Kendomo Profile Joined July 2015 United States 4 Posts Last Edited: 2015-09-01 15:51:03 #1



After moving to Seattle I tried to do many things to get more involved in the Dota 2 community, and coaching was one of the more successful pursuits. Unfortunately, it was a rocky road.



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



It was a slow start, and my 3.7k MMR didn’t help draw in students. I did cast some games in a small tournament ran by the now defunct Ducksoup Gaming (which is now Going Ham Gaming), where me and my co-caster garnered a good response on our commentary and insight. So I knew that I could, at the very least, gather my thoughts well. I just needed apply that to actively teaching a player. So I started gathering students by coaching for free, accepting literally anyone from any time zone. I had coached a handful of students within a month of starting and had garnered a good response. Many people that I coached were people who lagged behind in their group, and were looking for someone to just explain to them what they were doing wrong.



Figuring out how to teach, how to relay information, while your student is playing a game was the first hurdle. My structure at the beginning would simply party up with the student, be that students in-game coach, and then just guide them. It worked with a couple of sessions and the biggest compliment I had gotten was my ability to constantly remind a student of the abilities and items that were off cool-down. You could usually hear me scream “FORCE STAFF!” when a student is stunned.







At one point I realized that I wanted to keep the sessions around an hour, but just in-gaming coaching one game didn’t teach my students enough of the small things that you can apply to every game and every role. So I gave them a choice of 3 different session types, In-game coaching, a crash course, or replay analysis. In the end crash courses were the best way to teach people of the small things. I gave advice on line of site, positioning, warding, and counter-playing. It was the easiest way to figure our what a player knows and what he wants to learn, compared to just jumping straight into a game without any prior knowledge of what the student was like. Replay analysis did well too, but was a bit harder to pull off. It required the students to watch my twitch stream, with a 20 second delay. It was also the most underdeveloped, and I ended up talking only about laning for the majority of the session. I literally started doing hard math on each and every ability use, calculating damage.



I was very intent on creating a business out of this, I just needed to put in the time and effort to truly succeed. I decided to develop a system, creating a steam group, a custom email, and even opening up donations. This project unfortunately fit the natural cycle of many of my ambitions. I would start to fantasize about a project, think about the amazing outcomes it could bring, talk about the possibilities, try to reach those possibilities usually having a great start, but ultimately fail or give up in some way. My attempts at film school and Dota announcer seem to follow this pattern, an in some ways coaching did the same.



Things were flourishing, and good reviews of my service were being posted. Even though I had a couple bad sessions (don’t schedule people in Asia when you are on the west coast), I had a lot of people who told me stories of how they won their next dozen games because of my advice. I even made money and got some in-game item donations. I had things ready to really push things further, so much so that I just wanted to dedicated all my time to it. I requested less hours at my Safeway job thinking that I could just make up my rent money getting donations. Unfortunately for me, when running a business there is one thing you dread, competition.







When posting on /r/dotatutor I suddenly saw an influx of comments on all "looking for coach" thread, something a bit strange since every thread increased in comments. There was a user who was directing students and coaches to a new site, Dota2 Academy, and was posting on as many threads on the subreddit as possible in both "looking for coach" and "looking to coach" threads. I traveled to the site and wasn’t surprised at what I saw but was very lost trying to find a response. I probably overreacted, but I knew that this was threat to my business. People were going to be turned off from my service. My accomplishments weren’t that outstanding, and a single person going up against what seemed to be a group was an uphill battle. In the end I decided to just keep on doing what I was doing. The very next day Eli, the owner, messaged me about joining Dota 2 Academy. I soon realized things were going to get complicated.



The message I sent back was a passionate one.

“Your forcing me in a corner!”

“How can I compete against you.”

“Why would I regulate myself to your standards.”



All of which were pretty valid concerns, but were only responded back with confusion. His first message itself was just an inquiry, but was an inquiry in bad taste. He promised a lot, and thought that people would just willing join him. I had an internal struggle of what was morally right, and also morally good for business. In the end, I decided to join Dota Academy, mostly because I knew that there was a strong possibly of ending up in a “if I can’t beat em’ join em’” situation in the long run. I believed that making decision, instead of holding it off off, would lead to some progress.



It was another start, and another rough start. My student intake lowered, I was criticized about my coaching styles, and my overall attention was very split. There was a feeling that stuck with me when I was going through all the problems switching to a group; the feeling that if I fail, I have other people to help me and if I succeed then I help everyone else succeed. Optimism is one of my biggest strengths and biggest weaknesses. The the weeks carried on. I met new people and helped build an infrastructure for the coaching group. I tried to start a validation/testing process so the coaches we signed on were capable of coaching in the first place. I re-organized the “our coaches” page so more information on coaches were able to be seen. My need to build something respectable helped me get through working with people who didn’t really see my point of view, but the ability to compromise was a tool I already added to my repertoire. At the end of the day progress was being made, but sacrifices and mental pain were the scars that were being left.







