EVO's Next Level: Building a Better Experience for Players & Fans with Rick Thiher

0:01Spawn on Me is the premier podcast spotlighting people of color. Every week we talk news, what we've been playing, and tell you who's invited to the cookout. Our show is all about talking about gaming through a prism of blackness because we are the culture. Welcome to Brocago, y 'all.

0:22What's good, everybody in Brocago? I am here with one of my favorite folks on the planet because it is almost Evo time. It is time to get your hands on the sticks and get that ass beat by your local friends and family from all across the world. We're here with Rick Thire, general manager of Evo. Sir, how are you doing? So thank you so much for being here and giving us some time on your calendar today. Happy to join you. I am living those 14-hour days at the moment, but I'm good. I can imagine what it's like to be basically a month out from the biggest show on the planet in the fighting game space.

0:59And I would say, you know, now one of the biggest conventions in general within the entertainment space. Besides the 14 hour days, are you holding up OK? Are you eating? Are you getting hydrated? Are you taking care of yourself? We got some water. I can promise that we're being hydrated. can't claim i'm eating the best bounce out of 14 hour days as you eat the fastest food available but we're getting by we're trying to have the best time we can with it i i dig it man look i just came from a convention and i was supposed to eat well there was supposed to be vegetables in there there was no vegetables in that whole entire trip i i can't remember one uh you know i'm pulling no celery on the side of the wings even i you know what that was i should have done that i should have done that it should have been a carrot or a piece of celery somewhere in the mix when we have evo food championship edition we'll talk about that because we need to bring that all that conversation into the space but you know i'm really excited for the show i'm gonna also be there again this year um again thank you to you and the team for for for hooking us up and getting us in uh you know giving us the space to be able to cover the show in the ways that we want to for Spawn on Me.

2:17But this is a really interesting year. You know, last year was huge again, and kudos and congratulations to you and the team on that. And it feels like every time we have a conversation where we get a chance to hang out, the show has just like reached another level of importance and spectacle and all of those things. You know, how are you looking at, you know, this year coming into this and some of the goals that you've set? You feel like, Are you meeting those goals and kind of crushing it and getting to the space that you want? I'm sure there's always room for growth. But how are you feeling about the transition from 2024 to 2025?

2:55I mean, there's always room for growth, yes. But I think the big part of coming off of last year of running the largest open bracket video game tournament that's ever existed, I think focusing exclusively on growth can maybe get away from focusing on the fact that when you hit that scale, when you hit that milestone, that's an excuse to focus on refinement, maybe first and foremost, and letting growth come naturally. And so we've took a lot of time this year to look at everything that was on the show floor, all the experiences around the show. It is easy to say, how do we make them bigger and better?

3:30The arcade is bigger and better. Like, yes, there's more cabinets in there. There's more types of cabinets in there. The experience that that delivers is more intentionally designed around what was a gigantic old arcade like in person. How did that situate on a show floor? What was that feeling like when you're in there pressing buttons? But it's also how do we take the things that were good ideas on the show floor last year and turn them into really intentionally produced experiences? So the museums on the show floor this year, better build outs, different content in them, different content sections in them, get to the end of it this time, actually be able to buy a poster of some of the art that you just saw in the museum as I definitely underestimated the sheer volume of emails that would come in from people who could not buy a poster at the end of that museum.

4:16So yes, this year you can exit through the gift shop. It's how do we look at the layout of the tournaments on the show floor to make sure the players can get from pools to pool as cleanly as they need to for the competitors that are coming in and competing in four games for the competitors. They're trying to bounce between the fact that there's not just the eight title arena lineup this year. There's a 16 title lineup because the extended lineup is part of the show. So there's more opportunities to compete. All of those things then living in service to that holistic experience around the festival where, yes, there's the publisher and the exhibitor booths.

