Evo 2021 Online And Why It’s Important
What the major acquisition could mean for the tournament series, and other news
Sony Interactive Entertainment and Evo’s social media recently announced the return of Evo Online in August 2021, and that Sony had acquired the Evo brand in a joint partnership with newly formed esports organization RTS. Evo 2021 Online will be running across two weekends, August 6–8 and 13–15, and will feature four titles announced so far: Tekken 7, Street Fighter V, Mortal Kombat 11, and Guilty Gear Strive. This comes almost nine months after the initially planned Evo 2020 Online was cancelled and Joey “Mr. Wizard” Cuellar was ousted from his position as Evo CEO due to allegations of sexual misconduct. In the Evo press release, Tom and Tony Cannon reassure fans “that harassment or abuse of any kind has no place within Evo or any of our future events, and we’re taking every precaution to make sure members of our community will always be treated with the respect, dignity and decency you deserve.” Mark Julio also reaffirmed in a subsequent tweet that despite the Sony acquisition, Evo would still be open to titles on all platforms. Nintendo made a statement after IGN reached out for contact, stating that they would “continue to assess Evo” for future Super Smash Bros. tournaments.
There’s a lot to unpack and speculate about regarding the upcoming online event and future iterations of Evo. As COVID-19 vaccine distribution begins and events like Frosty Faustings announce their return to offline, Evo 2022 being an offline tournament is a safe bet. The corporate acquisition of Evo by Sony also makes sense, since the Cannon brothers are likely working full-time on Project L and can no longer manage the day-to-day operations of Evo in the same capacity. Sony has also been running online events for games like Blazblue Cross Tag Battle, Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late [cl-r] and more for some time now, so their pedigree for online tournaments has already been established. It’s still clear, however, that the prestige tournament series will change drastically, especially come next year.
Guilty Gear, though?
Guilty Gear Strive’s inclusion as an Evo title this year isn’t entirely surprising. It comes out roughly two months before the tournament takes place, and lately such early releases have been squeezed into Evo rosters anyway. (Blazblue Cross Tag Battle and Samurai Shodown were two games that notably bucked the trend of ‘games have to have been out for a while before earning an Evo main stage slot,’ much to the ire of Skullgirls fans.) We can, however, use GGST’s inclusion to speculate a bit about the game itself. For one thing, we can assume that the game is being developed with an Evo 2021 deadline in mind, so further delays are unlikely. We can also assume, since the GGST bracket will be PSN only, that PSN-Steam crossplay will not be ready by August, and thus the additional three months of development time will not be enough for such a feature to be implemented. We know that the netcode is good, so if the lobby and matchmaking systems are cleaned up in that time, there shouldn’t be any issues with the game’s first major tournament being an online bracket. (Hopefully.)
RTS’s credentials
While we don’t know a lot about RTS, we can speculate based on the information given in the SIE press release- namely, that the CEO is Stuart Saw and that the company is backed by Endeavor’s esports division. Saw, aka TosspoT, is a former Counter-Strike commentator from the UK who worked at Twitch for five years before moving on to Endeavor, and then clearly to RTS. Endeavor’s, well, endeavors with ELeague are mainly focused on games like League of Legends, MTG, and Overwatch, but they’ve also run FGC events for games like Street Fighter and Injustice 2 in the past. Ideally, Endeavor’s experience with running esports events translates well to Evo, and they will likely oversee bracket-running and broadcasting for the online tournament. Beyond that, however, there isn’t a lot of reassuring information insofar as other names with the same FGC pedigree as the Cannons being attached to the event, especially since Saw and ELeague are mostly associated with PC esports. It was a big deal, for instance, that Team Spooky was chosen to stream Evo a decade ago instead of a major games outlet like IGN. Beyond that, not only is the culture for PC esports different, but the open bracket formatting makes both the player and spectator experiences incomparable between the FGC and esports like League or CS:GO. Hopefully RTS grasps this concept and the Evo experience in the future still has the same community-driven passion we’ve come to expect.
