Fighting games are one of those genres where the competitive scene—the brutal arena where the best in the game do battle—is tied to the general gaming experience. This means that Riot Games’ upcoming fighting game 2XKO, which is set to have its first public alpha test this August, will inevitably host tournaments around the world. How Riot Games intends to enter the competitive fighting game space is a question that frankly has broad implications for the player base.
This is also a curious and interesting topic. Riot Games has previously taken a very hands-on approach to managing the competitive space for games like League of Legends and Valorant, and the fighting game sector has proven itself capable of building communities, whether developers support it or not. It stands to reason that the communities themselves know best, and that the best people to grow grassroots competitive scenes are tournament organizers who have been doing it for decades, not those with corporate backgrounds.
Even so, Riot Games has shown enthusiasm to get on board. Not only has the team behind 2XKO held private meetings with players and tournament organizers, but it has also hired former pros and TOs to join the development team. The game was initially launched at Evo, not at a Riot event. For now at least, there seems to be a real desire to work with the existing fighting game infrastructure, and the team is widely on board with that.
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Obviously it’s still early days. The game hasn’t even been released yet. But despite that, I wanted to sit down and learn more about Riot’s goals and plans for the 2XKO competitive scene. As such, I was able to sit down with Michael Sherman for a 15-minute interview outside the Evo 2024 show floor, one of the first interviews on the subject (besides the fantastic My Perfect Console podcast, which managed to lock him down first). As Riot’s Director of Esports for TFT and 2XKO, and someone with firsthand experience in the grassroots Smash scene, few people can offer such deep insight into what we can expect in the near future.
iGamesNews: So, you’re at Evo! From your position, what do you think of the event, its format and structure?
Sherman: “Evo is awesome to be here and check out. This is my third time seeing Evo in person and my sixth time following over the years. I think, especially over the last three years, it’s been really cool to see how Evo has exploded. The stuff they showed here this weekend – I’ve only been here for 30 minutes – but you can already see the improvements that are coming. Having the arenas set up in the convention hall is a cool experience to continue to build. The intersection of competition and community, the conference. It’s a perfect combination, and you can walk through Artist Alley and then over to the 2XKO booth and then over to the pool, which is a cool experience. As someone who’s been at Riot for 10 years, it looks completely different than what we’re used to and what we produce, but that’s what makes it so exciting to see.”
iGamesNews: This deflects a little from my main question because it’s so different. Obviously, Riot wants to create 2XKO, and that’s inevitably going to be competitive. You said on a recent My Perfect Console podcast that Riot’s stance is to add content, not to come in and change the status quo. Can you explain what that means?
Sherman: “I’ve been in this position for two and a half years now, and 2XKO has always been my title. I must admit that I’ve spent most of my time attending events and observing things, rather than formulating ‘this is the master plan.’ Because the real answer is that we need to get the game out there and see how the community plays it, what they build around it. We have some theories and things that excite us, but to add value, we need to get it into the hands of players and see where they take it.”
“There’s a solid foundation in the fighting game space right now, which means, okay, we anticipate that big tournaments are going to want to run 2XKO. So how do we make sure we’re ready to support that, and how do we build on top of that with additional features. It also means that we don’t think the right way to go into this space is to do anything that we’ve done for other games, where we say ‘this is an event we’re running, for ourselves, no other games’. This is where we realise there’s a lot more collaboration and collaboration with the rest of the community. We think collaboration with the rest of the community is critical to success. [the community] Has additional effect.
iGamesNewsQ: I wanted to ask, Riot Games has not held open tournaments like Evo before, but has adopted open tournaments to keep the number of participants relatively limited. Do you think there will be any challenges in entering this different style of competitive space?
Sherman: “What’s unique about fighting games is that there are so many components that make it easier to run than a lot of our other games. The fact that you could have a thousand consoles here and run a thousand games at the same time, each ten minutes long, means you can loop a lot of content. To do that for League of Legends or Valorant, for example, would take up 10 times as much space. A lot of our history actually comes from not having a strong infrastructure to support the types of games that we made before. So we had to build our own events to create the experiences that players want.”
iGamesNews: In the past, Riot Games has always been very focused on competitive play, giving up all the big tournaments. Now, the situation is different with TFT, which started from the grassroots and now has big tournaments around it. Do you think Riot will take a similar strategy to League of Legends, where all the big tournaments are controlled by Riot, or will it take a more relaxed strategy?
