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EVO video game tournament returns to Las Vegas after two-year absence

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EVO 2019
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The Evolution Championship Series (EVO), one of the world’s largest video game fighting tournaments, returns to Mandalay Bay August 5-7 for the first time since 2019.

EVO canceled in 2020 due to COVID-19, then ran exclusively online in 2021, to the disappointment of many fighting game fans.

“Even if we ignore that fighting games are historically rooted in side-by-side, one-on-one competition dating all the way back to the late ’80s and early ’90s … the nature of 1v1 competition is dramatized when you’re in person,” says EVO General Manager Rick Thiher. “All the ways that heighten that competition, all the ways that inspire camaraderie and rivalry, are much harder to see when you’re sitting at a computer.”

EVO returns with newfound support from Sony and RTS, the companies that bought it in 2021. That acquisition, Thiher says, has “absolutely impacted the show in almost entirely what I consider to be good ways.”

Thiher promises tournaments will be larger than ever before, and staging will be more impressive. Competitors will battle in such games as Street Fighter: V, Dragon Ball FighterZ, Tekken 7 and Mortal Kombat 11: Ultimate. Convention space will also be dedicated

to casual gaming, an arcade fighting stick museum, a vendor village and demo stations for sampling games like Street Fighter 6.

“EVO is a place to fall in love with fighting games, even if you are not already invested in this community or these games,” Thiher says. “There’s an opportunity for you to meet people that can be part of your life for the rest of your life.”

For more information, visit evo.gg.

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Tags: News, Video Games
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Amber Sampson

Amber Sampson is a Staff Writer for Las Vegas Weekly. She got her start in journalism as an intern at ...

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