Kendomo Profile Joined July 2015 United States 4 Posts Last Edited: 2015-08-28 02:17:10 #1



The past week has been pretty crazy. I posted on /r/dota the day I entered the hospital and immediately reached one of the top posts on the subreddit, and reaching the 2nd page of /r/all. The same day, I would receive messages from Valve employees, top players, a team manager, PC gaming industry employees, and also just regular Dota 2 fans wishing me well as well as inquiring about sending me gifts. Days later, after 2 rounds of chemo and 3 days of radiation treatment, I would then meet Cloud 9, one of the teams that went for the 6 million.







There is no words that can describe my gratitude towards the Dota 2 community as a whole. Cancer is really a deadly disease that, at this point, has many ways to treat and even cure. Although things may look good for me getting rid of this disease, I need to suffer through whatever my doctors try to fight this with. Usually if they punch the disease hard, I also get punched very hard in the process.



So, I am here to not only thank the Dota 2 community as a whole but also explain and elaborate on my journey through Cancer, as well as explain why Dota 2 has a bigger part of my story than one might think. First, I'll explain my experience making an announcer with a well known voice actor.



-------------------------------------------------------



So two years ago, I was living with my parents. I had spent the last year and a half saving for Film School that I eventually couldn't afford after getting two separate scholarships and taking out multiple loans. At that point getting in mountains of debt to get into a very stable screenwriting career wasn't worth it.



To save up for film school, I got a job at a hotel doing Valet during night-shift. Apart from becoming a vampire, I really enjoyed the job, mostly because I could actually have free time to watch movies, browse the web, and even get in a game of Dota 2 on my laptop, once it was past 2 am. Trust me, there was no-one who checked in or wanted their car at that time.



It was there were I met Earl Alexander, known for voicing Louis from the game Left 4 Dead. He was working as the concierge at the hotel I was working at. Funny enough, his status as an iconic video game character went relatively unknown aside from the one or two hotel guests who recognized him. When one of the other valets mentioned who he voiced, I went full fanboy. I played Left 4 Dead feverishly and always picked Louis. We started talking, took a picture that got me to the front page of reddit on my old /u/Kendomo account, and the more and more we talked the better friends we became.



Earl and I hung out pretty consistently after that. He wanted to explore what the internet can offer for him. He didn't know much about tech, social media, and the internet in general. Then there was me who cared about reddit karma; in the end It was a natural fit. We did a reddit AMA, boosted his site, made a facebook, and even got him into RTX, a video game convention in Austin Texas. It was inevitable that with the mix of his voice acting talent and my love of Dota to try and finish one of the hardest pieces of Dota 2 content to make, an announcer.







At the time there was pretty much only the Dr.Breen and Pirate announcer pack, as well as very little documentation on how to create your own. I decided we could give it a shot. We started as soon as we can and our plan was to eventually submit it to the workshop. For months, me and earl sat in his apartment recording lines. I would be on my laptop writing and explaining, while he recorded lines literally in his closet. Some days I sent him lines, most of the time I had to be there to really explain the context of what he was saying. It was alot of work not just recording but also organizing all the files. In the end we completed 90% of the lines when I made a mistake I would later regret.



One day my friend who worked at valve invited me to an advanced screening of "Free-to-Play". They needed "testers" to give them detail on how the movie looked. After the screening I asked one of the employees about my announcer pack. They told me to email another employee, who then emailed me about another employee in charge of voice/workshop content. I sent him some of our announcer, and he explained to me the situation.



First of all, we (mostly me) had tried and take a character they owned (not saying which one) to then make custom content that they themselves had to approve. I pretty much was telling them, we did the work for you. If you know Valve than you would understand why, out of all the companies, they would not like this. Second of all, we had grossly misjudged the quality of our recording equipment. I believe we had a pretty good Blue microphone, but the recording equipment and setting was not up to standard. Even if we could re-name the announcer as the "Earl Alexander" announcer, the quality of the voice clips probably would not pass.



