Evolution Championship Series

And that also included crowds that people would crowd around watching the fights.

So this kind of inspired the grassroots tournaments, you know, and then of course that sort of culminated into the evolution championship series, which we know as Evo, which happens every year.

So it made a massive shift culturally in video games, but it also was the thing that actually kept arcades relevant.

Because by the time we get to 1991, the arcades were actually dying down because consoles were obviously excited to come into the scene and it was sort of, it wasn't quite there yet, but it was competing.

And getting two parries in a row was like a big deal, but getting all like, I think it's something like 16 hits that he does with something crazy like that.

He got every single parry.

So that comes down to like one of the most biggest moments of Evo.

What console era was this?

But industry players say clear regulations and commercially viable projects are essential before the regional grid can expand.

Finally, Southeast Asia's first Evolution Championship Series fighting game tournament will take place in Singapore from January 15 to 17 next year.

It was originally scheduled to be held this year, but has been pushed back to fit the international tournament calendar.

The three-day event at Marina Bay Sands will feature five fighting games, including Street Fighter VI and Tekken 8, as participants compete for a total prize pool of nearly 160,000 Singapore dollars.

So my first exposure to Street Fighter franchise was Street Fighter 2 in the arcade.

Remember wanting to try to achieve the top high score in the arcades? Well, this game spawned little mini tournaments all over the place and literally evolved into the now famous Evolution Championship Series, aka EVO, which is an official annual esports event exclusively focusing on the fighting game genre.

It was introduced to us here in the States via Street Fighter II The World Warrior.

First in arcades, and then on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System by August of 1992.

I'll let you take the lead on this one.

okay uh young ladies don't play fighting games this is a show about a bunch of girls at a young ladies academy where gaming is banned but guess what they all game the young ladies do in fact play fighting games uh and they specifically play street fighter 6 now we already talked about the premise and the preview and all that so i kind of want to jump to the evo arc okay if you're good with that

yeah that's fine Like, Evo Evo? Evo Evo.

Like, Evo

Japan.

Yeah, Evo Japan.

Crazy word.

They...

But yo, five years of Strive is kind of insane.

It's kinda wild to think that that is the oldest game normally in any kind of Evo lineups that you see nowadays.

Yep.

It's still going on.

Terms and conditions apply.

All right, you get a DLC, you get a DLC, you get a DLC.

We are back, and there is plenty of DLC that has gone down, um, between Evo France that just went down over the weekend.

Nice.

Yeah

... versus Zaheer match up, he was looking to make a comeback after being down 2-1, and then his arcade stick disconnected in the first round, which means he forfeited the round, and then he got perfected in the second round, and that was his last game of EVO France for third place.

Ah.

Yeah, that sucked.

But yeah, uh, Avatar was fun.

Um, w- it'll be interesting to see how this continues to play out.

Weird how they announced an, an Avatar Pro Tour, but this wasn't part of it, the first EVO.

I think unfortunately for Avatar, that's the other thing we didn't talk about actually.

Um, we try to like go to things and have like...

You know, we're the only esports team that has an Evo booth every year.

Um, so we activate at Evo every year with like a big physical activation.

Those physical activations drive conversions really, really well as well, and the ROI on them is quite high because actually a lot of these events and conventions give us our space like at a, at a steep discount 'cause they actually want esports teams to be there 'cause they think it's cool.

Um, and so that's been, been very helpful.

Nice.

I'm amazed with the, uh, fighting games guys, uh, at Evo 'cause they're a bunch of broke ass motherfuckers usually, so-

[laughs]

Uh, obviously, like we are the target audience.

They were clearly trying to take over the fighting game community, which speaks to that like 2022 and beyond push when they're getting close to the, uh, the first demo, which was at 2023 at Evo.

They're everywhere.

At the physical places for advertising to all the physical, uh, players at these events, right? They were clearly trying to do a bit of a, a heavy marketing lift within the community to get players to try it, which would've worked pre Street Fighter 6.

Like, the buzz wasn't, "Oh shit, I can't wait to play this game." They're like, "What is this game? Is this actually happening or not?"

Mm.

"Why are there so many ads with them with Chipotle at Evo?" [laughs]

[laughs] Yeah.