Eli tried all he could to make something, but none of it was in the right direction. I was a bit happy that it wasn’t myself who was making the bad decisions, I wasn’t the one who was juggling five different balls, I was only juggling two. Coaches came and coaches went, but I kept busy trying to just be there for him, thinking it would pay off, but it was hard. Simple things like letting coaches schedule by e-mail was needlessly complicated with the addition of paid calendar software. Complicated things like assigning a business structure, company goals, student feedback, and customer data were never explored. I worked with Dota 2 Academy because I just outright believed that Dota coaching was a developing field that needed people dedicated to become successful. Eli was dedicated, but his mind wasn’t in the right place to manage a “crew” of coaches.



At one point we found new coaches who had higher MMR than me. I was outclassed and kicked off of coaching. There was a point where everyone stopped contacting Eli or just outright left the Academy. It was just me and him. I was basically #2. I stuck with him and tried to still build. I helped create a new site, find potential investors (which Eli declined because he thought the college student was going to “take over the site”), help organize coaches and students, and even streamed for 8 hours straight in the name of the site. After all of this it came down to just one day when expressed my opinion to add a list of top played heroes that each coach played, and he didn’t understand.



“Why do we need to change the site?”

“We don’t need to show information like that”

“You’re not a coach”

(not word-for-word what he said, but it felt far worse than this)



He had more important people to talk to. That was the last straw, and I put the gas pedal to the floor.



“After all that we’ve been through!”

“After all that I’ve done!”

“All the S%&T I had to put up with!”



It was over, I was done, all this work and it amounted to nothing. I hated the past two months that I wasted over the site, and despised the people that were “working” there. Worst of all, I had significantly less money, had bills to pay, and told my parents that I was transitioning into coaching as a job. I had to really reevaluate my life after this. I eventually quite my Safeway job and had an interview lined up as a bank teller.



In between the two jobs I had still had tickets to Ti4 that I needed to use. I was planning to go to Ti4 and represent Dota 2 Academy, instead I was just an attendee. My conversation I had with Purge after summed up my entire experience coaching in a group.



“There’s not enough people that’ll take it seriously”







It was a bittersweet end to something I gave my all to, but in the end I knew that I still wanted to make Dota 2 a career. No-matter what I would end up be doing, I would still be playing Dota 2 just because I didn't want to quit while I had already invested all of this time.



During Ti4 I started to notice something strange, my left leg started to cramp in a very intense manner. Walking and taking public transportation to my house on the other side of the city was one of the most excruciating experiences of my life. I took it off my mind thinking that it was just sitting on my wallet the entire tournament made things bad. Unfortunately it was something far worse



Continued in Part 3: Gaming Through Cancer



Follow me:

