Home Business Analysis: How Evo Tells Brands and Organizations Where to Invest in Fighting Games

Analysis: How Evo Tells Brands and Organizations Where to Invest in Fighting Games

by Trent Murray

The Evolution Championship Series (Evo) is the largest and most prestigious annual fighting game tournament in the world. The event predates modern tournament circuits, which allowed Evo to establish itself as the de facto world championship for every fighting game.

However, the fighting game community spans dozens of games, making it virtually impossible for Evo to give each game and its fans equal time in the spotlight. Instead, the tournament’s organizers have established a selection process through which a select few titles are chosen as the official, main games of Evo. Because of the event’s scale and prestige, Evo’s selection process has, over time, helped to shape the professional fighting game esports landscape.

Increasingly, Evo’s alignment with the business of fighting game development has created a system by which brands, organizations, and investors can build their fighting game strategy based on which games are chosen for that year’s Evo.

On Tuesday, the Evo organizing team announced the lineup of main titles for Evo 2019:

  • Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition
  • Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
  • BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle
  • Under Night In-Birth Exe.Late[st] (known as UNIST)

The above list represents a continuing trend towards favoring newer titles. While the tournament has often featured newly-released games, it has also generally included older titles with active player bases. Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, released in 2011, was featured at Evo through 2017, when a new entry in the series came out. 2001’s Super Smash Bros. Melee has been a prominent inclusion at Evo since 2013, consistently bringing in significant entrant numbers.

The Marvel series was dropped from Evo’s main roster in 2018, and Melee has been left out this year. Instead, every game chosen for Evo 2019 was released in some form in 2017 or later. Samurai Shodown and Mortal Kombat 11 will not even be available until later this year. The 2018 lineup also included a game which had not been released at the time of the announcement: BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle.

evo 2019

Credit: Evo

The organizers prefer to work directly with game developers and rights holders for their main game selections. Following Evo’s 2018 lineup announcement, the event received some criticism for not including Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite, which had released just months before and was part of one of Evo’s most historic game franchises. Evo director of global business development Mark Julio took to Twitter, indicating that the event reached out to “some developers” who did not give their blessing for a title to be featured as a main game.

That developer/publisher approval is critical to what has become a mainstay of Evo in recent years – exclusive announcements. At Evo 2018, Street Fighter, TEKKEN, and Dragon Ball FighterZ all announced new characters for their games. BlazBlue developer Arc System Works revealed Cross Tag Battle for the first time at Evo 2017. When the game released in 2018, the box featured a sticker proclaiming its inclusion at Evo. The tournament’s influence is so great that Arc System Works felt that it could influence buying decisions in gamers browsing store shelves.

Fighting game developers have realized that Evo is more than just a tournament, it is an opportunity to market directly to their core audience. Not only that, but Evo directly informs the play and spending habits of that audience.

In the last 24 hours, the active player base of UNIST on Steam has increased by 474% over its 30-day average, according to Steam Charts. Top FGC influencers from other games such as Street Fighter pro Victor “Punk” Woodley have purchased the game and are learning to play it in order to determine whether they will enter at Evo.

It is important to understand that the FGC is uniquely broad compared to communities of other esports genres. It is rare to see a League of Legends Database-Link-e1521645463907 pro also compete in Dota 2 Database-Link-e1521645463907 tournaments, but many top fighting game players will enter multiple games at Evo. In the eyes of fighting game fans, it doesn’t matter whether you won Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, or TEKKEN – the winner of each game will hold the same title of “Evo Champion.”

Essentially, with the possible exception of Super Smash Bros. Melee due to its separate tournament ecosystem, Evo decides which games will have a “World Championship” this year, and therefore where the time, money, resources, and viewership of the fighting game audience will be focused.

This means that brands and organizations must take Evo’s selection process into account when looking to activate in the fighting game community. While Melee remains a popular game, with some tournaments throughout the year approaching 100K concurrent viewers, this year it’s value to an organization has been substantially reduced by the loss of the event that generated the most viewership for the title in 2018.

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By contrast, Mortal Kombat’s stock increases dramatically by its inclusion. Evo has not seen a main series Mortal Kombat game on its main stage since 2016. The release of a new title combined with the series’ return to the FGC’s biggest event will give make its top players far more valuable to esports organizations this year than they have been for the last two years.

In short, while the fighting game community’s diversity and unique ecosystem can make it difficult to understand when exploring business opportunities, the overwhelming influence of Evo can help to streamline that process significantly.

BlazBlue: Cross Tag BattleDragon Ball FighterZevoEvo 2019fgcfighting gamesJapanMortal Kombat 11North AmericaSamurai ShodownSoul Calibur VIStreet Fighter V: Arcade EditionSuper Smash Bros. meleeSuper Smash Bros. Ultimatetekken 7UNIST



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