100 Steps for Improvement: Interview with SSBM Rank #93, Iceman
Get to know a bit more about Iceman, a Washington based player on the SSBM Top 100!
Iceman is one of the newer SSBM Top 100 members this year, coming in ranked at #93 worldwide and currently #4 in Washington state. At Genesis 5, Evo 2017, and The Big House 7, Iceman placed 65th. He's known locally for being one of the long-time residents of Washington's "Tuk House," a smasher house that has housed top talent in the past such as Silent Wolf.
For anybody who might not know you, where are you from? What character(s) do you most often play?
Iceman: I'm from Seattle, Washington. In tournament I use almost all Marth, but I also really enjoy playing Fox, Falcon, and Falco.
VGBC - S@P - Rudolph (Marth) Vs. Iceman (Marth) SSBM Top 32 - Smash Melee
Cool, good to know! How long have you been playing Melee and what about it caught your attention/kept you playing?
Iceman: I started playing competitive Melee in the spring of 2010. I'm coming up on my eight year tourney anniversary which is scary to think about. I played Melee for a long time casually from about 2003 onward, but I knew pretty much nothing about the competitive scene. I was in an area that was pretty isolated from most of Seattle so I doubt it would have mattered even if I did know about it. My first introduction to high level Melee was watching DBR Evolution when it came out on Google video. After I saw that I learned how to do repeated wave-shines with Fox because I thought it was so cool. It’s pretty ironic that I could do repeated wave-shines but didn't know what L-Cancelling was, around 2006. When Brawl came out in 2008 my friends and I switched to that, but after about a year me and my best friend stuck the Melee disc in one day and quit playing Brawl. That was about the time I found HomeMadeWaffles’ YouTube channel and I started learning a lot about competitive play, and eventually found Smashboards and found my local scene through there. I thought Melee was on its deathbed in mid 2012 and I quit playing for about a year and then started back up when the Smash Documentary and Evo blew everything up in 2013, and I pretty much haven't had a big break since then. Melee is just such an insanely difficult game that I happened to play as a kid. Those are the main aspects that keep me coming back.
That's a dope backstory. You live, or at least used to live, at the Tuk House correct? What was the story behind creating 'Tuk' and how do you think those elements might have helped you improve at Melee?
Iceman: I still live at Tuk, I've been here since mid 2012 and it was absolutely instrumental in my improvement as a player. We call it Tuk House because it's in Tukwila which is a small town in the greater Seattle area. Tuk House has been the premiere Smash house in Washington ever since Silent Wolf moved in up until the present day. Otto (Silent Wolf) moved out a couple years back but before that time I would try to play Otto as much as I could. Playing with a player of that caliber innately teaches you about a lot of things that you can and can't do. During that era of Tuk there were four smashers plus we would host fests on Fridays, so there was a lot of people to play. Being surrounded by the game tends to make you better.
Do you feel like living with smashers was something unique? Do you think that your living situation, being surrounded by the game and good players, was something pretty unique to you and a few others?
Iceman: Absolutely, the number of dedicated Smash houses is very small and it's not getting bigger as far as I know. Almost all of my current friends are people that I've met through Smash and I am incredibly grateful for that.
Hidden Bosses of the Pacific Northwest
Do you think you're a motivation-driven player, or do you think you're pushed by your peers or something else?
Iceman: I'm definitely more driven by my own goals than my peers. I think that's how most people are. Obviously having someone that can help you out is very important but at the end of the day it's all on you to put in the work. I've always been an extremely competitive person. Melee just happens to be my outlet for that. Earlier on I was definitely more focused on doing cool combos than I was with winning. That being said I never let the dream of being the best die. I know that the reason I'm not there is because I haven't put in enough work yet. I've seen all kinds of players come and go. Being the most talented player means nothing if you don't put in the work.
What do you think you need to improve in your gameplay overall? Where there ever any hurdles you've personally had to get through during your improvement?
Iceman: I think that overall my neutral game and my execution are the things that if cleaned up, would make me significantly better. I think one of the biggest things is finding the right ways to practice, I used to just mindlessly combo CPUs in my early years but doing VOD review and shadow boxing are two things that helped me a lot. Every player has to go through hurdles when improving, but that being said improvement can sometimes be hard to quantify. If you are just looking through the lens of win/loss record Vs X player, often times that is a very tainted way to look at things. It's almost always better to look at techniques or scenarios that you are losing in and figuring out what you need to do differently in those scenarios. Let's say you beat someone that you have never beaten before, a lot of people will just be happy that they won and that's the end of it, but it's always important to consider how your opponent was playing. If an SD or a two-stock swing scenario was a primary reason you won that's not a win that you should be very proud of. On the other hand, maybe you cleaned up your punish/neutral game in certain areas and that was the primary reason you won. Melee is very different from most games, in a way that you have technically demanding movement that is 100% necessary at a high level that could also inadvertently cost you a game or a set if you are even slightly off (without your opponent doing anything).
