Team Evil Geniuses is recognized as one of the most successful eSports teams in the world. While most attention in pro gaming these days is focused on League of Legends, Dota 2 and StarCraft II, the fighting game arena remains very strong. Justin Wong plays Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 for Team EG, which also has pros playing across all of the aforementioned games. Wong talks about the professional fighting game space in this exclusive interview.

How long have you been playing the fighting competitive games?

Wong: “For fighting games competitively, I’ve been playing for over ten years now.”

How have you seen the eSports industry evolve when it comes to fighting games?

Wong: “It’s actually been a very big revolution because back in the day it was very underground. The only people that would know about it were those who went onto the forums. But now it’s more commercialized and there are more sponsors. There are also more leagues picking up fighting games now. MLG picked up Mortal Kombat. Capcom is being more proactive with the community by having the Capcom Cup. And obviously Evolution is like the Super Bowl of fighting games.”

Now there was a time not long ago when Evolution seemed like it was on life support and all of a sudden it exploded this past year. What role do you feel livestreaming has played in resuscitating that brand?

Wong: “Livestreaming has definitely helped just every eSports scene in general, but especially the fighting game scene. Back in the day if you wanted to see the footage you had to buy the DVD or the VHS, but now streaming is so popular and everyone can do it because it’s so easy. Shout out to Twitch for doing that. Pretty much because of that now we have so many concurrent viewers watching the streams that it makes fans want to actually come in person. So every year EVO just gets more and more attendees.”

How do you utilize Twitch and streaming?

Wong: “I stream on my personal channel, EG_JWong. I stream training sessions of myself and other various players in Southern California. Sometimes I just play random games because you occasionally need R&R. But I like talking to the people, the fans, and I just try to teach people about fighting games.”

When it comes to fighting games, what does it take to go beyond being good to being pro?

Wong: “To be honest, my advice for people that want to become pro is ‘Don’t think about it.’ If you think about it, then you put yourself in more stress. Just play for fun, because when you play fighting games you play it because you love it and you have had a childhood experience growing up. Who hasn’t put a quarter in a Street Fighter machine at a laundromat when your parents were doing laundry. You know you do it because you enjoy playing the game. That’s how I became a part of Team Evil Genius. I put a lot of time and dedication into it because I love the game.”

What kind of dedication does it take to stay at a professional level? 

Wong: “There’s a lot of traveling because there are so many tournaments these days. I always tell people if you want to get better, travel to a tournament. You’ll come back ten times stronger because you play so much and you gather so much data from people. A person from New York might be playing differently than a person from California. There are different play styles, different everything. So just keep traveling -- even if funds are tight, If you have to travel, make sure you travel to EVO because that’s like the Mecca.”

Do you have a specialty when it comes to fighting games or are you good at multiple games?

Wong: “I’m good at multiple fighting games, but people mainly know me this year for Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 because I play with very unique characters. People really enjoy that because they don’t like seeing the staples.”

Who do you play with and give us a couple of tips if someone was going to play as those characters?

Wong: “My current team is Wolverine and Storm Accuma. For a couple of tips, Wolverine is a very strong character but the Storm Shoryuken is just character loyalty. If you want to play those characters you have to have very thick skin. Just because it’s one of those things where you have to make really good reads against your opponent. Hopefully you don’t get discouraged because fighting games are very discouraging if you don’t play what’s top.”

When it comes to fighting games, what are your thoughts about what Xbox One and PS4 out now will bring to fighting games?

Wong: “I’m hoping fighting games start migrating to the Xbox One and PS4. We have Killer Instinct for Xbox One and I really enjoy that game. I’m just hoping that Capcom will somehow make a port of Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 and Street Fighter 4 Ultra, and more games like that. I know more video game companies are probably looking into it, especially like Namco and Tecmo Games for Tekken. Hopefully, it will be soon and not two years from now.”

How does your skills in Marvel vs Capcom 3 translate when you’re playing other games like MK or Killer Instinct?

Wong: “They carry over just because Ultimate is very fast reaction pace, so because of that certain games are more slower to me. It makes me able to have a tighter defense and because of that it helps my overall gameplay. A lot of people like to stick with one game, but I enjoy fighting games as a whole. I like to play multiple games and support multiple communities at the same time.”

By now it is not a surprise to hear a gamer talk about disliking the Xbox One.  Even with the changes made to the console's DRM policies it still left a bad taste in the mouths of many gamers that will not just go away with a bit of backpedaling.  Perhaps no where has this dislike for the console been shown more clearly than it was at EVO this year, where Double Helix was booed on stage while talking about the new Killer Instinct when they mentioned Xbox One.

EVO (the Evolution Championship Series) is a huge event.  It is generally acknowledged as the largest (or at least most important) event for fighting game enthusiasts and competitors in the world, and is one of the few events a person can genuinely feel justified in calling themselves the best for having won.

