| 25 May 2011
Looks like the stats revolution continues to hit other communities. Dazwa, a Starcraft II referee, was a Brawl official during the 2010 MLG season, the only one that had Brawl. He was able to pull match data from the 2010 season, excluding the Orlando regional, which was the first tourney in the season.
The results of the data are really amazing, more than anything I could have ever imagined I would be able to do for Brawl. Dazwa has posted his findings on Smashboards, and it is a definite read, so be sure to check it out.
The obvious stat I wanted to look at was character usage and how far Meta Knight was ahead of the next highest-used character. According the data, Meta Knight was used 1,298 times and No. 2 on the list, Snake, didn't even get used half of that. Capt. Falcon wins the Mr. Irrelevant award (3 times, according to the data).
The character usage lines up fairly well with what is to be expected at a major Brawl tourney and in looking at the chart, you can tell there are breaks between groups of characters used.
More from Dazwa:
I'm going to be perfectly honest: nothing shown above should come as a surprise to anyone. While I was a little heartbroken that the least commonly played character was Captain Falcon, everything here seems to be reasonable, barring that unusually high Lucas. While it's possible that characters may have "earned" additional games to their tally by simply entering game 3, the effect that has isn't nearly as influential as simply advancing in the bracket. The game 3 effect might sway the lower portion of the cast, but it's not a terribly major factor.Another factor was stage usage and ban rate. Final Destination is a stage I live on, and yet it was the most polarizing stage in the tournament series, being the third-most used and most-banned.
Be sure to check out the rest of the stats and give much love to Dazwa and the MLG referees for putting this together.
Graphic from Smashboards.
