I feel like pro-Dota is a vacuum that’s slowly spinning me around and around until it inevitably completely sucks me in. It’s all a matter of learning who the players are, what their personalities are like, and finding a particular team to root for. Valve, smart cookies that they are, are about to make all that much easier by showing you these players, with all their flaws and triumphs, in a proper big budget documentary.
Announced by G4TV, it follows players from the sixteen teams to take part in the second International, which will take place at the end of the month. It’s a million dollar tournament, one of the biggest cash prizes in Esports, and for a lot of these players, it will be the defining factor in whether they’re going to be able to make a life for themselves, or continue to be stuck in their parent’s house with a lot of passion and only so many shots at the big time.
It’s easy to see why Valve would want to highlight these players; not least because this will be just one more way for people to get into Dota, to find that wedge they can shove in the door and overcome the initially killer learning curve. With the ‘Learn to Play’ tab still frustratingly sparse in terms of content, finding new ways to get players interested in the game isn’t getting any easier.
The trailer for the documentary is below, and we’ve only got a ‘Coming Soon’ to give us any idea on a release date, although I’d imagine something is going to happen in Seattle at the beginning of September.