LAS VEGAS—The night before I left for Evolution 2013, I mentioned to a few friends that I wasn't going to be around for the weekend because I was heading to a big Street Fighter tournament. I'm used to having to explain that a bit: yes, people still play Street Fighter and other fighting games. Yes, people travel from all across the world to compete. And, yes, this is basically the Olympics for fighting games. Before I could launch into my spiel, one of my friends responded:
"Oh, you're going to Evo. Hey, how about that Infiltration, right? Could you believe he beat Daigo?"
He paused and looked a little sheepish. Almost apologetically, my friend looked at the other guy in the room—a 40-year-old man who came to the gym with his kids—and said, "Yeah, we're all nerding out over here."
The older man looked back. "Naw, I play Street Fighter X Tekken online with my son."
(...)
Fighting gamers, an untapped resource
Evo isn't just about fighting games anymore. Capy Games President Nathan Vella (Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery, Super Time Force) and Seth Killian collaborated in 2012 and 2013 to set up an official indie showcase where independent game developers can show off their works-in-progress to Evo attendees. Games in the showcase are selected with an eye towards deeply competitive gameplay, a satisfying feel, and (mostly) local multiplayer, all of which are game design virtues that the fighting game community has kept alive since the days of arcade Street Fighter II.
At this year's showcase, Aztez drew a lot of passer-by interest, in part due to the really bold black/white/red visual motif and in part due to the fact that the developers were demoing it with an Oculus Rift dev kit. Samurai Gunn got a lot of love because it was so easy to pick up and play, and the idea of a multiplayer dueling platformer was easy for people to immediately pick up on. And Spy Party returned from last year's showcase with a very large group of players—no doubt because creator Chris Hecker was excitedly explaining to anyone who would listen how to play the game.
Evo isn't just another trade show for these developers. They bring their games for publicity and free, high-quality playtesting. The average Evo attendee has an unrivaled ability to quickly learn a new game and suss out the easiest path to victory. I was chatting with Noah Sasso, creator of BaraBariBall, and he kept noting that many of the newcomer players we watched looked like they were due to put on a good show at Saturday's BaraBariBall tournament. TowerFall creator Matthew Thorson concurred: "Evo is different. People who played TowerFall at E3 weren't as good, and you kind of have to pretend to be bad when you're showing them how to play."
The showcase was accompanied by a panel talk, too. Vella joined Chris Hecker (Spy Party), Beau Blyth (Samurai Gunn), and TowerFall's Thorson for an entry-level discussion on breaking into indie game development. It's not a bad fit for a place like Evo. After all, the way a fighting game player methodically dissects a game is not so dissimilar from the theoretical work a game developer does to build a game and make it balanced and fun.
So how do you start? "Just start making stuff," said Blyth. "I thought of Samurai Gunn when I was at a party watching The Room one too many times." Which programming language should you learn first? "It doesn't really matter," Thorson said. "Use GameMaker."
Should I quit my job to go indie? "Make your mistakes on someone else's dime," Hecker said. The crowd nodded along, dutifully taking notes. Maybe I'll see some of them presenting at next year's showcase.
