Evo weekend is here: How to watch the fighting game event of the year - Ars Technica

After a two-year pandemic-induced break the Evolution Championship Series (better known as just Evo), the annual celebration of all things fighting games, is back in Las Vegas this weekend.

Thousands of fighting game players and fans will fill the halls and arena at the Mandalay Bay casino to make their attempts at a top 8 finish, get in casual games with people from around the globe, watch panels, browse Artist Alley, and just generally soak up a chance to be offline with the fighting game community again.

If you're not already a fighting game tournament watcher, here are the basics of how Evo works.

There are eight main games featured, which I'll list below, as well as a huge amount of less official side tournaments.

The previous champion has to start the same as anyone else, and there's no guarantee an unknown won't hand them their first loss, putting them in the loser's bracket and one game away from losing that top 8 repeat dream.

Mathematically this means that when you get to top 8, half will be in the loser's bracket, half in the winner's bracket, and the grand finals match will have a winner's side and a loser's side.

To win the entire tournament from the loser's side you need to beat the other player twice, once to send them to loser's (known as resetting the bracket).

If you see an L or a W next to someone's name on the stream overlay that's indicating if they're playing from the winner's or loser's bracket.

This year the main featured games at Evo are:.

Half the games will have top 8s from the main hall on Saturday.