In Melee today, there are a handful of people who are making a living off of competition. Many of those are professionally sponsored players: the Mew2Kings and Armadas of the world. But for some, a Melee living is attained through less auspicious means, traveling to every nearby local and weekly to get by.

Dustin "Gravy" White is one of those people. Residing in Orlando, Gravy spends his days competing in tournaments, making the majority of his money from winnings. While he doesn’t travel to nationals much and isn’t as visible as other top players, he’s still well-respected in the scene; last year he was ranked 61st in the world in Melee It On Me’s Top 100. But despite his absence at major national events, his passion for Melee is unmatched throughout the scene. All it takes is a look back to see why.

Six Dragonites and a lot of bananas

As a kid growing up, Gravy was a big gamer. But unlike most people who consider themselves as such, Gravy only played a few games. "When compared to others, my experience is actually very narrow. I've always played in such a way that I accrued a vast amount of experience in a small range of games. I would find something and play it obsessively until there was nothing left to be done in that game, and then I would move on."

Because of this, as a small child he focused heavily on two games, and two games only: Pokémon and Donkey Kong 64. As a very young kid, he was surprisingly meticulous. “I remember the guy standing in front of the SS Anne and saying that the ship would be back in a year, and so I waited a literal year for it to come back. In DK 64, it felt like being a collectionist was the way to be good, so I did that." Interestingly enough, Gravy didn’t take the same tactic in Pokémon. "Pokémon I just wanted to have the strongest team and I didn't care about my PokéDex. Of course my idea of what made a strong team started out as six Dragonites, and grew from there."

But his hobbies would be cut short by real life. At six years old, he was taken away from his mother and put into foster care. "When the social service workers came they actually took my N64 and my DK64 save, so I never got to 100 percent."

Hard knock life

Gravy’s upbringing was, to put it lightly, far from ideal. During his childhood, Gravy lived with his mother and five half-brothers. She struggled to raise her children. "My mother was a genius, always clever in her words, but she was just neglectful and never got her life together." Unfortunately for Gravy, it didn’t get better from there.

"When I was six years old I got put into foster care, and was eventually relocated to an uncle of mine who ended up being incredibly abusive. I would change schools probably twice a year or more, we basically lived in an apartment until we got evicted and then moved over and over again. At one point we lived in a trailer down the road from my father’s house, in the middle of the woods with no running water and very little food. During this time, I became severely anemic and I had to have my adenoids and tonsils removed because they were hugely swollen from my mother’s smoking."

Gravy’s next stop was his father’s, where he found respite … for a time. "[My father] was an ex-drill sergeant, he worked at a juvenile prison, and was a martial artist. He had been aggressive and angry for his whole life, and was terrifying to be around." Despite his imposing description, the two of them lived together in relative peace for about three years. "But then my father got a girlfriend, who would later become his wife, who took over the household and made him extremely aggressive towards me." Things went downhill from there. "By the time I was 17 I was locked out of the kitchen, food was scarce and I fought physically with my father regularly."

A way out

During this time, Gravy made it a point to stay away from his home whenever possible. He would stay at friend’s places for days or even weeks at a time. It was during these moments that he found his way back into gaming. "I had two friends who were twins who I started out playing World of Warcraft and Brawl with, and I basically lived at their house for like four years."

One such friend who Gravy would stay with was also a World of Warcraft fan. That friend’s father was also a police officer. "One day my father called me while I was at their house, and he was screaming so loudly at me that my friend’s father heard, and he sat me down to ask about it. He asked if everything was OK and told me to contact him if I ever really needed help. Anyways one night I got into a fight so badly with my father that I called the cop, and I left my father’s house. So I actually became emancipated from my father at 17, and had moved out fully. However, it had barely been a home for years."

The police officer and his family adopted Gravy, and for the first time in his life, he found himself in a safe situation. It wouldn’t last forever. "I actually messed up my relationship with these people. You have to understand that living with my father had given me some serious issues. I was a compulsive liar, I was extremely manipulative, and I had serious rage issues.

"The cop helped a lot to fix these issues, and help me stabilize myself enough to actually function in society. I'm certain that I would be a lot worse off without him. Unfortunately, I couldn't fix myself in time to be a part of his family."

Gravy and the WNY crew watching Evo 2013 - at home © [unknown]

Where Melee comes in

After Gravy and the policeman’s family parted ways, he relied on his friends to stay afloat for some time until he found what would be one of his saving graces: Rochester Melee. "They lived in an apartment that everyone called The Apartment. It was the hub for Melee in all of Western New York, basically everyone who lived there was a smasher, and they had all been friends for years before I came around."

