August 3, 2023 • 53 mins
IT'S EVO WEEK! Jason sits down with Evo general manager Rick "TheHadou" Thiher to talk about the show in two segments: one recorded before the Project L announcement, and one after! Jason then gives his hopes and dreams for this year's event.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:26):
Hello, and welcome to episode numberone hundred and thirty seven of the Chief
Steaks and Controller's podcast presented by FoxPHL The Gambler one or two point five
FM fourteen eighty AM I Heart Radio, where wherever you get your podcast is
where you can listen to this hereshow as you are right now. My
name is Jason Finelli, and Iam the esports and gaming insider for Fox
(00:48):
PHL, The Gambler and Folks.It is one of my favorite weekends of
the year. It's EVA week.We are talking fighting games this week,
baby, and there are a lotof things to talk about as we get
into EVO Week eight. Tournaments plentyto discuss, and I have brought in
(01:11):
a fantastic interview to do just that. However, things are gonna be a
little bit different this time. We'regonna do something a little peak behind the
curtain when it comes to Chef Steaksand Controllers here. And what I mean
by that is so I have oneguest on the show today. We'll get
into who that is shortly. Ifyou saw the posts on social media,
you already know who it is,but we are I'm putting the interview in
(01:36):
two segments because we actually filmed.I'm sorry recorded, I don't film here.
We actually recorded two different times.We recorded the Friday before Project L
was announced to be playable at EVO, and then the Thursday after Project L
(01:57):
was able to was announced as beingplayable EVO. You're gonna hear the way
we talk about it, the wayit's teased in the first segment, along
with his great insight into EVO ingeneral, and then in part two we'll
talk about the afterpart of you know, the the the the reaction to and
(02:19):
stuff like that. So it's aninteresting little peek behind how podcasts sometimes work,
and I feel like it'll be areally cool way to let you see
how I do things here on theshow. So our first interview today on
Chief Stakes the Controllers is one I'mvery very excited about. If you have
listened to my show, you knowthat I am a champion of the fighting
(02:40):
game community. I have gone onrecord of saying that fighting games are the
future of competitive gaming in general.But you can listen to all the old
episodes to hear me talk about that. EVO twenty twenty three is a day
away, starts tomorrow. I amsuper excited to get into it and with
me to talk about twenty twenty threeis who better than the general manager of
(03:02):
EVO Rick Thyre, who started withCombo Breaker, still does Combo Breaker,
I think, and now is runningEVO and making it the biggest and best
EVO that has ever been Rick,How are you today, Jason? Would
that kind of upsell for just steppingby? I'm doing great. We're trying
to live up to that biggest andbest. Well. Your attendance figures,
(03:27):
your registration numbers certainly have already startedyou on that road. Seven thousand players
for street Fighter six alone. ThatI loved the numbers, where if the
only people who signed up for streetFighter only signed up for street Fighter,
it would still be the biggest tournamentof the whole thing. Now twenty twenty
(03:51):
two, your first year back.Good attendance, great show, especially on
the live stream side. Were peoplestreaming like I was? But I think
everyone's sort of expected this to belike an even bigger year in a sense
because it was your second year.You already got the first year underneath,
you worked out some cakes. Didyou expect it to be this big?
(04:12):
I don't think you can ever expectsomething to be record breaking, you can
expect something to be a big momentor a big beat, which the launcher
street Fighter six for me, wasalways going to be. We're talking about
the franchise that, in a lotof ways was the genesis point for what
modern fighting games are. That's astreet Fighter two without that arcade boom.
Maybe I'm not employed this way todaywith all those things happening, though,
(04:33):
You get to street Fighter six andyou have to assume that you're going to
get a boom, And then thegame came out and the game is good,
Yes, good with a capital G. Good. So seeing this response
is uplifting might be a great wordchoice for it. Definitely surprising in scale,
(04:53):
and I am really excited to seewhat happens at a tournament where when
you get out of pools, everyonethat gets out of pool that next phase
of the tournament is still larger thanthe first EVO Street Fighter tournament I competed
in. Oh my god, howdo you how do you wrangle that many
players like that? If you wereto put that bracket on paper, it
(05:15):
would probably stretch the entire Mandalay Baybecause it's double elimination too, so you
have all those players twice like,how do you how do you wrangle all
that. We've made a bunch ofjokes this year about the fact that it's
going to take a small army torun the tournament, and I don't disagree
at all. I think that's incrediblytrue. I'm deeply thankful for the bracket
(05:35):
staff and the tournament staff we have, for the enthusiastic response from the community
to sign up and help actually executethat bracket so that we have enough bracket
runners to move those pools. Butyou brought up combo breaker earlier at the
top of the show, which,as you know, my original tournament.
Baby, it's always fun to talkabout. But there are more PS fives
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on the show floor for just StreetFighter six than the entire allotment of consoles
at the first two years of CB. If you can bind them together,
Wow, that's amazing. And thatand that sort of support from PlayStation I
think is a huge Uh. Thefact that you're able to not have a
cutoff, Right, how did PlayStationwhen you when you came to PlayStation with
(06:20):
these numbers or your your higher upswith these numbers and said, look um,
we we're doing pretty good, butit's going to be really good.
How do we mitigate this? Werethey receptive? Were they like, yeah,
we're ready? Like, how howdo you manage all those logistics?
Because that's a lot of consoles,As you just pointed out, it's it's
a lot of logistics. I thinkthe cool thing about being in an orchestructure
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that Sony is on top of nowis they're going to get excited about people
using their hardware to play games.That's what they're here to support, and
so having the visual of that manyconsoles in a rome is a cool enticing
moment. When we were at EboJapan earlier this year, I got to
walk the show floor and then goup an escalator so that you could see
down onto the show for school withsome of the executives at Sony, and
(07:06):
here's this just huge room of PlayStationconsoles and Sony monitors and people enjoying themselves
competing. That's an impactful visual Ithink no matter where you are in any
corporate structure. Now, the backsideof that statement, though, is eyebrows
raise when you ask for support andcoming up with this much hardware. So
(07:27):
we're we are still using community vendorsat this show that our traditional hardware suppliers
for a bunch of the fighting gamecommunity executions around the country, around the
world. Now actually we have supportfrom Sony to come up with the sheer
volume of PlayStation five necessary to runand open bracket this scale. It makes
me think a lot about next yearwhen more of these games will be available
(07:48):
on PS five, because there's aTech and EIGHTE coming out, which I'm
praying is before Evote next year.There are more games in the future one
this year exactly. The needs forhardware support at this scale I think cannot
be devalued, and it's one ofthe absolute best parts of being in an
(08:13):
organizational structure. Now that has askedus to a legitimate platform partner who produces
hardware. Yeah, because it's notan immediate solve. Somebody still has to
go probably look through P and Lsheets and shipping logistics and figuring out who
has what, where, when,why, how. But there is a
path that can start with just oneemail to one person to go down that
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chain. Whereas every other show I'veever run, it's how how many suppliers
do we have to combine? Oh? Well, they show up on time,
So when does when did or doesset up begin? Like when are
you again? This episode is goingout the day before the show opens,
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but we are recording the week before. So where have you started now a
week before or you waiting till thebe like Monday? If next week,
when does that set up phase begin? So some of my team will start
arriving on Monday, the thirty first. We'll be in the venue on Tuesday
the first, chalking the floor,starting to get the rigging plans up into
(09:15):
the air, kind of doing thoseprocesses in terms of what I think a
lot of people would consider the setup. So trucks are in, vendors arean
boosts are getting set up, consolesare getting turned on. None of that
really gets going at great pace tillWednesday, which amazing to think. And
you're going to be up and runningon Friday, so you're forty eight hours
to get this whole thing set up. It's amazing. How y'all do it?
(09:37):
The incredible things we have an extraday this year. Last year we
did not have that ball even lesstime. That's good. Well, you
have what four thousand more people toworry about too, a lot more than
that. One of the one ofthe wildest things, and talking about the
numbers of EVO is people come andtalk about having almost ninety two unique players
and going, this is huge,this is the biggest, this is great,
(10:00):
and then no one discusses all thespectaculor tickets. Oh oh no,
oh, my's a massive, massiveshow. I hope you have a lot
of paths just lined up for peopleto just walk, because there's gonna be
a lot. That's like, I'veonly been to one EVO in my life.
(10:20):
It's twenty eighteen, five years ago, chomping at the bit to get
back hopefully next year. Um,and I just remember whenever something like a
big matchress go went on, orlike something really tense was going on at
the stations on Friday and Saturday,people would gather and then we have to
clear the path, but nobody wantto clear because they're watching. Now.
The big screens around the event centerkind of mitigate that for the people on
(10:43):
the stage. But if there's agreat match popping off, like in Row
four or Rowe D what do you? How do you? How do you?
I don't envy you, I guessThat's what I'm trying to say.
Get on your tip you get downon tippy toes. Um. We definitely
have a lot of walk paths thatare as wide as they can be in
the space that we have. We'vegot a lot of primary walks pass on
top of that to get from theleft side of the venue to the right
(11:07):
side of the venue. You getnorth south, so on and so forth,
which I think are very needed thisyear because aside from the sheer volume
of players, they're gonna be presentin that no lack of a better term
for this chaos pit for the earlytournaments. The show has a wealth of
activities beyond that too, because youhave a ten thousand square foot retro arcade
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this year that has high score tournamentsin it. So if you really want
to post up on Donkey Kong fortwo days straight and not sleep well,
he probably have to get kicked outof venue at some point. But regardless,
you can go that route of theshow. There's the community tournaments and
the community stagings that you can goand engage with. Games that aren't even
part of that core lineup still representthe breadth of what fighting game culture and
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the fighting game genre is. Thaton the opposite side of some of that,
you've got the artist alley is stillthere, vendor villages, are still
there. There's more exhibitors this yearthan there have been at EVA in the
past. And although I'm not goingto drop the names here, the advantage
of this show coming a couple ofdays after another big announcement next week,
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there are going to be more developersand publishers with hands on first impression games
characters, DLC routes. You evengot SMK in their running tournaments for some
of their now legacy titles just attheir booth space. So there is no
lack of opportunity to be entertained atEVIL this year. That's awesome. Now
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you did you were mentioning big announcements. You had some things earlier this week
that have really set a lot ofpeople on fire. What are some of
the things that you were dropping aweek before this show starts? As if
we needed more than you know,thousands of players and whatever else is getting
cooked up here adding game community.If we're not asking for more, what
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are we doing? That's true?That is true, and I'm happy to
be part of that, to behonest. Same here. Actually we have
at EVO this year, and yousaw this with the announcement for MK one.
