Allow me to clarify something up front: this is NOT about whether Smash is a fighting game, because it is. The question of what Smash is, taxonomically, is a pointless one that people only really pose as a framework within which they can deride Smash players without sounding like they’re deriding Smash players. It’s nonsense, and you’ll find none of that here.

What this IS about, is community and fandom – two things central to Evo, and to all enthusiast conventions/events. Everyone knows what those things mean, but they’re complex issues to discuss, especially in the world of competitive gaming where so many people are working hard to earn fans, money, and validation for whatever game happens to light their fire. It’s emotional stuff, and rightfully so.

That said, Smash’s rapidly growing presence at Evo, while certainly an exciting bit of validation for people who’ve faithfully played it for over a decade, creates issues of logistics, game exposure, and audience fragmentation - and while not all of these problems are necessarily solvable, we have to call on the event's organizers, and one another to try and address them.

What About the Little Guys?

“ Two years ago, there wasn’t a single Smash player at Evo, and they now make up the majority of the attendee base.

The overall Capcom playerbase isn’t shrinking at the expense of Smash, either. Despite a small drop in Marvel players from around 1,000 in 2014 to 800 in 2015, Ultra Street Fighter 4 made up the difference with its growth from about 2,000 entrants to 2,200. The fighting game community, as it exists at Evo, hasn’t shrunk or migrated over to Smash. Smash has added to it, nearly doubling the number of bodies walking the halls, and thus doubling the gameplay hours that need to be accommodated on and off stream.

There are a lot of logistical reasons why this kind of sudden growth can be hard to deal with, but the most important one is the question of exposure. Games that might have gotten some main stage love simply couldn’t due to the popularity of not one, but two Smash games. Even Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3, which according to Evo co-founder Joey "Mr. Wizard" Cuellar has been the tournament's most spectated game four years running, isn't immune to the effects. Top 32 was played in a corner of the secondary room on a small projector screen with no game audio, no real seating, and squished up against, of all things, Capcom’s Street Fighter 5 booth where crowds were lined up to play the upcoming fighter. If that’s how Evo’s most popular spectator game was treated, I can only imagine what it was like if you wanted to watch quarter-finals of another, less established game like Persona 4 Arena Ultimax.

Speaking of less established games, what about Killer Instinct and Guilty Gear Xrd? The former had arguably the best top 8 of this year’s tournament, with Sleep vs MyGod featuring one of the greatest comebacks in Evo history. The latter was the long-awaited Evo return of one of the greatest fighting game franchises ever, punctuated by show-stopping (and at times heartbreaking) moments throughout.

If either of those had happened on Sunday at an hour when people were actually awake like Smash Melee was, this could have been either game’s much-deserved breakout year like King of Fighters XIII enjoyed in 2012 when MadKOF and Bala showed the world what that game could be. Fingers crossed that both KI and Guilty Gear come back next year on the strength of the show they put on, but given that there was no room for BlazBlue this year despite putting on one of the greatest grand finals sets in history at Evo 2014, I’m not overly hopeful.

Out With the Old

And what about next year, by which time Street Fighter 5 will be out? Speaking to Twitch’s Mike Ross on Capcom Pro Talk last week, Cuellar said:

“I don’t know if Evo has the capacity to hold a 2200 man tournament and then, on top of that, if Street Fighter V gets, like, 3000 people, I don’t think anyone in their right mind can expect Evo to pull that off. That’s just ridiculous. We’ll definitely think about it next year, but I think everyone likes to drop the old game and play the new, fresh hotness.”

“ There are incredible games whose communities deserve so much more time to shine than they’re getting.

Why is Smash afforded the extra time, resources, and exposure instead of BlazBlue, Guilty Gear, UNIEL, Skullgirls, Killer Instinct, or King of Fighters XIII? These are incredible games whose communities deserve so much more time to shine than they’re getting. The simple business answer is numbers, but for a grass roots, “by the people, for the people” community like the FGC, that just doesn’t play, and it especially doesn’t play where Smash is concerned because of the perception that its players aren’t “one of us.”

Audience Overlap Issues

And where does that perception come from? The easiest answer is to just sit in the audience from beginning to end during grand finals on Sunday. Smash players fill the front rows early, a few games away from Smash to make sure they get seats (as one does at any con really), and then the moment Smash Melee is over, they all get up and leave. The point isn’t that they’re taking up space, or that they should stay and watch out of respect or anything, it just illustrates a simple fact: the Smash community by and large doesn’t care about anything else going on at Evo. “Traditional” FGC people don’t see them as having common interests, because they mostly don’t.

This isn’t about snobby nerd exclusion, these are actually entirely different audiences. Imagine if the World Cup finals was the halftime show at the Super

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The exposure issue can theoretically be fixed by securing a bigger, better venue and additional staffing – no small ask mind you – but technically doable. Perhaps adding a day to the event is another answer to explore.

Getting “traditional” FGC members to stop seeing Smash players as interlopers is a far greater challenge though. It’s understandably hard to ignore how fundamentally different Smash and its community is from the games and fandoms they share space with at Evo, and to people who have been slavishly supporting scenes of their own from the shadows for years, having the spotlight snatched away by something so different is a wound that’s tough to close.That doesn’t mean Smash doesn’t belong at Evo, but I fear that unless changes are made, both at the event and within ourselves, this sense of “us vs them” will be unfortunately pervasive.

Vincent Ingenito is IGN's foremost fighting game nerd. F ollow him on Twitter and tell him what you want him to test out next time he plays Street Fighter 5.