Talking DreamHack Fighters with Alex Jebailey: “There’s nothing like experiencing a hobby you love with other people in the same room.”

DreamHack Fighters is well underway in Dallas, TX this weekend. It features a slew of fighting games such as Street Fighter 6, TEKKEN 8, Mortal Kombat 1, and more. Among the fighting games community (FGC) is Alex Jebailey, who is the one in charge of DreamHack Fighters as the senior product manager. Esports.gg interviewed him about the evolution of the event, the significance of an international stage for players, and the impact of DreamHack Fighters on the FGC at large.

Players from around the world and Dallas locals are duking it out for the lion's share of each tournament's prize pool. The Street Fighter 6 and TEKKEN 8 tournaments, in particular, are also qualifiers to the 2024 Esports World Cup and feature $50,000 prize pools. In the interview with esports.gg, Jebailey shared his thoughts about the evolution of DreamHack Fighters over the years and how his influence has shaped it to be what it is today.

"I've been working for DreamHack for about seven years now, and when I came on, I helped to build their fighting game department alongside my big CEO event," Jebailey said, referring to the Community Effort Orlando Gaming (CEO Gaming) tournament series. "In Florida, I've been doing that since 2010."

Jebailey continued, noting how the Esports World Cup updated its name from Gamers8 this year. When the opportunity for DreamHack to help with the 2024 project came about, Jebailey accepted with enthusiasm.

"I was very excited to do it because knowing that people can trust me and then bring this into the fighting game world — but it's been a process. A great process, a challenging process for me to work with a much bigger team, to go through a lot more people, to work together. But also have help more than ever. [It's] not just me and my staff that are running the event itself to build something bigger. Being able to do these $50,000 qualifiers — that's a lot to qualify into a bigger event. It brought a lot of the best players in the world like say there's 503 veteran players — 400 of them can win an EVO. The level players that are here is insane."

Among these players are Zhen, Phenom, Chris Wong, Gachikun, Problem X, Nuckledu, Oil King, and Higuchi. However, these are only the players who qualified for Street Fighter 6 at the Esports World Cup. The other events have yet to conclude at the DreamHack festival.

"Now I get to reap the rewards with my staff and put on the show," Jebailey said. "We're having a great first time doing this. We also got to support a lot of community FGC events through the Esports World Cup. So bam! Australia as a qualifier, the CEO and Florida qualifier, ATL Korea for TEKKEN as well. Being able to spread that [and work] directly with the publishers and developers of the games has been even more exciting for me."

At DreamHack Fighters, players from around the world are enjoying both high-level competition and a weekend of meeting up with friends. To Jebailey, this turnout is really impressive despite the short notice.

"Seeing all these players that don't usually leave their countries coming all the way out here has been a really impressive to see for an event that was announced two months ago," he said. As a Street Fighter 6 fan himself, he's excited to see competitors who have won previous international tournaments or Japanese tournaments, for example, attend DreamHack Fighters.

Jebailey then shared his experience with uniting the FGC through online events, however, nothing is quite like meeting new people and interacting with fans in person.

"We're in a world where a lot of players are getting too busy and they're doing content creation and not coming to as many offline events," he explained. "But to see them all here and interact with the fans? I think that's what it's all about. We're all here for the love of fighting games."

Jebailey also talked about the potential of bringing the competition to other local communities around the world, appreciating the autonomy and trust that DreamHack has for him and his team.

"The processes with major companies always change when you're doing the event, but it's just gotten so easy," he added. "I have a lot of people that are like, 'This is your space. This is your you know production. What else do you need? Here's your budget.'"

Jebailey reflected on his overall journey with DreamHack as well, reiterating the trust and support he's received from the organization over the years. He recalled his involvement from running a Pokken tournament as a contract job before becoming a full-time member of the team and seeing the growth and evolution of DreamHack's processes and branding. The expansion into the Esports World Cup increased his team's resources and opportunities to host larger events with even bigger prize pools.

As for parting words, Jebailey encouraged fans to attend an offline event. This can be a casual LAN or even something as big as DreamHack Fighters.

"Just keep watching the FCC," he added. "Try to make it out to an offline event. There's nothing like it. A lot of people watch stuff from home and go, 'I want to go to that.' And then there [are] so many online matches, which is great. It gives you more chances to play and connect. But there's nothing like experiencing a hobby you love with other people in the same room."

That's all for now. Stick around on esports.gg for more news and updates about DreamHack Dallas and the FGC!