Sherman: “If you look at any of them, I don’t think their model best describes how we support the fighting game space. They all have a unique model that meets the needs of the game and the ecosystem. I think Evo is an example of that, it will be Evo’s show, and I think Riot will support Evo. We have a long-standing relationship with Cannons and Rick (Evo’s general manager), RTS and Sony (both are corporate owners of Evo). We want to be a really good partner there.”
“I think we’re going to get into this space – just like TFT, we do work with grassroots organisations, but there aren’t many grassroots organisations. [events]The span of fighting games requires you to take a slightly different approach. We really want to make sure that the ecosystem here can function and grow our game in the way that the community feels is best suited. We want to be a partner in building that, and I think that might be a slightly different approach than other publishers, but that’s the way we want to approach this space.”
iGamesNews: You mentioned earlier that a lot of your work so far has been about attending events. What have been your main findings?
Sherman: “I think my favorite is Smash Bros. I’ve been playing fighting games for a long time. Especially Smash Bros. I’m very involved in the grassroots Smash scene. I knew there were some similarities when I first joined. Why are you here? You might come here to go 0-2 and spend the weekend with your friends. It’s completely different from ‘I’m here because my favorite team or player is here.’ It’s more about how a community comes together to celebrate with their friends and like-minded people, which is more than I’ve seen from other esports. The way players have fans in this space is very unique and interesting.”
iGamesNews: In that regard, you’ve seen other esports historically have had funding issues, while fighting games have slowly but steadily grown due to factors like the rise of the scene culture. Compared to franchise esports, can you say for sure that this is an approach you appreciate, especially in these trying times? Building an esports scene right now must be a bit of a nightmare.
Sherman: “I can’t speak for the entire industry; but I can speak for Riot. Our position as an esports is that we do invest a lot of money in game development, and we believe that’s part of the overall experience. In order to build League of Legends or Valorant or TFT the way we envision, we need to invest. Just like you want to invest in server costs, which may be more expensive, but allows us to give players the experience we believe in. So going back to all of this, when we think about entering a new esports or a new game, it comes back to what is the experience we’re trying to build, what does it look like as a whole, and whether this is the right way for us to enter this space.”
“So it’s not daunting. I would say it’s not daunting because at the core, we’re still figuring out how to create the best experience for our players around the world and how to enter this genre in our own unique way. […] Despite the challenges facing the industry, we are pleased to be able to provide support.”
iGamesNews: Do you think it’s fair to say that it’s cheaper to invest in the fighting game space? Like you said, these events already exist and the community can already host tournaments on their own.
Sherman: “I think it means you have to think about your investment differently. I don’t know if it means the cost is going to be significantly lower. It means if I don’t have to build the event from scratch, what does the support actually look like? How do you add additional features, how do you produce content? How do you leverage Riot’s capabilities? We have broadcast studios and production facilities all over the world. Can we localize the event into more languages? Can we help produce more content? Even if the event as a foundation is already established, we can focus resources on other areas.”
iGamesNews: You talked a lot about additional features, are you referring to support? Helping promote upcoming events on Riot channels, creating content around tournaments, things like that?
Sherman: “These are just a list of possibilities, none of which are what we’re actually going to do. I would say that we want the experience to reflect what’s going on in the community.”
iGamesNews: In the past, not only Riot competitive players, but also players from other games were restricted by contracts to play the game of their choice. I know Doublelift said on a live stream a few years ago that he wanted to compete in Evo, but was unable to do so due to these restrictions. Fighting games have this culture of open competition, with many players signing up for multiple tournaments at the same time. Will this happen?
Sherman: “I would say this, if we don’t run tournaments or operate a franchise system, we don’t have the power to decide whether players play both games. We think that’s the beauty of fighting games. One of the reasons you’re here might be to sign up for three or four tournaments, and we don’t want to take that away from that. It’s part of the add-on. When we look at our other games, being a professional League of Legends player is a full-time job! But the cool thing about fighting games is that they extend beyond pro. An example of this is Leffen, who played in the TFT Vegas Open last year. In a world where we say you can’t play other games, we’d be missing out.”
2XKO will be playable by players who are in alpha lab testing starting August 8th. For everyone else, the game will be fully released sometime in 2025. Hang in there!
