Evo Championship Series 2012 - The World's Best - Fighting Games vs. eSports?!

It's time for the big one folks! Following last year's EVO 2011 and the Road to EVO 2012 season we are now just one week away from EVO 2012, the world fighting game championships. 2012 has certainly been packed with events this year leading up to EVO and now the best players from around the world will meet in Las Vegas.

EVO 2011 Recap

http://www.eventhubs.com/news/2011/jul/29/evo-2011-live-stream-team-sp00ky-x-iplaywinner/

Featured Games

Records are being broken for EVO 2012, we've got over 3,500 entrants playing mixtures of the titles this year, with $100,000 in prizes up for grabs.

Capcom - The Rise of SSFIV and UMvC3 and the Fall of Street Fighter X Tekken

Thanks to the release of SSFIV: Arcade Edition Version. 2012 and Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, the two games will be a lot more balanced affair this time around. No longer will the top 8 be dominated by Yun, Fei Long and C.Viper and no longer will Level 3 X-Factor Dark Phoenix be the overbearing character she was. Players are in a much better mindset for both games and going into EVO 2012, the winner of both AE 2012 and UMvC3 could be one of any 20 to 40 players.

And then we have the proverbial red-headed step child of fighting games, Street Fighter X Tekken, making its 2 vs 2 debut (448 teams) at EVO 2012.

• Gems are practically unusable because of the amount of time needed to set them up each match would double or even triple the time taken to complete the tournament
• The DLC on the disc/playable online hacked characters nonsense had left a bad taste in everyone's mouths
• Labelled by tournament players as Jab X Timeout, the game simply isn't fun to play or watch at a competitive level

Fighting Games and eSports

There's been a lot of debate about fighting games joining the eSports movement and while Capcom have stated their position is firmly against their games featuring at MLG (following an attempt in the past during the days when an event only had one stream, the fighting games viewers and the Starcraft viewers collided in the stream chat), MLG in turn turned their attention to other games outside of Capcom, those being Mortal Kombat, Soulcalibur V and The King of Fighters XIII.

Following two events at MLG in which MK and ScV had over 70 entrants at both, KOFXIII failed to break 40 entrants on both occasions. With the general assumption that KOFXIII will be dropped, many in the eSports camp dismissed KOF for its community not supporting their game. Yet look at the amount of entrants at EVO for the game, eclipsing both MK and ScV combined. Why? A very good article on iPlayWinner argues that for all MLG's prize money and high production value, the one thing they miss is the most important thing that Community events like CEO 2012 and UFGT8 do. They make you think, "You want to be a part of this," through engagement and the sense of community. http://iplaywinner.com/news/2012/6/18/the-salty-runback-community-effort.html

Also Featuring

The 25th anniversary Super Street Fighter II Turbo Tournament of Legends 32 man invitational plus Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown ($15000 prize pool from Sega) and Skullgirls ($1000 prize pool from Autumn Games) side tournaments.

Thursday (July 5th 10PM PDT) Pre-show!

Fighting game player and Evil Genius's own Floe (master of the Floe Face) has had a very popular stream channel http://www.twitch.tv/eg_floe trying to become "The Guy" in the crazy platformer indie game, I Wanna Be The Guy. This Thursday on stream 1, Floe will rage for everyone's entertainment playing I Wanna Be The Guy: Gaiden in the official Evo pre-show.

Indie Game Showcase

In an effort to provide some interesting indie titles to an audience receptive of them, EVO this year will feature 7 indie titles, one of which you may of heard of if you've seen my previous event blogs for UFGT8 and CEO 2012.

The 7 titles will be Aztez, BaraBariBall, DIVEKICK, Nidhogg, SpyParty, Super Comboman and Super Time Force (three of which need pages creating on Giant Bomb, get on that!).

“While on the surface EVO is a fighting game tournament for hardcore fans, dig a little deeper and you’ll learn that it’s much more than that. EVO has always pushed traditional gaming outside of the expected, and far past the norm. As an event, it represents how vast & varied gaming can be, and how much crazy fun can be had when it’s all mashed together into a weekend of tournaments & BYOC. A lot of these tenets & goals line up one-to-one with the core of independent game development. With this in mind, I’m extremely excited that EVO has partnered with the other indie game developers to showcase their games in the Indie Gaming Showcase.