4:51Yes, there's the large format curated artist alley. Yes, there's BYOC areas and even more tournaments than those. There's free play and casuals to make sure you can be warmed up for those competitions. There is the guy in the corner getting every player he can find to sign the arcade stick from 2004. Like all of those pieces in place have to have purposeful space on the show floor. And for us this year, we've taken a lot of time on making sure that all of those things purposefully have space on the show floor. That's rad because I think one of the things that I've always felt, and this has been, you know, a through line through every time that I've been has been, it has been very thoughtful where things are and the transition between having spaces where you can kind of you know you're basically an air traffic controller in a lot of different ways when you're when you're building out the stage and building out all of these these layers of the show it sounds like the feedback that you're consistently getting from fans and players is is really being listened to and being additive towards the experience what are some of the other things that you've heard from the community and players that have now kind of made their way into this next version of the show that we're going to see in a month so i think there's a lot to be honest there's some very expected ones like getting in and out of the arena experience last year was challenging because it wasn't a gated experience so there wasn't the actually passing by the security checking your badge going in and out the way that we were hoping people could so that's a ticketed experience this year.

6:32Low cost ticket to make sure that it can still get in and out, that it can still be something that is appreciable for a large portion of the community but can avoid the line that materialized in 2024. We had a ton of feedback last year about how the arcade was beloved, but they wanted the opportunity to pass through the arcade in a route to other locations on the show floor. They didn't necessarily want to go to the arcade as a destination. They wanted the arcade to be something that was constantly present in how they moved around Evo. And so the arcade this year has moved to the center of the show floor and has expanded the number of pathways in and out of it.

7:08So you can always walk by a machine and stop, play a game and then get up to go do something else or perhaps literally never leave the arcade as that was where I wish I spent some more time last year. The museum is now up front and center because it was something where that's a first impression activity or something that as you're leaving the show is something you wanted to get back to. Whereas last year, again, it was a destination location. We're trying to make sure that that type of feedback is very closely listened to where water stations are around the show floor this year has moved. So they're more accessible from where they were last year.

7:47Even where the tournament ops station was on the show floor has moved because a big piece of feedback there was I've entered the show floor, the first thing I want to do is stop by the command center to check in on my bracket or verify where I'm going to be as a competitor. That's more accessible for that same purpose. Biggest piece of feedback from last year that I think I'm really excited was corrected for this year is there's the partial airsoft wall between the tournament pit and the arena experience where last year there was a banner on there because budgets are a thing. This year, there is a gigantic LED wall stretching off across that area so that while you're competing, particularly on Saturday, you can still see what's going on in the arena experience.

8:31Or while you're in pools on Friday, you can see what's happening over on the Evo Showcase stage so that you know what's happening around the show in that capacity. If you're sitting and playing casuals on Sunday, you can actually watch that. Big option for Sundays. There is a seating area around that screen in the festival location, so you don't necessarily need to go borrow a chair from a casual setup if you just want to sit and watch some of the some of the finals let the casual players play the casuals please we have chairs for you those types of refinement pieces for the show i think are the most important things that we can do for the show in a lot of ways because although we can consistently expand to new activities and new treatments and bigger and better everything because end goal always bigger and better everything.

9:21Those small things impact the vibe at the show, impact the experience of the show very, very directly, and they stack up to make for good experiences. So we want to make sure we hit all those. Same reason the arena experience itself has pivoted heavily this year. The entire staging and seating environment in that room is different from 2024. Screen sizes in that room now literally cannot be larger. You cannot hang larger screens in this building than are hanging in that arena experience this year. They won't let us. So I think all of those refinements are going to lead to an Evo that is not just as enjoyable as it's been in prior years in all the ways that it was enjoyable, but is better in lots of little ways that matter that will help this be probably the best Evo experience somebody can have.

10:13so confirmed you can now see evo from space with the with the largest screen i mean the the building has a ceiling on it so the from space parts uh a little challenging but you can definitely watch finals at a great distance reasonable that was the answer i got from chat gpt so don't don't don't mind that that was that was that was something i read uh in in the prompt that i gave it but i love the fact that you all continuously talking about those quality of life things i think that's a huge part of the experience i think when you're putting on a big show like this usually the the outliers aren't necessarily always positive and when you do get some of those potentially not negative but like quibbles that people have it is great to be able to see that that is a part of the feedback loop that you all are getting in and working on um i love to hear about the the experiences parts of the show again like we're going to definitely talk about the arena and day three and all of those things.

