Evo 2022 Was Really Good
A look back at Wild West Guilty Gear’s weekend
The first Evo I attended was the one in 2016, which was the last Evo before they finally settled on the Mandalay Bay consistently. At the time, I was only there to play Smash 4, but the events for other games like Melee and Pokken Tournament had earned my interest. Walking around in 100-degree heat, spending most of my money on water, not being able to play friendlies in the cramped venue which only had setups dedicated to bracket, and not even having sitting space for the Saturday finals, made my first Evo a very difficult experience. On top of that, even though I split the cost of gas and hotel with my carpool, it was still expensive to book a room near the Las Vegas Convention Center and I was less enthusiastic about a return to the otherwise prestigious event. After I had gotten deeper into the fighting game community with games like UNIST and Guilty Gear, Evo held no appeal to me beyond a spectate-from-home experience.
Earlier this year it was announced that Rick Thiher, formally known as TheHadou and colloquially known as the event director of Combo Breaker, would be taking over managerial duties for Evo. That alone had raised my hopes for how well future offline Evos would be run, especially in the wake of the ousting of Mr. Wizard and the floundering attempts to move to online events. The thing that clinched my decision to go back this year wasn’t just his inclusion in running the event. It also wasn’t the increased venue space for Vortex Gallery and casuals, or the addition of games that I’m particularly passionate about, like Melty Blood’s return after a decade long absence. It wasn’t even the opportunity to maybe see Pokimane as a random encounter (I didn’t see her.) It was the promise of free water.
I still didn’t know if I was going for sure until around June or so, because it took a while to figure out the carpool and for someone to book the room. I also only registered for Melty Blood, and in Vortex Gallery I only signed up for UNICLR- I have a huge soft spot for French Bread and I haven’t been able to play with that community in-depth since prior to the pandemic, whereas I’ve been spending several days a week playing or running tournaments for GGST and +R. I also didn’t want to spend most of my day running from event to event like a madman. My best friend Kim, who I’ve known basically my whole life and has been helping me run Wild West Guilty Gear since October, decided to tag along but elected not to enter any events. We also were accompanied by two of our friends, Nikki joining us in the carpool and Liam flying in from Oregon before checking into the room early.
My trip to Evo actually began on the Wednesday prior to the event. I drove from the Inland Empire to my dad’s place in Orange County to cut down the total amount of driving I would be doing in a single day. The next day, I picked up Kim, who lived nearby, then drove up to LA to pick up Nikki, and from there we went straight to Vegas. We stopped in Barstow because I forgot my deodorant and we were hungry, which extended our travel time a bit, but we got there late in the afternoon, with enough time to pick up our badges on Day 0 of Evo. The first thing I did once I got my vaccination-verification strap was figure out how the hell I was going to take it off whenever I needed to shower or something. Some of the registration volunteers just put it in a loop on the badge, or leave it hanging loose, but one of them ended up putting it too tight on Kim’s and my wrist.
Day 1 of Evo was probably the most chaotic, since that was when I was playing my Melty Blood pools. Liam also had pools for various games that he forgot he had even signed up for, including Melty and GBVS. I was scheduled to play my pools at 12, and I ended up lucking out- my round 1 and 2 opponents both ended up DQing out. I would jokingly remark repeatedly that I outplayed my opponents by showing up on time, but I figured that as I got further into my pool I would buster out without playing any games… until I 2–0ed my next two opponents and made it into top 64. What’s more, I only had an hour until top 64 began, so I quickly shuffled off to a McDonald’s just outside the venue to eat my nerves. I ended up getting washed once the rest of the event started but ending my first ever Melty Blood major at 33rd out of 411 entrants was huge for me- it was also the first time I had made it out of pools on winner’s side. The last time I made a top 8 was on the loser’s side of Pokken at Switchfest 2019, so I updated my Twitter bio accordingly. (Incidentally, Shinobi did a hell of a job running the Evo MBTL pools. You can directly support him and his French Bread-centric major, Climax of Night, by buying a shirt.)
