The Splatoon Peer Review Server: A Catalyst for the Scene's Growth

Article originally posted at: https://www.splatoonstronghold.com/guides/the-splatoon-peer-review-server

The Splatoon Peer Review Server: A Catalyst for the Scene’s Growth

Improving community connections and individual player ability is difficult in Splatoon; many players ask themselves how to achieve these things at one point or another. The Splatoon Peer Review Server has recently gained traction as a way to grow the scene’s analysis in a collaborative way and answers that question.

What is the Splatoon Peer Review Server?

The Splatoon Peer Review Server (or the SPR Server for short) is a Discord server dedicated to utilising teamwork and communication through peer review in order to help aid the progression of Splatoon players at all levels of play.

Peer Review refers to the process of analysing and giving feedback on certain clips in a player’s match to ultimately help them gain a better sense of understanding as to what went wrong, what they could have done differently, or simply how the situation in question occurred the way it did. It makes sure to include everyone in the process of reviewing so that as many viewpoints as possible can be conveyed. This makes it a very valuable tool to a player’s progression, helping them learn mechanical in-game skills and gain a better awareness of how games unfold. Furthermore, it also lets them lend a hand to other people, creating more connections with others to improve the scene’s communication, strengthening community ties.

How does it work?

The Splatoon Peer Review Server follows a simple structure in order to maximise the efficiency of communication between members and to make it as easy as possible for people to get their gameplay reviewed. All that is required is for you to be on the server!

To ask for some peer review, all you have to do is make a post in the #lf-peer-review channel, using the template for making a post in #peer-review-guidelines.

After creating this post, anyone on the server is welcome to step in and help you with your issues. Often, help will be in the form of a Discord call on dedicated Peer Review voice channels, where if you allow drop-ins, other people can also join the call to learn with you and provide their own reviews and tips. The clips you wish to review can be shown on the call through screen-sharing. Many players in the server have a capture card so that they can screenshare from using your replay codes, as well.

What else can you do in this server?

As mentioned above, this server is not just for asking others to review your clips, it is also for you to help others! One of the most important stages in growing a community is giving back to it, and this is exactly what the Peer Review server offers. You do not have to be a top level player to review gameplay with others, as the skills required to analyse gameplay are different to the skills required to carry out gameplay of the same skill. Any help that can be given to others is good help, so don’t be afraid to reach out and lend others a hand!

The Splatoon Peer Review Server also offers other resources, such as general text channels or general voice channels for meeting other players and discussing in-game questions or simply chatting together! Alongside these tools, there is a questions and advice section if you would prefer your questions to be answered in text form.

Why is peer review specifically important?

The Splatoon Peer Review Server is based heavily around the concept of reviewing the gameplay of others, but why is this emphasised over other methods to improve gameplay, such as coaching?

Peer review allows players to collaborate more effectively than the traditional coach-to-player approach as it removes the idea that one player knows much more than another simply because they have evidence that they might have more in-game skill. While on the surface this may not seem like an issue, it can result in people not speaking out when it comes to generating ideas or giving help, reducing the amount of aid a developing player receives. To quote Echo (an admin of the Splatoon Peer Review Server): “There is still an infinite amount we don’t know about what’s possible and what can work in this game. As a scene, I believe we would grow much faster and with a bigger breadth of ideas if people were more open to listening to the perspectives of their peers. And at the very least, encourage players to not immediately dismiss the ideas of someone else because they’re a lower solo queue rank.”

It would be unfair to say that coaching does not have its place in the competitive scene. In fact, coaching is still very important for the scene's growth and improvement; however coaching thrives when used alongside peer review, as then the maximum amount of ideas can be shared and tested to help players improve.

From the minds of the admins

To get a deeper understanding of the server’s admins and their goals, I asked Echo to answer a few questions about the server as a whole.

1. What inspired you to get involved with the SPR Server?

“The server (originally named ‘Splatoon Coaching and Peer Review’) was first spearheaded by Xi (their Bluesky here). You might know Xi as the head TO of Under Pressure, or from his work on the Splat World Series international tournament. I saw his promotion for the server on Bluesky, and struck a conversation in DMs.

After coaching a lot of players since 2020, I joined SPR because of my love for analyzing this game, and desire to help build a community of growth mindset individuals.