11:11I definitely want to hear about that. But like those moment to moment things of like the arcade being bigger and having more cabinets and things like that. Artist Alley also kind of getting some love as well, which I've read and heard that that's also getting some touch on that as well. How has it been for folks who have, you know, come up to you and said, man, this was a really great experience. and I had a ton of fun. Here is the memory that I have from that year. Do you feel like that is also growing in terms of now you being, you know, one of the main faces of this really fantastic event? Are you finding that more people are coming up to you and you're catching a lot of those memories now as well from people to say like, man, that thing that happened on X day was the thing that made my show.

12:03The cool part about the show at this point is it is so large that that type of feedback is omnipresent. It's almost possible to truly take it all in. You're dealing with tens of thousands of people. Everyone has their own unique experience. Everyone has their unique feedback. One of the things that I love hearing about from the show is individual pieces of feedback that are about specific things that are different than whatever I've heard about for the last couple of days. So if I get a ton of really cool feedback about the tournament or the arcade from Monday to Wednesday, and then somebody pops up on Thursday to talk about the cosplay competition last year.

12:37And it was their first time cosplaying at a large format festival, and they took a whole bunch of photos, and it was incredibly cool to see the champion and watch that champion get awarded a trip to another Evo event somewhere else on the planet and going, that could be me someday, that's my new competition path, that's my personal goal. Those types of things stick with me a lot. Last year, one of my favorite stories in general actually came out of Majin Obama, and one of the streams that he hosted after the event because he has access to almost the entire show because he's on-air talent for the show, very important member of the community in general, has flown over, has access to arcades in Japan.

13:18And there was a conversation with him about how he just wanted to live in the arcade at the show because so many memories with games or other people or experience over the years could be found just in that footprint, that that footprint was worth attending the show for him. We had some people that came to the show last year that were extremely excited about the fact that they could meet other people at the show. And it's ad hoc at EVO. We're walking around, running into some people. And this year, there's even an official version of that. We've got Shinkiro and JB Style coming this year as featured artists.

13:53And that means there's huge sections of the museum showcasing some of the works out of their careers, which is incredible pieces. including two new pieces they made specifically for this show. But we also have an actual meet and greet area this year where you can go and meet them, maybe get some of those work signed where some of the developers and publishers are popping up in that meet and greet. Some of the personalities around the community are popping up in that meet and greet so that there can be a way to have that experience that you value from the show floor be scheduled so that you know for sure it can fit into your show floor experience.

14:31Um, and I think the ability to have both intentional versions of what's happening at the show and all the ad hoc versions of what happens at the show together means all those little stories that I hear about over the year will not only have more of, but in theory, more of those experiences will fit into every, everyone who's attending the show's individual experience. So there's just hopefully more opportunities for each of those story making moments to happen. that's great because i know for me it's always a little bit of a mad scramble for covering everything that i possibly can and getting a chance to see everything i love what you've done with the museum and seeing and hearing that that's going to get an expansion uh this year is is really cool to me because as a person who is old uh i like to be able to to be able to see things that i have not seen you know and and get a chance to you know to see all the stuff that mark man has had in this basement for for at least you know multiple years and be like oh you you brought that to the show that's rad that you were able to do that stuff he's dug out some stuff this year too i am sure i'm like i i can just imagine the like i want to get him and i want to get mike micah together and get them both mashed up and be like both of you talk about all the stuff you have in your in your homes that you have uh cordoned away for for us but i think that i think there's there's value in those conversations because yeah i think the coolest part about fighting games in general is how generational fighting games have become you're making a joke about well i'm old so i remember a lot of stuff and i want that nostalgia to be part of my experience and there's a bunch of people at the event this year where it might be their first time at the event and one of the coolest things i saw happen in the last couple of years at the show was where that cross-pollinated in all places for me in the Melty Blood tournament, where you had Mr.

16:26Knapps, who I know from Tekken, competing incredibly well, being up on that stage, playing with literal generations of Melty Blood players in Type Lumina as a new title, and that all converging into a row of people that I was sitting with from 15 different subcategories of fighting game fandom who were just all connected through those two players that were on stage and all the different places that those connections rooted. Part of, I think, what makes Evo Evo is that can happen everywhere on the show floor. Oh, like it is a I mean, we talk a little bit about the museum layer of that stuff and all of those pieces.