How do you do your VOD review? Do you have any specific process when you do your reviews?
Iceman: Usually I just look at scenarios where I'm doing poorly and think about what I could do differently. I think that going into every minor detail when looking at vods is unnecessary for improvement. If I really feel motivated I might write some stuff down but I feel like I internalize information pretty well so most of the time I don't. For watching other player’s matches I always like to steal things from good players so if I see something that's useful I'll try to incorporate it. Adding on to that I think there's a lot of people that think there's some mystical reason as to why they can't beat X player and they tend to overthink things in that regard. Most of the time the answer is a lot simpler than what you think.
Right, keeping things simpler tends to be better I think. Have you ever had a specific matchup or player that was difficult for you?
Iceman: Bladewise and Silent Wolf have always been very difficult for me for different reasons. Bladewise for being incredibly difficult to kill and Silent Wolf for having amazing calculated aggression. Earlier on I think I did struggle with certain matchups but once you hit a level of experience it's more about the player than it is the matchup.
What did you do/try and change to improve your chances against them? Did you specifically study their videos, or just try and pull new things from other players into your game?
Iceman: Against Bladewise, VOD review has definitely helped me a lot and I've been taking more sets because of it in my opinion. Just looking at situations that I’m doing well in and deliberately putting yourself in those scenarios is very useful along with attempting to find solutions in bad scenarios. Against Silent Wolf, on the other hand, nothing really helped significantly if I’m being perfectly honest. Even on the sets where I would take games I'd just get destroyed afterwards. I’m talking like if I would win a game I'd get three or four stocked the next game like clockwork. I was definitely a worse player back then, but if there's any player that's had my number over the years, it's Silent Wolf.
Silent Wolf’s been pretty dominant for a while right? How do you feel about his competitive retirement?
Iceman: Some of my best memories at tournaments have been rooting for Otto and it is definitely sad to see him stop competing. That being said it was definitely a long time coming. When Otto and I would practice it would never be for more than one hour at a time. He was wearing double hand braces whenever he could but at the time he didn’t have the ability to rest his hands because he was living off of Smash. Being insanely technical and going long hours without breaks when he was younger took serious tolls on Otto as he got into the later half of his Melee lifespan. Once Otto got picked up by Team Secret and moved out of Tuk he had the ability to take a break from the game and seriously focus on his hand health. At that point Otto's retirement was pretty close to inevitable. Even though his hands are better now he's been out of the game for so long that it's hard for him to want to get back to where he was and I completely understand that.
It’s really unfortunate seeing that happen to him. Do you think it was just the hands for him? Like if his hands were better he'd keep playing?
Iceman: No, it was definitely a combination of things. I think that his hands were a big factor but as Otto said in his interview with Tafo, he never truly had the drive to be the best and I think that is probably more important in the end.
How does this series of events affect you? Do you feel any similar symptoms or do you think you'll be in the game longer?
Iceman: I think I've got some good years left in the tank. I imagine once I stop having fun will be when I finally quit, but I don’t see how that could happen in the foreseeable future.
Do you have any plans for 2018? Any specific majors you want to go too or specific goals?
Iceman: I'm definitely going to Flat Iron and I’ll probably go to Evo and The Big House. Don't Park On The Grass is in my region, so I'll be at that as well. As far as goals, I just want to perform well at big tournaments. I know that if I do, the results will come.
If you had to give a piece of advice in terms of just how to improve as a player, in general, for a beginner level player, a "mid" level (mid in your own terms) player, and a player close to your level, what do you think would be good for them to work on and improve their gameplay?
Iceman: For beginner level players of any character, I always tell them that you need to be faster. Faster in terms of recognizing different scenarios, movement, and ability to adapt without thinking. For mid level players it usually is a player to player thing. Often times they aren't using certain options or they don't understand why they lose to specific tactics. Usually players at that level just need to get beat up a lot more than they already have been and they need to have better vision of what's happening in the game. When I talk about vision, I just mean seeing holes in gameplay from players that are better than you. Often times when lower level players play really good players, it's easy to get overwhelmed and put in scenarios you don't understand. As you get better you start to see the cracks in more players’ gameplay and that's just something that comes with time. Those things both come with time. For players close to my level, I'd say it's even more player specific advice and it's very difficult to give one particular thing. Often times for players at that level it becomes an accumulation of small things that need to be worked on instead of one big thing.
Last things to wrap up, anyone you want to shout out?
Iceman: Shoutouts to all the Tuk boys, you know who you are. Shoutouts to all of PNW smash. For our skill level our region is more in the dark than other regions, but our scene is sick and there's a lot of good people here that people don’t know about.
You can follow Iceman on twitter at https://twitter.com/Tuk_basement,
and his Twitch is listed here too: https://www.twitch.tv/ticeman12
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