You saw this with the announcement forTech and eight, the ability to
get hands on with upcoming titles inthe fighting game genre that you have not
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played before. Amazing. And Iknow you said that this is dropping the
day before the show's assuming Thursday hereyesterday. If you go back one week,
there is another huge announcement that justcame out about more hands on games
at EBO that I think are goingto incite absolute fervor about getting over into
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that developer publisher Alley at the show. Oh man, oh man, this
guy, this guy with his teases. Go check those announcements out. That's
pretty exciting. I'm gonna have togrow him a little bit after the show's
over because he's being coin with me. Here. Another game I want to
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talk about a little bit is onethat, honestly, for me, is
the most exciting part of this andthat is Ultimate Marvel three at number four.
Having over thirteen hundred players for agame that is twelve years old,
well that boggles my mind. Imean it doesn't. Marvel community has always
(14:24):
showed out, but to have eventhat many players. Some may argue that
Street Fighter six if you're a capcomfan, you might have tried both,
but I'd say they're two completely differentgames. That doesn't really translate. So
what do you attribute that successful numbertwo? If you had to choose something,
I think it's a combination of things. There's a lot of easy attributions.
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But for me, it's that theplayer base around that subgenre of fighting
games has never lost its enthusiasm.Many of the best players from the heyday
of Ultimate marvels Capcom three are stillplaying and still playing regularly because the game
is at tournaments. But I knowthat a few years ago, when some
of the enthusiasm around the competition forthat game had started to wane a little
(15:11):
bit because the age was showing youhad high volume, not even high volume,
high viewership, influencers like Maximilian workwith Twitch to put together an Ultimate
Marvel Versus Capcom three tournament that couldbe made possible because groups of developers,
particularly with parsek, had come upwith ways to make sure that you could
(15:33):
play this game at home on yourPC with other people multiple states away,
and that had never been possible forthat game previously, the net code was
just a little too old. Thatopportunity was capitalized on by I think Kevin
Hoff first, but then tong OffTampa Never Sleeps, where he started hosting
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a tournament series. Every week.They were putting together incredible, incredible matches
on a consistent basis, So youhave new viewership tuning in, You've got
players reinvigorated by having this tent polespot to go to. And Tong then
went around the country championing Marvel atevery tournament that he could get to,
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and that led to what I thinkreally true resurgence for that game, that
got our attention, that allowed usto go to Marvel and Capcom and go,
hey, come on, yeah,come on, and I am imagining
that meeting. Y'all sit down,the stuffed shirts, sit down, You
(16:36):
sit down, everybody's looking at eachother, and you just break the ice
with a come on, guys,what are you doing here? I think
it was a perfect storm. Wewound up working with some folks over at
Marvel truly and Marvel Game specifically,who understood why we wanted to do this,
Who are fans of the game,because I think it's easy to be
a fan of that game, thatwere enthused about the fact that we could
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presented in a way that hopefully itjust hadn't been presented in before, and
so when we announced that and theinitial response was strong, that bubbling up
into what is now the largest ultimateMarvel VERUS Capcom three tournament in the history
of the franchise is a beautiful,beautiful thing to kick off the fact that
Evo's going to be doing these throwbacktournaments moving forward. It's not just going
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to be Marvel this one year.There is so much in this genre that
has surface back up in recent yearsbecause rollback net code is strong, because
PC ports are playable now, becauseof archival and emulation and all these things
that we don't normally talk about alot, but still kind of keep that
fandom rolling, and we're big partsof what made EVO into what EVO is.
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So shining this new, bigger lightback on him and seeing, well,
you know what happens if we throwMarvel to ten people play, or
do oh thirteen hundred people play?Okay? Now, are you are you
worried that this particular classic game orretro game might be a misleading bar you
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know what I mean? Like thisone is particularly popular just had that major
resurgence. I feel like the modeingcommunity, although they won't be moded here,
might have helped in there as wellwith those other characters and making things
a little weird. But I wonder, then, if you say, next
year you tried it with a classicKoft title or something from maybe like a
like a Mortal Kombat one and MortalKombat one or two or three or Ultimate,
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if the same amount of enthusiasm mightoccur. Does that make sense?
It makes perfect sense. Do Ithink that all franchises will produce the response
that Marvel just did? No?No, I think there's an opportunity for
any number of franchises to produce thistype of enthusiastic historical look back. Sure.
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Yes, I don't think you haveto run a tournament that gets thirteen
hundred players for it to have avaluable response, Like we go look Out
in Japan. This year you hadmatsudasan throw at DreamHack his annual Virtual Fighter
series, and it still produces greatgameplay for really excited players who are invested
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in that moment in the genre's history. And I think if we can put
a light on those moments, youwind up with new people who not only
discover a little bit of the genre'shistory where we all came from collectively,
but also might get engaged with andtry it out. And I think a
lot of those games are still incrediblyfun to play. That's why you've got
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a Third Strike community series in NorthAmerica right now. It's why you can
find Vampire Savior players, That's whyyou can find pockets of players in Latin
America, particularly where the older techins are played more than the newer techns.
And I think if we can findthe right timing for a lot of
those games from year to year,we have a great moment to tell our
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story while also giving new players whoare unfamiliar with that history or those games
a chance to be part of it. Which is I don't know, some
weird VH one behind the music kindof approach to this, but I think
it works because the games are stillgood. That's true. As long as
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the games are good, people aregonna want to play them. Especially,
like you said, with the rollbatNeck code bringing it to older titles in
established franchise is guilty Gear comes tominds what SNK is doing with all their
games as well. That makes alot of makes perfect sense to me.
Coming up after the break, weget to part two of my talk with
Rick Thyer, general manager of EVOmostly about Project Dell if I'm being honest,
(20:45):
but you'll enjoy it. Stick around. Welcome back to Chief Stakes to
Controller's episode number one hundred and thirtyseven. Moving on now to part two
of my discussion with Rick Thyre,also known as the Hado General Manager of
EVO. As I mentioned at thetop of the show, this was recorded
after the Project L announcement was made. A last segment was recorded before,
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which is why we were being alittle teasy about it. But he was
gracious enough to come back and giveme some insight into that, and I
really appreciate him for it. Sohere is part two of that discussion.
Now. So, Rick, oneof the most exciting things about EVO this
year. There's a lot to beexcited about, don't get me wrong.
As we've talked about, it's goingto be a humongous show. But as
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far as the convention part, withall the different poos where you can try
out different games, there's a bitof a coup, a bit of a
big coup for EVO this year,and that will be the first playable demo
of Project L, which I believeis still a working title. You can
correct me if I'm wrong, whichis Riot Games first foray into fighting games,
a two v two tag based fighter, pulling from their immense pantheon of
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champions from the League of Legends universe. The next step in there branching out
for just their insular mobile game toArcane and the RPGs that have come out
on consoles and stuff like that.So talk to me about how those discussions
came about. Obviously the Cannons.There is a lot of connected tissue between
EVO and the Cannons, so Iimagine the foot in the door was not
(22:15):
that difficult. But from there,how did this all come about? So
you are correct, the foot inthe door had arguably nothing to do with
me. You have Tom and TonyCannon who helped found EVO, ran it
for twenty some years and moved onto work on Project L full time and
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make sure that the future of fightinggames looks as bright and ambitious as they
wanted to. And coincidentally, areyou know, still on our board of
advisors. So being able to go, I'd like to take my game and
show it at the largest fighting gametournament convention in the world, which also
happens to be mine. I can'tsee where that was too hard a decision
(22:57):
process, and probably a pretty wonderfulfull circle moment for them both as event
organizers and owners and former owners andquick just people who have grown up in
fighting games since the dawn of fightinggames. So you get the foot in
the door dawn, and then itturns into a bunch of meetings about space
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and logistics and power and how longdo we think this Q line can be?
Wait, how many people are coming? Yeah, that's a problem.
Especially so the interesting thing about ProjectDeality vote is I don't think there's been
anything about activating that hands on experiencethat has been unexpectedly difficult or weigh out
(23:44):
the bounds of what you would considernormal in two entities getting together and go
we want to showcase something. Ithink the truly wild part about Project del
at EVO is the fact it existsat Evo at all is way outside the
bounds of what I expect from Riothistorically. I expect for a game that
hasn't even had an official demo anywherethat I really know of, that's available
(24:10):
for the public to consume, andthat's going to exist at EVO in a
year where the event is so largethat you're not walking away with a playtest.
You're walking away with the population ofan entire city. Yeah, basically
tested out the game. That's awesomethat today. Did you anticipate when?
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So? I guess obviously, I'mtrying to think of a timeline as to
when your attendance numbers started coming inand when they decided like a demo would
be happening. Was the demo beforeyour attendance figures, like early figure started
to roll in. When did thatdecision happen? Because I wonder if that
attendance figure made any difference, ifthat makes sense. So when we first
(24:56):
started talking about it, attendance wasalready up for the year. It just
wasn't okay, we're going to bebreaking all the records kind of up.
So we had committed to that.At which point we get into the standard
registration period where you get done withyour early reds, you promote that there's
a price increase. Everybody floods intoregister to save the couple of dollars here
(25:17):
and there, which makes total senseagainst the scale of a Vegas vacation.
Maybe not that impactful, but makestotal sense. You get an extra you
know, Johnny Rockettsburger meal but afterthat really came into play. We wound
up on site with the Riot teamtalking about, Okay, what what are
we going to do to make surethis works because this is no longer just
(25:41):
EVO at EVO scale and Project L. It's Project L for the first time
at the biggest EVO that's ever existed. Oh, you're going to announce really
close to the show. I guessthat might help a little bit because maybe
the whole city doesn't flood in,but I expect there to be a an
interesting Q line for this particular activity, Healthy, which will yeah, yeah,
(26:04):
it'll be healthy, which, although, to be honest, it might
be a squashed a little bit onthe fact that Project L is a two
B two game. So whereas youget in line to play Technade or m
K one or there's surprises at theshow that you'll discover later this week wink,
there is an opportunity for Project Lto potentially move through that Q line
(26:30):
even faster because instead of two people, that can be four or three or
whatever combination. That's true. Thatis true because the duo's mode, each
player gets a character you can switchback and forth, and I imagine the
demo will focus on that duo's mode, it will not It'll just be four
people to a console at a timeto keep that line moving. It almost
reminds me of I don't know ifyou were on the committee at all,
(26:52):
if you were helping with the voin twenty eighteen, the one year I
was there when they had Smash Brothersdemo available on the floor for four people
to a console, one big youknow, free for all match, and
then off you went. I wonder, and that line was very healthy the
entire time. So I'm wondering ifyou might run into a similar situation just
(27:14):
with you know, probably some morepeople. I don't remember the twenty eighteen
attendants records off the top of myhead, but there were a lot.
