robert hyma

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Eight years ago, I started watching a tournament called EVO, short for the Evolution Championship Series. It’s the world championships for fighting games held every summer in Las Vegas, Nevada. I didn’t know it then, but EVO 2014 was the return of the Super Smash Bros. series after a 5-year hiatus from the tournament. 

            I sat in the basement of my parent’s house, loosely aware of a website called Twitch and browsed the frontpage for something interesting to watch. I saw footage of two players sitting in front of an old CRT television on a stage with a crowd of spectators watching on from behind. The players were none other than Mango and Mew2King, two of the greatest Super Smash Bros. Melee players of all time. I thought I would return to playing whatever game on Xbox I had loaded up, but I couldn’t turn away from my laptop screen. Here was my favorite game being played at a level I never thought possible. If the automobile instantly made the horse drawn carriage obsolete so, too, did watching Mango and Mew2King play in a set.

            I thought my Super Smash Bros. Melee skills were adequate, but I was clearly mistaken.

            For the next three days, my eyes were glued to every match being showcased. I saw the greatest Smash Bros. players from around the world wield the likes of Samus, Captain Falcon, Fox McCloud, Marth, Pikachu, and Jigglypuff, moving in ways that seemed impossible. I heard the commentators using foreign phrases like “Wavedashing” and “Edge-guarding” and “Footsies” for the first time, terms that would later become the bedrock of my future tactical approach to playing fighting games.

            What I remembered above all else, however, was that watching this level of play was exhilarating. It felt like watching the Olympics and the greatest athletes in the world were neck and neck in a race to win it all. Except, instead of physical feats, these players wielded handheld controllers from a bygone era, engaged in a mental battle of reading the other, a virtuoso digital chess match played at a millisecond-by-millisecond pace.

            EVO 2014 was something that changed how I saw the world, opening a portal to something so endearing and yet new. Not only was there Super Smash Bros. Melee, but the Marvel vs Capcom 3 Ultimate, Tekken Tag Tournament, and Super Street Fight IV tournaments were just as exhilarating.

            By 1 AM, late into Monday morning when EVO 2014 concluded, I was too awake to sleep. I had seen something euphoric, spellbinding. There was only one thing I could do and that was to tell someone.

            The next day I hung out with a friend that I’ve played Super Smash Bros. with since the original launched on the Nintendo 64 to explain everything I had seen. As we sat down to play, I told him about the Grand Finals set between Mango and Hungrybox, the famous Jigglypuff player who perfected the sleep setup—essentially a maneuver that could guarantee a KO on his opponent from near perfect health. The tension of will or won’t Hungrybox land the setup was enough to make the crowd leap out of their seats. I told my friend about all the hours and struggle these players put into playing, how it was heartbreaking that someone who fought so hard came up just short.

            My friend shrugged as we hit start to play a match and said, “But it kind of sucks. You put all that time into playing a game and what do you get for it? You lose and you’ve just wasted your life on video games.”

            Was that really all it amounted to? Had I just stayed up all night enamored with the excitement of competition? There wasn’t anything more than that?

            I decided not to tell another soul about EVO, about what I had stayed up for three days to watch.

            “…you’ve just wasted your life on video games,” he had said.

            Eight years later, on the eve of EVO 2022, the echo of those words came up again and again. 

**

OUT WITH THE OLD, IN WITH THE NEW

            Since EVO 2014, I spent years of my life watching every tournament associated with fighting games. I devoted weekends to watching Defend the North, Community Effort Orlando, Combo Breaker, Canada Cup, even the weekly Next Level Battle Circuit tourneys held in NYC featuring Team Spooky on the mic, the most celebrated and historied streaming presence in the community.

            As the years passed on, I watched fewer tournaments, but was avidly interested in news from the scene. Prized players arrived and left, some tiring of endless competition, while others levied their reputation as content creators or jobs in the gaming space. This allowed room for new players to grow into their own, and a revolving door of new talent took to the stage. Eventually, the burgeoning of esports that had brought other gaming communities under the influence of corporate sponsorship took hold of the fighting game community. Players adorned in team jerseys and tagged with sponsorship logos represented every gaming peripheral imaginable (headsets, arcade sticks, even energy drinks). These players became the ultimate contenders as dream teams were assembled to win.

            One of the beautiful things about fighting game tournaments is that ANYONE can enter and compete against the world’s best. Often these dream teams didn’t win because of the ever-expanding scene bringing to light a new generation of players who could hold their own.

