Rivals of aether stock icons cracked#
Rivals of aether stock icons pro#
Rivals of aether stock icons license#
Rivals of aether stock icons professional#

It's one of the reasons we're moving quickly to get a really polished product out there - we believe the first company to hit that mould is able to achieve those PUBG or League of Legends heights. 'And then you have platform fighters - as of January you have Melee as the seventh most-watched game on Twitch. All of these make north of $200m a year,' Matt says. You have card games with Hearthstone, squad shooters with Counter-Strike and more recently Overwatch. 'Genres with the hook of a strong PVP loop and that are really watchable - each has a really strong and successful game. Matt tells me he knows there's an opening there - room for a Smash rival designed specifically for a fresh audience, one raised on free-to-play megahits like League of Legends and Hearthstone.

Rivals of aether stock icons cracked#

Icons is far from the first contender for the platform fighting crown but, as yet, no one else has properly cracked it. Wavedash Games' motto? 'Fighting for everyone.' In other words - you can play this on Steam, no GameCube needed. It feels like a line he's used before, but it rings true.

Rivals of aether stock icons license#

'Melee could now hold a driver's license in the USA,' Matt states. We held an AMA and answered as many questions as we could about art, design, sound.'ĭespite its issues, Wavedash still has a solid pitch. That's how we do business - we want to hear it, we're talking on reddit and discord and other social media channels. 'The first thing we did was say thank you and let people know we were reading every single comment. 'We're only in trouble when we release something and nobody notices. 'We can release something and people want so badly for it to be good they tell us what they don't like about it,' he explains. It's not exactly the answer I was expecting. 'We are the luckiest company in the world,' Matt tells me, when I ask for his thoughts on the community's response. Wavedash had learned from the experience, he said, but were no less certain Icons would still compete with Smash, in the genre Nintendo had made mainstream. Perhaps surprisingly, he was positive - really positive - about how Icons was progressing, despite the loud feedback received. Matt Fairchild.Ī few weeks on, I caught up with Matt via Skype to see how things were going. Would-be fans criticised its similarity to Smash, its lacklustre characters and its lack of polish.

It was announced with gameplay footage, detailed as a free-to-play game and revealed with the promise of an open beta later in the year. The project had been bubbling away for some time, and the community was eager to see it. Wavedash unveiled their new platform fighter at EVO 2017, named Icons: Combat Arena.

This September, Matt and Jason's Wavedash Games will turn two. A string of community manager jobs later, he felt it was time to found a studio himself.

Rivals of aether stock icons pro#

Over time, he became part of the game's community: meeting pro players and befriending an early employee of Major League Gaming - Jason Rice - who is now his business partner.

Rivals of aether stock icons professional#

He spent a lot of the next four years playing it, then found a job after organising some of the first professional Smash tournaments. Melee launched just before Matt went to college. Melee is still the community's favourite: played by a dedicated hardcore, broadcast to a huge worldwide audience at tournaments such as EVO. Smash is the undisputed king of platform fighters - games where you battle to boot opponents off-stage - and after 16 years, Super Smash Bros. Now, he's trying to make a game which rivals it - or that could even knock it from its perch. Matt Fairchild's adult life has revolved around Super Smash Bros.