17:06But like even me as a person who has been a fan of the FGC and been a player for many, many years, not professionally, but like you know as a casual i still am walking through you know the times i get a chance to go and being like oh that's such and such i like i remember the match that you had against blah blah blah but that is also you know tells you not only about the longevity of the space but the fact that it is so welcoming to everyone who has had a foot in it to a certain extent like if you've made a made a name for yourself and you've had those moments where you have garnered some visibility it is a thing where people will like i remember that match that you had against one of my favorite players or you are my favorite player it's so cool to be able to see you but also like even generationally talking about you know you know we'll pivot away from arcade in a second but like there's a whole generation that has no idea what that means that's why the arcade is there right right i want them to have that experience i wanted to have that experience i grew up somewhere where the biggest arcade I had access to was just, here's a couple of cabs in the corner of a different business.

18:14Yes. Yeah. And so being able to walk through Evo show floor and that click clack of buttons that just, that cacophony of sound. Yeah. There are so many players that haven't experienced that before. Having access to that, I think is, aside from just being cool. Yeah. Historically important. Yeah. Like it is a one-to-one of how we got here. You know, like we are now in a space where you have to seek out that one V one, like person to person kind of interaction, unless you're going to an actual tournament and you don't have those in many spaces anymore. Even the, you know, the ways that we thought about that in the old pizzeria, or you had the old actual arcade that you were in, like those, a lot of those things don't exist in those same, in those same ways.

18:57um one of the things that i'm really excited about not only with all of those layers combined are this is one of the most stacked years for fighting games that we've seen in a very long time what is the curation process look like for y 'all at this point because there are so many games and then we have stuff that's on the horizon that's coming too that i'm sure fans have been really excited about the potential of those coming in too but like what's it like to curate and and figure out what's going to be the the kind of the games for the year hard which is which is part of why i think that extended lineup is so important when you look at how you can schedule a tournament day or how you can schedule one of the presentation days the max amount of games that you can fit in that day presentation wise is going to be four and once you add a lot of pageantry maybe only three It's why I'm super excited the top eights are back for the arena finals this year.

19:53And I also recognize that the day might be a little bit longer because of that. And being able to actually feature more games because of that extended lineup is how I think we approach the difficulty of which games can actually be in that core lineup can be the games that Evo's promoting leading into this show. So that's why I'm really excited about the international expansions, because the show titles in France or in Tokyo or in the Singapore event don't have to be the exact same lineup that is featured in Vegas. Because I don't think that challenge is going to get any easier in the years ahead.

20:30And I think if we are as lucky as we would hope to be, it becomes endlessly harder because you have that many more games where the player place is large and it's and it's fervent and it is interested in attending offline events and corralling together as a community to celebrate that game. I mean, Marvel vs. Capcom 2 is the throwback title this year, and we announced earlier today that it's the largest MVC 2 bracket that has ever existed. wild and just being able to drive that moment in and of itself i think is extremely valuable but when you look at all the games that you could maybe drive that moment for and all the games that we're currently playing and all the games that are coming up in the next couple of years and the bunch of rumored games that aren't even announced yet um and then you stop and go yeah four finals a day um okay yeah i i think we need to figure out a an actual festival format where that's not that's not a limitation like when you go to a music festival there's enough stages that yeah you can fit 60 bands into two to three days and is it the same as going and seeing that band in isolation at an arena or a stadium no absolutely not um you can't see all of it Evo's already at a scale where you cannot see all of it.

21:50But I think all of it being together is its own unique experience. And so I really want Evo to figure out how do we generate lineups that as an experience have a lot of value to fighting game fans on a community level, but also on a cultural level. Because I think that's the space that Evo can exist sensibly in, because that's not a space you're going to get at Capcom Cup. It's not a space that you're going to run into at Tekken World Tour Finals. It's not a space that some of the international tournaments in the world currently exist in. That's a space that Evo exists in. So how do we lean into that a bit further?

22:28Because that's where this all came from anyways. The arcade wasn't one cabinet in the corner. It was an arcade. And that was a collection. And that collection is where I think all this fandom rooted. So why don't we find a good way to not only pay homage to that, but to service what that was in a way that works for today? And it feels like the, you know, the community also, you know, we just talked about generational layers of all of it. But that also is, you know, cultural in, you know, location. That is, you know, you know, the folks who are, you know, I'm not going to say aging out, but like, because you can't really, you don't really age out until Corporal Tunnel tells you that you aged out.

