Where nerds are the new jocks
MANILA, Philippines - Being a gamer is a thing. Being paid copious amounts of money to sit competitively in front of a computer is also a thing.
Nerds are shaping up to be the new jocks as Manila plays host to the biggest Dota 2 tournament South East Asia has ever seen — eight Dota 2 teams from all over the globe have come to vie for a $250,000 prize pool (the grand champions taking home $100,000) as ESL One takes the stage on this weekend at the Mall of Asia Arena. That’s 40 top-tier professional players from global teams, professional panelists, casters, game analysts, scene personalities, the whole kit and caboodle for one of the bigger banner events from the 2016 digital sporting season.
This isn’t your Mom’s deep, dank basement anymore with token bouts of after-school Tekken. No more illegal rounds of operation can’t-wait-any-longer to get you out of a tight Starcraft spot.
Dota 2 is no longer sequestered to the confines of your neighborhood kanto computer shop. The revolutionary five-on-five battle arena published by Valve Corporation has grown into one of the most unique gaming platforms online and a shining example of video game culture as a true spectacle sport. At par with the traditional side of athletics, the electronic sports scene (or e-sports) has professionalized to include thousand dollar sponsorships, organizational management, competitive team transfers, and a staunch fan base of millions for just about every player or personality.
Largest Player-Base
Coupled with strong anecdotal evidence that the Philippines boasts one of the largest Dota 2 player-bases in the world (our “peenoise” bad manner reputation notwithstanding) and our defiantly irreverent gaming culture (Dota o ako? anyone?), ESL One staged in Manila being the first premium Dota 2 tournament of its kind in South East Asia is a watershed moment for the regional scene.
It’s undeniable, the legacy of gaming has started to transcend the binaries of nerd culture. Be it the first-person shoot-em-up Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, the cartoon chaos of League of Legends (Dota’s more famous yet more annoying cousin), or Valve’s very own multi-player battle arena Dota 2 — e-sports have started to gain mainstream ground with the rise of high profile tournaments and the kind of big money prize pools traditional media (that’s us) can’t scoff at.
Dota 2’s biggest annual tournament “The International” raised an $18 million prize pool for 2015 alone, the largest amount of prize money to-date in e-sporting history — that’s at least $5 to $7 million more than both NFL’s The Super Bowl and the NBA Finals; with five players to a side in each round of Dota 2, that’s at least a million a pop for each professional athlete on the winning team.
Spectator Seats
Seeing the appeal behind a bunch of (mostly) male adults sitting manically in front of computer screens may be difficult for some; let alone imagining someone pay for a spectator seat — a front-row vista to a virtual world of pixels and sound come alive on a wide screen solely via keyboard and mouse clicks. The most obvious questions becomes: why would you pay to watch someone else play a game that you, yourself, could be playing?
The premise is ridiculously simple -- people like seeing other people play games. Judging from Amazon’s $970,000,000 acquisition of video game live-streaming site Twitch in 2014 and the growing valuation of e-sports as a global industry, people are more than willing to pay money to see good players play good games in a high stakes environment. That’s #MajorLeagueGaming in a nutshell.
Imagine a 20 thousand capacity crowd in a single arena (with millions more tuned in via Twitch, YouTube, and in-client Dota 2), the roaring wall of cheers (and jeers) comes crashing down to a cacophony of battle chants and in-game magic spells, professional shout-casters and game analysts narrate a brisk play-by-play as a virtual world of heroes (with more than a hundred to choose from in Dota 2) fight to the death for an all-important title and the promise of a hefty cash prize — the hype-train can get very real, very quickly. And the billion dollar global aggregate revenue for e-sports (growing to include sponsorship revenue, concurrent ad streaming, tournament ticket sales) is a testament to its sustainability.
Good Narratives
More than just the pixels on the screen, a good tournament is worthless without a good narrative. With the recent infusion of Artour “ArtEEzy” Babaev to the well-oiled team of global Dota 2 superstar Clement “Puppey” Ivanov, are we ready to accept Euro-American Team Secret’s inevitable rise to the top with another ESL One championship? Whatever the outcome, the recent Shanghai Majors champions are primed to put on a good show. An upset from Chinese legends EHOME or the other South East Asian contender Fnatic perhaps? Team Empire from Russia for a dark horse win? Among the 8 invited and qualified teams, the biggest story of all could belong to Team Mineski.Sports5, our home-court advantage Filipino underdogs carrying the brunt of our nation’s hopes and dreams.
Could e-sports be our next boxing, and Team Mineski our Pacquiao? A homegrown gamer could dream.
Fresh from the 2006 World Cup stadium of Commerzbank-Arena in Frankfurt, to New York’s Madison Square Garden — the next edition of ESL One makes its way to the Mall of Asia Arena in Manila as a landmark e-sports event for the South East Asian Dota 2 scene.
ESL One in Manila this weekend is only the beginning as Dota 2’s parent company Valve Corporation has already slated another 6-day tournament in June, The Manila Majors.
Nerds are in your ESPN as much as we are on Twitch, and it’s official — nerds are here to stay and all-your-base-are-belong-to-us.
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Tweet the author @martinpanduh. ESL One Manila takes place today on April 23 and 24 at the Mall of Asia Arena sponsored by PLDT Home Fibr and Smart. ESL One Manila will be aired live on Aksyon TV (UHF Channel 41) on April 23-24, 10 am to 10 pm. ESL One Manila’s Grand Finals will air primetime on TV 5 from 9 pm to 11 pm on April 24.