Plus… we all can’t wait for the FGC to absolutely tear our games apart!”

Nathan Vella
Co-founder & president, CAPY (Super Time Force)

Stream Details

For the first time, EVO will be streamed on Twitch.tv, Spooky and Haunts from Team Spooky and iPlayWinner will be handling the stream duties once again, following their successful showing last year.

Stream 1 (Pools, Quarter-finals, Semi-finals, Finals) - http://www.twitch.tv/srkevo1

Stream 2 (Pools, Quarter-finals, Semi-finals) - http://www.twitch.tv/srkevo2

Stream 3 (Panels) - http://www.twitch.tv/srkevo3

The guys at shoryuken.com have set up a handy Custom Player (complete with the weekend's full schedule) page for viewing all three streams and chat however you want at http://evo2012.s3.amazonaws.com/live/index.html

$12 720p HD stream = Annual Evo $10,000 College Scholarship for Gamers

http://evo.shoryuken.com/2012/06/26/shoryuken-com-introduces-the-evo-annual-10000-college-scholarship-for-gamers/

Get your Evo 2012 Ticket! This is a one time purchase for the Evo 2012 streams, July 6 - 8, 2012.

Proceeds will go towards the foundation of an annual $10,000 Evo college scholarship for gamers pursuing degrees in gaming and technology. Evo 2012 ticket holders will receive:

EVO 2012 ticket holders will receive:

»No ads

»720p quality streams

»Access to chat

»Custom Emoticons

»The warm fuzzy feeling of helping your fellow gamers fulfill their dreams

All for the price of $12.00.

In Closing

With UFGT8 and CEO 2012, I could've easily said, "if you watch one fighting game stream this year..." but to be honest, as good as they were (and as much potential they have to be on the same level), they don't currently compare to EVO. EVO is the tournament that all players go to above any others and there's a reason why EVO 2011 broke the 85,000 concurrent (2.2 million unique views) stream viewers (on the ustream stream channel alone) mark.

I hope you can tune in and make this even bigger than last year.

Official EVO 2012 / 2k12 Livestream Discussion Thread (July 6-8)

I'm glad to see Skullgirls is there but will it be streamed? I don't know how they handle side tournaments.

Also they should get Dong Dong Never Die in the indie area.

Very much looking forward to this, though EG has been dominating these past few events the other players are going to need to bring their A game. Maybe some of the Japanese players can upset the balance a little.

Not many Mortal Kombat entries. I can sit here and make assumptions as to why with my limited knowledge but does anybody want to clue me in why MK seems to have fallen off a cliff?

@chilibean_3 said:

Not many Mortal Kombat entries. I can sit here and make assumptions as to why with my limited knowledge but does anybody want to clue me in why MK seems to have fallen off a cliff?

Because it's not a good game at high levels.

It's fun to play just messing around with friends, but competitively, the game is no good.

Also, who has subscribed to the chat yet? Feel kinda weird paying 12 bucks to chat with other stream monsters... But I'm already a Team Spooky subscriber so it's not too much of a foreign concept to me. Wonder how the chat quality will turn out.

I love Evo, and I'm really happy to have a spot to go to get all the links/details...

but you clearly left out Super Smash Bros.

@chilibean_3 said:

Not many Mortal Kombat entries. I can sit here and make assumptions as to why with my limited knowledge but does anybody want to clue me in why MK seems to have fallen off a cliff?

Mortal Kombat has faired better than people expected. Many detractors of the game claimed "Mortal Kombat is dead after Evo" last year. Many people were not expecting it to come back for Evo this year, but the MK community has been pretty strong and always shows up to support the game at tournaments.

It's just nowhere near as big as the Capcom games.

@MethodMan008 said:

@chilibean_3 said:

Not many Mortal Kombat entries. I can sit here and make assumptions as to why with my limited knowledge but does anybody want to clue me in why MK seems to have fallen off a cliff?

Because it's not a good game at high levels.

It's fun to play just messing around with friends, but competitively, the game is no good.

I disagree. I get pretty hype for high-level MK play. I was expecting CD Jr. to take Evo, easy, but when Perfect Legend came back at MLG Anaheim (after getting severely owned at MLG Columbus, including Babalitied), I don't know what to expect now.

And I'm under the assumption that the reason entrants for KOF at Evo signed up just 'cause of the free t-shirt. :P Not that I think KOF is a bad game or anything!