23:12But it's like, how are you going to age out? We watched John Choi playing in tournaments last year. That's what I'm saying. I mean, it feels like it is one of the only spaces that I still see as you can be as competitive as long as you still have the eye-hand coordination to remember what your hands and mine need to do at the same time, right? Which is beautiful. There's very few places where you can do that from a competition standpoint. But it also feels like now with the expansion of the tournament to Japan, to France, to Singapore, that those cultural connectivities are also going to be very interesting for you all as planning it to say like, all right, so what does the experience feel like in Vegas as opposed to Singapore?

23:55What are we going to change that's going to go from those? And, you know, venue will dictate some of that stuff. But the ideas of how do we play into some of the cultural relevancies that are in those spaces, too, is going to be really cool for you all to be able to do that. Plus, you know, curation of game and how does that work? is that is that part as exciting as it sounds because it seems like for for me as a layman that's a lot of work but like for you as a person who's you know driving a lot of that stuff that feels like a really dope opportunity for for so many different interesting layers it it's definitely a lot of work i think it's an unbelievably dope opportunity and i think it's it's also this extremely valid opportunity in ways that i didn't expect before i was working here because one of the things that changed after I started working at Evo, I had access to Evo attendance data.

24:43So I got to look at the sheer volume of players just that I knew in Europe that don't make it to Vegas or the pockets of players that I know exist around Japan that never make it to Vegas for any number of reasons and vice versa. And so coming up with opportunities to bring the Evo experience somewhere new to make it more accessible to those players who do not have easy access to it because they can't drive over from Arizona. I think that's important on its own, but also giving the opportunity for that cultural exchange to happen in the opposite direction is really engaging to me. Going to Evo Japan the last few years and watching some of the players that had not been to Evo Japan before, watch some of the talent that hadn't been to Evo Japan before.

25:28You have Yipes making videos about being in Japan because that's a new experience for Yipes and then you think about how long Yipes has not just been culturally important to fighting games, how long I've been watching Yipes be culturally important to fighting games. Yes. And so getting to watch some of those first experiences is eye opening because that cultural exchange had worked the other direction for decades. And now is the opportunity to go that opposite direction. and what is appreciated in each of those areas, what's expected in each of those regions is different. And so watching that cohabitate around EVO and what EVO has been and what EVO can bring to those player bases is huge to me.

26:15That's why EVO France is so interesting to me right now. EVO France launched this year. It's barely had ticketing open now. There's 60 countries already registered for it. I know it's quickly on pace to be the largest fighting game event in the history of Europe, not just France. And that's happening because Evo's brand is accessible enough that it creates that rally point. The brand is big enough to almost inspire that rally point. But if that can grow interest regionally, nationally, I think that also builds up all the other events around it. It's one of the things we've seen in America. We have many, many scaled convention level events, convention level tournaments in america and that's a hard thing to generate on its own it's easier when there's something like evo in the market to generate that interest in their that awareness so having that opportunity elsewhere to do the same thing i think is super valuable so a little bit of a rambly answer there but in general i think this is all dope i want to keep doing it for a while um but it's dope in so many different ways yeah i mean i and i love to hear you talk about the you know the history there because you know like as a as i'm i'm i'm i know i'm some some years older than yipes but it's like i know from my visibility of him and giving him some flowers really quick he's been a not only a brand ambassador for the fgc for a very long time as a native new yorker who's no longer there but like every every time i see him on on stream it reminds me of home it's like oh that's what it feels like to be back in new york when with in the bx with my people who are in there but he's also now a cultural ambassador you know making these moves and doing these things in japan for for for things like evo and things like that but i think that also brings up a good question of what has it been like to work with the the countries themselves i'm sure that there's a lot of different uh things that you have to kind of pay attention to from a cultural perspective, from a, you know, of like, how do we make sure that folks feel comfortable perspective?

28:24You know, you talked about going to Japan and France and in Singapore. Are all of those countries now also getting to learn more about the sport through an event like EVO? And how has it been to kind of be the bridge for that, for them and those communities? I don't even know how to turn that into a soundbite answer. um say what you feel right yeah right uh i find it really interesting because there's so much that that you know and you don't know at the same time like i know a lot about hosting events yeah i don't know a lot about hosting events in japan right a lot of what you do to host an event in japan is a very similar to what you would do here but the processes around it the expectations around it are very, very different.

