Evo 2008: For the Love of the Game

It's been a year since I've written anything on my blog. And to be truthful, this was not an accident. Evolution 2007's recap was my last article written for a reason: that event took the life out of me. I over-exerted myself in 2007, so much to the point where I was super stressed out and ended up super burned out. I'm talking really burned out. And yes, so burned out that I needed a year to recover. So I took an unannounced hiatus from my blog (and from making a DVD trailer and such) to give myself a good year to relax and recover and take care of other, more important personal businesses. Such as being the best man at my brother's wedding and actually taking, for the first time in my life, a real vacation where I traveled and did nothing but eat, sleep, and relax. So it was a very good year for me. Very relaxing.


In fact, so relaxing that Evo 2008 pretty much snuck up on me. At some point in time earlier this year, it suddenly dawned on me: Evo 2008 was only 3 weeks away!

The last two years, Evo West and Evo East were good ways to prepare for Evo Finals 2008. But this year, there were no qualifiers, so I ended up relaxing so much that I had forgotten to really get myself mentally prepared for Evo. So when Evo weekend rolled around, I didn't know what to expect at all. I knew everything that was gonna happen there, but unlike last year, where I had given myself so many expectations and so many goals, this Evo was like a blank slate for me. So while that could be scary, not knowing what to expect, it can also be an exciting thing! Sometimes the best experiences occur when you leave yourself room to be surprised. So now that the weekend has come and gone, how did I feel about it?


It was wonderful.

Two years ago, my post about Evo2006 was all about Evo growing up. It was the first year it felt like the scene was truly maturing, but that's not a good enough goal. In order to continue to succeed, you must not be content with growin up... you must continue to grow and mature. And even though there was every reason to falter and regress this year -- no major sponsor this year, only one new game and lots of really old games -- the scene proved it could survive and thrive and grow stronger without those things. It proved that Evo's biggest strength is still the thing that made earlier tournaments like B3 and B5 so successful: the communities that play Fighting Games.

Yes, the turnout was slightly lower than previous years with very low numbers for games like Tekken. Yes, there was a huge clash between Evo and the Smash community regarding the rules used for Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Yes, the Tropicana was not even close to being as nice as Green Valley or Red Rock (we'll know better next year when we try to make it back onto the strip). But it didn't matter. Because one of the main lasting memories of this year's Evo, for me, was that, at several points during Friday and Saturday as I walked the Evo grounds doing my usual FOB thing of taking pictures, I noticed that the place was packed. From the actual tournament stations down to the Bing Your Own Console area down to the Street Fighter IV machines down to the BlazBlue setup, there was nary room enough to walk without trampling over over people.

And everyone was having fun.


I saw people using their badges as "tokens" on the SFIV machines to mark whose turn was next (and every machine had tons of badges on them). I saw Dark Geese doing his usual thing of making sure SNK was represented, and watched a match he ran between Tokido and Sabin for the KOF Ultimate Match Championships. I saw Hellmonkey, one of the most vocal people angry at Evo over the choice to drop Guilty Gear from the main lineup, doing his best to run a great and hyped up and organized Guilty Gear tournament... one on each day. I saw a gigantic horde of people gathered and screaming around a T.V. to watch J.R. and Ryan Hart compete in a Third Strike moneymatch. I talked to one kid (actually, he wasn't a kid, he just looked like one... he told me he was actually in his twenties, but I swear he looked 15!) who said he came specifically to play Tatsunoko Vs. Capcom, and he looked like he soaked up every minute he could of that game. I saw the crowd give support to special surprise guest T.Double a.k.a Turbo during his very first live stage performances ever. I saw Kugler with a notebook feverishly writing down every bit of juicy information he could about BlazBlue to share with the community who weren't there. It probably sounds weird to say that seeing these types of things bring me a lot of joy, but it's true. And it was just as great as it had been in the past few years with no drop off at all.

And that's when it hit me: the thing that makes Evo so great is that the people who are there are there for Evo. Regardless whether or not the prize money is 5 grand or 700 dollars, the players are there to enjoy Evo. There are other competitive gaming organizations out there that may appear to have as big of numbers as Evo does, but I guarantee you that the people at those events do not have even remotely the same amount of dedication and love that the Fighting Game community has.

We can use the Smash drama as a perfect example. The Smash community was livid at the Evo staff for choosing to go with items. But why were they so mad? It's because they love their game, they love the gaming community, they love gaming events, and they had high hopes, after last year's successful Melee tournament, that Evo would become the main Smash tournament of the year... the Wimbledon of Brawl, so to speak. So it's natural for them to be so frustrated that we chose to go a direction they do not approve of. Am I angry at the core Smash community for being angry with us? For trying to brush Evo off as a "joke" tournament after our decision to play with items? No, not at all. I know where they are coming from, and it's coming from the love of the game.


Same goes for the Guilty Gear community. After long threads full of mostly flames and angry bitching from both sides, the Guilty Gear community showed up in full force and, despite Accent Core not being a main game in the lineup, and they showed Evo that their community is no less deserving than any other community. Last year, I said the Guilty Gear community wasn't strong enough. This year, they showed me they were.

So the main thing that stood out to me about this year's Evo was that the people there wanted to be there. They were there for Evo, because they love the games and nothing more. They don't need things like prize money as motivation to go. No, they were there because they love the games they love, and they were there to have fun.

(This is not to say that people who didn't show up don't love the game just as much. I know a lot of people who did not show up because of other more important things to attend or because it just wasn't financially feesible... I'm sure if they could have made it, they would have.)

I am probably extremely biased when I say this, but I truly believe, thanks in large part to this year's Evo, that no video game community can rival the love and passion of the Fighting Game community. Sure the RTS communities and the FPS communities and the MMO communities and such are out there and they are strong and have equally as dedicated fans, but the Fighting Game community has every reason to drop off the map, especially because there have been so few major Fighting Games released recently. But despite all of that, the Fighting Game community still holds strong, and that's the feeling I got from Evo this year. It's truly a magical thing to have so many people gather at one event like Evo just because of how much they love the games they play and how much they love the community. And so, I have only one thing to say to the Fighting Game community:

Thank you. ^_^

- James

P.S. Up next, my annual "State of the Fighting Games" article.

P.P.S. Nothing can symbolize how much fight there is in the Fighting Game community than the story of what one person had to go through. I have to make a mention of this in this blog post, because to me, it's not only a moving story in the Fighting Game community, but it's a moving story for any community.


By now, everyone in the Fighting Game world has heard about John Choi's success from Evo this past year. Even though Choi has been a respected top player for years and years, it may come as a surprise that Choi has never, ever made 1st place in an Evo tournament since we changed to the "Evolution" moniker. So to win two games this year was huge. To win two games typically dominated by Japanese players by defeating Japanese players in the final matches was extremely huge.

But what makes it especially incredible is the obstacles Choi overcame to make it to Evo to compete at all. I won't tell his story. He does a better job of telling it himself. I urge everyone to read it. It is truly inspiring stuff. You are the best, John!