1. It’s played like a sport
Dota 2 is a multiplayer online battle arena game (MOBA) made by
Valve, the video game company known for classics like Half Life and
Portal. Valve runs the Steam Store, which is one of the best-known
digital marketplaces for PC video games. In Dota 2, each team of five
players chooses individual heroes, and then attempts to level up by
defeating non-player characters (NPCs) or other heroes. Once the team is
strong enough, they try to attack the opponent’s base and destroy their
“ancient.” If they succeed, they win. Each team always has 5 players,
the game always starts the same way (on opposite sides of the map,
separated by a river), and it's always two teams playing against each
other. Heroes are chosen based on their attributes, and certain heroes
are better suited to fight in certain styles or against certain other
heroes. (A lot like drafting players on a per-game basis in any other
sport.)
Here’s is a pretty decent video explanation:
2. It’s free!
Like most other MOBAs,
Dota 2 is free.
This means there's a low barrier to entry, especially taking a look at
the minimum system requirements for the game. Consumer-grade computers
have made leaps and bounds in recent years, and now even mid-range
laptops have the integrated hardware to run games that had top-tier
graphics. Of course with the minimum specs—4 GB of RAM, a Intel
dual-core processor, and a NVIDIA 8600 GPU—you won’t eye-popping detail,
but the game will run on your machine. Valve, the game's creator, makes
money through micro-transactions—but it’s not pay-to-play. Players can
buy purely cosmetic gear for their heroes from the Dota 2 Store, or from
the Steam Community Marketplace. (Either way, Valve gets a cut of the
money.)
3. It makes a lot of money
Speaking of Valve’s profit from all of this, the game company makes
about $18 million dollars per month from Dota 2 alone. It’s paltry when
compared against League of Legends ($123 million dollars/month), but on
it’s own the game stands as a huge moneymaker for Valve. What’s better,
is that the $18 million dollar winnings for this year’s game doesn’t
come out of Valve’s pocket. TI5’s pool is crowdsourced by Dota 2
players, who are buying
The International Compendium 2015
(initially priced $9.99) which grants certain in-game treasures,
effects and emoticons. Players can then pay more to “level up” their
Compendiums, and as more money is raised, overall goals are unlocked for
all Compendium owners. They did
the same thing last year, garnering $10 million dollars from players.
4. It’s super popular
Dota 2 is the most-played game on Steam. It first peaked at more than 1 million concurrent players in February, and has
more than 10 million monthly users.
However, it’s not the largest game by a longshot. That crown goes to
League of Legends (LoL), another MOBA that’s been around since 2009. LoL
has about 27 million people who play at least one game per day,
according to VentureBeat,
vastly outstripping Dota 2. It also makes far more money than Dota 2:
the company said its income was $123 million per month in January.
However, with Valve’s backing Dota 2 has become far more lucrative for
professional players. The largest payout for a League of Legends
tournament was around $2 million dollars, for the World Championships in
2014. TI5’s pool has reached $18 million dollars.
5. It started as a fan-made Warcraft 3 mod
The predecessor to Dota 2 is
DotA, or Defense of the Ancients. (Makes sense, now, right?) It started out as a custom-built level from Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, according to
the Dota 2 wiki.
DotA’s level design was based on another level from StarCraft, Aeon of
Strife. The whole thing is one big mashup, which was formatted into a
standalone game with Dota 2. (DotA still exists, too, and
there’s a WikiHow
on how you can play it.) DotA was originally maintained by a
pseudonymous programmer called “IceFrog” who updated the scenario until
he were hired by Valve in 2010 to work on Dota 2. According to
IceFrog’s unofficial, fan-run Facebook account,
he’s still the lead designer of Dota 2. “Apart from being known as
highly-meticulous with game balance, IceFrog is renowned for his
continued anonymity, having never publicly disclosed his actual name,”
the also anonymous page-runner writes.
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