The Difficulty of Being A Dota Fan
The International is a few weeks away, and its winning team will receive the Aegis, the acclaim, a slice of a record breaking prize pool—projected to above $20 million—and a slew of new fans. That’s not to mention the ones who latched onto that team’s success through the course of the tournament. We’ve seen this trend on a lesser degree throughout the year, and we call them, pejoratively, “bandwagon” or “fair weather” fans. These fans are line-cutters, nudging in and reaping the rewards of shared success, right along with the real, authentic and loyal fans, who have stuck with that team since the beginning. But can these bandwagoners be blamed for not adhering to the same fan-code expected from other sports?
Dota is barely nascent, only entering its sixth year of The International and coming off its first year of its Major circuit. Compare this to the recent NBA champions, the Cleveland Cavaliers, who won their first championship in 46 years of the franchise. How loyal can Dota fans expect to be for such a limited time, and should it matter?
Time And Timing
First: time. Real fans pick a team—usually their hometown team—and they’re stuck with that team the rest of their lives. They can trace that team’s history back to their own child and young adulthood, like telling war stories. The longer they’ve been in the trenches of fandom, the more credibility they gain as real fans. For the lucky few, there’s a championship here and there, but the rest of the time it’s about resolving the cognitive dissonance of loving a team that continues to fail.
Second: timing. Real fans don’t drop their team at the first sign of trouble, then renew relationships when that team wins again. Real fans remain loyal and committed, weathering the anxiety, disappointment, and frustration over time. They love their team like an ugly child—out of obligation.
Now, the issue is that these two components fall short when applying them to Dota. Dota is too young a game to foster childhood nostalgia and emotional scars. Its competitive history is too young to be proud of a six year commitment. With Na’Vi’s comeback into relevancy, how many Na’Vi fans are patting themselves on the back? For sticking to a team that’s never missed an International? For staying with the affable Dendi over Puppey and Kuroky?
To be fair, Na’Vi is among the very few teams who have maintained competitive consistency throughout Dota 2. There’s also longstanding organizations such as Evil Geniuses, EHOME, Fnatic, and Complexity. But there’s also a plethora of teams who rotate in and out of tournaments throughout the year. Unlike other sports, Dota teams don’t play a set number of games. There is no league. It’s up in the air whether your favorite team will receive an invite, or make it through the thicket of qualifiers. Despite the amount of money funneling into Dota 2, there’s a serious concern for the scene’s sustainability. The majority of winnings are funneled to a handful of teams. Last year’s TI was the first attempt to smooth out the payouts for the bottom half of finishers (TI5’s 9th-12th teams each received 1.2% of the prize pool, compared to TI4’s 0.35% payout for 12th, and nothing for 15th-16th place). It’s tough to be a loyal, consistent fan for a team that might not even be around at the next tournament.
What’s The Local Team?
It’s tough being an esports fan. For most sports fans, they attach to the team of the city they grew up in. Fans in other areas gravitate to the nearest team, unless they’re overseas or in a desert, then they just pick the Yankees and Cowboys. By consequence of esports’ medium, there is no local city team. New fans of Dota are stranded, so why not just pick the best team? Yes, there are regions, but that’s still too wide a berth. For North Americans, take your pick, for this TI, of Evil Geniuses, Digital Chaos, or Complexity. Choose wisely.
Still, this isn’t the Olympics. Many teams—with the exception of China, SEA, and Alliance—who claim a region have rosters that are comprised of players from elsewhere nationalities. Evil Geniuses, America’s team, has 3 out of 5 players born in America. Team Secret had their choice whether to compete in the NA or EU open qualifiers. Complexity, a historic, NA esports organization, has three Swedes. And here’s the five national backgrounds of Digital Chaos’ rosters: American, Ukranian, Syrian, Swede, and Macedonian.
The nationalist connection is a weak one too, when teams are diverse internally, while also split into four regions, when people generally connect their identities with more specificity. Is there ever a reason to chant EU-ROPE? What if you’re British? Then there’s Na’Vi, during their heyday, who used to receive cheers of U-S-A, U-S-A.
It’s A Player’s League
If esports fans aren’t bound to their teams by location, then what’s keeping them there? The organizations’s colors, the brotherhood of fans, or loyalty? Even players aren’t loyal to their own teams. Every major tournament is guaranteed to be followed by the musical chair act that is the shuffling of team rosters. The event is framed as if teams are moving players to better their organization’s chances, but players, namely the superstars of Dota, are also seeking to improve their own situations. And it makes sense, because if you’re a player who can significantly increase your team’s chances to get in the top 8 of a $20 million payout, who really is your primary employer? Is it your organization or is it Valve?
The volatility of the scene, from team rosters to team solvency, makes it tricky for fans to pick a team, and rationalize why they should stick with it when in weeks or days, everything could change. For sports fans who are stranded, sometimes they just end up following Kobe or whatever team Lebron James is on. It’s easy to do the same for Dota. There will be Na’Vi fans for as long as there are Dendi fans. The Dota competitive scene is still in its infancy stage. It hasn’t been around long enough to define clear lines for what is a real fan. For the moment, everyone is a bandwagon fan.
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Firsted
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Dendi for president 2016
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fans will be loyal if they have the same team members,foster changes tend to break us apart..
8th???
"Is there ever a reason to chant EU-ROPE? What if you’re British?" I LAUGHED WAY TOO HARD AT THIS
Literally the best pictures you could have picked to illustrate the article. Kappa
Dendi virgin (с) Xboct on stream
Good article. My impression is that fans tend to adopt their favorite pro players, rather than pro teams. I like Universe, Fear, Pieliedie, and Dendi, so I tend to watch whatever team they are currently playing for.
