As many of you may have known, I spent the last three days immersed in great fighting game competition. Evolution Championship Series 2010 held up to every promise that it was going to be a great event to watch, and aside from a few hiccups here and there the people at Level Up provided quite the stream. It seems that with each passing year, EVO just keeps outdoing itself.
The event was such a huge milestone for not just the fighting game community, but gaming as a whole. The massive amount of growth from the peak of last year's EVO to this year's blew my mind. Last year the list of sponsors was quite impressive. The support came companies like Capcom, Bandai-Namco, and Sony for example. Companies showing support to the fans of their games for putting such a large event together built completely on volunteer work, built for the gamers, by the gamers. It was the first year that the event was streamed live on the internet for all to see, rather than have the fans that couldn't make the trip out to vegas have to wait to buy a DVD, or look to YouTube to see the level of play, to see the magic that happened over the weekend. Due to this fact people got to have a first look at Tekken 6 before it made it's way to the shelves, to see the game that had largely been missed out on in action.
From yesteryear, to this past weekend, we saw many upgrades. The event was held in the ballroom of Caesar's Palace, one of the most well-known hotels on the strip. Last year's collaboration with IGN.com was one-upped by the collaboration with G4. Adam Sessler was present to co-host alongside Seth Killian to provide commentary on not only the top 8 competition, but also the world's first look at Marvel vs. Capcom 3 since it was revealed at E3. Madcats stepped up from just revealing the second round of its famed Tournament Edition arcade sticks, to giving away several "gold edition" models to the top competitors of Super Street Fighter 4, and also a few lucky winners that were attending the tournament, or watching the stream.
If you mist out, there's no reason to worry too much, as G4 isn't done with EVO yet. There will be a special on G4 covering the history of EVO airing July 20th, so if you're still interested in getting into a bit of this action, and the already avilable footage on YouTube isn't enough for you, then definitely tune in and check the show out.
Now the reason why I say that this was a huge milestone for gaming in general, rather than just for the fighting game community, is that it's clear and obvious through the Evolution Championship Series proves that if the community gets behind their games enough, that other people will get involved. Streaming game sessions is becoming a popular thing, and I'm sure that hardcore fans of other huge multiplayer games are more than likely interested in seeing the best players of the game do their thing. We already have huge followings on sites like MLG, so I see no reason not to believe that something just as huge as EVO can be started for other games. I urge you gamers of the world that are truly passionate about what you do to get behind your passion and support it in any way and every way that you can.
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