Evo main stream has been up and running, re-airing past Evos and other miscellaneous videos. It's been fun to watch as I never had a chance to really watch any of the really OG Evos past the last couple of years. CvS2 was my favorite game back in the heyday. Seeing some of these old Evo matches...damn my mind's blown even after all these years.

It sucks that while KOF13 has over three times the entrants as MK the prize pool is less then half. I'm curious how SFXT is going to go down. I bet many of the entrants are doing just cause and for the money, not for any passion for the game.

@SuperWristBands: If it is streamed, it'll be through an unofficial channel, the EVO streams all have their schedule filled with the main 6 titles.

@Commisar123: It's interesting because the Japanese are usually dominant at EVO, this could be the closest yet.

@TurboMan: Nooooooooooooo!

@Seroth said:

@chilibean_3 said:

Not many Mortal Kombat entries. I can sit here and make assumptions as to why with my limited knowledge but does anybody want to clue me in why MK seems to have fallen off a cliff?

Mortal Kombat has faired better than people expected. Many detractors of the game claimed "Mortal Kombat is dead after Evo" last year. Many people were not expecting it to come back for Evo this year, but the MK community has been pretty strong and always shows up to support the game at tournaments.

It's just nowhere near as big as the Capcom games.

@MethodMan008 said:

@chilibean_3 said:

Not many Mortal Kombat entries. I can sit here and make assumptions as to why with my limited knowledge but does anybody want to clue me in why MK seems to have fallen off a cliff?

Because it's not a good game at high levels.

It's fun to play just messing around with friends, but competitively, the game is no good.

I disagree. I get pretty hype for high-level MK play. I was expecting CD Jr. to take Evo, easy, but when Perfect Legend came back at MLG Anaheim (after getting severely owned at MLG Columbus, including Babalitied), I don't know what to expect now.

And I'm under the assumption that the reason entrants for KOF at Evo signed up just 'cause of the free t-shirt. :P Not that I think KOF is a bad game or anything!

Mortal Kombat, whether it's competitive scene is doing well or not, brought a lot of first time EVO viewers over to the stream last year. It's pull with gaming mainstream can't be denied, plus the MLG events have kept it moving along.

@churrific: I love the soundtrack in that game. Commentary in those days was almost non-existent it seems, it's improved a lot since then.

@ImmortalSaiyan: More than likely yes, I think it would've gotten even less entrants had it not been made a 2 vs 2 tournament. It is a shame about KOF vs MK, but KOF doesn't usually get a whole lot of marketing behind it before or after a release. MK on the other hand, has Warner Bros. supporting NetherRealm.

Ah yes, the REAL reason why I love July 4th weekend. Love EVO weekend!

All I care about is Persona 4 Arena.

That's a really cool write-up. I don't normally follow the fighting game scene, but I've been watching older matches and it seems like it could be fun to follow in the future. Awesome stuff!

DIVEKICK!!!!!!!!!!!

This will probably be the most unpredictable EVO this year. AE 2012 is of course unpredictable with the amount high-level players this year.

KOF XIII is also pretty unpredictable this year. Of course BALA is considered to be in favor, but he also lost to Luis-Cha and The Beast this week. And of course int'l players will be there like the Chinese sensations Dakou and Xiaohai :D.

Marvel.... I can't even bother. Between Fchamp, Justin Wong, Marlinpie, and ChrisG, the 4 I consider to be the best right now, I don't know who will win. And of course the Japanese UMvC3 players there, and yeah other top Marvel players.

I don't really care for the other games though, especially SFxT

No Jackie Chan?

And they call this a fighting tournament.

I'll be there! My first tourney. Mainly just going as a fan, but entered anyway.

EVO this year will be awesome!

So tempted to take the weekend off so I can watch. Dammit.

I am so hyped for MK9, I think it's a real shame that so many people didn't stick with it, the way that game has evolved since last year is amazing.

I'll be scheduling dinner/powernaps when MK9 is being streamed.

CALL SP00KY!

I don't think I've watched a fighting game live stream since the last EVO and I kinda stopped playing fighting games, but man EVO! Gotta watch EVO. Time to sit in front of the computer and get some hype!

One of the EVO co-founders Tom Cannon did an interview with GameSpot on their number of entrants among other things.