When Double Helix and Mad Catz spoke, the crowd was generally positive, right up until they reminded the gamers who make up EVO's attendance that Killer Instinct is an Xbox One exclusive.  The reaction was immediate, with booing rising from the crowd sufficient to actually silence the speakers from Mad Catz and Double Helix into nervous laughter.

So what?  It's just one event, right?

EVO is a big deal.  Hundreds of people spend thousands of dollars just to attend, nevermind the actual professional gamers who go to compete.  Gamers train all year long for the opportunity to compete at EVO, while enthusiasts treat it with a similar reverence to how America views the NFL Superbowl.  It brings together the entire fighting game community, not a small number of people, for one massive celebration of who they are and what they love.

The people at EVO are gamers.  Not the gamer who calls themself a nerd for playing Call of Duty, not the gamer who got their start with Angry Birds, not the gamer who has not been paying attention to the upcoming next-gen console war.  These are the gamers who go out and spend $100-$400 on a single controller.  These are the gamers who regularly spend entire days traveling to compete, or even just to watch their closest local tournaments.

Look at that hype!

These gamers are the fans, the ones who get genuinely excited about new games and consoles.  These gamers are the ones who pre-order games solely for the random DLC costumes they can get with them, or who will pay upwards of $100 for them later.  They, we, matter.

No, having EVO hate your upcoming console will not instantly sink it.  It is, ultimately, just one subset of the overall gaming world and fanbase.  It is, however, a significant one both in terms of monetary potential and in terms of publicity.  It means a lot of lost money to have these gamers dislike a console enough to actively boo it in public.  These are very vocal people, as anyone who has watched an EVO stream can attest.

And as Double Helix and Mad Catz found out, much to their own embarrassment.

EVO 2013 is this weekend, and with day one coming to a close, it will be a surprise to see anything like what happened during a quarter-final round of Street Fighter IV. The match was between MCZ Tokido and FNEX EMP RG K-Brad fighting as Akuma and Cammy. Depending on a person's fighting style and school of thought, it is said that K-Brad's Cammy tends to be superior to Tokido's Akuma

Last round, last chance 

In the final and deciding round K-Brad demolished Tokido until his very last pixel of health. I wrote last pixel people! With that last pixel and a full combo bar, Tokido timed his super move perfectly, as people stood in awe whilst Akuma drops Cammy's health to under 1/8th. Again showing restraint and his true skill as a gamer, Tokido beats K-Brad with a simple combo putting a nail on his victory in the EVO 2013 Quarter-finals, thus proving that even when you are near defeat, the winds can change in your favor at the last-minute. 

The Evolution Championship Series is a big deal.  Among fighting game fans, it is the premiere tournament event of the year, with the best players in the world competing in various games.  Earlier this year it was announced there would be seven games, with an eighth decided by a charity donation contest.  The runner-up in that contest, Skullgirls, was then, in recognition and appreciation of thousands in charity donations, told they would have an unofficial tournament at EVO as well.  Then Injustice: Gods Among Us was released.

And the crowd goes wild!

The response from the fighting game community to Injustice has been phenomenal.  The day after the game's release, Wednesday Night Fights had a 92-person tournament.  Two more tournaments with over 90 players took place within a week.  The game is hot, and everyone's enjoying getting close to the fire.

Now, with their final lineup already established, EVO has announced they will be including Injustice: Gods Among Us as a ninth game in EVO 2013.  The games for EVO this year are going to be incredible, and as new as Injustice is, there is not yet a set hierarchy of skill. Any of two dozen people could walk home as EVO champion for the DC fighter.

In summary: Get Hype!

Sometimes contests have happy endings even for the side that loses.  EVO held a contest to decide what the eighth and final game of the Evolution Championship Series would be for 2013, and for the month of January two games both donated tens of thousands of dollars.  Super Smash Bros. Melee eventually won the donation race, but Skullgirls stayed neck and neck with them, even passing them several times until the finish.

While Smash Bros. may have won with its total donations adding up to $94,683, Skullgirls did still donate an impressive $78,760 for the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.  As a nod to the huge amount of money that the second-place finishing game did manage to raise, over double what the next-highest donating game managed, EVO has decided to go ahead and host a side tournament for Skullgirls anyway.

The side tourney will have a top prize of $1000 and EVO will be streaming the top eight matches live.  Congratulations to everyone who donated to second place, your generosity has been noted.

At the start of the year, EVO announced the first seven games of its competitive lineup for the Evolution Championship Series for this year's event.  More immediately relevantly, they announced a charity fundraiser for the final game, stating that the game that had the most money donated in its name would find itself as the final game chosen.  They announced that the winner would be decided at the end of the month of January.

Now that it's February, the official announcement has been made.  While for most of the month it was a close race between Skullgirls and Super Smash Bros. Melee, in the end Smash Bros. pulled well ahead with a dominant lead, becoming the eighth and final game of this year's EVO.

The final totals had the donations from the two games at $94,683 for Melee and $78,760 for Skullgirls, with the total donated across all of the games in the running reaching an astounding $225,744 for the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.  Look forward to the coming gaming this July!