Evo’s roster, platform exclusivity, its place as a convention
Evo has, by-and-large, maintained the appearance of being a grassroots tournament that retained its origins in the Cal Poly Pomona ballroom- main stage titles were selected by community outreach, brackets are run by volunteers, artist alleys are hosted by community members, and side events are run freely on the show floor. This year, however, the online tournament picks (so far) are all major titles as opposed to community-backed games like Killer Instinct, Skullgirls, and Them’s Fightin’ Herds (which were on the initially announced Evo 2020 roster alongside MK11.) Beyond that, SFV and Tekken 7 both share a reputation for having spotty online play. Tekken at least seems to have shaped up nicely since the Season 4 patch- enough to be a Frosty Faustings XIII Online main title- but the game’s netcode is still improperly functioning rollback. SFV, on the other hand, has rollback netcode so infamously poorly implemented that former Capcom Cup champion iDom disqualified himself from top 8 at a Capcom Pro Tour Online event.
While we don’t know if community picks like KI or indie titles like SG or TFH might get another shot at Evo-level competition, the current ‘main stage’ roster is very divisive for an online event. At this point, it’s enough to say that SFV and TK7, to various extents, are unable to support international competition in the same way that certain other titles are. The acquisition by Sony is potentially heralding the beginning of a move away from uplifting smaller communities and towards hyping up major titles, and SFV and TK7’s place in the Evo lineup is a testament to that. Some could also argue that this is in fact the finalization of such an endeavor, since Evo has already become a sort of fighting game corporate tradeshow, with big genre reveals year after year and more third-party sponsorships from esports organizations and developers alike. Of course, this is all speculation, and by the time offline events roll back around, we could see an expanded roster with more picks like Under Night or Skullgirls, or even events like the Marvel vs. Capcom 2 invitational that was supposed to take place prior to COVID-19. Hopefully, a more explicitly corporate Evo still allows for such games and communities to find a platform at the event.
With the Evo roster announcement, the platforms each game would be played on were also revealed. Street Fighter V’s bracket would feature PSN-Steam crossplay, Tekken 7 would be played on PC, and MK11 and GGST would both be limited to PSN. Tekken 7’s bracket and MarkMan’s earlier statements seem to confirm that, at the very least, roster decisions for current and future Evo events aren’t motivated by platform exclusivity- although it does seem to imply that the Evo staff recognizes how poorly implemented MK11’s crossplay solution is. This leaves the door open not only for games like the aforementioned Killer Instinct (XBLA and Steam) and Them’s Fightin’ Herds (Steam only) but for titles like Smash and Pokkén. Smash’s inclusion might be iffy this year, due to Ultimate having poor netcode and Melee events being cease-and-desisted for using Slippi to facilitate online play. (It should be noted that Capcom has never made any moves on similar technology like Fightcade when used at events like Frosty Faustings.) While it would certainly be amusing and even ironic if a newly restructured Evo threw its Sony money around to defend a Slippi Melee bracket at this year’s online bracket, it is also highly unlikely.
Of course, Sony money and infrastructure can still benefit Evo in the long run. If money goes to improving the event overall, like making sure bracket runners, auxiliary staff, hosts, commentators, and so on get paid properly, and if the notoriously low payouts for top 8 bracket are bolstered significantly, then SIE’s presence at Evo will probably be welcome. Having an actual circuit and governing body that can enforce bans against offenders or people who violate rules, while also protecting vulnerable attendees, would also be genuinely useful, and hopefully Sony can provide such structure to Evo events. The Cannon brothers have made their stance on such harassment clear going forward, but only time will tell if the new corporate body will be a boon or a burden in protecting the FGC.
Conclusion
Evo 2021 Online is only one of a handful of online FGC major events this year, with tournaments of similar prestige like Combo Breaker and CEO still under wraps. The success of Frosty Faustings XIII in terms of running an event with multiple titles and being the largest GXXAC+R bracket ever speaks to how effective online brackets can be at drawing players, especially when run well. This will not only be the first online Evo event, but the first run under such a new and foreign structure. More news about the event has been promised in the coming months. We won’t know entirely what the “new Evo” will look like until we’re able to attend in-person again, but the tournament this August will serve as a good primer of what we can expect.
