Unlike developer-run leagues and circuits that focus on a single game, fighting game tournaments are not reliant on the success of any one title, instead thriving off of the popularity of the genre as a whole. While this can make it difficult for brands and esports organizations to track ideal investments in popular games and pro players, it adds a unique level of stability to the tournaments themselves. Players migrate from new title to new title, with each new game competing for a limited number of slots at major tournaments. While most other esports have moved to a “games as service” model-releasing constant updates and balance patches for a single game-the fighting game community still relies heavily on excitement generated by new releases to fuel popularity. Street Fighter V had 5065 entrants at its first Evo in 2016, but fell by nearly 50% the following year. The question for DBFZ‘s competitive scene will be whether or not the game can sustain this level of popularity. A version for the Nintendo Switch will be released in September, which likely add a wave of new players to the game’s fanbase. Meanwhile, publisher Bandai Namco recently launched the game’s official tournament circuit, the Dragon Ball FighterZ World Tour. Many top fighting game pros known for other titles like Echo Fox’s Dominique “SonicFox” McLean and Christopher “NYChrisG” Gonzalez of Evil Geniuses have shifted their focus to DBFZ almost exclusively. Because the headlining game of Evo is decided by number of entrants, this will be the first time since 2009 that a non- Street Fighter title has headlined Evo’s Championship Sunday.ĭragon Ball FighterZ in particular has had a major impact on the fighting game community since its record-breaking release in January of this year. For Evo 2018, BBTag has 1178 entrants and DBFZ has 2575, passing up Street Fighter V’s 2484. Capcom 3 and BlazBlue: Central Fiction, which brought in 648 and 499 entrants in 2017 respectively. These two games replaced Ultimate Marvel vs. This is due to the success of the two new games Evo added this year: Dragon Ball FighterZ (DBFZ) and BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle (BBTag). Still, despite the reduced entrants in specific games, Evo’s total entrants have grown significantly year-over-year, which indicates that the event as a whole is growing. Injustice 2 has not released any new characters this year, an important part of the sustainability of modern fighting games. for Wii U has decreased as fans eagerly await the release of its sequel later this year. The Summer months are filled with fighting game tournaments throughout the world, forcing players with limited travel budgets to pick and choose the events they can attend. There are a number of likely factors for the decrease in entrants for established titles. Melee and Wii U, Guilty Gear Xrd: Revelator 2, and Injustice 2 lost a combined 1101 entrants. Notably, every returning game from last year-with the exception of TEKKEN 7 which increased by 260-has seen fewer entrants in 2018. 6797 individual players competed in Evo 2017, with the number growing to 7437 for Evo 2018. Like most fighting game tournaments, Evo allows players to compete across multiple titles, meaning that the number of entrants does not reflect the number of individual players attending the event. Since then, Evo has maintained at least 10K entrants each year. While Evo 2014 had only 5707 entrants, the massive growth of the Smash community and influx of MKX players brought Evo 2015’s total registration to 10299. Evo experienced explosive growth in 2015 due in part to the release of Super Smash Bros. Recent years have seen the premier tournament’s numbers solidify in the five digits, but that hasn’t always been the case. This is a 15.4% increase over last year’s total for the top eight games of 9707.Ģ) Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition – 2484 Wizard” Cuellar released the player entrant numbers for Evo 2018, the largest fighting game tournament of the year, with 11472 entrants across eight games. Today, CEO of the Evolution Championship Series (Evo) Joey “Mr. Update: Registration for Evo 2018 has been reopened, and TEO will update the numbers accordingly upon release. This story has been updated to reflect the changes. Update 2: Registration has closed, and the final numbers have been released.
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