            Meanwhile, as home console supremacy took hold, arcades in malls and small establishments slowly went out of business. These training grounds for some of the best players in the world closed their doors for good, a relic from the past along with the video rental store.

            It was a tumultuous decade of “out with the old, in with the new”.

            By 2018, EVO had become the biggest fighting game tournament in the world. Each year, the convention center in Las Vegas grew larger and larger, with grand finals of five premier gaming titles reserved for Sunday at an arena nearby. Competitors met center stage to play in front of thousands of spectators, the roars of the crowd likened to the NBA Finals rather than a crowd of gamers gathered on a Sunday to cheer on a pair of players hitting buttons on a gamepad or arcade stick. 

            EVO had also become the premier event for big game announcements from prized publishers like Capcom, Bandai Namco, Arc System Works and more. After the conclusion of each game’s grand finals came a surprise visit from a game developer, usually the director of the series, to introduce the latest character or work-in-progress that would be added as downloadable content in the coming months.

            EVO had become an industry, a capital event. And there was no deterring its upward trajectory.

**

THE DARK BEFORE THE DAWN

            Stop me if you’ve ever heard this before: “Everything was going great…until March of 2020.”

            Due to concerns with the ongoing pandemic, EVO 2020 was slated to be “remote”, an online-only tournament, all to the chagrin of many top players. It was an official EVO, but online play was in a wretched state in 2020. A widely used Netcode architecture led to such random fluctuations in game performance that it was impossible for even top players to play consistent. Playing online wasn’t so much a show of skill but rather of luck—if the Netcode fluctuated during a pivotal moment in the match, anyone could take advantage of a player caught performing a move they didn’t intend. EVO would be a tournament of chance, which was no way to crown the top player in the world.

            Performance issues aside, a second blow finally canceled the tournament completely. One of the former founders of EVO and its then CEO was accused of hazing allegations that spanned over several years towards younger players. In the ensuing weeks, all game publishers had pulled their games from the tournament in protest for his removal.

            EVO 2020 was officially canceled.

            Many wondered if EVO would ever return. And in March of 2021, more doubt was cast on the storied tournament’s revival.

            An announcement that Sony Interactive Entertainment had bought all rights to the premier tournament shocked the fighting game community. Sony, the makers of PlayStation, was feared to have its own agenda when buying a tournament that saw games from a variety of rival publishers, including Microsoft and Nintendo. Would Sony admit Nintendo games into their tournament (Super Smash Bros. Ultimate being at the height of popularity at the time)? Would they admit Killer Instinct, a Microsoft-owned IP and console rival?

            EVO was beginning to feel like a shell of its former glory; a corporate-owned, commodity-run business spectacle.

            And the business side was only half the problem.

            Over the course of the pandemic, the fighting game community had splintered. With no choice but to forgo in-person events for nearly three straight years since the  beginning of the pandemic, the veil of social media anonymity brought out the worst in the community. Many stoked the flames of old arguments about which games were better than others. The rhetoric behind what constitutes healthy shit-talking and what crossed the line to outright harassment nearly brought the community into a civil war, of sorts. Even one of the most prominent streamers and production companies behind many fighting game tournaments, Team Spooky, left the tournament scene behind in NYC because of criticisms constantly levied towards him and his production staff.

            By August of 2022, after an entire year of bad publicity and toxic social discourse, I had long forgotten that EVOwas scheduled to begin in the coming days. When a notification popped up on my phone, I quickly dismissed it. I wasn’t interested. With everything considered, I thought of the words my friend said all those years ago.

            “You put all that time into playing a game and what do you get for it? You lose and you’ve just wasted your life on video games.”

            Maybe he was right. What was the point in spending all those weekends watching fighting game tournaments? I was ready to move on. Maybe I would catch some of EVO in passing, but I wasn’t going to stay and watch this time. 

            I was over it.

            I think many felt this way on the night before EVO 2022.

**

REUNION

            On August 5^th, the convention doors opened at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, the warm rays of the desert sun shone on a new day for fighting game competition. A collective of players, fans, artists, vendors, video game developers, and volunteers showed up in droves, pouring in through the doors to find their weekend badges and settled in to compete in pools.

            Out of curiosity, I turned to the EVO main feed airing on Twitch.tv. I was shocked by the number of people there. 

            COVID safety protocols were in place, and everyone was mandated to wear a mask in the convention center. In the background of the video feed there were countless hugs being shared in the crowd, long lost friends reunited under one roof for the first time in three years. Accounts on social media shared group photos of old training partners, even those from old arcade venues long shut down during the pandemic. Some shed tears, absorbed into the N95 masks or into long embraces on shoulders. It was like watching family members reunited as though they had been separated by some great natural catastrophe. 

