. Sorry about using the word “poor” very loosely. As you may have guessed English isn’t my first language so I’m not familiarised with economic lingo.
Why is Waluigi on the thumbnail?
I want to offer some explanation for the Greninja Bias in Singapore. We actually have a relatively active competitive scene and considering Greninja is a high tier mon it would be seen a lot. Another option I want to consider is that Mobas are very popular here. So maybe the resemblance of ninjas and the assasin class is what made that decision.
Yass
Game theory can help you with the Philippines culture I live in the Philippines the reason why we love greninja is because that most kids around the county will play certain physical games based on our culture and my favorite is bato bola, you can look it up or if you want to then look at other games but that's not over when you said that we don't have that much access to Nintendo well we have something for mobile users there, an app called Gameboy it an app where instead of getting a real Gameboy they can download one but they also have to download the game file and the other people can share the file if the others don't have it so it's the end. Oh and one thing to its also very rainy in the Philippines and some kids go to the forest including me and if you look at some stores at malls that involves culture you can clearly see there are some swords including some knuchuks (srry if I said it wrong) there even wooden version so ya that's all the information I got and thx bye.
2:21 that is some poor resolution