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Valve's Dota 2 documentary Free To Play tells the stories of three professional gamers -- Danil "Dendi" Ishutin from Ukraine, Benedict "HyHy" Lim from Singapore and Clinton "Fear" Loomis from the USA -- as they compete for their share of a $1 million (£600,000) prize at Valve's first annual Dota 2 tournament, The International.

Free To Play premiered during The International 3 back in August 2013 after a couple of months of beta screenings and it has been waiting for a general release ever since. If you'd prefer to watch spoiler free, just know that it offers a fascinating and humanising insight into the world of eSports. Alternatively, read on.


The movie tends to focus on the three players and what drives them as well as offering background and context from eSports experts. You won't be receiving a Dota 2 masterclass.

Viewers are instead offered just enough of the basics to get an overview of the game's premise: it's a 5v5 game where the idea is to build up more momentum than the enemy team in order to cross a map and destroy a gigantic building called the Ancient (Dota originating as an acronym for Defence of the Ancients).

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In terms of individual stories, the featured players showcase a variety of the issues facing or driving pro-gamers. Dendi's narrative revolves around his relationships with his family and positions gaming as one of the ways of coping with grief; Fear is forced to keep an erratic schedule to play on a team who are based in a completely different timezone and eventually his mother kicks him out; HyHy's academic grades are taking a huge hit thanks to the time requirement of his gaming but his Dota 2 habit is also tied to his efforts to win his ex-girlfriend back.

The movie isn't schmaltzy, nor is it dismissive of the parents who are worried about their children's chosen career. HyHy's father wants a better life for his son than he managed, while Fear's mother reasonably points out that there hadn't been a precedent for earning money by playing games -- "I don't know anybody who's made a living out of gaming so it's kind of a scary thing when you see your kid putting their whole life into gaming, not college and not the traditional things. What if nothing comes of it?".


In between the personal stories, the movie is at pains to draw parallels with other, more traditional sports, treating Dota 2 as part of a continuum of competitive play rather than a digital oddity. It will be interesting, therefore, to see what sort of penetration the movie manages in terms of non-gaming audiences.

One of the interviewees is Jeremy Lin, an NBA player who also happens to love Dota. It's less of a meaningful gesture for a non-American audience but it demonstrates that gaming isn't the exclusive preserve of out-of-shape nerds hiding in their bedrooms for days on end. Commentator James "2GD" Harding also makes the point that parts of Asia already treat pro-gamers like celebrities and adds that Starcraft players were brought in to motivate one of the 2010 World Cup football teams because the football players viewed them as heroes.

The movie isn't perfect and viewers without a knowledge of the scene might struggle at points, particularly with some of the game footage as a couple of the fights simply appear chaotic rather than complex. Early in the documentary it's explained that players make calculations and deal with a great number of variables every second so dissecting a dramatic sequence or a skilful snippet of play might have helped convey that complexity in a more manageable form.


If you do know more about the game, you'll know the winners and losers in advance meaning some of the interviews can be jarring.

Above all, though, it's a movie which participates in, as well as documents, a tipping point. The movie is set largely in 2011 and over the last two years eSports and professional gaming have made real inroads in terms of being considered an occupation where they were previously often dismissed as a childish hobby.

At one point HyHy tells his aunt "It's tough being a gamer", but as pro-gamer Tammy Tang points out, acceptance is just a matter of time: "Changing mindsets is never easy so it's going to take a while but when the gamers now become parents we will be supportive of our kids playing and I think that's when everything will boom."