Genesis 8: Viewership Statistics and Event Results

The American fighting game community is famous for its long and glorious history, and grassroots tournaments have played a big role in its development. An example of an event with such a cult following is the Genesis series, the eighth tournament of which ended in mid-April. Esports Charts describes the series, the results of the last competition, and the community broadcasts that competed with the official streams.

About the Genesis Series

The Genesis Convention is known as the most popular grassroots tournament in the Super Smash Bros. series. The first event of the series was organized by a group of friends of interest: Bobak Vakili and members of the DBR gaming team, who played Super Smash Bros. together since early 2000s. Now, in terms of significance and prestige, the Genesis series tournaments can compete with largest competitions such as EVO and The Big House series.

Photo from duo-tuornament during Genesis 1: Hbox and Hax on the left6, Armada on the right

Genesis originates from a small barn in Antioch, where the first convention took place in 2009. As Genesis Gaming co-owner Sheridan Zalewski recalls, “It was the only place in the area where we could accommodate the 600 people who came to the first convention.” Since then, their business has grown significantly, and this year the number of people who expressed a desire to take part in the convention was about 4.6K: that is how many people registered on the official website of the event.

Initially, the competition was held only for two titles – Melee and Brawl, but later it expanded far beyond SSB. This year the event consisted of tournaments in eleven different fighting games. Although the convention is announced as an annual event, only eight such events have been held since 2009. Coronavirus not only caused the cancellation of the tournament in 2021 but also almost disrupted the holding of the event this year. Due to another outbreak, the organizers were forced to reschedule the tournament from January to April.

Results of Genesis 8

The highlight of the convention was the Super Smash Bros. Melee tournament. The tournament in this discipline has become the largest LAN competition since 2017, with more than 1.5K participants having registered for it. Four of the most successful players were invited to Smash Summit 13, and Zain won, becoming a two-time Genesis Champion. In the final, he easily defeated Jmook (the dark horse of the tournament) with a score of 3:0. In the pair discipline, the victory went to the American-Japanese duo: Plup and aMSa.

Competitions in the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate discipline were dominated by players from Mexico. One of the best players on the planet, MkLeo, regained his crown after losing in 2020 and also became a two-time series champion. In the pair discipline, Chag and Sparg0 became champions.

Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl, released in October last year, was the new title presented at the tournament – with bodedee becoming the winner in this category. Another novelty of the convention was the anime-styled fighting game Guilty Gear Strive, in which Aarondamac won.

Comparison of the most popular Genesis 8 disciplines

Genesis 8: Disciplines Comparison

Among all the titles presented, the last installment of the series, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate was the most popular among viewers. It also traditionally gathered the most participants: about 2K people registered in the competition. Game broadcasts generated 1.3M Hours Watched and 168K Peak Viewers.

The second most popular tournament was the classic Super Smash Bros. Melee. Its viewership figures were much more modest, with half as many Peak Viewers, and almost three times fewer Hours Watched.

The 2017 fighting game tournament Rivals of Aether amassed a very modest 45K Hours Watched and only 18K Peak Viewers. Closing the top 5 were two newcomers to the convention: Guilty Gear and Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

In addition to the official stream, the most popular broadcast channels were streams of etoiles (a French fan of Minecraft and Super Smash Bros.) and moistCr1TiKaL (a popular streamer and commentator of Super Smash Bros). Hours Watched on the streams of moistCr1TiKaL and etoiles accounted for 20% and 12% of the tournament’s total indicator, respectively.

Super Smash Bros. Melee

Accompanying the official channels was a well-known streamer and content creator – Ludwig, who was a long-time fan of the Super Smash Bros. series. In particular, Ludwig-owned clothing brand Mogul Merch sponsored his friend Zain during competitions in 2019. Ludwig is also the founder of his own series of the tournaments, the Ludwig Ahgren Championship. The American could not miss the matches of his favorite player Zain, and his broadcasts collected 75K Hours Watched with 23K Peak Viewers.

Genesis 8 failed to become the most viewed tournament in the series. The record still stands from the pre-Covid times with over 3.5M Hours Watched and the highest online figure of 174K Peak Viewers being accumulated during Genesis 6 in 2019. According to the results of the competition, we can say that Super Smash Bros. continues to form the bulk of the audience. However, the debut of new titles may mark the beginning of new popular disciplines, which will attract an extra audience to the convention.

***

You can get more detailed information about the tournament by using a PRO subscription. If you want to get the full statistics of a particular tournament, click on the corresponding button on the tournament page on the website.