DotA2 and eSports
A free game is legitimizing an entire form of entertainment.
I’m a lifelong gamer. One of my earliest memories is my grandfather writing down the instructions I needed to type into his computer to run Frogger on his Apple. I have played video games literally my entire life. But I always thought eSports was a stupid idea. I never liked watching regular sports, the passivity of simply observing someone else do something fun was never fun for me.
In the early 2000's ESPN even aired Magic: the Gathering tournaments. I was an avid MtG player at the time, including attending, judging and even occasionally winning small MtG tournaments. But watching an MtG tournament on TV was boring.
So when I heard about how popular watching StarCraft tournaments was in Korea I though “Man, they must be bored.”
But then WarCraft 3 came out and I got into it. The community around it mirrored that which existed for StraCraft: Broodwar. Web sites sprung up with replays available for download from top level players. Suddenly I got how watching someone else play a game could be fun. Watching top level players do amazing things in WarCraft 3 not only helped me improve my own play, but was entertaining in itself. I couldn’t believe the micro of Grubby or Moon. Wishing that in the heat of battle I could have the focus and control to save all of my grunts.
It’s in that environment that DotA sprung up. I won’t recap the history of DotA here, it’s been done many times elsewhere. Sometimes it’s even done well and accurately.
Watching video games has still been a niche pass time though, which always sounds weird to people if you tell them that’s what you did last night or are going to do tonight. You will get sideways looks with people thinking much the same thing that I thought about the folks in Korea chearing for Flash or Yellow.
But then Valve made DotA2 and gave away a million bucks. And now here we are at $2.7 million and counting for the International 2013. When you tell people that kind of money is on the line, they don’t have a hard time believing that it’s interesting to watch. Sometimes they even become curious themselves.
After all, people watch folks do really stupid shit on TV for far less money.
When you have those kind of stakes, the drama of the prize elevates the contest. My brothers and friends and I are having a LAN party to watch the International 2013 finals. My wife is already familiar with my DotA problem and besides which not at all surprised I’d jump at the chance for a LAN party.
But my sister said, “What? You guys are getting together to watch a video game tournament?” To which I said, “There is $2.6 million at stake.” and her disbelief evaporated. She immediately understood that it was a Big Deal.
Valve is legitimizing watching video games simply by throwing so much money at it. This year it’s not just Valve throwing money at it, but the entire community. If you don’t know, Valve created an in game Compendium with all kinds of features (such as a custom HUD, the ability to create Fatnasy Teams, make predictions about the tournament, collect player cards and more) which sells for $9.99. A portion of that price is added to the prize pool.
The socialist in me of course looks at that money and thinks “How many poor kids in third world countries could we save with all the money being squandered on a video game tournament?”
But the selfish gamer in me hopes to see Dendi Orb, Rift and Coil his way to holding that trophy.
