I know. That hand control, even if demonstrated live, wouldn’t be much of a show. Something different is in schedule for Sunday, and they are confident enough to invite guests to watch as well as stream their event on their Twitch channel starting 12.30pm Pacific Time.

OpenAI, with the AI they call OpenAI Five, will play a five-on-five competitive game against well-known human experts on the game. The game, Dota 2, is arguably the most complex esport of all time. It is not a button-mashing contest, nor a slow-paced electronic board game. Dota 2 is a multiplayer online battle arena, and the arena is so huge that figuring out where to go and forecasting where the opponents will go are key aspects to win the game.

When we compare the hand control above and competing against experts, OpenAI Five might look like it is about to bite way more than it can chew. OpenAI haven’t released a full match with OpenAI Five yet, but they have released highlights and their AI seem really good. In fact, a survey showed there are more people who think OpenAI Five will win in the upcoming match.

Learn just enough of Dota 2 to understand the demonstration

If you are not used to playing Dota 2, you might think watching it would be a waste of time. You don’t need to understand in-trend strategies and other complicated aspects of the game to observe OpenAI Five. What you want to focus on is what the AI-controlled heroes do together and guess why they are doing that. The casters will help you with the difficult-to-understand parts of the game.

I gave explaining “just enough” a shot below. Good luck!

Game basics

There are two teams in a game. Bottom left is the Radiant team, top right is the Dire team. The victory condition in this game is to destroy the opposing team’s ancient building, which is the biggest and the farthermost building.

Heroes start stupid and poor. They need experience to learn skills and gold to buy items. The stronger heroes get, the easier it is for them to destroy buildings, and the faster they get stronger compared to heroes from the opposing team, the more likely it is for the former to win the game.

Green squares are Radiant team’s buildings, Red squares are Dire’s. Buildings outside of bases are towers. Towers are dangerous because they can hit non-allied units within range and they hit hard.

Towers are located in lanes. There are three lanes: top, middle and bottom. The image above, especially the tower locations, should give you an idea of where the lanes are. Every 30 seconds, non-player-controlled allied units spawn from your base and walk on the three lanes until they see non-allied units and try to fight them. These units are called creeps, and they are much weaker than the player-controlled heroes.

The tower position in middle lane is similar for Radiant and Dire, but not in top lane and bottom lane. Radiant’s outermost tower in the bottom lane almost reaches the end of the map, but the outermost tower in the top lane is just a little more than halfway. This makes bottom lane is safer for Radiant because spawned creeps from the two teams meet closer to the Radiant tower. The opposite goes for Dire. For that team, top lane is the safelane while bottom lane is the offlane. A common early game strategy is to try to dominate in safelane and midlane and win the laning stage at least 2:1.

Jungles occupy the area between lanes. Heroes can roam the map and wander inside jungles where they will hunt or be hunted by the opposing team.

There is no set time when heroes are supposed to stop laning. Teams can decide to group up and hunt opposing heroes or destroy buildings anytime they want. Different lineups are strong in different stages of the game and teams will be aggressive at the times when they are better fighters.

Shadow Fiend, Sniper, Viper, Gyrocopter, Razor, Sven

These are the names of carry heroes. What carries need to do starting from the beginning of the game is farm in lane. Farming is done by executing the last-hit to kill a non-allied unit. Reward for getting the last-hit is gold, and you can use the gold to buy items that strengthen your hero. Continuous success in doing this should result in the carry heroes getting strong enough to defeat opposing units and create opportunities to destroy buildings.

There are also neutral creeps in jungles and heroes can farm there as well, but they are less rewarding. Usually, the reason carries farm in jungles instead of lanes is due to the fear of getting attacked by the opponents.

Crystal Maiden, Lion, Witch Doctor, Lich

These four are support heroes. Support heroes generally aren’t picked for their damage, they are picked to secure farm for allied carries and prevent opposing carries from farming. Lion can disable opponents from doing anything from a short period of time. Lich can strengthen its allies. Crystal Maiden and Witch Doctor can do both.

