It's a hot Friday in Orlando, Florida, as thousands of people gather at the Wyndham Orlando Resort to compete in one of the world's largest fighting game community tournaments, Community Effort Orlando. Over 800 Street Fighter V competitors from around the world gather in hopes to win a CEO championship title belt mimicking that of the WWE.
One of the favorites for this event, South Korea's Lee "Infiltration" Seon-woo, is all smiles as he sees familiar faces and newcomers come for a shot at the gold. He's not playing today; his pools begin tomorrow, and today he's just playing casual games in Street Fighter V.
But he's ready for tomorrow.
Regardless of the outcome from this weekend, however, Infiltration will be at the Street Fighter V equivalent to the World Cup, the Capcom Cup, at the end of the year. He's one of the few players, alongside Evil Geniuses' Yusuke "Momochi" Momochi and BX3 and TP-Link's Arman "Phenom" Hanjani, to already qualify for that event. To get there, Infiltration took home the gold from Final Round in March in Atlanta, Georgia, earning his direct invite.
As I walk around the floor, I see Infiltration carefully watching 2015 Capcom Cup runner-up Daigo "Daigo" Umehara, who many would consider his rival. Rivalry or not, Infiltration says he has a lot of respect for Daigo.
"So, Daigo has been famous for a long time, and I find him to be a good rival," Infiltration tells me. "At the same time, though, since he's been in the scene for such a long time, I find him to be a higher up [in the scene]. I'm hoping to get together with Daigo and be a good rival."
But it's much more than just a rivalry for Infiltration. He tells me, "But at the same time ... be the kōhai to his senpai."
Daigo's seniority status within the community and his history within the scene make him a significant veteran at age 35. Infiltration, 31, has a competitive past that is also impressive. Last year, Daigo took out Infiltration at the Capcom Cup in Round 3, leaving Infiltration in seventh place.
And reasonably, the two might meet this weekend in Orlando in the bracket.
But the real task for both comes next month at the Evolution Championship Series (Evo). Daigo, for his part, said on his stream that he isn't ready for the event; it's too soon, according to a tweet from one of his producers.
-EVO is too soon for him. He's not ready.
-His goal is on Capcom Cup results because he doesn't know if SFV will still be played next year.- J I Y U N A (@jiyunaJP) June 22, 2016
Surprisingly, Infiltration tells me he feels the same as Daigo. Despite winning Final Round on Nash, Infiltration says he has struggled to find a character that fits him. Instead, he has continued to practice an array of characters, but is unsure whether he'll have mastery of one by the time Evo kicks off on July 15.
"I don't feel that I'm not truly ready for Evo coming up in a few weeks, because I've been training a lot on different characters, and I have to have three or four characters down," he says. "I have to master them before going to Evo. The fighting game community isn't that big in Korea in comparison to Japan and America, so I have limited practice in that regard."
I ask him if training in another country is an option, something well-known American competitor Darryl "Snake Eyez" Lewis did in Japan before the Capcom Cup last year. Snake Eyez had arguably better results once he returned from spending time and training there. Unfortunately for Infiltration, he says going to a different country for practice is most likely not an option.
Furthermore, he mentions that he's a representative of his country, South Korea. It's something that he wears with pride. And in an interview with ESPN last week, Capcom's Peter "ComboFiend" Rosas said that Capcom wants to highlight more players and their stories from home -- to build hometown heroes for fans and spectators.
"I think it's a very good idea," Infiltration says of building stories around players and their home countries. "It's not just for us, the players, but I think it'll be fun for the entire crowd -- and for me, I feel like this kind of approach will incentivize a lot of players to keep trying hard and continue to represent their countries."
And now with the backing of the gaming peripheral company Razer, Infiltration has more opportunities than ever to travel and compete while representing his home. Prior to working with Razer, he was sponsored by Reddit's /r/Kappa subreddit, a subreddit based on Twitch's Kappa emote; a large congregation of the fighting game community is on it.
The opportunities aren't the only thing Infiltration looks forward to with Razer. He says that he wants to get involved in product placement in his time with the company.
"I might be able to be used as a model, like Michael Jordan, to be on Razer products," he says, comparing himself to the Hall of Famer widely considered to be the best basketball player of all time. "I can make a name for myself, but honestly, I've not been with Razer all that long, and I just see a good future happening for me since I'm a part of the Razer team and their community."
In the fashion of Jordan, who has his own shoe brand under the Nike umbrella, I ask Infiltration if there are any Razer Infiltration shoes in his future. We laugh.
"I'd love that."