The EVO 2012 World Finals in Las Vegas, Nevada, next weekend will be the biggest in the event's history, EVO co-founder and Shoryuken.com president Tom "inkblot" Cannon told GameSpot.

The crowd is glued to the action at EVO 2011.

"We will have over 3,500 competitors (actual human beings), which is a record for us," Cannon said. "I estimate another 4,000-6,000 spectators, but it's impossible to say accurately as it's free to attend except Sunday."

Among the record number of challengers at the event will be Team MadCatz's Daigo "The Beast" Umehara and Evil Geniuses' Justin Wong. There were 2,500 competitors in 2011, and approximately 1,700 in 2010. Not only is this year's number of competitors the most ever, it's also the biggest jump from one year to the next.

http://uk.gamespot.com/news/evo-2012-draws-record-number-of-entrants-6384601

Aw man, awesome post. The EVO information can be hard to keep up with if you don't check in on streams every week or so, so it's nice to have a place to compile all the info. Good job!

I personally can't wait to see some KOF action. I was really into SFxT but it just didn't put its hooks into me like most other fighters do. Skullgirls should also be interesting if I can find whatever side-stream will be showing it.

On the subject of MK, I think it's doing well. This is the first time they really tried hard to make an MK game for competitive play and it's had some solid showings. I think (and hope) Netherealm is smart enough to build off the really solid foundation they laid down for the next MK game.

I'm curious how SFXT is going to go down. I bet many of the entrants are doing just cause and for the money, not for any passion for the game.

SBO West Coast Quals are pretty insane right now. Dieminion and JWong OCV'ing all over the place. :O

Also, over five thousand people in chat, NO SLOW MODE, and the chat is going very smoothly.

Shout outs to not lazy mods. /side eyes to giantbomb mods

I'm glad to see Skullgirls is there but will it be streamed? I don't know how they handle side tournaments.

As someone who only watched the MK steam last year and had a blast, it's a shame the entrants are about half compared to last year. At the same time over 250 entrants is probably better than what people were expecting. Either way I really look forward to the commentary from the pros one year later about the game, it's place in the fighting scene, and their speculation about its present and future at Evo.

So disappointed at that Soul Calibur 5 prize pool. That five grand is gonna be divided for the top 8. Not like I wanna win for the money, but shit c'mon.

@BaconGames said:

As someone who only watched the MK steam last year and had a blast, it's a shame the entrants are about half compared to last year. At the same time over 250 entrants is probably better than what people were expecting. Either way I really look forward to the commentary from the pros one year later about the game, it's place in the fighting scene, and their speculation about its present and future at Evo.

I think MK has a chance at making it back next year. The community has continued to rally around the game even if it is a bit smaller than some of the other games.

I am personally very excited for KOF XIII. As with SSFIVAE is made exponentially more exciting by international competition. A player named b.a.l.a. has been dominating the U.S. tournaments including the two MLB ones. However, there are a number of players outside of the U.S., including Poongko, Xian, and Mago, who stand to make his road to the tournament a much harder one.

@Lunar_Aura: I must admit I'm very surprised Namco Bandai could dip into their pockets a little more for the ScV community who've done an excellent job representing themselves.

@jewunit said:

@BaconGames said:

As someone who only watched the MK steam last year and had a blast, it's a shame the entrants are about half compared to last year. At the same time over 250 entrants is probably better than what people were expecting. Either way I really look forward to the commentary from the pros one year later about the game, it's place in the fighting scene, and their speculation about its present and future at Evo.

I think MK has a chance at making it back next year. The community has continued to rally around the game even if it is a bit smaller than some of the other games.

I am personally very excited for KOF XIII. As with SSFIVAE is made exponentially more exciting by international competition. A player named b.a.l.a. has been dominating the U.S. tournaments including the two MLB ones. However, there are a number of players outside of the U.S., including Poongko, Xian, and Mago, who stand to make his road to the tournament a much harder one.

MK has a chance, if only to keep the new viewers it gained last year who'll be oblivious to the game's performance this past year. Also keep in mind that if Injustice makes it out in time for EVO 2013, then that could replace it. I also expect Tekken TAG Tournament 2 to replace Soulcalibur V.

Assuming that Capcom don't turn SFxT into a game worth playing and watching by this time next year then that will more than likely by dropped, leaving a gap for another game.