            In many ways, it was.

            I didn’t log off. I kept watching, and the familiar sensation of seeing the competition come from everywhere imaginable – France, UK, Pakistan, Japan, Thailand, Mexico, Chili, East Coast, West Coast, Canada…came back as it did before.

            I glanced at the numbers watching the stream. Some 50,000+ were watching in the first hour across the many EVO channels on Twitch.tv

            Exhilaration: it was still there! Quickly, I turned to one of the other channels hosting the start of the Street Fighter V tournament. And it all came rushing back; the familiar smile, rooting for the unknown player to make a splash, to see everyone come together and compete.

**

THE FINEST OF FIGHTERS

            If you’ve never witnessed the collective hype and excitement of a crowd attuned to the second-to-second decisions playing out on a screen between two fighting game characters, there’s nothing quite like it. EVO is famously encapsulated by a video deemed EVO Moment #37 wherein Daigo Umehara’s Ken parries a Super by Justin Wong’s Chun-Lee who is sure to win the match. The parry, even if done casually in Street Fighter III: Third Strike, was a risky maneuver that had to be timed perfectly. The skill and scope required to pull off such a parry during a semifinal set on the biggest tournament stage in the world was nothing short of miraculous at the time.

            So many storylines gave breadth and scope to EVO 2022, rekindling the hype and togetherness of bygone eras like the one shown in EVO Moment #37. From Mortal Kombat 11’s Top 8, which included the dethronement of perhaps the most dominant fighting game player of this generation, SonicFox, and saw the dominance of two Chilian brothers claim first and third place (with a dominant performance by T7G’s ScorpionProcs), to The King of Fighter’s XV Top 8 that included a truly inspiring win from Taiwan’s ZJZ—it was one of the finest 72-hours of fighting games ever seen.

            Most noteworthy was Street Fighter V’s Top 8.

            The bracket was filled with absolute legends of the game including Daigo Umehara, Tokido, MisterCrimson of the EU, gachikun, Justakid, Oil King, a young Japanese starlit named Kawano, and the NYC phenom iDom.

            To set the stage of this grand finals, EVO is an open-bracket, double-elimination tournament that takes place over three days, culminating in a journeyman’s effort to survive to Top 8 on Sunday. The tournament features a breakneck schedule of round robin play that sometimes sees pools played late into the night depending on delays, and the endurance to keep the mind and body healthy through 12+ hours of gaming in a single day. It is a testament to one of the most rigorous tournaments around.

            One of the hardest positions to be in with a double elimination bracket tournament is to be sent to Losers Side. To win the tournament, not only must you go without another loss, but you must win two complete sets in Grand Finals over the Winners Side contestant.

            iDom began in Losers Side on Sunday night at the Michelob Light Ultra Arena, first playing against another USA favorite, Justakid. iDom plays one character in Street Fighter V (as opposed to multiple players who use specific characters for specific matchups). He uses Laura, the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu fighter, and believes in sticking to the character that best represents you as a player. Laura is not the strongest character in the game, but iDom uses her in a way that befuddles his opponents. He’s outrageously aggressive, and his ability to make reads on his opponent all but leads to uncanny mistakes from them. It’s suffocating to watch his offensive play.

            No one was ready for the level of performance iDom was about to show the world on the final night of EVO 2022. 

            He first defeated Justakid, then went on to face Daigo Umehara, arguably the greatest fighting game player of all time. At 41, Daigo has been playing competitively for 20+ years, longer than the inception of the EVO tournament. His playstyle is unlike anyone else’s because of the knowledge and expertise that he wields. That iDom, a great player in his own right, had to face Daigo, win or go home, was nothing short of fantastic.

            iDom wins. It isn’t nearly over. He has to face Tokido in the next round of Losers Side, perhaps the second-finest player of his generation. At every turn, the audience is rooting for the US player who represents the home crowd to pull through, but the auditorium knows the odds. To beat Daigo is one thing, but then to match up with Tokido, one right after the other, and win? Unheard of. Yet, iDom prevails 3-0 against the storied Japanese player.

            Meanwhile, the 17-year-old starlit of the Street Fighter V scene in Japan hasn’t lost a game in the tournament. Kawano has just beat gachikun, the former Capcom Cup champion and sent him to Losers Side. He awaits the winner between iDom and gachikun. Somehow, iDom must defeat this next titan of the game as well.