So this announcer that me and Earl worked on for months, was dead in the water. I had tried to resurrect it later in the year by releasing the "mega kills" announcer onto the workshop, but to no avail. At this point I had lost my job at the Hotel, and had been very tired of living with my parents in a city an hour away from Seattle. Also at this point I was still tying to get over never going to my dream film school. I needed to get out, move out of my parents place, and just experience being young and independent.







So I moved to Seattle with three of my best high school friends, and another soon to be very good friend. It was a bit rocky at first, moving out while unemployed, but I had saved up a fair bit of cash and decided to just go job searching when I moved. I eventually did find a job working at a local Safeway deli, but I always wanted to do more. Eventually I did what any young gamer who worked a dead end job try to do, make money while streaming/playing video games.

It was my year plan after I attended Ti3, that I would try to make gaming my career. I even made a more ridiculous goal of getting invited to Ti4 as an analyst.



So for a couple of months after I moved in I just worked at Safeway, played dota, thought about writing guides while never writing them, and streamed at very inconsistent times. As you can tell none of this took off. In all honesty, I was just enjoying my time being 21 and living away from his parents. Hanging with friends, drinking, partying, and slowly starting to hate the dead-end job I had.



It wasn't until the later months of my first year alone where I found a niche market waiting to be explored. Dota 2 Coaching. At this point I knew I wanted to be more involved in Dota 2, but also needed a good way to make money. Coaching was a thing, but coaching people other than your friends wasn’t a highly explored area yet. The only place to really find students was reddit. /r/dota2tutor was where I would start.



Continued in Part 2: Coaching is "Fun"



If you want to hear parts of the Earl Alexander announcer pack email me at franco.duerme@gmail.com. I don't really know how to share the full thing easily since it's over 4 gigs. Any suggestions would be great.



Follow me:

