This year marks the fifth year of my attending EVO, the largest fighting game tournament in the world! Held in Las Vegas, it’s the place to let loose, splurge, and have fun all while still playing the game we all love.
Event Thoughts
As an overall event, I honestly started feeling a bit jaded about EVO. Perhaps it’s…
- Lack of friendly setups the entire event up until ~8pm-ish Saturday night, when the venue would close just two hours later
- Paying $6 for a bottle of Starbucks, and similar Vegas strip prices
- Maybe I’ve just been to EVO and Vegas enough to where there’s nothing new anymore? Aside from the tournament itself — that honestly never gets old.
Fun fact though, approximately 10,000 competitors among all games and the venue didn’t smell at all!
Social
Despite going to EVO so many times, the people always make it worth. Throughout four days, I was able to:
- Enjoy a fantastic road trip / hotel room with friends from San Diego
- Meet a ton of friends from DK Discord and Twitter
- DK dittos, DK dittos, DK dittos
- Rejoice with dozens of old friends, some whom I hadn’t seen in over a year
- Eat out at a buffet with other friends from San Diego
- Hear a drunk friend complaining about their bad experience with hiring an actual stripper
- Stay up until 3am playing friendlies in the hotel room with a bunch of friends
- Visit a bunch of other hotel rooms to play them for the first time
Nothing too crazy I know, but it was still a great time for me!
Competition
- 193 / 3,534! Made it to round 3, then lost my first match. Played to my seed of 206, placing the same as multiple San Diego PR players.
- More phases than usual made my successes feel more meaningful, even if round 1 was a breeze
- Tackled round 1 going solo Daisy, bringing her out for the first time at a supermajor, and only dropping two stocks.
- Had multiple friends cheer me on mid-game, which I’m sooooo not used to, but it made me feel so loved ;-; thank you guys, you know who you are
- I’m so bad / inconsistent versus Snake lol
- Beat a challenging Link in bracket for the first time in Ultimate!
- I’m not afraid to use Daisy at a (super)major now. I’ve felt comfortable using her often at weeklies for a month or two now, but now that I feel good using her at majors too, I’m much more confident as a competitor now.
- Playing to my seed this entire year has a bunch of mixed feelings. It’s great – fantastic even! – to play so consistently when it matters the most. That said, post-tourney it feels like I’m competing just to run into the inevitable, not making any notable upsets. I’ve only made a huge upset at a major once in my life, and it was honestly the greatest feeling I’ve ever experienced. I’d love to go through it all again and push myself even more.
Book Sales
- Spotted two strangers with my notebook!
- One even came up to me and asked me to sign it ;-;
- Sold more Smash 4 books than usual at a major!
- Lots of unsolicited requests to check out my notebook when I had it out, with nothing but compliments for it!
- Overall a very successful book campaign : )
Great weekend overall! Not sure when my next travel adventures will be, but I sure can’t wait to compete at an international level again soon : )
Kevin Who 