korey-mueller
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The top SpyParty player is a fighting game guy from EVO 2012
Four months before SpyParty debuted at EVO 2012's Indie Showcase, convention founder Seth Killian threw down a gentlemen's bet with SpyParty creator Chris Hecker: "An EVO attendee will be your No. 1 player in subsequent tests, and take down whoever the existing top players might be." Hecker took the bet. One year later, SpyParty is on its way to EVO 2013, and Hecker owes Killian a beer. SpyParty is slow-paced for a one-on-one "fighting game," but it requires the same mad obsession with detail prevalent in many fighting games. Players are either the spy or the sniper: As the spy they must blend in with a room of AI characters attending a fancy party and complete tasks unbeknownst to the sniper. The sniper has to spot the human character with enough certainty to shoot it before the other player completes all the tasks. The top SpyParty player in the world is Korey Mueller, AKA "kcmmmmm" (pictured above, standing in the blue button-down), and as a lifelong fighting game fan, it's fitting that he first heard about SpyParty at EVO 2012. Since the convention, Mueller has played 6,436 games of SpyParty and has spent 262 hours in-game, with 1,020 hours total log-in time. The player that comes closest to these numbers clocks in at 5,151 games and 213 hours in-game. After picking out which beer he's going to buy Killian, Hecker asked Mueller about his fighting game roots and how he thinks SpyParty fits into the fighting game community. "There's always this feeling that there's some way I can improve, and every time I meet a personal goal, I find another one," Mueller tells Hecker. "I couldn't really look at the game and decide to be a top player, I just wanted to continue to improve – and at some point, I guess I got pretty decent at it. Now that you mention it, 6,000 games is a lot." Yeah, it is.