The team-changing by professional dota players is on the extreme end of things, even when compared to a high-turnover sport like NFL (where a player playing for two teams in the same season/year is quite rare). Pro dota players have far more control over their careers than almost any other type of team-sport athletes.
Landish I agree, I watch pro dota to see my favourite players rather than teams. I find that players move around quite often so its best just to follow the player.
Of course currently I enjoy watching Miracle but I will always be a fan of Fear and Dendi!
When I first started out with dota I was a fan of Na'Vi but the way that team has changed makes it hard to be loyal 'to the team'...
For football fans its easy because you are loyal to your local club and so you that is the main supporting drive.
Even as a kid, I never tended to get attached to hockey teams from my region. I always liked the team that impressed me and played impressively. That would tend to change from year to year.
Right now I love OG. I love that they've stuck together through the roster shuffles, I love their unpredictable drafts, their camaraderie, their pure individual skill. They can execute any combo, they are three steps ahead of what any team is planning.
I think a lot of people connect to stability, and that's part of the reason why people love Navi, because Dendi is the loveable foundation of that team. When EG switches its roster a dozen times in a year, how can you be a fan of EG?
Liquid all the way, KuroKy FATA- German pride!!
"what if you're British?" LMAO!! BREXIT burn!!!
There's an error in the article: no Swede on DC, Misery is Danish.
i fucking hate dota.
I really don't get why it's such a must for murican fans to chant 'USA! USA!' to any non-asian team. It actually sounds cringe-y af
[A]lliance fangay since ti3
Also... only Dota TWO is 6 years old... the whole dota thing ages way longer than that... EG.Fear has been on the road for more than a decade now!
i met puppey once, i cummed so hard.
[A] Fandog here since their team name is "no tidehunter"
Meniski TI 6 Confirm
"childhood nostalgia and emotional scars"
nice one
Last xD
wtf author
actually active roster of DC contents American (Moo), Ukrainian (Resolut1on), Macedonian (Saksa), ROMANIAN (w33) and DANE (MiSeRy)
Fuck this society, it's not even real. Everyone keeps pretending its a fun thing to do but it isn't. These players are just human like us and their career shouldn't be significantly tolerated. You go to school for a purpose and that's legit. Just play dota2 or watch tournament only if you're depressed but its not even helping, its only good if you're winning. Don't support any of this shitty player. They just play and make a different kind of strategy, still the hero plays doesn't change, An Infinite loop of insanity. Wake up everyone.
^ Nope, not today troll, not today
why kentucky?
Alliance got a top 3 highest fanbase and u put em in locals, delete ur article pls
I started following EG post DAC and have been following them since then even when Universe left the team. To me EG is my FCB and I will keep on supporting it till the end even if they change all the players of current roster.
Alliance till the end
Community could use a lot of Improvement ,boycott compendium for instance because it fucks up the game.
I play since 2009 2 months after the first TI and the thing is quite simple :
Every last year it was better ,less hats more dota.
Compendiums and cosmetics are killing the game,
you should pay for your account 20 bucks and there should be perma ban
The fundamental problem is that player salaries are dwarfed by prize pools. So whenever a player feels like he needs a different roster to get the prize pool, he initiates a shift (either kicking players or moving himself).
Kind sad for @fsociety, saying like that but still here commenting & reading this section lul #R[A]T !!
In truth, the teams are made up of any 5 players. Watching teams in Dota means watching the players. How this compares to in, let's just say, British Soccer league, where teams like Liverpool, Chelsea, etc have coaches/managers/ideologies which represent the team... this is not the case in Dota 2 and other eSports games; players switch and captains often depict playing styles. Old Na`Vi had Puppey, a legendary tactician and captain... those who agree with his ideals and play style will move with him (IMO). Likewise with Alliance, who invented the "Rat", a team who brought new, exciting and desperate exploits which the world of Dota hadn't seen before. If all the players moved over to a different brand, would Alliance still be Alliance? Is Alliance still NoTidehunter (even tho EE isn't there anymore)? I think the largest change would be a team like Fnatic, who if you said you were a so-called "diehard" fan of the team, your ideals would have had to shift not only play styles, but complete regions, where the team moved out of EU and into SEA, taking the entire name with them. While Fnatic today is a great team, supporting the Fnatic of old would have you supporting OG... and their dominance over the scene has been incredible the past few months.
As a diehard Na`Vi fan, I have to say that my team probably comes the closest to a team you can become "diehard" for... while captains, coaches and players have changed quite drastically (considering Dendi is the only one still there from the TI2 squad), their hardcore man-up, balls-to-the-wall play style has not changed, and IMO has become better with the introduction of General and Ditya recently.
While players rotate squads and coaching becomes a definite part of eSports organisations, I think it would be quite awesome to see an organisation built around certain ideals... Ideals that say "This is who we are", and allows players to say "I like *enter team name* because of their insane team plays and their resilience to fight to the last minute, not calling GG till the throne is down". I think we'll get there soon. May the Dota culture begin.
it's so obvious that an american wrote this article.
holy fucking shit thank god you can enjoy following a competitive sport without the local bias.
[A] Forever.
Well, i'm a big Na'Vi fan since ti2 maybe ( coz i have their second season jersey with dendi signature on it ), i really see the improvement in the fanbase of every team, it is much bigger than 1 - 2 years ago, the hype of dota2 pro scene in my country is not really that big, we only have small group of people that really enjoying dota2 pro scene, maybe someday the hype of dota2 will rise just like football basketball etc.