Daunting, exciting, record-breaking: At Evo 2023, Street Fighter 6 is already unbeatable

The Evo 2023 fighting game tournament will become the largest open-support video game tournament of all time, according to Evo General Manager Rick Thiher. This comes on the heels of the explosive launch of Street Fighter 6, which has led to a staggering 7,061 unique competitors registering to travel to Las Vegas to compete in August.

In all, there are 9,182 total competitors who have registered for 14,975 competitive slots across the eight main event games. This figure, described as “overwhelming and exciting” by Thiher, is a record for both the event and Street Fighter as a series.

“Our team has researched a variety of well-known competitions around the world – the only open draw competition that beats this is poker,” explains Thiher. “But without being able to say definitively, we’re pretty sure today that this is the biggest video game tournament of all time.”

The event has always had special cultural significance for the genre, with the best gamers and biggest developers in the space traveling to Las Vegas for the competition and the convention organized around it. Once a grassroots event titled ‘Battle by the Bay’ in 1996, the event has since become an industry giant, partnering with Sony and talent management company RTS.

It is these partners, along with a dedicated team and volunteers, who play an important role in helping Evo change and shape around the incoming wave of players. Says Thiher: “It’s a pretty big mobile machine to make sure [equipment] It not only arrives in the quantities we need, but it’s prepared and we have the right kits installed. It is an undertaking worthy of an army.”

But it is the work of the military that has resulted in an annual hub for the genre, even for those without competitive aspirations. This year, the event is associated with anime distributor Crunchyroll and will feature settings from Tekken 8 ahead of the game’s full release. As in previous years, big reveals are expected in the major games present, with industry giants like Riot Games using it as a platform to reach out to the community directly during the development of Project L.

There he talks about the importance of Evo’s growth as a cultural asset, instead of just a tournament. “I think from the dawn of Evo, when it was a singular tournament in an arcade, it represented a rallying point for competitive players, and there’s only a small subset of competitive players who are in the upper echelon and capable of reaching any champion moment.”[…]”

Thiher continues: “This can’t just be a tournament, it has to be a celebration of fighting games as a competitive focus, a cultural focus and an industry moment. If we’re not doing all three, I don’t think the event will live up to its potential.”

So where does Street Fighter 6 fit in here? Obviously, the game is a great success, selling 2 million copies in early July. Why exactly has she jumped so hard? According to Thiher, it’s due to the game’s ability to reach both an established audience and a new one.

“I think Street Fighter 6 has done a great job of providing a product for the existing fan base, both old and new, but what’s even more impressive, it has delivered a compelling and interesting product for people who weren’t previously involved in fighting games.

“I think it’s the only example outside of what Netherrealm did with Mortal Kombat 11, where you have a fighting game that launched with the expectation that everyone would touch it, and did everything possible to incorporate everything the game could do to relate to that reality.”

Thiher goes on to point out a selection of non-traditional experiences that Street Fighter 6 has enabled, including the streamer Majin Obama Avatar Battle Streams and his own team’s lunch sessions around an in-game arcade machine that he describes as “reminiscent of being in a local.” This, on the back of a game that is both rewarding to play and watch, has created in Thiher’s mind “a perfect storm on the back of a decade of fighting games starting to get all the pieces right.”

With the three pillars of Evo mentioned above (competition, industry, and culture), the doors were essentially open for a wave of Street Fighter 6 players to flock to the event. From Thiher’s perspective, the game has the real potential to push the genre forward in a way we haven’t seen before. “What I think we have now is, frankly, a portal opening. We have something compelling enough to get us to where we are, to a place we’re interested in getting to, and potentially avoid a lot of the long journeys in between.”

“When you have the CR cup in Japan, or the Vtubers who broke audience records, that wouldn’t have happened before Street Fighter 6 because there wasn’t everything necessary for that to hit the market. It’s not just the product, it’s not just the talent, it’s also the timing.”

So where does this portal lead? For Thiher, as for all of us, it is a mystery. “The fun part is that I don’t know. The coolest part of my job is that I don’t know. We found out together.”