More Than a Game is a documentary about the Evolution Championship Series (“Evo” for short), the world’s largest video game fighting tournament. For a very limited time, you can check it out for free.

I’ve always been fascinated by fighting games. When it comes to actually playing them, I am godawful. Yet, for some reason, I am fascinated by their strange complexity. Imagine a game of speed chess, played by world champions, where both sides have completely different move sets. That’s a rough description of a typical matchup at the EVO tournament.

Each years’ Evo revolves mainly around Capcom’s Street Fighter series. There are tons of different games that are played at the event, but Capcom’s titles are usually the main attraction. Fighting game players aren’t your stereotypical shut-in gamers. They’re actually quite social and fiercely competitive. And I don’t mean “they will yell at you over a microphone” competitive. These players will actually trash talk you right to your face. It can be intense. A typical fighting game tournament has more in common with a street basketball game than a LAN party. There’s even a fierce East Coast vs. West Coast player rivalry that’s been raging for decades. More Than a Game is not just another The King of Kong-style documentary that attacks a small subculture of outcasts. It’s a labor of love by the actual fans.

If you’d like to take a closer look at this weird world, here’s the trailer for Tom Hewett and Jack Abbot’s More Than a Game:

If this looks like your type of documentary, you can watch the entire film for free on Vimeo: