Can DOTA 2’s aging professionals perform as well as their younger competition?

Puppey (above) has competed at every International for the past 8 years.

When Roshan spawned for the very first time in April 2004, one of this year’s TI8 champions, OG.Ana, was 4 years old. Secret.Puppey (above), who led his team to a 5th — 6th place finish this year, had just turned 14.

The youngest TI8 player was paiN.Duster (18). The oldest was VG.Fenrir (29).

No matter how you look at it, everything about esports is young. In most of the world, the ability to earn a living playing video games has just begun.

Unlike most traditional sports, esports don’t appear to involve significant physical wear on the body. For this reason, extensive training is technically possible for people of most ages. However, evidence suggests that mental response times, which are crucial for competitive gaming, slow down measurably around the age of 24.

“Everything about esports is young”

Very little is known regarding how aging impacts the performance of competitive gaming professionals. The fact that most esports pros are young could be explained by recognizing that children have vastly more expendable time than adults in general, and that most people who are adults today didn’t have access to competitive online gaming in their youth.

However, the question remains. For the first time ever, the team at STRATZ is able to offer an analysis of player performance by age using data from the players who competed at The International 2018.

Over 40% of TI8 players were between the ages of 21 and 23

The question of how to measure the performance of individuals on teams can be very difficult. For example, it’s almost never true that the best teams contain all of the best players in a competition. Rather, the players are collectively the best, which generally results in their victory.

At Stratz.com, we use custom algorithms paired with artificial intelligence to assess Individual Match Performance (IMP). By comparing every second of every DOTA 2 match played in the world, our systems are able to calculate and weigh the most important variables for every combination of hero, lane, and role in every skill bracket, for any time of any match.

Every second of every DOTA 2 match played in the world

The IMP is the result of turning this complex analysis into a number that’s easily understood. An exactly average performance will earn an IMP score of 100, while a performance that’s 30% better (and therefore, more likely to win) than average will earn an IMP score of 130. This is true regardless of whether a player is Herald or a top professional Immortal — they’re always compared against similar players.

In order to get a good measure of the IMP of each player at TI8, we took all of their last 100 league matches, and looked at the average score. Here’s what we found:

Not a good sign for the aging pros

Looking at the graph above, it appears clear that a DOTA 2 player’s ability to perform decreases as they age through their 20s. Can the news really be that unfortunate for aging players?

Determined to make sure that our results were really as foreboding as they appeared before publishing our findings, we thought about what outside factors might be contributing.

It occurred to us that team captains are often the oldest, and also tend to play position 5. For those who don’t know, positions in DOTA 2 are effectively indicators of farm priority by hero, with 1 being the highest priority, and 5 being the lowest.

The youngest players are often Position 2, with the oldest often Position 5

Curious at these findings, we decided to break down the average IMP by position, to see if there was something skewing our results.

UPDATE: Resolut1on was originally listed as position 2 in our data, but has been updated as a position 1 player.

Were position 4 and 5 players really underperforming so badly at TI8?

After seeing the graph above, we knew something wasn’t right. The best players in the world were in peak shape going into TI8; it seemed extremely unlikely that players like EG.Fly, Secret.Puppey and LGD.xNova had been averaging significantly lesser performances than other high ranked support players.

The truth wasn’t difficult to uncover. Our systems compare all available matches where players of equal ladder skill ratings compete, and don’t differentiate between professional league matches and top-rated Immortal ranked matches. It’s not surprising that a pro who’s focused on maximizing his/her effectiveness as a position 5 will play differently than a generic Immortal support player.

Thankfully, we found a short term solution. Since there were 18 players for every position at TI8, we can normalize the data we showed above by each position’s average IMP, and then check again for variations by age. This way, we can see how players’ ages might be associated with their performance.

Position 1 players range widely in age

Age still appears to be somewhat of a factor, but not quite so linear

OG.ana (18) skews this graph by having the highest average IMP of any TI8 players over his last 100 league matches with a massive 128!

VP.RAMZES666 (19) averaged an extremely impressive 121.

VGJ.Storm’s Resolut1on (21) took third with an average 117 IMP.

iG.Agressif (26) wasn’t far behind in fourth place with a strong 112, proving that an older player can perform very well as position 1 in league matches.

Fnatic.EternaL.EnVy (27) earned an 86, the lowest average for position 1 players.

No Position 2 players were older than 23 at TI8

Age appears to factor in differently for Position 2 players

Winstrike.Iceberg (21) tops the chart with an averaged 115.

Liquid.Miracle- (21) was close behind at 114.

EG.SumaiL (19) took third with 112.

Optic.CC&C (19) came in last with an average IMP of 97.

Position 3 players come in most ages

Well this is different

Fnatic.UNiVeRsE (28) and Mineski.iceiceice (28) are here to give hope to the aging gaming population!

UNiVeRsE took the top spot for position 3 players with a 115 average IMP, while iceiceice took 112.

Team Serenity’s XinQ (20) took second with 114, while Liquid.MinD_ContRoL (23) averaged a 113.

VG.eLeVeN (22) and paiN Gaming’s Tavo (23) tied for last with 98.

Position 4 seems to favor the middle ground

The younger position 4 players seem to have the edge

Secret.YapzOr (23) blew away the competition at position 4 with an average IMP of 116 over his last 100 league matches.

His only competition comes from LGD.fy (23) with a 112. Third place goes to iG.BoBoKa (21) with a very nice 106.

paiN Gaming’s Kingrd (26) averaged the lowest with 90.

Almost all position 5 players were above the average age at TI8

There’s no clear cut winner regarding age for position 5s

Only two position 5 players managed to average above 100 IMP in their last 100 league matches: iG.Q (25) with 103, and VGJ.Storm’s SVG with 101. VP.Solo (28) took third with 99.

Last place in the position 5 slot went to Optic.ppd (26), with an 83 average.

Conclusion

DOTA 2 players are young. The oldest player (VG.Fenrir) in TI8 was 29 years old. Two of the best offlaners in the tournament were 28 years old, while the best performing player in the entire tournament (and therefore, in all likelihood, the world), OG.ana, is 18 years old.

It’s clear that teams favor young position 2 players, with the oldest being 23 (Mineski.moon). It’s equally clear that most teams prefer a more experienced player for their position 5. Other positions seem to discriminate less because of players’ age.

Ultimately, DOTA 2 is currently an esport dominated by players who are in their first decade of adulthood. It’s unlikely that older players will emerge as being world class, as very few are in a position to invest anywhere near as much time into gaming as their more youthful competition. Still, the data proves that players can continue to be dominant into their late 20s. Only time will tell if that remains true for players who’ve entered into their 30s.

Eric Phy

Find me on Discord at STRATZ