There were a lot of people.Yes, someone who also stood in that
line. Yeah, yeah, assomeone who also stood in that line,
yes, well the line when Igot there, if I recall, it
was the first thing I did.I made sure I just ran too it
(27:36):
on Saturday morning, I think,and I was still like twenty twenty five
people deep. It was brutal.I think the nice part is as much
as we're joking about the line beinglong and deservedly being long, sure that
Smash one moved pretty fast, andso I legitimately do expect the Projdel one
to move as quick or potentially evenquicker, because I don't anticipate there is
(27:57):
going to be as many champions ofa little as there were in Smash.
So even just getting stuck on characters, like trying to figure out who am
I going to play today? Smash, you're dealing with everybody's here. Yeah,
Project Bell, You've got three fourchampions. Yeah. Yeah, So
that that Smash demo was the sameexact one from E three twenty eighteen,
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So you're right, it was likeeighteen characters in that demo versus four in
this one. Three they've revealed inthe fourth one they're going to reveal at
some point before things kick off.Are they talking to them now this week?
If you've talked to them yet theweek of the show, has their
excitement grown to see all these people? Are they now extra nervous? So
(28:38):
I imagine there's this double sided coinof yes, all these people are going
to play these our game. Crap, all these people are going to play
our game. But it's like aweird dichotomy. Is that is that what
you're feeling you're you're you're getting fromthem here. I mean, I think
the the enthusiasm and excitement versus thestress and nervousness applies that reaspect of the
(29:00):
show. Sure the Project L teamis feeling it, Yes, I do
have I talked to them to confirmthat. No, I hadn't, But
I know our tech staff feels thatway. I know the janitorial staff feels
that way. I know that thesecurity staff feels that way. So I
would expect the Product L team hasa similar feeling in that regard. Poor
one out for the janitorial team,they are they are better poor two or
(29:23):
three out right saints among men.Those guys, those those folks are h
That is not a job I envy, but it is one I definitely respect.
So one last thing before I getyou out of here. It's the
week of the show. You're flyingout. I assume we're recording on Monday,
the thirty first, So why thetime it goes out, you'll be
there Thursday. You're flying out tonighttomorrow, bright and early tomorrow morning,
(29:45):
right and early tomorrow morning. Igot a three year old at home,
so I didn't want to fly outpost bed time. I'd rather get up
a little too early, maybe getout the door before she's away. Otherwise,
have a breakfast and head off toVegas. You and I have very
similar thoughts when it comes to travelingalone. We don't go after they go
to bed, we go before theywake up, which I guess in retrospect
(30:07):
is the same thing. But yeah, whatever, the kid appreciates it.
So my question then, is,how are you feeling now? All this
preparation, all this work, allthese records, all these new cool demos
that you have announced. It's almostput up a shut up time. Are
you ready? I don't think you'reever ready to run a show like this,
(30:29):
but I think we have all thepieces in place for this to be
the evil event that we are aspiringfor it to be. It all is
all the things any event can haveat this scale to break those ambitions.
But I think we've got the rightstaff. I'm very confident we have the
right activities. We've obviously got agreat turnout. I know we're going to
wind up with great matches. We'vegot a good venue partner, we've got
(30:52):
a good just general preparations plan andbest practices that we've been running through for
the last few months. Is itall going to blow up eleventh hour because
that's what happens. Yes, butthat's why you've got the best people that
we can have involved in the showso that it will be the best show
it can be. So what Iguess my last question is for someone who's
(31:14):
getting ready to come out there,other than stay out of the one hundred
degree heat for as long as youcan, there are there any words of
wisdom from someone who's been doing thisfor a very long time, both as
a fan and running the thing thatyou can give to attendees both new and
old for EVO twenty twenty three specifically, so it's not specific, all of
(31:34):
one hundred degree heat does play intothis advice. This is the general advice
I give about every show because Ithink it makes a difference. Treat yourself
right so the show can do thebest it can to do right by you.
Love. That means get enough sleepto actually enjoy the show. If
you're somebody where that's seven minutes,great. If you're somebody where that's like
me, it needs to be sevenplus hours. Aimed for that drink water,
(31:57):
particularly because we're in vague it's goingto be one hundred degrees plus,
whether you're inside or out. Thatwill creep under your skin and get into
your bones. Yes, eat andif you can't eat, well, pack
some protein bars, bring some cranolabars, bring some jerky, because if
your body feels good, the eventwill go well. There's enough there to
do an experience that I can promise. The entertainment level is high. There's
(32:20):
enough to compete in that. Ifthat's your jam, you will have the
opportunity to do so. The showthat's been put together for Friday, for
the showcase, for the finals onSaturday and Sunday, all of that I
know will be what you need itto be. So just be in a
condition to appreciate it to the bestof your ability. I love that advice.
You're going out to EVO twenty twentythree this year and you see Rick
(32:42):
Thyer, general manager of EVO,walking around the floor, shake his hand,
elbow, whatever, he's comfortable with, his choice, not yours,
but make sure you thank this manbecause he and his team are doing their
best to make EVO what it is. And based on those attendance numbers,
this year is going to be ahell of a show and you know what.
I lied. One last little extraquestion for you, is one particular
tournament of the eight main ones thatyou're excited for because there one game where
(33:04):
you're like, man, I'm reallyjazzed to see this. So I know,
I'm supposed to say Street Fight orsix because it is the biggest tournament
YadA, YadA, YadA. Asthe guy who helped put together the Tech
and World two or years back,I'm supposed to say Tech and seven.
As the guy who still to thisday is playing m K eleven pretty regularly,
I'm supposed to say Mortal Kombat.The reality of it is, this
(33:24):
is the single largest ultimate Marble Versecapcom that has ever been hosted, and
we somehow managed to get Combo Fiendto climb out of the shadow realm?
Do you commentary for that bracket?That one, to me is special,
and whether the rest of the tournamentsare the best ever in any capacity that
(33:46):
you want it to be the bestthat one, specifically, that one means
something to me and a lot ofthe people that I used to travel to
tournaments with on a regular basis,So it's very cool to have that at
the show. I love that itrepresents evil being able to do throwback tournaments,
and I just think that one thatone as a legacy head of that
(34:08):
game is going to just feel good. And I'm hoping that with the turnout
that you've had and the crowd thatI expect for that Top six in particular,
because let's be honest, a lotof times people just don't only have
the time to tune in for theTop six is they can't be a degenerate
(34:28):
like me and have eight screens goingon a Friday afternoon. Let's hope that
certain eyes are opened and that wedon't have to talk about Marvel as a
legacy game for much longer. Butthat's just a pipe dream on my end.
I'm sure it's one on yours aswell. I'm not going to make
you comment on that. You're welcometo, but I'm not going to make
(34:49):
you Oh. I would love tobe the guy that could just sit here
and be like, yes, moreMarvel. I have no influence, i
have no power. I've got thesame hopeful dreams that a few too many
people have had for a few toomany years, and hopefully those years dwindled
down into something new and cool eventually, I would hope, so too,
Rick Thire, Ladies and gentlemen,the general manager of EVO, the hardest
(35:10):
working man this weekend. I don'tcare what you're doing. This guy's going
to be running around Las Vegas ina one hundred degree heat making sure people
can digitally punch the punch each otherin the face as safely and with as
much fun as possible. I lookforward to watching as much as I can.
I'm not kidding when I say eightscreens. I'll tweet it like I
do every single year, and I'lltag you in it specifically just so or
(35:31):
exit? Are we exiting now?What are we doing forget? Anyway?
Rick, thank you so much foryour time and your efforts in this.
I am looking forward to an incredible, incredible show. Thank you for your
great answers here, looking forward toseeing what everything EVO has to offer,
and maybe after the facts, sometimein August or September or something like that,
we can do this again, todo like a post show like what
(35:52):
went right? What went wrong?What you were most excited about? Rick?
Thanks Bell, thank you. Comingup after the break, I get
into my wishes for EVO twenty twentythree, including reveals I would like to
see tournaments I'm most looking forward to, and pipe dreams that probably won't come
true, but hey, let's hopestick around, all right, Yes,
(36:14):
folks, is che Steaks and Controllersone hundred thirty seven, which I have
not mentioned yet throughout this episode.This is the EVO episode, and as
many people know, the number thirtyseven is very relevant in the world of
EVO as EVO moment. Thirty sevenkind of put this event on the map
for a more across the greater gamingindustry as opposed to just the FGC there
(36:39):
in California. So it's for onethirty seven to be the EVO episode and
to have the great Rick Thryer.The Thier, the general manager of EVO
on the show, was a great, great, great, great get and
I really appreciate him coming. Andnow I am going to beg him for
things. I'm going to beg himfor things that I would like to happen
(37:04):
at EVO this year. I'm goingto queue up this music again because I
love it that much. It's justone of the best fighting game songs ever
made, and it's actually relevant tothe first thing I would like to request
in this segment, and that isanother crossover between Capcom and SNK. They
seem real chummy all of a sudden, they seem like they're they're good friends.
(37:27):
They're doing you know, roundtables togetherduring the pandemic and there, and
they're spending a lot of time together. They're talking very highly of each other
on you know, social media andstuff like that. So they wanted to
give us cap Com Versus SNK three, I would have no problems with that.
Cap Com Versus SNK two is avery special game to me for multiple
(37:49):
reasons. The fantastic fighting game.For one, it holds the distinction of
being the only game to date thatI have ever imported from Japan. Because
I owned the Dreamcast version of thegame, an American version for the Dreamcast
did not exist, so I hadin order to play it when I had
a Dreamcast and no other consoles,I had to import it, and a
(38:13):
local mom and pop shop here inmy neighborhood had not only the copy of
the import but also a little calledinnovation disc that I put in to basically
allow my console American console to playit to get past them the coding or
whatever it is that the region regionlock. Excuse me, uh So um,
(38:38):
cap con Versus SNK is big forme, and I would love to
see CAP con Versus SNK three,or if they want to call it something
else, just not Cap con VersusSNK Infinite Police. That name seems to
be a little you know, taintedat this point. But if they wanted
to give us another one, Iwould be all about it. I think
it's a it's ripe for the picking. If they wanted to you know,
(39:00):
expand on the ratio system or evenbring that back stick with one V one,
two V two or VV three,I think there's I think the online
would be awesome. Um I would. I wouldn't mind the approach where capcom
makes one and SNK makes one justbecause they're so different. But I do
think that that there is definitely apossibility there h The the really you know,
(39:27):
needy part of me would love thatto be in two D sprites.
That would be a really cool throwback. And I feel like a two D
sprite fighting game from a major companymight be a cool way to replicate the
sort of retro revival that happened inthe inde scenes starting with shovel Night and
going across multiple genres and multiple evenfighting games are INDI fighting games to do
it and stuff like that, butit would be you know, full three
(39:49):
day, big budget. Of course, I'm not going to shake a stick
at anything Capcom versus SNK related ifit were to come back, but it
is something I would like to see. Now. I know that SNK is
busy with other projects, which bringsme to number two of my request,
and that is Garrow gameplay. Sofor two years now they've teased us with
the return of Fatal Furity Slash Garrow. First it was the teaser with Rock
(40:13):
Howard, and then last year therewas a different teaser that was basically the
same sort of alleyway shot, justwith different people standing in the alleyway.