            And iDom does defeat gachikun, perhaps in one of the greatest sets in Street Fighter V history.

            It’s Grand Finals, the final set of Top 8. By this point, iDom has captured the belief of everyone in the arena and watching at home. The way iDom was playing was like watching the greatest athlete of our age dominate in the playoffs. He was a modern-day Michael Jordan willing his team to victory, achieving the unbelievable along the way. And yet, the 17-year-old Kawano has also held his own against the world’s best. It truly was a test of the greatest players in the world that night. 

            At this point, not a soul watching disbelieves in iDom. He is Beowulf, Achilles, the greatest warrior in the world on this night. It was manifest destiny that iDom would win this tournament. 

            iDom won the first set, pushing Kawano to the brink with an easy reset of Grand Finals. There are only three games left to win and he’s crowned EVO champion.

            In the second set, the pace was frantic for both sides. Kawano continued to make small adjustments despite iDom’s brilliance, and he found ways to connect his bread-and-butter combos with Kolin, the icy Secret Society agent character of his choosing. Both kept to character loyalty, a battle of ability versus functionality; and each match was testament to read the other.

            As though following the greatest script ever written for this night, the tournament comes down to the final game, final set, and final match. iDom and Kawano have a quarter health bar each. One mistake means victory for the other. iDom sees his opening and commits to punish Kawano and take the tournament. Glory is his; we all expect it!

            Until iDom misses his opening.

            Kawano recovers and connects with a final bread-and-butter combo.

            iDom loses.

            Collectively, all our hearts broke. iDom’s heart the worst of all; he couldn’t lift himself up from his chair after congratulating Kawano. He had come too far, done the unfathomable, and when he was at the finish line a simple mistake in judgment led to his defeat.

            And the words of my friend echoed in my head as I watched iDom continue sitting there, defeated:

            “…You put all that time into playing a game and what do you get for it? You lose and you’ve just wasted your life on video games.”

**

AND THE WORLD WILL BE A BETTER PLACE

            The lights on the stage floor lit up as the Top 8 of Street Fighter V gathered on stage to be awarded their medals. Top three received gold, custom-painted arcade sticks, a nice touch by tournament organizers. And as each competitor on stage for Street Fighter V was announced, all eyes were on iDom. He wasn’t crying, that anyone could see because his mask was pulled up so tight to his eyeline. Kawano had won, and rightfully—it is never a fluke to win EVO, and props were given to Kawano as the only one capable of surviving the onslaught levied by the tenacious play of iDom.

            To think about all the hours spent training, not just for iDom but all 5045 entrants of EVO 2022 (according to the start.gg bracket stats), the countless matches played against training partners, all the videos watched dissecting matchups and playstyles, the travel to tournaments to train and prepare for the biggest stage in the world…and to come up short, whether in 2^nd place or to go 0-2 in pools…

            In a world of thankless competition, was any of it worthwhile then?

            “And in second place,” said the announcer LIJoe, another favorite of the fighting game community, “give it up for iDom!”

            A standing ovation! The applause was deafening as all came to their feet. There is seldom standing ovation for runner-ups, but the play of iDom was that of a champion without the trophy. With a nod, iDom received his second-place medal, not the one he fought so hard for, but for the applause, the affirmation everyone showed that he had done something truly remarkable.

            At that moment, I knew why my friend was wrong all those years ago.

            To spend your life committed to something you truly believe in, no matter what the result, is never going to be a waste. Because it matters. It truly matters in ways that aren’t obviously understood.

            All those years ago, I watched players like Mango and Mew2King light the Super Smash Bros. Melee world on fire with their amazing play at EVO, and I’ve never forgotten how that felt. To think that somewhere out there, someone witnessed the way iDom and Kawano played on a Sunday night in Las Vegas has forever changed their life.

            It means everything.

            When I look back at EVO 2022 and what this past 72-hours meant to all who watched and participated, who showed up at the venue despite the rifts growing within the community; it’s clear that it meant everything to come together again. The hugs, the tears, the acknowledgment of the struggles we all faced during the (still ongoing) pandemic, the periods of isolation and anguish, the petty squabbles and inbred battles—none if it amounted to anything once the doors opened on August 5^th.

            Playing games without the promise of success matters.

            Being together matters.

            You matter.

            I won’t be silent this time with regards to what I saw at EVO 2022. Time to spread the word.      

            EVO Tokyo was announced for March of 2023. I’ll be watching. Oh, and if you’re wondering when the next time the community will come back together between now and the next tournament, the answer is simple enough:

            We have always been together.