This weekend’s EVO fighting games tournament in Las Vegas, Nevada is being hailed by organizers as the “least depressing we’ve ever had”. The gathering of joystick-twiddling mutants is often referred to as “the worst dregs of the gaming community”, a “collection of self-obsessed introverts fully indulging in the worst aspects of their obsession.” However, this year’s tournament was quickly deemed “less disgusting” and “more palatable to a normal person by far.”

While fighting game players are near-universally understood to be sweaty, obsessively focused silent types, lines to play Street Fighter IV this year showed early signs of a move towards being able to carry on basic conversations and a basic understanding of grooming and personal hygiene widely believed to be a massive step forward for the industry.

In an interview with Daigo Umehara, the self-proclaimed “Beast” and winner of the event’s Street Fighter IV tournament, the champion managed to hold himself to a mere 6 minutes of long, awkward pauses in our ten minute interview. His comments, a near-incomprehensible stammering collection of words like “fluidity”, “zone game”, and “parry play”, were largely useless for this article, but for once, we actually had tape worth giving to our interns to transcribe.

Festival organizer Melanie Brown told us, “In past years, I’ve often found myself face-to-face with top players who couldn’t speak to me or look me in the eye because I was a woman. But this year, I actually had at least four players go so far as to ask me for my number, and several more who wanted to talk to me about the balancing of the mid-range game in BlazBlue. It’s a step forward, to be sure, although I’m still not clear how all of their palms got so sweaty.”

At this rate, festival organizers expect EVO 2010’s participants to have the social skills of a normal 5th Grade classroom. Local stripclubs and prostitutes for the Las Vegas-based conference are already preparing for the possible influx of new customers once the festival’s participants reach the mental age of puberty. While some fear that their growing social skills and developing worldliness may push them away from the insanely juvenile fighting game scene, many others look forward to a new generation of fighting game players, trained on Xbox Live and PSN to be even more socially repugnant and disturbingly awkward.

“These players are our future,” said another organizer. “We have a whole new generation of insanely depressing freaks to keep playing and discussing fighting games, and to keep our traditions alive.”