Let's see some gameplay this year.Let's see what you're going for. Let's
see what you want to do.I don't need a full system deep dive.
I don't think it's that close tolaunch that we would get something like
that, but I just want tosee it. If you want to give
me a couple of minutes of footagein a trailer with some you know,
(40:37):
big combos or special moves or whatever, I'm fine with that. I'm not
picky. Just let us see alittle bit of garrow. Pretty pretty pleased.
That would be super cool. Fromthe Capcom side, it's obvious,
it's what everybody wants, it's whatI want, it's it's it's something we're
going to request to we're blue inthe face, and that's a new Marvel
(40:58):
Versus Capcom game. However, Ido not think it's very likely for this
year. But I don't think it'svery likely for this year. But I
think this year could be a majorboon in the favor of that in the
favor of a new game coming,thanks to the number of people who have
(41:19):
signed up for that tournament. Itwill there's so many people sign up for
that tournament. It will start daythree. It'll be the first finals we
see on day three, placing fourthout of eight games in the overall rankings,
and that and Ultimate Marvel Versus Capcomthree, let me remind you,
is twelve years old. So thefact that a twelve year old game had
(41:40):
that much of an of a supportsystem, that so many that many people
came out for this tournament should opensome eyes at the in the c suites
that need their eyes open, right, And I would hope that that sort
of attendance might lead and I kindof said this with Rick at the end
(42:01):
of part two of our discussion,I would hope that the attendance of this
tournament would would would allow those talksto begin, which would mean we wouldn't
see another game for you know,four or five years, if work hadn't
even started yet. It is somethingI would like to see built from scratch.
I don't want them to fall intothe same trap they fell into last
(42:24):
time with Infinite where they just kindof poached and tried from Ultimate Marvel three
and tried to make the game ascheap as possible, as cheaply as possible.
I should say that did not workout well in their favor. Favor
they had a lot of egg ontheir face after that. But Capcom right
now seems to be firing on allcylinders. So if it's if the iron
was ever hot enough to strike,it would be now based on this attendance,
(42:49):
based on the you know, thethe hot streak the Capcom was on
with Art President Evil and Street Fighterand all the games that they're making.
Now is a great time for thatto happen. So if they wanted to
bring that to the forefront, Iwould appreciate that also too. With Capcom,
I would like to see character numbertwo and Oversheed just came out and
(43:10):
he's causing quite a star with himhaving to be edited basically the first day
he was out. But I dothink that getting a glimpse of the next
character, Aki would be kind ofcool. Whether it's a little teaser trailer
where it's some brief footage, Idon't know what they want to do,
but I would like to see Aki, and maybe some hints for year two.
(43:32):
I think it's a little early forthat yet, but some hints for
year two would be kind of coolas well. So that's Capcom. Let's
move on to ban Dynamico. Ithink now would be the time to really
go all in on Dragon Ball FighterZ two if that was going to happen.
(43:52):
The game has been out now forsix years. It is getting a
huge rollback neet code patch. Iunderstand that if they wanted to announce detail
on that as well for the thirdyear in a row, I think that
would be great also. I'd behappy with that, but I think a
new game with some updated although theproblem you run into there is what would
(44:12):
a new Dragon Ball Fighter Z addto what's already happening. The problem with
that game is it makes They wouldhave to overhaul the fighting system in that
game, because a critique of mineever since its first ego in twenty eighteen
is that it basically degenerates into whocould do the super the fastest, and
it's just the same multiple supers overand over and over again, big long,
(44:37):
drawn out level threes that we're seeingall the time. They need to
find a way to streamline that combatmake a little more interesting, whether that's
you know, slower meter or eventwo v two or one v one.
I don't know, to make thematches faster. I'm not sure, but
I feel like there's a lot morework to be done there. So I
(44:57):
don't think it's definite. The DragonBall Fighters E two will be announced this
year, but I would like tolease see some more news on the role
on the new rollbacknet code that wouldbe nice. And then Tech and eight.
Obviously Tech and eight has the possibilityfor a huge update. I would
love to see some new characters,maybe our first guest character, or even
since this is EVO and it's thecrowd that would appreciate it the most.
(45:19):
The first original brand new roster memberfor Tech and eight. There has not
been one yet. We have nowhad a beta test with sixteen characters,
and all of them were returning veterans. I do not think the entire roster
will be returning veterans. So ifthere was ever a moment to bring in
a brand new character with a newplay style, EVO and a fighting game
(45:43):
centric fan audience base would be theplace to do that. They are a
part of the Friday Showcase. Idon't know again if they're going to listen
heed my advice here. It wouldjust be really cool if they did.
I'm wondering if they would announce aguest character now, because I feel like
(46:05):
guest characters are going to be DLCand they don't even have a release date
yet, although a release date wouldalso make an excellent announcement for EVO twenty
twenty three. I do think thatgame comes out in twenty four, though
maybe in the beginning of the monthor at the beginning of the year.
Excuse me, but I do notthink it's going to make this year unfortunately.
(46:29):
I think it's going to be atwenty twenty four announcement, So we'll
see their panel is seven o'clock Eastern, four pm Pacific on Friday tomorrow.
You're if you're listening to this whenit actually launches, but that so we'll
see what's going on there. Butthere's a lot going on in this showcase.
So let's move on to what Iam hoping for from the actual events
(46:51):
or what I'm looking forward to themost from the actual events. Arc system
Works panel, probably season three ofGuilty Year Strive. Then it goes right
into Grand Blue Versus Rising, sowe'll see more on that, and then
a Guilty Year Strife panel. Soour system Works basically owns the first three
or four hours, three and ahalf hours of this EVO showcase on Friday.
(47:15):
A lot of stuff they're going tobe doing there. I'm sure there
was a surprise announcement scheduled for twelvethirty Pacific three thirty pm Eastern, but
I'm guessing that's going to be Projectdel They'll announce the fourth character in their
playable demo, and then demos willopen to the public. We already kind
of know who the fourth character isbecause one of the influencers that was invited
(47:37):
to Riot's studio to play the gamewas just shooting some camera and showing off,
you know, like people playing andstuff like that, and was pointed
towards the screen and the fourth characterwas standing there and it's kind of hard
to miss. So I'm not goingto say who it is in case you
haven't heard it yet and want tobe surprised. It is a champion you
(47:58):
would expect considering they have been featuredin other League of Legends offshoots, but
I will let you figure that outfor yourself. A lot of indie games.
In the second like segment of Friday, a Skullgirls panel, Rivals of
eight or two panel, and thena full fighting game showcase for about twenty
minutes before we move on to theUltimate Marvel versus Capcom three panel, which
(48:21):
is just going to be EVO memories. It's not going to be anything with
news, so don't get excited.Street Fighter six panel, which is where
if we see any hokey it'll bethere. Maybe costumes and collaborations as well
Tech and eight panel. As Imentioned after that, that'll be some new
characters, maybe a guest or twoor release date. Another interesting one,
(48:42):
Kyar. It's the last thing ofthe showcase stage before the Evo the first
Evo Twitch channel turns into the topsixes of each tournament, and that is
a tenth anniversary showcase for Killer Instant. Killer Instate on Xbox One is ten
years old this November, because theXbox One is ten years old this November.
(49:04):
And I really think that this gameset a trend that we were not
ready for it to set, Likeit basically introduced the idea of adding characters
piecemeal and you know, building afighting game that way as opposed to gaining
(49:30):
everything behind the sixty or seventy dollarsentry fee and then extra DLC after that.
Not every franchise took to it,obviously, but the model that was
there kind of set the standard forall of DLC going forward in fighting games.
And if they wanted to announce anone, that would be awesome.
Phil Spencer did show up at theFinal Fantasy fourteen fan fest in Vegas to
(49:53):
surprise everyone and say that Final Fantasyfourteen's come into Xbox. Maybe he stayed
for a week and is going toshow up at this showcase as well.
That would be bad S. DoI expect it? No? But it
would be bad s. So that'syour your Showcase, Pandel and then we
get into the tournaments throughout the weekend. Obviously, I am most excited for
(50:17):
I'm most excited for the Street Fightersix tournament. I'm most excited for Guilty
Gear Strives Tournament Tech and eight orTech and seven. Excuse me, it's
gonna be fun. It's gonna bea fun weekend of fighting games that I
am very much looking forward to.I'm wondering though, if I'll be able
to watch all of it, andI will get into the reasons for that
(50:39):
later. I have not talked aboutsomething that is going on in my days,
but I will leave that until nextepisode to talk about episode one thirty
eight. Wink wink, don't judge. Some people know, some people don't.
But so yeah, those are thethings I'm looking forward to most at
EVO, the fighting games, theshowcase. It's going to be a lot
(51:00):
of fun, and I encourage youto watch as much as you can for
the best competitive gaming has to offer. In my humble opinion, things kick
off tomorrow at I believe one pmEastern time is where all the things happen.
Yes, ten am Pacific time.There will be eight different streams going
(51:22):
on or seven different streams going on. Excuse me. At any given time,
Evo has seven different channels Evoe Evo, Evo two, three, four,
five, six, and seven.Each one will be playing different fighting
games. Each one will have whilethe main one will have the showcase and
it's it's it's amazing, it's it'sjust a weekend of fighting games that I
(51:44):
highly recommend everyone check out if youhave the time, and if not,
catch the videos on demand because itis absolutely worth it. And with that,
we are at the end of episodenumber one thirty seven or Chief Stakes
and Controllers percented by Fox PHL TheGambler one or two point five fourteen eighty
am iHeartRadio or wherever you get yourpodcasts. As I say at the end
(52:05):
of every episode, if you're hearingthese words, you have reached the end,
and I am eternally appreciative that youhave. I hope you were educated.
