The fact that the Evolution Championship Series, or Evo, is the largest fighting game tournament in the world means that it does have a reputation to uphold when it comes to running a tournament and creating a fun, easy to watch spectacle. Evo 2016 had a few hiccups leading up to finals Sunday, which was ran immaculately.
When running a tournament with multiple games it is hard to balance them by giving them the attention they deserve and the time slots and space that they have spectators for, as well. You want to make sure that everyone is content in experiencing what they came to watch and play. One of the issues that occured with this, was the way that the Super Smash Bros. 4 tournament was ran.
According The Score's Annabelle Fischer, the tournament director, Tony “Ponder” Cannon, the SSB4 numbers grew by over 1,000 since 2015 and they did not expect the amount of participants or spectators they had for this game. During the finals for SSB4, people covered the ground of the convention center so they could watch their favorite players and friends. Ponder said that they will get more tournament halls, so there is more space to watch your favorite games, for next year. This year’s numbers definitely caught them by surprise.
Ponder, also acknowledged that they put the majority of their effort into finals Sunday, to make sure that was done well which created a lack of attentive detail for the other events that were going on that weekend. He says that they will definitely improve all events for next year and plan for even bigger numbers, so that everyone can more comfortably and easily enjoy their experience.
One of the other issues that will be fixed for next year’s Evo, is pool times. There were quite a few incidents in which players would have a late pool one day and then the next they would have an early morning pool which generated a lack of sleep. It is stressful to play in an event as big as Evo, anyway, but especially without enough sleep. Ponder and the other Evo organizers realize this and will make sure that there are at least 12 hours between when they finish pools and start them the next day.
The Evo organizers realize that they have a standard to live up to when putting on a function such as this, and that they underestimated the numbers and so they weren’t as organized as they could have been this year. They do have plans to make everything run smoother next year and to give spectators and players alike the experience they expect from such a notorious event.