29:13The conversations that have to be had around it are different. And that's everything from layouts and show floors. That's where you purchase tickets and how you deal with ticketing. Evo Japan has a separated ticketing process where you purchase a ticket on Pia.gg, you register for the tournament on Start.gg. Vegas, that's just all on Start.gg. And a big reason for that is when you buy a ticket from Pia.gg, you can go to the local convenience store and you can just print your ticket out at the store. And that's, that's so common that that's expected. And so like international considerations don't really want to divorce ticketing from bracketology.

29:51Local conversation is I really want to be able to pick up my ticket at seven 11. And so finding all those little connection points and idiosyncrasies, super, super important, super interesting, um, sometimes challenging because there's going to be things that you do or you don't know that you think you know or you think you don't know. But that's what makes going to the different places engaging. That's part of that cultural exchange. And I think in exploring that through Evo, you also find places that that exchange lives really, really well. Evo is in Japan, for instance, a American style event in Japan and to the best of its ability to deliver that.

30:31In France, it'll still be a American style fighting game festival in france but now positioned and adjusted to best fit that market best fit nice as a city best fit some of the expectations of that fan base um and that can be as simple as language and that can be as expected as changes in games having cooperation cup at evo japan for instance makes an incredible amount of sense matsuda san is the head of the tournaments over over there. He's the head of both. Might as well run them both at the same time. And that's not the case in France, but also France has an incredible history with Dragon Bowl fighters.

31:15So that seems like a very natural place for that game to still be present in 2025. And I know that's not really directed to how you run the event or how you set up the event, But I think that really basic kind of adjustment in expectations exists at every single level of the event development and figuring out how best to balance all those is. It's the job in the literal sense. Yeah. But it's the it's the most interesting piece of going to the international events because that balance and that job is also the fun part because there is an endless amount to learn. and i don't know i think that's the cool part about it because it gives you a little bit of a different flavoring everywhere you go whether it's how the stream is presented or again how the activities at the show floor come together and all the parts that are then the same but ever so slightly different because it is somewhere else yeah just those very small adjustments become some of the coolest things to be part of and that's the reason why i love to hear you talk about the cultural exchange because I feel like this is an undercurrent and a pillar of the FGC, right?

32:24It is always about kind of the 1v1 version of it, but the cultural exchange part is the thing that has brought everyone really together over the years and has kind of kept everyone with friendships and partnerships and all those things that are connected. So it's dope to hear you think and talk about the kind of small intricacies intricacies that that wind up changing across those things and also you know i think a lot of people just feel like oh well you just go to a place and it works you know like you know like you have to explain things to people while you're actually asking them to host the thing in their home country and figure out what those things are um from those largest conversations i do want to talk about uh day three because you know the final day is always you know the the the penultimate part of the show right it is the day where people are you know you're in the arena you know you're hearing things from across the from across the space all over you're focused getting all those things together and it feels like in from conversations i've heard you you had in other spaces about how you're thinking about changing this experience for players and for the fans you talked about the ticketed part you talked about larger screens and being able to have more spaces for people to see things um what's the thing that you're most excited for when it comes to that layer of the stagecraft and the kind of bringing everyone together for that kind of final those final moments of the show i think the the the experiential component of that is in endless need of refinement no matter how well you do it it can always be better so i know this year in talking about how the stage is set up talking about where the screens are talking about camera placements and where camera placements can move looking at how are players introduced How do those introductions live alongside the custom music and the music videos that now live next, not next to, but literally on top of that custom soundtrack?

34:34How does that feed into the actual matches that are about to happen? How do those matches sequentially get from one match to another as quick as they can, knowing we still have to have presentation opportunities with some of our publishing partners where we still have to fit in some actual arena activities or advertising breaks so that we can pay for the show? And how do all those things stack together neatly? How do we get in and out of each of those things swiftly and efficiently? How do we help that show day be as long as it needs to be and feel as short as it can be? That puzzle is incredibly engaging to me to watch and talking to the team that gets to work on it on the day to day.