I gotta fight Poongko in KOF first. :(

Thank you so much for putting this together.

@ThePhantomnaut said:

I gotta fight Poongko in KOF first. :(

Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet. That sucks dude.

I gotta fight Poongko in KOF first. :(

@OllyOxenFree said:

@ThePhantomnaut said:

I gotta fight Poongko in KOF first. :(

Got my money on Poongko! Sorry, duder! :P gl;hb

No hating but gl:hb is so annoying to hear. It puts me in a bad mood. :(

Whatever though.

@OllyOxenFree said:

@ThePhantomnaut said:

I gotta fight Poongko in KOF first. :(

Got my money on Poongko! Sorry, duder! :P gl;hb

No hating but gl:hb is so annoying to hear. It puts me in a bad mood. :(

Whatever though.

@OllyOxenFree said:

@ThePhantomnaut said:

@OllyOxenFree said:

@ThePhantomnaut said:

I gotta fight Poongko in KOF first. :(

Got my money on Poongko! Sorry, duder! :P gl;hb

No hating but gl:hb is so annoying to hear. It puts me in a bad mood. :(

Whatever though.

Good luck; have Batman?

Yeah unfortunately. But you did it out of good faith so thank you regardless. :P

Secret chat again?

Holy shit, old school FChamp. That was god damn epic. Pop offs. Fuck esports.

MK9 FTW!!!!!!

So crazy excited!

@LordXavierBritish said:

@ImmortalSaiyan said:

I'm curious how SFXT is going to go down. I bet many of the entrants are doing just cause and for the money, not for any passion for the game.

All of that nonsense has been patched out save for the block stun on jabbing. Even then, it doesn't take much effort to throw out a Cross Counter when someone's block string is that predictable.

I'm still having a lot of fun with SFxT, and the online community (on PS3, at least) is still full of new people coming in every week; rarely do I ever fight the same person in ranked matches twice. The professional scene, however, did a complete 180 once they got their hands on the game, and it's a shame they aren't making any concerted effort to utilize most of the systems; you have players like Ricky Ortiz and Justin Wong complaining about the game as whole just because Rufus got his divekick nerfed. That's just the way things go with balance changes. Plus, it doesn't help that the commentators are full of negative opinions whenever it's on stream. An enthusiastic voice can go a long way in making something exciting. There was a moment during the CEO stream when only five people were watching SFxT in person and the commentators were observing the crowd for KoFXIII.

Either way, I will agree that, at this point in time, SFxT isn't that fun to watch. And I say that because it's hard for the game to replicate the "one pixel of health" or "insane comeback" moment. The momentum sways too heavily toward one player, and it's easy to determine the pulse of a match once the first hit lands. Going back to the CEO stream, the top 4 had some matches that ended with players standing still with ten seconds left on the clock; they knew it was impossible for one side to win.

Anyway, this is just a long-winded way of me saying that I like SFxT and I hope EVO will generate some hype for it. At least the team play will add a bit more drama to the mix.

@Anwar: No worries, let me break it down for you.

Leading up to EVO there's been 17 events in the Road to EVO season from January to June, Spooky streamed 7 of them as well as spending an entire week in North California in February streaming Team Street Fighter in the Cross Assault show, in addition to a lot of other events. This means that in the last 6 months, Spooky has been lucky if he's spent three weekends in a month at home and a number of times only one weekend if he's been in high demand. That means constantly travelling around the USA with his stream equipment to these events. That's mainly why they call him the hardest working man in the fighting game community.

Some of these events around March/May turned out to be of ... questionable quality, so he feels a bit jaded about it.

Next year he's going to cut down quite a lot on which events he travels to do streaming for. I imagine this means he'll still do the bigger ones, like EVO and CEO and the weekly Big Two from New York every Wednesday night. But as far as Road to EVO events are concerned, a lot of these events are going to have to rely more on their local streamers, however good or bad they may be.

Pretty hyped for this!

Just heard about pelican x lol

Any news on a Blazblue side event? It was an actual event last year I think. Sad to see it gone. Oh well I guess. Looking forward to EVO as always.

Gonna have to check out some of the matches. Man I wish I had half the skillz in fighting games these guys have. I did manage to drop a Carl jump loop on some poor guy in a local tourney at one time, too much fun.