I hope you were entertained, andI hope that you were enlightened by
some of the things we talked abouttoday. And I hope you come out
of here with a new appreciation ofnot only fighting games in general, but
EVO itself. Because Rick Thyer,the Hatto, the general manager of EVO,
(52:27):
who joined me twice on this episode, is a great, great man,
doing great things with a great team, and they're going to put on
an event this weekend that's going toknock your socks off. I have no
doubt. However, as I sayat the end of every episode, I
hope you have a fantastic weekend.I hope you have an even better week
right behind it, and I willbe back in two weeks time with the
(52:49):
latest and greatest in video games.Here on Chief Steaks and Controllers by
Hello, and welcome to episode numberone hundred and thirty seven of the Chief
Steaks and Controller's podcast presented by FoxPHL The Gambler one or two point five
FM fourteen eighty AM I Heart Radio, where wherever you get your podcast is
where you can listen to this hereshow as you are right now. My
name is Jason Finelli, and Iam the esports and gaming insider for Fox
(00:48):
PHL, The Gambler and Folks.It is one of my favorite weekends of
the year. It's EVA week.We are talking fighting games this week,
baby, and there are a lotof things to talk about as we get
into EVO Week eight. Tournaments plentyto discuss, and I have brought in
(01:11):
a fantastic interview to do just that. However, things are gonna be a
little bit different this time. We'regonna do something a little peak behind the
curtain when it comes to Chef Steaksand Controllers here. And what I mean
by that is so I have oneguest on the show today. We'll get
into who that is shortly. Ifyou saw the posts on social media,
you already know who it is,but we are I'm putting the interview in
(01:36):
two segments because we actually filmed.I'm sorry recorded, I don't film here.
We actually recorded two different times.We recorded the Friday before Project L
was announced to be playable at EVO, and then the Thursday after Project L
(01:57):
was able to was announced as beingplayable EVO. You're gonna hear the way
we talk about it, the wayit's teased in the first segment, along
with his great insight into EVO ingeneral, and then in part two we'll
talk about the afterpart of you know, the the the the reaction to and
(02:19):
stuff like that. So it's aninteresting little peek behind how podcasts sometimes work,
and I feel like it'll be areally cool way to let you see
how I do things here on theshow. So our first interview today on
Chief Stakes the Controllers is one I'mvery very excited about. If you have
listened to my show, you knowthat I am a champion of the fighting
(02:40):
game community. I have gone onrecord of saying that fighting games are the
future of competitive gaming in general.But you can listen to all the old
episodes to hear me talk about that. EVO twenty twenty three is a day
away, starts tomorrow. I amsuper excited to get into it and with
me to talk about twenty twenty threeis who better than the general manager of
(03:02):
EVO Rick Thyre, who started withCombo Breaker, still does Combo Breaker,
I think, and now is runningEVO and making it the biggest and best
EVO that has ever been Rick,How are you today, Jason? Would
that kind of upsell for just steppingby? I'm doing great. We're trying
to live up to that biggest andbest. Well. Your attendance figures,
(03:27):
your registration numbers certainly have already startedyou on that road. Seven thousand players
for street Fighter six alone. ThatI loved the numbers, where if the
only people who signed up for streetFighter only signed up for street Fighter,
it would still be the biggest tournamentof the whole thing. Now twenty twenty
(03:51):
two, your first year back.Good attendance, great show, especially on
the live stream side. Were peoplestreaming like I was? But I think
everyone's sort of expected this to belike an even bigger year in a sense
because it was your second year.You already got the first year underneath,
you worked out some cakes. Didyou expect it to be this big?
(04:12):
I don't think you can ever expectsomething to be record breaking, you can
expect something to be a big momentor a big beat, which the launcher
street Fighter six for me, wasalways going to be. We're talking about
the franchise that, in a lotof ways was the genesis point for what
modern fighting games are. That's astreet Fighter two without that arcade boom.
Maybe I'm not employed this way todaywith all those things happening, though,
(04:33):
You get to street Fighter six andyou have to assume that you're going to
get a boom, And then thegame came out and the game is good,
Yes, good with a capital G. Good. So seeing this response
is uplifting might be a great wordchoice for it. Definitely surprising in scale,
(04:53):
and I am really excited to seewhat happens at a tournament where when
you get out of pools, everyonethat gets out of pool that next phase
of the tournament is still larger thanthe first EVO Street Fighter tournament I competed
in. Oh my god, howdo you how do you wrangle that many
players like that? If you wereto put that bracket on paper, it
(05:15):
would probably stretch the entire Mandalay Baybecause it's double elimination too, so you
have all those players twice like,how do you how do you wrangle all
that. We've made a bunch ofjokes this year about the fact that it's
going to take a small army torun the tournament, and I don't disagree
at all. I think that's incrediblytrue. I'm deeply thankful for the bracket
(05:35):
staff and the tournament staff we have, for the enthusiastic response from the community
to sign up and help actually executethat bracket so that we have enough bracket
runners to move those pools. Butyou brought up combo breaker earlier at the
top of the show, which,as you know, my original tournament.
Baby, it's always fun to talkabout. But there are more PS fives
(05:57):
on the show floor for just StreetFighter six than the entire allotment of consoles
at the first two years of CB. If you can bind them together,
Wow, that's amazing. And thatand that sort of support from PlayStation I
think is a huge Uh. Thefact that you're able to not have a
cutoff, Right, how did PlayStationwhen you when you came to PlayStation with
(06:20):
these numbers or your your higher upswith these numbers and said, look um,
we we're doing pretty good, butit's going to be really good.
How do we mitigate this? Werethey receptive? Were they like, yeah,
we're ready? Like, how howdo you manage all those logistics?
Because that's a lot of consoles,As you just pointed out, it's it's
a lot of logistics. I thinkthe cool thing about being in an orchestructure
(06:41):
that Sony is on top of nowis they're going to get excited about people
using their hardware to play games.That's what they're here to support, and
so having the visual of that manyconsoles in a rome is a cool enticing
moment. When we were at EboJapan earlier this year, I got to
walk the show floor and then goup an escalator so that you could see
down onto the show for school withsome of the executives at Sony, and
(07:06):
here's this just huge room of PlayStationconsoles and Sony monitors and people enjoying themselves
competing. That's an impactful visual Ithink no matter where you are in any
corporate structure. Now, the backsideof that statement, though, is eyebrows
raise when you ask for support andcoming up with this much hardware. So
(07:27):
we're we are still using community vendorsat this show that our traditional hardware suppliers
for a bunch of the fighting gamecommunity executions around the country, around the
world. Now actually we have supportfrom Sony to come up with the sheer
volume of PlayStation five necessary to runand open bracket this scale. It makes
me think a lot about next yearwhen more of these games will be available
(07:48):
on PS five, because there's aTech and EIGHTE coming out, which I'm
praying is before Evote next year.There are more games in the future one
this year exactly. The needs forhardware support at this scale I think cannot
be devalued, and it's one ofthe absolute best parts of being in an
(08:13):
organizational structure. Now that has askedus to a legitimate platform partner who produces
hardware. Yeah, because it's notan immediate solve. Somebody still has to
go probably look through P and Lsheets and shipping logistics and figuring out who
has what, where, when,why, how. But there is a
path that can start with just oneemail to one person to go down that
(08:33):
chain. Whereas every other show I'veever run, it's how how many suppliers
do we have to combine? Oh? Well, they show up on time,
So when does when did or doesset up begin? Like when are
you again? This episode is goingout the day before the show opens,
(08:54):
but we are recording the week before. So where have you started now a
week before or you waiting till thebe like Monday? If next week,
when does that set up phase begin? So some of my team will start
arriving on Monday, the thirty first. We'll be in the venue on Tuesday
the first, chalking the floor,starting to get the rigging plans up into
(09:15):
the air, kind of doing thoseprocesses in terms of what I think a
lot of people would consider the setup. So trucks are in, vendors arean
boosts are getting set up, consolesare getting turned on. None of that
really gets going at great pace tillWednesday, which amazing to think. And
you're going to be up and runningon Friday, so you're forty eight hours
to get this whole thing set up. It's amazing. How y'all do it?
(09:37):
The incredible things we have an extraday this year. Last year we
did not have that ball even lesstime. That's good. Well, you
have what four thousand more people toworry about too, a lot more than
that. One of the one ofthe wildest things, and talking about the
numbers of EVO is people come andtalk about having almost ninety two unique players
and going, this is huge,this is the biggest, this is great,
(10:00):
and then no one discusses all thespectaculor tickets. Oh oh no,
oh, my's a massive, massiveshow. I hope you have a lot
of paths just lined up for peopleto just walk, because there's gonna be
a lot. That's like, I'veonly been to one EVO in my life.
(10:20):
It's twenty eighteen, five years ago, chomping at the bit to get
back hopefully next year. Um,and I just remember whenever something like a
big matchress go went on, orlike something really tense was going on at
the stations on Friday and Saturday,people would gather and then we have to
clear the path, but nobody wantto clear because they're watching. Now.
The big screens around the event centerkind of mitigate that for the people on
(10:43):
the stage. But if there's agreat match popping off, like in Row
four or Rowe D what do you? How do you? How do you?
I don't envy you, I guessThat's what I'm trying to say.
Get on your tip you get downon tippy toes. Um. We definitely
have a lot of walk paths thatare as wide as they can be in
the space that we have. We'vegot a lot of primary walks pass on
top of that to get from theleft side of the venue to the right
(11:07):
side of the venue. You getnorth south, so on and so forth,
which I think are very needed thisyear because aside from the sheer volume
of players, they're gonna be presentin that no lack of a better term
for this chaos pit for the earlytournaments. The show has a wealth of
activities beyond that too, because youhave a ten thousand square foot retro arcade
(11:28):
this year that has high score tournamentsin it. So if you really want
to post up on Donkey Kong fortwo days straight and not sleep well,
he probably have to get kicked outof venue at some point. But regardless,
you can go that route of theshow. There's the community tournaments and
the community stagings that you can goand engage with. Games that aren't even
part of that core lineup still representthe breadth of what fighting game culture and
(11:48):
the fighting game genre is. Thaton the opposite side of some of that,
you've got the artist alley is stillthere, vendor villages, are still
there. There's more exhibitors this yearthan there have been at EVA in the
past. And although I'm not goingto drop the names here, the advantage
of this show coming a couple ofdays after another big announcement next week,
(12:09):
there are going to be more developersand publishers with hands on first impression games
characters, DLC routes. You evengot SMK in their running tournaments for some
of their now legacy titles just attheir booth space. So there is no
lack of opportunity to be entertained atEVIL this year. That's awesome. Now
(12:33):
you did you were mentioning big announcements. You had some things earlier this week
that have really set a lot ofpeople on fire. What are some of
the things that you were dropping aweek before this show starts? As if
we needed more than you know,thousands of players and whatever else is getting
cooked up here adding game community.If we're not asking for more, what
(12:54):
are we doing? That's true?That is true, and I'm happy to
be part of that, to behonest. Same here. Actually we have
at EVO this year, and yousaw this with the announcement for MK one.
You saw this with the announcement forTech and eight, the ability to
get hands on with upcoming titles inthe fighting game genre that you have not
(13:16):
played before. Amazing. And Iknow you said that this is dropping the
day before the show's assuming Thursday hereyesterday. If you go back one week,
there is another huge announcement that justcame out about more hands on games
at EBO that I think are goingto incite absolute fervor about getting over into
(13:41):
that developer publisher Alley at the show. Oh man, oh man, this
guy, this guy with his teases. Go check those announcements out. That's
pretty exciting. I'm gonna have togrow him a little bit after the show's
over because he's being coin with me. Here. Another game I want to
(14:01):
talk about a little bit is onethat, honestly, for me, is
the most exciting part of this andthat is Ultimate Marvel three at number four.