After my bracket run was over, the four of us sat to watch Skullgirls finals. We watched the top cut at the venue and then went back to the hotel room to watch Top 8, have dinner, and relax our feet. (I still have bloody callouses from the event, but that was partly my fault. The walk from the Luxor to the Mandalay Bay venue was long, but I did not pack properly for it at all.) I ended up re-installing Skullgirls on my laptop during top 8, but we unfortunately couldn’t get local play to work, so I gave up on playing it outside of the venue setups.
Saturday was when I played my Vortex Gallery UNICLR pools. I went 0–2 and cried about it on Twitter. (Another shoutout to TabbyNickel, who not only ran UNICLR, but ran P4AU2.5 and DFCI the previous day and is in general an excellent commentator at every game she can fit into her brain.) Saturday was mostly spent shopping, spectating, and playing friendlies at the venue- most of which was nearly impossible to do at previous Evos. Kim bought herself one of the last remaining Qanba Drones at the Gaming Generations booth, and we tried it out on Skullgirls at the friendly setups. Someone recognized my Them’s Fightin’ Herds stick decals and I sat down with him for a FT10 and taught him how to play the game, and he managed to improve gradually throughout the set. Nikki and Liam were both playing KOFXV brackets, so I took the time to meet some other friends who I knew were travelling to Evo that I had never met before. It was cool seeing some people for the first time ever, and others for the first time in a long time- I got to call Patrick Miller my dad to his face. My main regret was just that we didn’t have enough time to hang out and play with everybody- I wonder if a 24-hour venue for Evo is possible in the future. I made the other three watch the Melty Blood top 8 and we all popped off for Jing’s victory over Masoma. On the way back to the hotel room, we stopped at a pub and found the Melty Blood update news on Twitter, which wasn’t shown during the top 8 proper- I blame MK11 running too long.
Incidentally, it was wild how much good fighting game news was at Evo, as well as how much of it was incidental. P4AU2.5 rollback wasn’t even announced via a proper trailer- just as an ad between games! On top of that, major information about the next MBTL balance patch adding a bunch of things that people had been asking for, the rest of GGST’s Season 2 development schedule, and DBFZ getting rollback as well were all excellent reveals. Nikki and Liam, who were SNK fans, were eating good this weekend, with official announcements for Team SamSho, the reveal of Shingo Yabuki and Kim Kahpwan, SamSho itself finally getting rollback, KOFXV getting crossplay, and the tease for a new Garou. All that news gave me an itch to learn KOFXV again, and at the suggestion of someone we met at the pub I swapped out B. Jenet for King on my team.
Sunday was honestly disappointing- we all expected the venue to be open on Sunday for more shopping, friendlies, and to spectate the finals. Upon finding that none of that was the case, we trudged back to the room as broken shells of our former selves, ordered some pizza, and played sets in the hotel while watching the finals on stream. Kim also had an impromptu version of Sajam’s “Will It Kill…?” which we played in the room, guessing on certain clips that she had compiled in between finals or sets. We all popped off for the Bridget reveal, only to realize that we would actually have to fight against Bridget, and we ended up pissing ourselves off at the thought of what her potential mixup game would be. On a personal note, having watched Umisho’s meteoric rise while TO’ing the WNF GGST brackets for the past year, it was immensely satisfying to watch her win GGST’s first Evo run, and the biggest event of the series’ history so far.
We drove back to California the following day, but after dropping off my friends I still didn’t get back home until Tuesday, and I barely had a day of rest before we had to pick it up again with WNF Online again. Kim unfortunately came down with COVID and is currently recuperating- the rest of us came up negative and haven’t experienced symptoms. The venue itself did an excellent job of making sure everyone was safe and masked, but obviously the COVID guidelines at the hotel and casino proper were not being enforced, so there was no accounting for exposure at the food courts or on the path to the venue.
Apart from not being able to access the venue on Thursday or Sunday, Evo 2022 was a vast improvement over the last time I had entered. Being able to carry a liter of cool water everywhere saved my life and being able to enjoy the venue I was at made spending time there instead of the hotel room meaningful. If future Evos are run the same way and further iterated upon- seriously, I cannot emphasize how much I would have liked to hang out at the venue an extra day- I would absolutely make going there an annual thing. The memories I made with friends and in bracket reminded me how much I love and miss offline competition and reassured me of my faith in the FGC.