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Twitter: @FDuerme

Facebook.com/FrancoKendomo





This is part two of my ongoing blog, probably of three parts, recollecting the different projects I pursued before I got diagnosed with Caner. You can read part one here , and my original post on /r/dota2 here After moving to Seattle I tried to do many things to get more involved in the Dota 2 community, and coaching was one of the more successful pursuits. Unfortunately, it was a rocky road.-----------------------------------It was a slow start, and my 3.7k MMR didn’t help draw in students. I did cast some games in a small tournament ran by the now defunct Ducksoup Gaming (which is now Going Ham Gaming), where me and my co-caster garnered a good response on our commentary and insight. So I knew that I could, at the very least, gather my thoughts well. I just needed apply that to actively teaching a player. So I started gathering students by coaching for free, accepting literally anyone from any time zone. I had coached a handful of students within a month of starting and had garnered a good response. Many people that I coached were people who lagged behind in their group, and were looking for someone to just explain to them what they were doing wrong.Figuring out how to teach, how to relay information, while your student is playing a game was the first hurdle. My structure at the beginning would simply party up with the student, be that students in-game coach, and then just guide them. It worked with a couple of sessions and the biggest compliment I had gotten was my ability to constantly remind a student of the abilities and items that were off cool-down. You could usually hear me scream “FORCE STAFF!” when a student is stunned.At one point I realized that I wanted to keep the sessions around an hour, but just in-gaming coaching one game didn’t teach my students enough of the small things that you can apply to every game and every role. So I gave them a choice of 3 different session types, In-game coaching, a crash course, or replay analysis. In the end crash courses were the best way to teach people of the small things. I gave advice on line of site, positioning, warding, and counter-playing. It was the easiest way to figure our what a player knows and what he wants to learn, compared to just jumping straight into a game without any prior knowledge of what the student was like. Replay analysis did well too, but was a bit harder to pull off. It required the students to watch my twitch stream, with a 20 second delay. It was also the most underdeveloped, and I ended up talking only about laning for the majority of the session. I literally started doing hard math on each and every ability use, calculating damage.I was very intent on creating a business out of this, I just needed to put in the time and effort to truly succeed. I decided to develop a system, creating a steam group, a custom email, and even opening up donations. This project unfortunately fit the natural cycle of many of my ambitions. I would start to fantasize about a project, think about the amazing outcomes it could bring, talk about the possibilities, try to reach those possibilities usually having a great start, but ultimately fail or give up in some way. My attempts at film school and Dota announcer seem to follow this pattern, an in some ways coaching did the same.Things were flourishing, and good reviews of my service were being posted. Even though I had a couple bad sessions (don’t schedule people in Asia when you are on the west coast), I had a lot of people who told me stories of how they won their next dozen games because of my advice. I even made money and got some in-game item donations. I had things ready to really push things further, so much so that I just wanted to dedicated all my time to it. I requested less hours at my Safeway job thinking that I could just make up my rent money getting donations. Unfortunately for me, when running a business there is one thing you dread, competition.When posting on /r/dotatutor I suddenly saw an influx of comments on all "looking for coach" thread, something a bit strange sincethread increased in comments. There was a user who was directing students and coaches to a new site, Dota2 Academy, and was posting on as many threads on the subreddit as possible in both "looking for coach" and "looking to coach" threads. I traveled to the site and wasn’t surprised at what I saw but was very lost trying to find a response. I probably overreacted, but I knew that this was threat to my business. People were going to be turned off from my service. My accomplishments weren’t that outstanding, and a single person going up against what seemed to be a group was an uphill battle. In the end I decided to just keep on doing what I was doing. The very next day Eli, the owner, messaged me about joining Dota 2 Academy. I soon realized things were going to get complicated.The message I sent back was a passionate one.“Your forcing me in a corner!”“How can I compete against you.”“Why would I regulate myself to your standards.”All of which were pretty valid concerns, but were only responded back with confusion. His first message itself was just an inquiry, but was an inquiry in bad taste. He promised a lot, and thought that people would just willing join him. I had an internal struggle of what was morally right, and also morally good for business. In the end, I decided to join Dota Academy, mostly because I knew that there was a strong possibly of ending up in a “if I can’t beat em’ join em’” situation in the long run. I believed that making decision, instead of holding it off off, would lead to some progress.It was another start, and another rough start. My student intake lowered, I was criticized about my coaching styles, and my overall attention was very split. There was a feeling that stuck with me when I was going through all the problems switching to a group; the feeling that if I fail, I have other people to help me and if I succeed then I help everyone else succeed. Optimism is one of my biggest strengths and biggest weaknesses. The the weeks carried on. I met new people and helped build an infrastructure for the coaching group. I tried to start a validation/testing process so the coaches we signed on were capable of coaching in the first place. I re-organized the “our coaches” page so more information on coaches were able to be seen. My need to build something respectable helped me get through working with people who didn’t really see my point of view, but the ability to compromise was a tool I already added to my repertoire. At the end of the day progress was being made, but sacrifices and mental pain were the scars that were being left.Eli tried all he could to make something, but none of it was in the right direction. I was a bit happy that it wasn’t myself who was making the bad decisions, I wasn’t the one who was juggling five different balls, I was only juggling two. Coaches came and coaches went, but I kept busy trying to just be there for him, thinking it would pay off, but it was hard. Simple things like letting coaches schedule by e-mail was needlessly complicated with the addition of paid calendar software. Complicated things like assigning a business structure, company goals, student feedback, and customer data were never explored. I worked with Dota 2 Academy because I just outright believed that Dota coaching was a developing field that needed people dedicated to become successful. Eli was dedicated, but his mind wasn’t in the right place to manage a “crew” of coaches.At one point we found new coaches who had higher MMR than me. I was outclassed and kicked off of coaching. There was a point where everyone stopped contacting Eli or just outright left the Academy. It was just me and him. I was basically #2. I stuck with him and tried to still build. I helped create a new site, find potential investors (which Eli declined because he thought the college student was going to “take over the site”), help organize coaches and students, and even streamed for 8 hours straight in the name of the site. After all of this it came down to just one day when expressed my opinion to add a list of top played heroes that each coach played, and he didn’t understand.“Why do we need to change the site?”“We don’t need to show information like that”“You’re not a coach”(not word-for-word what he said, but it felt far worse than this)He had more important people to talk to. That was the last straw, and I put the gas pedal to the floor.“After all that we’ve been through!”“After all that I’ve done!”“All the S%&T I had to put up with!”It was over, I was done, all this work and it amounted to nothing. I hated the past two months that I wasted over the site, and despised the people that were “working” there. Worst of all, I had significantly less money, had bills to pay, and told my parents that I was transitioning into coaching as a job. I had to really reevaluate my life after this. I eventually quite my Safeway job and had an interview lined up as a bank teller.In between the two jobs I had still had tickets to Ti4 that I needed to use. I was planning to go to Ti4 and represent Dota 2 Academy, instead I was just an attendee. My conversation I had with Purge after summed up my entire experience coaching in a group.“There’s not enough people that’ll take it seriously”It was a bittersweet end to something I gave my all to, but in the end I knew that I still wanted to make Dota 2 a career. No-matter what I would end up be doing, I would still be playing Dota 2 just because I didn't want to quit while I had already invested all of this time.During Ti4 I started to notice something strange, my left leg started to cramp in a very intense manner. Walking and taking public transportation to my house on the other side of the city was one of the most excruciating experiences of my life. I took it off my mind thinking that it was just sitting on my wallet the entire tournament made things bad. Unfortunately it was something far worseContinued in Part 3: Gaming Through CancerTwitch.tv/ken_domoTwitter: @FDuermeFacebook.com/FrancoKendomo Surviving cancer so I can play more Dotes