Gravy attempted to convert some of The Apartment’s faithful to Brawl, as that was the Smash game he had spent more time with. But with no success, he moved onto Melee, and immediately picked up his current main: Captain Falcon. "I always played Falcon because he matches my playstyle in every game. I like to move around fast and hit hard. In CoD I always ran lightweight and sub machine guns, I was a mage in WoW … the theme sticks in every game for me. Right off the bat my obsessive personality took over, and I played Melee and only Melee for like three years straight."

While moving from place to place, Gravy lived at The Apartment on and off, and attempted to adapt to a regular lifestyle. But it wasn’t easy for him, and he still struggled to make ends meet. “During this time I also tried to attend a community college, but gave up after about three semesters. I just couldn't support myself while going to school; I had to bike ten miles in upstate winter just to get there, and it was not as easy to be intrinsically motivated towards the topics in my classes.”

Given his obsessive personality, Gravy threw himself into Melee, so much so that he quickly rose to become second best in Western New York. But there was one man he could never beat: JesiahTEG, his Melee mentor. “This guy was unbeatable in the area; he had been winning every tournament in western New York with Marth for years. Jesiah’s Marth, his Fox, and even his Mewtwo could spank me [at first].” The two have fought many times in Melee, but rarely does Gravy come out victorious, even today. “After taking 17th at Big House 4, I came back to WNY and STILL lost to Jesiah. The guy is the definition of a hidden boss.”

Melee is the focus

As Gravy quickly advanced through his community, he started to get to a point where Melee was beginning to support him financially. This is the point where some struggling players would think to themselves, “maybe professional Melee is how I can succeed.” But Gravy took a very long time to start looking at it that way. He just wanted to play more Melee, plain and simple. “I’ve always been the type to ignore the realities of life. The fact is that I've always been poor, I've always been struggling. So even when I was struggling to eat regularly and I was getting destroyed by my schedule, all I really cared about was Melee.

“It's just that for me, the most value I can get out of life is being engrossed in a thing. Falling asleep thinking about it, waking up wanting to do it. This is just what I look for in my life, and I don't really regret it, even when it does make my life very hard.”

Gravy playing against his mentor, JesiahTEG © [unknown]

When Gravy moved to Orlando, many thought it was to become one of the people who makes their living off of Smash. But money had nothing to do with it — he just wanted to get better. "I eventually left WNY to move to Orlando, even though that would cut the money I could make from Melee down severely. If I still lived in WNY, I could be winning all the tournies in that area, and I could even be traveling to Boston or wherever just to make more. I moved to Orlando because the competition here was amazing, and I basically set everything aside just so I could try to become the best."

The aftermath

Orlando has been a new kind of challenge for Gravy. His Falcon has gained further recognition and his gameplay his well-respected amongst the community. Competition is fierce, and he battles top players like Plup and Colbol regularly. Tournament payouts are low (his regular local event has a two dollar buy-in) but Gravy is getting by with help from side jobs. The irony to him is that by moving to a more competitive region, he’s lost some visibility.

"I always think that I would have been more well-known or whatever if I stayed in WNY, or if I moved to Cali. It's funny how being in a region this difficult, especially when it was not even streamed or put on YouTube for quite a while, can make you slip under the radar." That’s slowly changing over time, however. "We've recently had Polarity stepping it up with their streaming and YouTube, and I think that the visibility is slowly increasing with the lifespan of the stream."

A lack of recognition isn’t all bad, though. Life in the spotlight isn’t really what Gravy is looking for. "You have to understand that I've been introverted my entire life, and I went from being a kid with serious problems to just being known as some kind of alter ego. I couldn't even handle myself well enough to make my adopted family stick around, and not long after that I'm in the public eye for beating KDJ." So maybe it's best he steps into the limelight one foot at a time after all.

What’s really important

Gravy still scrapes by most months, more or less making ends meet but very rarely exceeding that financially. He travels to big events when he can, but it’s not easy so he rarely ventures out of state. It would be easy to look at Gravy’s situation and wonder why he doesn’t apply himself to a more consistent career, and put Melee on the backburner. The simple answer? It’s not what he wants.

"Melee has made me a huge believer in the idea that people need intrinsic motivation to be happy in their life. I know I could have chased after monetary rewards by pursuing a more adult career. But I just think that if you do something for the money, that thing doesn't give you the same kind of feelings."

Melee is a game that will give Gravy the feelings he desires for years to come, he believes. Unlike Pokémon, where a powerful team was the goal, or DK 64, where completion meant perfection, Melee presents a new kind of challenge. One of constant betterment. "Melee appeals to the perfectionist in me. I am never doing it right, I can always be playing better."

Even if the public eye is not always on him, Gravy will strive to improve and climb the ranks. You can count on that.