Twitch.tv/ken_domo

Twitter: @FDuerme

Facebook.com/FrancoKendomo



As I am writing this from my hospital bed in Seattle (not when I'm posting this). Many of you have read my story through the top page of /r/dota2. My name is Franco Duerme, and I have being playing Dota 2 for 4 years now, am 23 years old, and currently diagnosed with Cancer, Lymphoma specifically. You can see my journey through the past year here The past week has been pretty crazy. I posted on /r/dota the day I entered the hospital and immediately reached one of the top posts on the subreddit, and reaching the 2nd page of /r/all. The same day, I would receive messages from Valve employees, top players, a team manager, PC gaming industry employees, and also just regular Dota 2 fans wishing me well as well as inquiring about sending me gifts. Days later, after 2 rounds of chemo and 3 days of radiation treatment, I would then meet Cloud 9, one of the teams that went for the 6 million.There is no words that can describe my gratitude towards the Dota 2 community as a whole. Cancer is really a deadly disease that, at this point, has many ways to treat and even cure. Although things may look good for me getting rid of this disease, I need to suffer through whatever my doctors try to fight this with. Usually if they punch the disease hard, I also get punched very hard in the process.So, I am here to not only thank the Dota 2 community as a whole but also explain and elaborate on my journey through Cancer, as well as explain why Dota 2 has a bigger part of my story than one might think. First, I'll explain my experience making an announcer with a well known voice actor.-------------------------------------------------------So two years ago, I was living with my parents. I had spent the last year and a half saving for Film School that I eventually couldn't afford after getting two separate scholarships and taking out multiple loans. At that point getting in mountains of debt to get into astable screenwriting career wasn't worth it.To save up for film school, I got a job at a hotel doing Valet during night-shift. Apart from becoming a vampire, I really enjoyed the job, mostly because I could actually have free time to watch movies, browse the web, and even get in a game of Dota 2 on my laptop, once it was past 2 am. Trust me, there was no-one who checked in or wanted their car at that time.It was there were I met Earl Alexander, known for voicing Louis from the game Left 4 Dead. He was working as the concierge at the hotel I was working at. Funny enough, his status as an iconic video game character went relatively unknown aside from the one or two hotel guests who recognized him. When one of the other valets mentioned who he voiced, I went full fanboy. I played Left 4 Dead feverishly and always picked Louis. We started talking, took a picture that got me to the front page of reddit on my old /u/Kendomo account, and the more and more we talked the better friends we became.Earl and I hung out pretty consistently after that. He wanted to explore what the internet can offer for him. He didn't know much about tech, social media, and the internet in general. Then there was me who cared about reddit karma; in the end It was a natural fit. We did a reddit AMA, boosted his site, made a facebook, and even got him into RTX, a video game convention in Austin Texas. It was inevitable that with the mix of his voice acting talent and my love of Dota to try and finish one of the hardest pieces of Dota 2 content to make, an announcer.At the time there was pretty much only the Dr.Breen and Pirate announcer pack, as well as very little documentation on how to create your own. I decided we could give it a shot. We started as soon as we can and our plan was to eventually submit it to the workshop. For months, me and earl sat in his apartment recording lines. I would be on my laptop writing and explaining, while he recorded lines literally in his closet. Some days I sent him lines, most of the time I had to be there to really explain the context of what he was saying. It was alot of work not just recording but also organizing all the files. In the end we completed 90% of the lines when I made a mistake I would later regret.One day my friend who worked at valve invited me to an advanced screening of "Free-to-Play". They needed "testers" to give them detail on how the movie looked. After the screening I asked one of the employees about my announcer pack. They told me to email another employee, who then emailed me about another employee in charge of voice/workshop content. I sent him some of our announcer, and he explained to me the situation.First of all, we (mostly me) had tried and take a character they owned (not saying which one) to then make custom content that they themselves had to approve. I pretty much was telling them, we did the work for you. If you know Valve than you would understand why, out of all the companies, they would not like this. Second of all, we had grossly misjudged the quality of our recording equipment. I believe we had a pretty good Blue microphone, but the recording equipment and setting was not up to standard. Even if we could re-name the announcer as the "Earl Alexander" announcer, the quality of the voice clips probably would not pass.So this announcer that me and Earl worked on for months, was dead in the water. I had tried to resurrect it later in the year by releasing the "mega kills" announcer onto the workshop, but to no avail. At this point I had lost my job at the Hotel, and had been very tired of living with my parents in a city an hour away from Seattle. Also at this point I was still tying to get over never going to my dream film school. I needed to get out, move out of my parents place, and just experience being young and independent.So I moved to Seattle with three of my best high school friends, and another soon to be very good friend. It was a bit rocky at first, moving out while unemployed, but I had saved up a fair bit of cash and decided to just go job searching when I moved. I eventually did find a job working at a local Safeway deli, but I always wanted to do more. Eventually I did what any young gamer who worked a dead end job try to do, make money while streaming/playing video games.It was my year plan after I attended Ti3, that I would try to make gaming my career. I even made a more ridiculous goal of getting invited to Ti4 as an analyst.So for a couple of months after I moved in I just worked at Safeway, played dota, thought about writing guides while never writing them, and streamed at very inconsistent times. As you can tell none of this took off. In all honesty, I was just enjoying my time being 21 and living away from his parents. Hanging with friends, drinking, partying, and slowly starting to hate the dead-end job I had.It wasn't until the later months of my first year alone where I found a niche market waiting to be explored. Dota 2 Coaching. At this point I knew I wanted to be more involved in Dota 2, but also needed a good way to make money. Coaching was a thing, but coaching people other than your friends wasn’t a highly explored area yet. The only place to really find students was reddit. /r/dota2tutor was where I would start.If you want to hear parts of the Earl Alexander announcer pack email me at franco.duerme@gmail.com. I don't really know how to share the full thing easily since it's over 4 gigs. Any suggestions would be great.Twitch.tv/ken_domoTwitter: @FDuermeFacebook.com/FrancoKendomo Surviving cancer so I can play more Dotes