Interestingly, these heroes’ ultimate skills are threatening damage spells. Heroes have four skills and one of them are the ultimate skills. Thanks to those spells, these heroes can be the hero to watch out for even in the late game.

Wards are generally purchased and placed by supports. The reasons are because carries should be busy farming and poorer heroes have lower gold bounties, so the opposing team wouldn’t get too much profit if the ward placer got caught.

Axe, Tidehunter, Earthshaker

Traditionally, some heroes are categorized as offlane heroes. They stay in the offlane, get outnumbered and bullied by the opposing team’s carry and support in lane, and their priority is to somehow still survive and gain experience. Unlike earning gold, standing near to dying non-allied units give you experience, no matter you got the last hit or not.

Recently, game changes make having three carries and no offlaners viable in the competitive scene. It is sometimes better to pick another carry that is really strong in the laning phase. Therefore, offlaners aren’t a necessity anymore. They do still get picked though, and they offer something different.

Offlaners are generally heroes who start or enter fights first. They have spells that help their teammates enter fights with less risk of being bombarded by the opposing team.

These heroes can cast mass disables to non-allied units near them. They don’t have spells to help them get close to opposing units quickly, but they usually buy an item that grants them the ability to do short-distance teleportation.

Earthshaker is a special mention. This hero has three disables and one of them has a long range. Earthshaker can be an offlaner, but he is used more often as a support to catch opponents in the early stage of the game thanks to the long range disable.

Queen of Pain, Death Prophet, Necrophos

The first group of carries rely a lot on normal attacks to deal damage and their spells are practically damage-dealing spells, but this group of carries is unique. They rely less on their normal attacks and rely more on their skill sets.

Queen of Pain has a short-range teleportation spell and her damage spells hurt a lot. She often leaves the lane earlier than other carries to roam and hunt opposing heroes.

Death Prophet is good at destroying buildings. In addition to two simpler damage spells, this hero is also capable of silencing all opposing heroes in an area so they can’t use spells, and summoning a battalion of immortal ghosts that can attack units and buildings.

Necrophos has a spell that both heals allies and deal damage to opposing units near him. His ultimate skill can execute opposing heroes by dealing damage according to how many health those heroes have already lost.

Riki, Slark

The last two available heroes for the demonstration are the two with the most interesting mechanics. Riki has permanent invisibility and only reveals himself for a short time when he attacks. There are items to reveal invisible units, but they are not free, so the opposing team can’t use those items recklessly. Human players usually use Riki as a support that can surprise opponents and his silencing spell is good at preventing his opponents from fighting back.

Slark’s ultimate skill is to disappear for a while and not reveal himself no matter what he does. During this period, there will be smokey visuals to tell everyone where this hero is, but there is zero way to reveal this hero so normal attacks or targeted spells don’t work towards him. Area effect spells can still hit him, but besides that, all the opposing team can do is to wait or run. Another skill this hero can cast is leaping to the front and if he lands to an opposing hero, that hero will be tied and unable to go away for a short time. Not only that, Slark can also cleanse himself from negative effects such as disables. All of these make Slark a scary carry who can single-handedly catch and slay opponents.

Defensive items are epic

Defensive items in this game are not limited to increasing heroes’ durability. Besides an item that grants invisibility which you might have predicted by now, there is also an item that grants immunity from spells, an item that grants permanent evasion, an item that pushes you or allied heroes out of the way, an item that reflects damage, and many other items with strong defensive effects. They are necessary due to the insane amount of damage heroes can deal and the disparity between carries and supports. Near the end of the game, it is not uncommon for Sven to be able to kill supports in two seconds. Wealth and item choices are vital in this game.

Imagine the future

I don’t know if you are excited, but I know this is big. Someone famous convinced me.

There was a lot of doubt whether AI can really replace humans’ work. It definitely won’t be able to replace humans at everything, but recently I think it will be able to do more than I thought it could. Practice makes perfect, and OpenAI Five made it this far not because AI is already smarter than humans, it is because it practices the equivalent of ~180 years a day. Strong computers allow OpenAI Five to be a hard worker, and it probably shouldn’t be underestimated.

I wonder when artificial intelligence will start composing and publishing news articles.