Talk Dota 2 me
MANILA, Philippines - Not many people know this, but I put the “gay” in “gamer.” All tea, all shade — I’m a lifestyle journalist by day and a dungeon-raiding boss-ass shadow priest named Dazzle by night.
I grew up the real deal: bootstrapped to a desktop with an IV drip of pizza and diet soda for most weekends. I was that scrub at your kanto Netopia trolling for lobbies of Warcraft 3 and Counterstrike. Purposefully concealing my gamer status (despite a painfully empty social calendar) I never thought the PTSD of my internalized nerd-shaming — contracted by feeding an embarrassingly unhealthy secret obsession with Rangarok Online — would ever come back to haunt me.
Being a hardcore Dota 2 player was my not-so-secret life — and up until very recently, I never had reason to “celebrate” my gamer status outside of my own bedroom. That all changed when Manila played host to Electronic Sports League (ESL) One, a $250,000 Dota 2 tournament held at the Mall of Asia Arena. A massive two-day e-sports tournament Southeast Asia had yet to see.
Most games come and go, but nothing captured my adult fascination quite like Valve Corporation’s Dota 2. Originally an innocuous mod from Blizzard’s Warcraft 3, “Defense of the Ancients” (or Dota) was a fan-made custom map that carefully evolved into a whole other game in itself, eventually a million-dollar industry and, anecdotally, the Philippines was one of its biggest strongholds. Dota or ako, anyone?
Digital gaming as spectator sport is built on the simple idea that people like seeing other people play games. Being a gamer is a thing. Being paid copious amount of money to play games is also a thing.
Last weekend, Manila played host to one of the biggest large-scale LAN events this side of Asia — Dota 2, a five-versus-five free-for-all typically played online across continents with contingents of professional players, streamcasters, commentators, analysts, team coaches and organizations behind each game, localized to a single destination for a round-robin tournament with a prize pool of $250,000. By virtue of ESL One being the first of its kind in Manila, let alone the region — it’s fair to say none of us knew what to expect.
Except cute boys. I was right to expect a lot of cute boys. When the audience sample is reduced to a hundred males for every one female — trust me, the mix of hirsute Germans and Swedes from ESL One’s production crew alone was fit for a good statistic.
Consider ESL One the APEC of gaming — a world-class tournament with previous editions staged at the Commerzbank-Arena in Frankfurt (the site of the 2006 World Cup) and New York’s Madison Square Garden. This is #MajorLeagueGaming at its best, thousands of fans coming together to watch (mostly) male adults competitively brawl for sometimes, millions of dollars at a time. Dota 2 holds the record for biggest e-sports prize pool with $18 million for a single tournament in 2015 — that’s a bigger prize than both the NFL Super Bowl and the NBA Finals combined.
According to ESL One’s gaming vice president Ulrich Schulze, Manila’s iteration is touted as being the fastest-selling sold-out tournament they’ve ever staged. The Mall of Asia Arena brought the hype with eight top-seeded Dota 2 teams, the scene’s most popular hosts and international casters (all cheekily wearing barongs on the first day), production value of the highest degree and a real-time broadcast both in-game and by stream on Twitch.tv.
Almost packed to the rafters with some of the most passionate Dota 2 fans the gaming world had yet to see, the local Filipino audience brought the hype level to unprecedented heights. “Never heard a crowd as loud as these guys outside of a football match,” shared Matthew “Cyborgmatt” Bailey, a popular Dota 2 personality. With tweets to the tune of “these fans are hyped as f*ck,” “#ManilaYouAreAwesome” and “Manila is the craziest bunch of dedicated fans I’ve ever witnessed” — Dota 2 has proven to be huge here and Filipino fans are masters of hype.
For every successful play in each of the 50-odd games during the two-day event, the deafening roar of cheers inside the arena was heard all over the globe by the millions tuned in on different concurrent streams. With underdog Chinese team Wings Gaming as the weekend’s champion, beating out fan favorites Team Secret, Russia’s Team Empire, and homegrown Dota boys Team Mineski — yet another Filipino fanaticism has put Manila on the map as a premiere e-sports destination.
ESL One can only be the beginning as Dota 2’s parent company Valve Corporation has already slated another six-day tournament for June: The Manila Majors. Based on brisk ticket sales (9,000 per day by rough estimation — that’s a lot of nerds) and the warm reception for Dota 2, the future of e-sports shines brightly in Manila.
The dawn of ESL One in Manila made me proud to be a gamer, let alone a Filipino. Who knew a second “coming out” was ever in the cards?