Xi’s initial vision for the server was “to promote peer review, as well as giving coaches an opportunity to network and find players committed to improvement.” Remnants of this vision still exist, but SPR’s first few months highlighted some key problems. Lots of players entered the server thinking it was just “a place for free coaching,” and so they either misunderstood or rejected the peer review aspect of the server. Then, lots of existing coaches felt overwhelmed: they’re busy, and so if they feel like everyone in a server is asking them to do more work for free then it was less about “learning how to learn.”

A lot of my work has been to build SPR into something that can help to build more analysis in the scene, and challenge the concept that this game is "solved”: even seasoned analysts are constantly learning, and there's so much to gain from everyone around you. As a player and as a person, I've improved by leaps and bounds from analyzing deeply while keeping an open mind to others' perspectives. Ultimately, we hope that members of SPR may be inspired to keep learning, improving, and sharing their perspectives that help others do the same.”

2. What plans do you have for the future of the SPR Server?

“I try to keep the goals of the server flexible, both because I want it to evolve to meet the community’s needs, and because sometimes life can be unpredictable for myself and others who help out. Being able to shift plans when needed helps us to stay true to our mission in the long-term, instead of having some superficial schedule of events. As long as everything stays true to the server's mission, then that's great for me.

In some ways, the server's future is already being realized. In the past month, we've completed a server overhaul to remove many of the coaching-specific channels, and have begun public watch parties of high-level tournament replays. Already, we've seen an uptake in players analyzing gameplay from their peers and getting insights from top level tournament sets. From here, it's really important to further establish this core of analysis: we want to both solidify the server's mission, and build up the ability and motivation for more players to become proactive reviewers in the server.

Above all, I’m most excited to see this server and its ideals reach out to the broader comp community. There are currently a lot of community spaces that encourage being 'perceived as good' (having people hype you up), instead of 'being good' (finding ways to actually improve your performance). I think an open space like this is sorely needed for more players to discuss improvement methods in an open forum. More personally, when I recognized that I didn't need to be perfect at Splatoon to start analyzing, it let me create more ideas, better understand other players' concepts, and ultimately find more love for the game. Whether it be in esports, hobbies, or your life as a whole, loving the process of improvement will take you far, and I think this server is a small way to show that.

And the server gives me more reason to vod review myself/top level more. But that's a bit too short-winded, haha.”

3. What would your main piece of advice be for Splatoon players wishing to improve at the game?

“This is a hard one to answer, especially briefly. Honestly, one thing that helped me significantly was reading books on competitive mentality and growth: they've helped me both in Splatoon and life more generally. Some influential ones for me were The Will to Keep Winning by Street Fighter world champ Daigo Umehara, as well as The Inner Game of Tennis by W. Timothy Gallwey.

Aside from that, there are two main things I want to highlight. First, make sure to keep an open mind. Keep finding new opportunities to grow, and recognizing when certain habits/lines of reasoning aren't helpful for your growth, so you can keep changing yourself to what fits you best as time goes on.

Second, build an environment conducive to your own growth. Physiologically, make sure you can put your all into your practice/play: food, sleep, and stress are all pivotal for mentality and performance. Socially, make sure that the people around you are able and willing to support you. Accountability buddies can help in so many ways, anywhere from helping to theorycraft certain situations, to forcing each other to play X rank by staying in the same vc.

And above all else, recognize that this is still a game we play: make sure that, however you play the game, you are being honest with yourself and how you get joy out of experiencing it. I tried speedrunning games for a bit, and after recognizing that I was no longer enjoying the process, I switched to other hobbies. And that's okay! Life is big, life is long. If you find playing competitive is no longer augmenting your life, then finding things in life that can give you more joy can go a long way.”

Summary

The Splatoon Peer Review Server is a growing hub for competitive Splatoon, with new members constantly joining to aid their learning and the learning of others. By emphasising the concept of peer review, this server aims to increase the spread of new ideas and knowledge through the Splatoon community by focusing on collaboration to strengthen community ties. Peer review is a great tool that many may not truly appreciate, but with this server it can finally be used to its fullest extent. So go on, give it a try! Start peer reviewing to help yourself and others improve! Here’s the server link to get you started: https://discord.gg/9DwrVSJek7

Original Posting Date: October 2, 2025

Written by Kitamura.