Having over thirteen hundred players for agame that is twelve years old,
well that boggles my mind. Imean it doesn't. Marvel community has always
(14:24):
showed out, but to have eventhat many players. Some may argue that
Street Fighter six if you're a capcomfan, you might have tried both,
but I'd say they're two completely differentgames. That doesn't really translate. So
what do you attribute that successful numbertwo? If you had to choose something,
I think it's a combination of things. There's a lot of easy attributions.
(14:46):
But for me, it's that theplayer base around that subgenre of fighting
games has never lost its enthusiasm.Many of the best players from the heyday
of Ultimate marvels Capcom three are stillplaying and still playing regularly because the game
is at tournaments. But I knowthat a few years ago, when some
of the enthusiasm around the competition forthat game had started to wane a little
(15:11):
bit because the age was showing youhad high volume, not even high volume,
high viewership, influencers like Maximilian workwith Twitch to put together an Ultimate
Marvel Versus Capcom three tournament that couldbe made possible because groups of developers,
particularly with parsek, had come upwith ways to make sure that you could
(15:33):
play this game at home on yourPC with other people multiple states away,
and that had never been possible forthat game previously, the net code was
just a little too old. Thatopportunity was capitalized on by I think Kevin
Hoff first, but then tong OffTampa Never Sleeps, where he started hosting
(15:54):
a tournament series. Every week.They were putting together incredible, incredible matches
on a consistent basis, So youhave new viewership tuning in, You've got
players reinvigorated by having this tent polespot to go to. And Tong then
went around the country championing Marvel atevery tournament that he could get to,
(16:15):
and that led to what I thinkreally true resurgence for that game, that
got our attention, that allowed usto go to Marvel and Capcom and go,
hey, come on, yeah,come on, and I am imagining
that meeting. Y'all sit down,the stuffed shirts, sit down, You
(16:36):
sit down, everybody's looking at eachother, and you just break the ice
with a come on, guys,what are you doing here? I think
it was a perfect storm. Wewound up working with some folks over at
Marvel truly and Marvel Game specifically,who understood why we wanted to do this,
Who are fans of the game,because I think it's easy to be
a fan of that game, thatwere enthused about the fact that we could
(17:00):
presented in a way that hopefully itjust hadn't been presented in before, and
so when we announced that and theinitial response was strong, that bubbling up
into what is now the largest ultimateMarvel VERUS Capcom three tournament in the history
of the franchise is a beautiful,beautiful thing to kick off the fact that
Evo's going to be doing these throwbacktournaments moving forward. It's not just going
(17:23):
to be Marvel this one year.There is so much in this genre that
has surface back up in recent yearsbecause rollback net code is strong, because
PC ports are playable now, becauseof archival and emulation and all these things
that we don't normally talk about alot, but still kind of keep that
fandom rolling, and we're big partsof what made EVO into what EVO is.
(17:48):
So shining this new, bigger lightback on him and seeing, well,
you know what happens if we throwMarvel to ten people play, or
do oh thirteen hundred people play?Okay? Now, are you are you
worried that this particular classic game orretro game might be a misleading bar you
(18:11):
know what I mean? Like thisone is particularly popular just had that major
resurgence. I feel like the modeingcommunity, although they won't be moded here,
might have helped in there as wellwith those other characters and making things
a little weird. But I wonder, then, if you say, next
year you tried it with a classicKoft title or something from maybe like a
like a Mortal Kombat one and MortalKombat one or two or three or Ultimate,
(18:36):
if the same amount of enthusiasm mightoccur. Does that make sense?
It makes perfect sense. Do Ithink that all franchises will produce the response
that Marvel just did? No?No, I think there's an opportunity for
any number of franchises to produce thistype of enthusiastic historical look back. Sure.
(18:56):
Yes, I don't think you haveto run a tournament that gets thirteen
hundred players for it to have avaluable response, Like we go look Out
in Japan. This year you hadmatsudasan throw at DreamHack his annual Virtual Fighter
series, and it still produces greatgameplay for really excited players who are invested
(19:17):
in that moment in the genre's history. And I think if we can put
a light on those moments, youwind up with new people who not only
discover a little bit of the genre'shistory where we all came from collectively,
but also might get engaged with andtry it out. And I think a
lot of those games are still incrediblyfun to play. That's why you've got
(19:38):
a Third Strike community series in NorthAmerica right now. It's why you can
find Vampire Savior players, That's whyyou can find pockets of players in Latin
America, particularly where the older techins are played more than the newer techns.
And I think if we can findthe right timing for a lot of
those games from year to year,we have a great moment to tell our
(20:00):
story while also giving new players whoare unfamiliar with that history or those games
a chance to be part of it. Which is I don't know, some
weird VH one behind the music kindof approach to this, but I think
it works because the games are stillgood. That's true. As long as
(20:22):
the games are good, people aregonna want to play them. Especially,
like you said, with the rollbatNeck code bringing it to older titles in
established franchise is guilty Gear comes tominds what SNK is doing with all their
games as well. That makes alot of makes perfect sense to me.
Coming up after the break, weget to part two of my talk with
Rick Thyer, general manager of EVOmostly about Project Dell if I'm being honest,
(20:45):
but you'll enjoy it. Stick around. Welcome back to Chief Stakes to
Controller's episode number one hundred and thirtyseven. Moving on now to part two
of my discussion with Rick Thyre,also known as the Hado General Manager of
EVO. As I mentioned at thetop of the show, this was recorded
after the Project L announcement was made. A last segment was recorded before,
(21:07):
which is why we were being alittle teasy about it. But he was
gracious enough to come back and giveme some insight into that, and I
really appreciate him for it. Sohere is part two of that discussion.
Now. So, Rick, oneof the most exciting things about EVO this
year. There's a lot to beexcited about, don't get me wrong.
As we've talked about, it's goingto be a humongous show. But as
(21:30):
far as the convention part, withall the different poos where you can try
out different games, there's a bitof a coup, a bit of a
big coup for EVO this year,and that will be the first playable demo
of Project L, which I believeis still a working title. You can
correct me if I'm wrong, whichis Riot Games first foray into fighting games,
a two v two tag based fighter, pulling from their immense pantheon of
(21:55):
champions from the League of Legends universe. The next step in there branching out
for just their insular mobile game toArcane and the RPGs that have come out
on consoles and stuff like that.So talk to me about how those discussions
came about. Obviously the Cannons.There is a lot of connected tissue between
EVO and the Cannons, so Iimagine the foot in the door was not
(22:15):
that difficult. But from there,how did this all come about? So
you are correct, the foot inthe door had arguably nothing to do with
me. You have Tom and TonyCannon who helped found EVO, ran it
for twenty some years and moved onto work on Project L full time and
(22:36):
make sure that the future of fightinggames looks as bright and ambitious as they
wanted to. And coincidentally, areyou know, still on our board of
advisors. So being able to go, I'd like to take my game and
show it at the largest fighting gametournament convention in the world, which also
happens to be mine. I can'tsee where that was too hard a decision
(22:57):
process, and probably a pretty wonderfulfull circle moment for them both as event
organizers and owners and former owners andquick just people who have grown up in
fighting games since the dawn of fightinggames. So you get the foot in
the door dawn, and then itturns into a bunch of meetings about space
(23:18):
and logistics and power and how longdo we think this Q line can be?
Wait, how many people are coming? Yeah, that's a problem.
Especially so the interesting thing about ProjectDeality vote is I don't think there's been
anything about activating that hands on experiencethat has been unexpectedly difficult or weigh out
(23:44):
the bounds of what you would considernormal in two entities getting together and go
we want to showcase something. Ithink the truly wild part about Project del
at EVO is the fact it existsat Evo at all is way outside the
bounds of what I expect from Riothistorically. I expect for a game that
hasn't even had an official demo anywherethat I really know of, that's available
(24:10):
for the public to consume, andthat's going to exist at EVO in a
year where the event is so largethat you're not walking away with a playtest.
You're walking away with the population ofan entire city. Yeah, basically
tested out the game. That's awesomethat today. Did you anticipate when?
(24:32):
So? I guess obviously, I'mtrying to think of a timeline as to
when your attendance numbers started coming inand when they decided like a demo would
be happening. Was the demo beforeyour attendance figures, like early figure started
to roll in. When did thatdecision happen? Because I wonder if that
attendance figure made any difference, ifthat makes sense. So when we first
(24:56):
started talking about it, attendance wasalready up for the year. It just
wasn't okay, we're going to bebreaking all the records kind of up.
So we had committed to that.At which point we get into the standard
registration period where you get done withyour early reds, you promote that there's
a price increase. Everybody floods intoregister to save the couple of dollars here
(25:17):
and there, which makes total senseagainst the scale of a Vegas vacation.
Maybe not that impactful, but makestotal sense. You get an extra you
know, Johnny Rockettsburger meal but afterthat really came into play. We wound
up on site with the Riot teamtalking about, Okay, what what are
we going to do to make surethis works because this is no longer just
(25:41):
EVO at EVO scale and Project L. It's Project L for the first time
at the biggest EVO that's ever existed. Oh, you're going to announce really
close to the show. I guessthat might help a little bit because maybe
the whole city doesn't flood in,but I expect there to be a an
interesting Q line for this particular activity, Healthy, which will yeah, yeah,
(26:04):
it'll be healthy, which, although, to be honest, it might
be a squashed a little bit onthe fact that Project L is a two
B two game. So whereas youget in line to play Technade or m
K one or there's surprises at theshow that you'll discover later this week wink,
there is an opportunity for Project Lto potentially move through that Q line
(26:30):
even faster because instead of two people, that can be four or three or
whatever combination. That's true. Thatis true because the duo's mode, each
player gets a character you can switchback and forth, and I imagine the
demo will focus on that duo's mode, it will not It'll just be four
people to a console at a timeto keep that line moving. It almost
reminds me of I don't know ifyou were on the committee at all,
(26:52):
if you were helping with the voin twenty eighteen, the one year I
was there when they had Smash Brothersdemo available on the floor for four people
to a console, one big youknow, free for all match, and
then off you went. I wonder, and that line was very healthy the
entire time. So I'm wondering ifyou might run into a similar situation just
(27:14):
with you know, probably some morepeople. I don't remember the twenty eighteen
attendants records off the top of myhead, but there were a lot.
