First Thoughts: DOTA 2: The International 2014 coverage.

Let me preface this post by saying I have never been a MOBA player. I understand the basics behind League of Legends and Dota 2, and the massive impact they've had on the gaming and esports community. As for this Jawa, however, MOBA's are purely an 'on the outside looking in' affair, and due to the steep learning curves, time investment, and colorful community, there's a good chance it will stay that way for the time being. That being said, nothing excites me more then watching the Esports and streaming communities explode in the last several years, and as a spectator sport, MOBAs deliver.

For all 3 of you who have never heard of Dota 2, or the MOBA genre, the general premise is as follows: 2 teams square off in an arena, with the goal being to capture and destroy the enemies main base. Players choose from a wide cast of heroes with different abilities, synergies, and strategies, and face off for games that typically last anywhere from 40 to 90 minutes. Dota 2, Valve's entry into the MOBA genre, has swept the international gaming community away in the past several years, making it a direct competitor to Riot Games massively popular League of Legends. According to Valve's statistics, there are over 800,000 Dota 2 players across the world as I'm writing this. Overall figures estimate Dota 2's playerbase to be almost 9 million players who have played in the last month alone, let alone less frequent players. While this still pales in comparison to League of Legends' massive community (estimated to be over 65 million players at this point) Dota 2 is easily the 2nd largest MOBA, and even more importantly

The prize pool for this tournament is now the largest in Esports history, with a total of over $10,000,000 in prize money.

 Needless to say, this is a huge moment in gaming history, and as such there's already professional tier coverage for the qualifying rounds going on as I type this over on Twitch. There's even a stream for people new to the game at The Noob Stream (a definite lifesaver for someone who knows next-to-nothing about the game, like myself.) As Esports as a whole continues to grow in popularity and scale, the technology used and the quality of commentary on competitive gaming events continues to skyrocket in a way that I think, given a few more years at most, will match the amount of commercial attention physical sports attract, and given the view counts on the Twitch streams so far, livestreamed Esports are much more then a passing fad.

On to the actual coverage itself: I followed most of day 1 of coverage of The International on the standard Twitch stream, and I have to say that for having no idea what's going on, Dota 2 is a blast to watch. The visual quality of the stream is fairly high, depending on your network speed, and barring some echoing and volume control issues in the first hour or so, the audio is crisp and easy to hear. The commentators are very much into the matchups, and for the most part the camera control follows the action, and while matches usually take the better part of an hour, it's hard to be bored watching the best in the world square off, whilst narrated by some of the most passionate members of the Dota 2 community. Overall, I'm excited to continue watching these streams over the next few days and weeks, and I hope all of you Dota 2 fans out there enjoy the largest tournament of the year!

 -Madjawa