Almost everyone comes to college in hopes of finding their “people.” Many satisfy this search through classes, others through Greek life and some through video game controllers and a Nintendo franchise classic.

Smash Club, Washington University’s gathering space for players of Nintendo’s Super Smash Brothers series, has been on campus for eight years and attracts more and more appeal with every passing year.

Courtesy of Smash Club

A normal, non-COVID year with Wash. U.’s Smash Club looks a bit like this: weekly tournaments—“weeklies”—every Tuesday evening in Ursa’s, monthlies in Risa Commons, an end of the semester tournament called Wonderland and a lot of casual gaming meet-ups in between it all.

Smash Club’s co-president, senior Jack Goldberg, has been a part of Smash Club since his first year, but he has been an avid fan of the game since he started playing in middle school.

This continued through high school, where he and a couple of his good friends would go to tournaments about once a week, sometimes more. So when it came time to apply to colleges, Goldberg had to at least look into the surrounding city’s Smash community. He joined the St. Louis area Super Smash Bros. Facebook page before he even toured Wash. U. Soon thereafter, he found a junior from Wash. U. on the page.

“He said that when I come and visit Wash. U., he would be happy to have me over and we could play some games and just talk about Wash. U.,” Goldberg recalled. “So I did that and it was a really fun time, and that helped me decide on Wash. U.”

Four years later, Goldberg is quite pleased with his decision. “It certainly wasn’t on the top of my list of reasons to go to a school; it was more of a happy coincidence.”

Most cities or regions in the United States have their own Smash community depending on numbers, and St. Louis has a solid following. “We have a lot of people who play here and obviously a subset of them are at Wash. U., a subset of them are at [St. Louis University].” Schools like Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and Webster University are also a part of the mix.

Goldberg entered the St. Louis Smash sphere with an interesting background: his home state of Connecticut happens to be a hotspot for Super Smash Bros. This leaves Missouri at least a few steps behind what he had grown up with, but the impact of the local community here on Goldberg’s college experience is incomparable. “Especially freshman and sophomore year, it was really nice that I had a lot of friends that were Wash. U. friends, but I also had a lot of friends that were St. Louis people who had already graduated college and lived in St. Louis or were students at SLU; one of my best friends is at SLU who I met through Smash,” said Goldberg.

But Goldberg’s list of gaming friends does not stop in Missouri or Connecticut or even North America. While studying in Shanghai last fall, Goldberg could not help but inquire about the city’s Smash community. Nintendo games are much less popular in China because of past legal restrictions on consoles, but there exists a community nonetheless. “I went to tournaments every week there and was able to make a lot of friends outside of the Wash. U. bubble, which is really nice,” he said.

And because the Smash scene was much less competitive in Shanghai than here, Goldberg and his go-to character Pokémon Trainer actually ended up qualifying for an invitational for the sixteen best players in China. During that same trip, he also spent a night playing Smash in Beijing with strangers who he met solely as a result of the game. The whole experience was surreal for Goldberg; in a country and city where he knew no one, he “was able to make friends and hang out for a night… just a lot of fun.”

Back at Wash. U., Goldberg has been on the executive board for Smash Club since he first joined freshman year, serving this year as co-president with junior Nathan Thompson. Seniors Grant Marketta and Fadel Rodriguez also play essential roles on exec, and together they have witnessed the progression of the club through changing membership and strengthened connections.

While all Smash Club tournaments have always been open to the public, Goldberg and his fellow exec leaders are now particularly interested in creating more of a Wash. U. community.

This notion may have been a leading factor in the creation of the club’s online discord group two years ago. “Obviously when we started there was no one in it, now we have a little over a hundred people in it. And it’s like a really good community of kids that just talk about games they like and watch stuff together,” explained Goldberg.

In COVID times, the discord group has become increasingly active and increasingly essential. Goldberg shares that they sometimes play rounds of Among Us, and currently they are trying to initiate a routine weekly hangout in the discord. Goldberg describes this idea as probably a log-on and “play-whatever-games-you-want night… but it’s been hard for sure.”

Because he is a senior, Goldberg’s remaining time with Wash. U. Smash Club is limited. He admits that he has “zero expectation of any physical tournaments” before he graduates. Streaming online and playing is an option, but the huge loss of the social aspect makes it much less appealing.

“Video game tournaments are the last thing in society that we need to bring back… like the least important, most spreading-covid thing in the world,” said Goldberg with a slight laugh. One of those ‘this sucks but you kind of just have to make light of it’ laughs.

The ultimate takeaway from Goldberg is that his time at Wash. U. has been profoundly shaped by Super Smash Bros. He knows the many technicalities of the game in and out, and he could enthusiastically outline its history for you with no issue. But at the end of the day, what began as a fondness for a video game has transformed into long-lasting memories and an unmatched network of friendships.

“It is generally called the Smash Community—that’s like the wording that people use—but whenever I talk about it, I always just say the word community, and I think that’s like a really, really important part of it… like that’s how I meet people, that’s how people kind of get together.”