(That’s a pretty good point for the essay to end, but I do want to add a recap here with some pros and cons about the event.)
The Good:
- I cannot emphasize how good having free water was. This is probably the most important thing that future Evos can guarantee. Paying for convention center food and drink at a markup is obscene- being able to stay hydrated in the hottest part of the country is a must.
- Forcing everyone to mask up and require proof of vaccination. As everyone else, including the CDC, becomes dangerously lax with disease prevention guidelines, it’s incredibly reassuring to know that the FGC is still taking the pandemic seriously. As far as I’m aware, breakthrough infections have occurred but were fairly uncommon, which means that the safety protocols worked.
- The arcade! I didn’t actually get to play on any cabinets but just having that space where people can go and run sets/try out classic games was super cool and accentuated the offline experience.
- Lots of space in the artist alley and vendor/sponsor sections, including putting them front and center, was a smart move. While walking between the main events and Vortex Gallery/friendly setups, you’re guaranteed to see something cool and spend money there.
- Proximity of the actual venue to the food court meant that I didn’t have to walk very far to get food during the event, whereas at most other majors (and at my last Evo) I would have to leave the venue and go pretty far for food and back.
- Simply having so much dedicated space to Vortex Gallery and friendlies meant I could just go and play games without lugging a setup around or going back to the hotel room. I would not have had so many interactions with out-of-region players if that wasn’t the case.
- No matter where you look in the venue, there’s always something to watch going on. This is probably an influence of Rick’s roots with Combo Breaker, but I remember that when I went to Evo the first time it was difficult to spectate any games that weren’t on one of the three main stages. There were eight stages for the main games (which was fine since Skullgirls only ran a single day) and in the other side of the venue it was easy to watch things like MultiVersus or Vortex Gallery Top 8/Top 4 events.
The Bad:
- For all the cool stuff there, not being able to experience it all three days was a bummer. If everything was open during Thursday (Day 0, check-in) or Sunday (finals day,) the event would feel more complete. Otherwise, if you don’t have arena tickets (Kim, Nikki and I didn’t) there’s not much to do besides prep for the trip home or bum around Vegas. No three-day venue was probably the worst part of the event as a convention experience, and I think having that extra day, even if it’s not 24-hour, would greatly improve Evo.
- Evo staff has shown that they are rightfully concerned for the safety of players and spectators at their venue. However, bag check was subpar (the fault of security working the event just dismissing us if they saw a fightstick and not checking the rest of the bag) and more importantly, certain players were still allowed to enter the event that should not have been. Security and player bans should be more strictly enforced in the future- with the latter, community TOs should be able to collaborate with Evo staff by reviewing who is attempting to register that has already been banned from other events.. This is probably the worst part of the event as far as safety is concerned.
- There was a dedicated space where some developers got to reveal parts of their announcements for their games before their respective finals. For instance, the GGST developers got to share their Season 2 roadmap and announce that there would be a new character reveal but saved the Bridget trailer for their top 8. However, some top 8s managed to run long, meaning that some major announcements like the MBTL season 2 plans got shafted, and in general other announcements like the GBVS online tour and P4U2 rollback could have been saved for that panel. (GBVS’s announcement got booed because they announced an online tour for a delay-based title, and I wager that most people at the event didn’t know P4U2 got patched unless they saw it on Twitter or caught an on-stream ad for it.) There was even other stuff like the Tekken 8 announcement, which didn’t even seem like an announcement. I think if the developer panels were opened to more companies, then we could have a space for those reveals that weren’t shown or necessary for the top 8 stage.
- This one is probably unavoidable, but as mentioned before, it was about a half-mile walk inside the Luxor through the conjoining indoor strip mall to get to the convention center inside the Mandalay Bay. We never took the tram service, so I don’t know if it was free or if that cut down on travel time in any way. Either way, it’s been a week since I was at Evo and I still have a pulled muscle and scabbed callouses, considering we would take multiple trips to and from the room to the venue on Friday and Saturday.