There were a lot of people.Yes, someone who also stood in that
line. Yeah, yeah, assomeone who also stood in that line,
yes, well the line when Igot there, if I recall, it
was the first thing I did.I made sure I just ran too it
(27:36):
on Saturday morning, I think,and I was still like twenty twenty five
people deep. It was brutal.I think the nice part is as much
as we're joking about the line beinglong and deservedly being long, sure that
Smash one moved pretty fast, andso I legitimately do expect the Projdel one
to move as quick or potentially evenquicker, because I don't anticipate there is
(27:57):
going to be as many champions ofa little as there were in Smash.
So even just getting stuck on characters, like trying to figure out who am
I going to play today? Smash, you're dealing with everybody's here. Yeah,
Project Bell, You've got three fourchampions. Yeah. Yeah, So
that that Smash demo was the sameexact one from E three twenty eighteen,
(28:18):
So you're right, it was likeeighteen characters in that demo versus four in
this one. Three they've revealed inthe fourth one they're going to reveal at
some point before things kick off.Are they talking to them now this week?
If you've talked to them yet theweek of the show, has their
excitement grown to see all these people? Are they now extra nervous? So
(28:38):
I imagine there's this double sided coinof yes, all these people are going
to play these our game. Crap, all these people are going to play
our game. But it's like aweird dichotomy. Is that is that what
you're feeling you're you're you're getting fromthem here. I mean, I think
the the enthusiasm and excitement versus thestress and nervousness applies that reaspect of the
(29:00):
show. Sure the Project L teamis feeling it, Yes, I do
have I talked to them to confirmthat. No, I hadn't, But
I know our tech staff feels thatway. I know the janitorial staff feels
that way. I know that thesecurity staff feels that way. So I
would expect the Product L team hasa similar feeling in that regard. Poor
one out for the janitorial team,they are they are better poor two or
(29:23):
three out right saints among men.Those guys, those those folks are h
That is not a job I envy, but it is one I definitely respect.
So one last thing before I getyou out of here. It's the
week of the show. You're flyingout. I assume we're recording on Monday,
the thirty first, So why thetime it goes out, you'll be
there Thursday. You're flying out tonighttomorrow, bright and early tomorrow morning,
(29:45):
right and early tomorrow morning. Igot a three year old at home,
so I didn't want to fly outpost bed time. I'd rather get up
a little too early, maybe getout the door before she's away. Otherwise,
have a breakfast and head off toVegas. You and I have very
similar thoughts when it comes to travelingalone. We don't go after they go
to bed, we go before theywake up, which I guess in retrospect
(30:07):
is the same thing. But yeah, whatever, the kid appreciates it.
So my question then, is,how are you feeling now? All this
preparation, all this work, allthese records, all these new cool demos
that you have announced. It's almostput up a shut up time. Are
you ready? I don't think you'reever ready to run a show like this,
(30:29):
but I think we have all thepieces in place for this to be
the evil event that we are aspiringfor it to be. It all is
all the things any event can haveat this scale to break those ambitions.
But I think we've got the rightstaff. I'm very confident we have the
right activities. We've obviously got agreat turnout. I know we're going to
wind up with great matches. We'vegot a good venue partner, we've got
(30:52):
a good just general preparations plan andbest practices that we've been running through for
the last few months. Is itall going to blow up eleventh hour because
that's what happens. Yes, butthat's why you've got the best people that
we can have involved in the showso that it will be the best show
it can be. So what Iguess my last question is for someone who's
(31:14):
getting ready to come out there,other than stay out of the one hundred
degree heat for as long as youcan, there are there any words of
wisdom from someone who's been doing thisfor a very long time, both as
a fan and running the thing thatyou can give to attendees both new and
old for EVO twenty twenty three specifically, so it's not specific, all of
(31:34):
one hundred degree heat does play intothis advice. This is the general advice
I give about every show because Ithink it makes a difference. Treat yourself
right so the show can do thebest it can to do right by you.
Love. That means get enough sleepto actually enjoy the show. If
you're somebody where that's seven minutes,great. If you're somebody where that's like
me, it needs to be sevenplus hours. Aimed for that drink water,
(31:57):
particularly because we're in vague it's goingto be one hundred degrees plus,
whether you're inside or out. Thatwill creep under your skin and get into
your bones. Yes, eat andif you can't eat, well, pack
some protein bars, bring some cranolabars, bring some jerky, because if
your body feels good, the eventwill go well. There's enough there to
do an experience that I can promise. The entertainment level is high. There's
(32:20):
enough to compete in that. Ifthat's your jam, you will have the
opportunity to do so. The showthat's been put together for Friday, for
the showcase, for the finals onSaturday and Sunday, all of that I
know will be what you need itto be. So just be in a
condition to appreciate it to the bestof your ability. I love that advice.
You're going out to EVO twenty twentythree this year and you see Rick
(32:42):
Thyer, general manager of EVO,walking around the floor, shake his hand,
elbow, whatever, he's comfortable with, his choice, not yours,
but make sure you thank this manbecause he and his team are doing their
best to make EVO what it is. And based on those attendance numbers,
this year is going to be ahell of a show and you know what.
I lied. One last little extraquestion for you, is one particular
tournament of the eight main ones thatyou're excited for because there one game where
(33:04):
you're like, man, I'm reallyjazzed to see this. So I know,
I'm supposed to say Street Fight orsix because it is the biggest tournament
YadA, YadA, YadA. Asthe guy who helped put together the Tech
and World two or years back,I'm supposed to say Tech and seven.
As the guy who still to thisday is playing m K eleven pretty regularly,
I'm supposed to say Mortal Kombat.The reality of it is, this
(33:24):
is the single largest ultimate Marble Versecapcom that has ever been hosted, and
we somehow managed to get Combo Fiendto climb out of the shadow realm?
Do you commentary for that bracket?That one, to me is special,
and whether the rest of the tournamentsare the best ever in any capacity that
(33:46):
you want it to be the bestthat one, specifically, that one means
something to me and a lot ofthe people that I used to travel to
tournaments with on a regular basis,So it's very cool to have that at
the show. I love that itrepresents evil being able to do throwback tournaments,
and I just think that one thatone as a legacy head of that
(34:08):
game is going to just feel good. And I'm hoping that with the turnout
that you've had and the crowd thatI expect for that Top six in particular,
because let's be honest, a lotof times people just don't only have
the time to tune in for theTop six is they can't be a degenerate
(34:28):
like me and have eight screens goingon a Friday afternoon. Let's hope that
certain eyes are opened and that wedon't have to talk about Marvel as a
legacy game for much longer. Butthat's just a pipe dream on my end.
I'm sure it's one on yours aswell. I'm not going to make
you comment on that. You're welcometo, but I'm not going to make
(34:49):
you Oh. I would love tobe the guy that could just sit here
and be like, yes, moreMarvel. I have no influence, i
have no power. I've got thesame hopeful dreams that a few too many
people have had for a few toomany years, and hopefully those years dwindled
down into something new and cool eventually, I would hope, so too,
Rick Thire, Ladies and gentlemen,the general manager of EVO, the hardest
(35:10):
working man this weekend. I don'tcare what you're doing. This guy's going
to be running around Las Vegas ina one hundred degree heat making sure people
can digitally punch the punch each otherin the face as safely and with as
much fun as possible. I lookforward to watching as much as I can.
I'm not kidding when I say eightscreens. I'll tweet it like I
do every single year, and I'lltag you in it specifically just so or
(35:31):
exit? Are we exiting now?What are we doing forget? Anyway?
Rick, thank you so much foryour time and your efforts in this.
I am looking forward to an incredible, incredible show. Thank you for your
great answers here, looking forward toseeing what everything EVO has to offer,
and maybe after the facts, sometimein August or September or something like that,
we can do this again, todo like a post show like what
(35:52):
went right? What went wrong?What you were most excited about? Rick?
Thanks Bell, thank you. Comingup after the break, I get
into my wishes for EVO twenty twentythree, including reveals I would like to
see tournaments I'm most looking forward to, and pipe dreams that probably won't come
true, but hey, let's hopestick around, all right, Yes,
(36:14):
folks, is che Steaks and Controllersone hundred thirty seven, which I have
not mentioned yet throughout this episode.This is the EVO episode, and as
many people know, the number thirtyseven is very relevant in the world of
EVO as EVO moment. Thirty sevenkind of put this event on the map
for a more across the greater gamingindustry as opposed to just the FGC there
(36:39):
in California. So it's for onethirty seven to be the EVO episode and
to have the great Rick Thryer.The Thier, the general manager of EVO
on the show, was a great, great, great, great get and
I really appreciate him coming. Andnow I am going to beg him for
things. I'm going to beg himfor things that I would like to happen
(37:04):
at EVO this year. I'm goingto queue up this music again because I
love it that much. It's justone of the best fighting game songs ever
made, and it's actually relevant tothe first thing I would like to request
in this segment, and that isanother crossover between Capcom and SNK. They
seem real chummy all of a sudden, they seem like they're they're good friends.
(37:27):
They're doing you know, roundtables togetherduring the pandemic and there, and
they're spending a lot of time together. They're talking very highly of each other
on you know, social media andstuff like that. So they wanted to
give us cap Com Versus SNK three, I would have no problems with that.
Cap Com Versus SNK two is avery special game to me for multiple
(37:49):
reasons. The fantastic fighting game.For one, it holds the distinction of
being the only game to date thatI have ever imported from Japan. Because
I owned the Dreamcast version of thegame, an American version for the Dreamcast
did not exist, so I hadin order to play it when I had
a Dreamcast and no other consoles,I had to import it, and a
(38:13):
local mom and pop shop here inmy neighborhood had not only the copy of
the import but also a little calledinnovation disc that I put in to basically
allow my console American console to playit to get past them the coding or
whatever it is that the region regionlock. Excuse me, uh So um,
(38:38):
cap con Versus SNK is big forme, and I would love to
see CAP con Versus SNK three,or if they want to call it something
else, just not Cap con VersusSNK Infinite Police. That name seems to
be a little you know, taintedat this point. But if they wanted
to give us another one, Iwould be all about it. I think
it's a it's ripe for the picking. If they wanted to you know,
(39:00):
expand on the ratio system or evenbring that back stick with one V one,
two V two or VV three,I think there's I think the online
would be awesome. Um I would. I wouldn't mind the approach where capcom
makes one and SNK makes one justbecause they're so different. But I do
think that that there is definitely apossibility there h The the really you know,
(39:27):
needy part of me would love thatto be in two D sprites.
