In similar ways, I believe The International and Majors systems were setup looking to keep the competitive spirit of the tournament as pure and untainted as possible while looking to the community to support this dream. As a result, every TI has been the largest prize pools esports has ever seen and the Majors are easily the most important tournaments outside of the International.

Much like the creation of Dota itself, I think Valve has ignored what the rest of the esports scene has done and focused on what they believe is the correct system to have. To expand on that, League of Legends had a freemium model that Dota easily could’ve followed, but they attempted to keep the purity of the game intact while making money off of everything else surrounding it.

As impressive as they are [TI/Majors], they’re not exactly ideal for the sustainable growth of the supporting cast of Dota.

Every tournament organizer, caster, admin, etc probably has something negative to say about Valve’s tournaments. But, while esports is in its infancy, we’re all still learning and redefining how this genre of entertainment should look and no current esports system is ideal.

I remember staying up late to watch the first International with my cousin. See, at the time, no one in America knew what Dota was. At least, not that I knew of. Explaining wasn’t exactly easy either.

“So you play Warcraft III?”

“No, I play another game inside of Warcraft III called Dota!”

“Huh?”



Of the very few exchanges I had about Dota in those days, they were all pretty much like that.

So this weird, game inside of a game was finally becoming a AAA release and The International was it’s coming-out party. I was so excited to see the game that I loved, the game that I had casted and played scrims and followed competitively for all of my adolescent life, turn into something real and tangible.

But all that excitement and passion for the game in that moment doesn’t instantly give you the connections to start playing & learning Dota with the best. It doesn’t jumpstart your career in commentating, giving you the opportunity to cast for thousands. So, given that esports wasn’t really much of a thing and very, very few were making a living from it, it stayed as a passionate hobby. I fit my play times and casting times between my jobs and military duties. I used my vacation time for TI’s, since it was in my neighborhood anyway and I was lucky enough that my military duties never overlapped with it either.

I attended TI’s, I worked as press and casted for various organizations that were doomed for failure. I got by like many other people on Reddit do, tasting a bit of the esports life here and there by watching or playing games but knowing I’d never be a part of it. One of those times, I was watching Toby casting a game solo while talking to my friend Chappy.

I mentioned to him that I didn’t understand how someone as popular as Toby couldn’t get a co-caster for the game (I later became all too familiar with that problem). He asked me why didn’t I co-cast with him. I told him I didn’t really know Toby, I contacted him once long time ago in the Dota days, but I didn’t really know the guy. Chappy insisted that he could get me in and contacted Toby on my behalf. Next day, Toby hit me up for co-casting and that’s where I made my broader debut.

After a little trial and error, I learned about how to become a co-caster over the PbP that I was used to doing, and I became a regular on the stream. I knew how rare an opportunity this was, so I worked every single cast I could.

Even if it didn’t pay, it didn’t matter because I loved doing it and the exposure couldn’t hurt. Then late one night, I was working a 16 hour shift at the paper mill. I was exhausted and reclining in my forklift, listening to music while I talked to Toby on Skype. Out of nowhere, he asked if I’d ever be interested in a job and moving to Germany.