That would be a really cool throwback. And I feel like a two D
sprite fighting game from a major companymight be a cool way to replicate the
sort of retro revival that happened inthe inde scenes starting with shovel Night and
going across multiple genres and multiple evenfighting games are INDI fighting games to do
it and stuff like that, butit would be you know, full three
(39:49):
day, big budget. Of course, I'm not going to shake a stick
at anything Capcom versus SNK related ifit were to come back, but it
is something I would like to see. Now. I know that SNK is
busy with other projects, which bringsme to number two of my request,
and that is Garrow gameplay. Sofor two years now they've teased us with
the return of Fatal Furity Slash Garrow. First it was the teaser with Rock
(40:13):
Howard, and then last year therewas a different teaser that was basically the
same sort of alleyway shot, justwith different people standing in the alleyway.
Let's see some gameplay this year.Let's see what you're going for. Let's
see what you want to do.I don't need a full system deep dive.
I don't think it's that close tolaunch that we would get something like
that, but I just want tosee it. If you want to give
me a couple of minutes of footagein a trailer with some you know,
(40:37):
big combos or special moves or whatever, I'm fine with that. I'm not
picky. Just let us see alittle bit of garrow. Pretty pretty pleased.
That would be super cool. Fromthe Capcom side, it's obvious,
it's what everybody wants, it's whatI want, it's it's it's something we're
going to request to we're blue inthe face, and that's a new Marvel
(40:58):
Versus Capcom game. However, Ido not think it's very likely for this
year. But I don't think it'svery likely for this year. But I
think this year could be a majorboon in the favor of that in the
favor of a new game coming,thanks to the number of people who have
(41:19):
signed up for that tournament. Itwill there's so many people sign up for
that tournament. It will start daythree. It'll be the first finals we
see on day three, placing fourthout of eight games in the overall rankings,
and that and Ultimate Marvel Versus Capcomthree, let me remind you,
is twelve years old. So thefact that a twelve year old game had
(41:40):
that much of an of a supportsystem, that so many that many people
came out for this tournament should opensome eyes at the in the c suites
that need their eyes open, right, And I would hope that that sort
of attendance might lead and I kindof said this with Rick at the end
(42:01):
of part two of our discussion,I would hope that the attendance of this
tournament would would would allow those talksto begin, which would mean we wouldn't
see another game for you know,four or five years, if work hadn't
even started yet. It is somethingI would like to see built from scratch.
I don't want them to fall intothe same trap they fell into last
(42:24):
time with Infinite where they just kindof poached and tried from Ultimate Marvel three
and tried to make the game ascheap as possible, as cheaply as possible.
I should say that did not workout well in their favor. Favor
they had a lot of egg ontheir face after that. But Capcom right
now seems to be firing on allcylinders. So if it's if the iron
was ever hot enough to strike,it would be now based on this attendance,
(42:49):
based on the you know, thethe hot streak the Capcom was on
with Art President Evil and Street Fighterand all the games that they're making.
Now is a great time for thatto happen. So if they wanted to
bring that to the forefront, Iwould appreciate that also too. With Capcom,
I would like to see character numbertwo and Oversheed just came out and
(43:10):
he's causing quite a star with himhaving to be edited basically the first day
he was out. But I dothink that getting a glimpse of the next
character, Aki would be kind ofcool. Whether it's a little teaser trailer
where it's some brief footage, Idon't know what they want to do,
but I would like to see Aki, and maybe some hints for year two.
(43:32):
I think it's a little early forthat yet, but some hints for
year two would be kind of coolas well. So that's Capcom. Let's
move on to ban Dynamico. Ithink now would be the time to really
go all in on Dragon Ball FighterZ two if that was going to happen.
(43:52):
The game has been out now forsix years. It is getting a
huge rollback neet code patch. Iunderstand that if they wanted to announce detail
on that as well for the thirdyear in a row, I think that
would be great also. I'd behappy with that, but I think a
new game with some updated although theproblem you run into there is what would
(44:12):
a new Dragon Ball Fighter Z addto what's already happening. The problem with
that game is it makes They wouldhave to overhaul the fighting system in that
game, because a critique of mineever since its first ego in twenty eighteen
is that it basically degenerates into whocould do the super the fastest, and
it's just the same multiple supers overand over and over again, big long,
(44:37):
drawn out level threes that we're seeingall the time. They need to
find a way to streamline that combatmake a little more interesting, whether that's
you know, slower meter or eventwo v two or one v one.
I don't know, to make thematches faster. I'm not sure, but
I feel like there's a lot morework to be done there. So I
(44:57):
don't think it's definite. The DragonBall Fighters E two will be announced this
year, but I would like tolease see some more news on the role
on the new rollbacknet code that wouldbe nice. And then Tech and eight.
Obviously Tech and eight has the possibilityfor a huge update. I would
love to see some new characters,maybe our first guest character, or even
since this is EVO and it's thecrowd that would appreciate it the most.
(45:19):
The first original brand new roster memberfor Tech and eight. There has not
been one yet. We have nowhad a beta test with sixteen characters,
and all of them were returning veterans. I do not think the entire roster
will be returning veterans. So ifthere was ever a moment to bring in
a brand new character with a newplay style, EVO and a fighting game
(45:43):
centric fan audience base would be theplace to do that. They are a
part of the Friday Showcase. Idon't know again if they're going to listen
heed my advice here. It wouldjust be really cool if they did.
I'm wondering if they would announce aguest character now, because I feel like
(46:05):
guest characters are going to be DLCand they don't even have a release date
yet, although a release date wouldalso make an excellent announcement for EVO twenty
twenty three. I do think thatgame comes out in twenty four, though
maybe in the beginning of the monthor at the beginning of the year.
Excuse me, but I do notthink it's going to make this year unfortunately.
(46:29):
I think it's going to be atwenty twenty four announcement, So we'll
see their panel is seven o'clock Eastern, four pm Pacific on Friday tomorrow.
You're if you're listening to this whenit actually launches, but that so we'll
see what's going on there. Butthere's a lot going on in this showcase.
So let's move on to what Iam hoping for from the actual events
(46:51):
or what I'm looking forward to themost from the actual events. Arc system
Works panel, probably season three ofGuilty Year Strive. Then it goes right
into Grand Blue Versus Rising, sowe'll see more on that, and then
a Guilty Year Strife panel. Soour system Works basically owns the first three
or four hours, three and ahalf hours of this EVO showcase on Friday.
(47:15):
A lot of stuff they're going tobe doing there. I'm sure there
was a surprise announcement scheduled for twelvethirty Pacific three thirty pm Eastern, but
I'm guessing that's going to be Projectdel They'll announce the fourth character in their
playable demo, and then demos willopen to the public. We already kind
of know who the fourth character isbecause one of the influencers that was invited
(47:37):
to Riot's studio to play the gamewas just shooting some camera and showing off,
you know, like people playing andstuff like that, and was pointed
towards the screen and the fourth characterwas standing there and it's kind of hard
to miss. So I'm not goingto say who it is in case you
haven't heard it yet and want tobe surprised. It is a champion you
(47:58):
would expect considering they have been featuredin other League of Legends offshoots, but
I will let you figure that outfor yourself. A lot of indie games.
In the second like segment of Friday, a Skullgirls panel, Rivals of
eight or two panel, and thena full fighting game showcase for about twenty
minutes before we move on to theUltimate Marvel versus Capcom three panel, which
(48:21):
is just going to be EVO memories. It's not going to be anything with
news, so don't get excited.Street Fighter six panel, which is where
if we see any hokey it'll bethere. Maybe costumes and collaborations as well
Tech and eight panel. As Imentioned after that, that'll be some new
characters, maybe a guest or twoor release date. Another interesting one,
(48:42):
Kyar. It's the last thing ofthe showcase stage before the Evo the first
Evo Twitch channel turns into the topsixes of each tournament, and that is
a tenth anniversary showcase for Killer Instant. Killer Instate on Xbox One is ten
years old this November, because theXbox One is ten years old this November.
(49:04):
And I really think that this gameset a trend that we were not
ready for it to set, Likeit basically introduced the idea of adding characters
piecemeal and you know, building afighting game that way as opposed to gaining
(49:30):
everything behind the sixty or seventy dollarsentry fee and then extra DLC after that.
Not every franchise took to it,obviously, but the model that was
there kind of set the standard forall of DLC going forward in fighting games.
And if they wanted to announce anone, that would be awesome.
Phil Spencer did show up at theFinal Fantasy fourteen fan fest in Vegas to
(49:53):
surprise everyone and say that Final Fantasyfourteen's come into Xbox. Maybe he stayed
for a week and is going toshow up at this showcase as well.
That would be bad S. DoI expect it? No? But it
would be bad s. So that'syour your Showcase, Pandel and then we
get into the tournaments throughout the weekend. Obviously, I am most excited for
(50:17):
I'm most excited for the Street Fightersix tournament. I'm most excited for Guilty
Gear Strives Tournament Tech and eight orTech and seven. Excuse me, it's
gonna be fun. It's gonna bea fun weekend of fighting games that I
am very much looking forward to.I'm wondering though, if I'll be able
to watch all of it, andI will get into the reasons for that
(50:39):
later. I have not talked aboutsomething that is going on in my days,
but I will leave that until nextepisode to talk about episode one thirty
eight. Wink wink, don't judge. Some people know, some people don't.
But so yeah, those are thethings I'm looking forward to most at
EVO, the fighting games, theshowcase. It's going to be a lot
(51:00):
of fun, and I encourage youto watch as much as you can for
the best competitive gaming has to offer. In my humble opinion, things kick
off tomorrow at I believe one pmEastern time is where all the things happen.
Yes, ten am Pacific time.There will be eight different streams going
(51:22):
on or seven different streams going on. Excuse me. At any given time,
Evo has seven different channels Evoe Evo, Evo two, three, four,
five, six, and seven.Each one will be playing different fighting
games. Each one will have whilethe main one will have the showcase and
it's it's it's amazing, it's it'sjust a weekend of fighting games that I
(51:44):
highly recommend everyone check out if youhave the time, and if not,
catch the videos on demand because itis absolutely worth it. And with that,
we are at the end of episodenumber one thirty seven or Chief Stakes
and Controllers percented by Fox PHL TheGambler one or two point five fourteen eighty
am iHeartRadio or wherever you get yourpodcasts. As I say at the end
(52:05):
of every episode, if you're hearingthese words, you have reached the end,
and I am eternally appreciative that youhave. I hope you were educated.
I hope you were entertained, andI hope that you were enlightened by
some of the things we talked abouttoday. And I hope you come out
of here with a new appreciation ofnot only fighting games in general, but
EVO itself. Because Rick Thyer,the Hatto, the general manager of EVO,
(52:27):
who joined me twice on this episode, is a great, great man,
doing great things with a great team, and they're going to put on
an event this weekend that's going toknock your socks off. I have no
doubt. However, as I sayat the end of every episode, I
hope you have a fantastic weekend.I hope you have an even better week
right behind it, and I willbe back in two weeks time with the
(52:49):
latest and greatest in video games.Here on Chief Steaks and Controllers by
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