...by talking about him?
I’ve been talking about Crash since 2014 for smash for instance, even when he was not in vogue. I am the og Sephiroth supporter on here. Tons of people talk about characters against the grain of the times and sell them. I doubt Adol would be received as well if SharkLord did not write such a compelling case for him. Rie has done a lot of stuff to help Reimu’s case as well. By talking about Isaac and explaining why he’s likely...people will listen to your case. And if they don’t and he gets in, you get a lot of schadenfreude.
****, I've not done a proper Dota 2 write up when I perhaps should've. I know Eldrake's been the primary guy talking about that game, but damn it, I have a ****ing famous-within-Dota-2 Tagalog meme line in my sig. Here we go:
Since Dota (2) has its origins as a WC3 map / mod, it grew out of the WC3 Custom Map ecosystem. Its early days (2002-2006) were extremely chaotic before Dota All-Stars was developed, but already by 2006 it was the most popular custom map, and a lot of other custom maps took cues from Dota All-Stars - thus it became the definitive WC3 Custom map.
Several games arose during the 2000s - early 2010s seeking to solidify the formula. Some like LoL and SMITE would be here to stay. Others like HoN and Infinite Crisis would eventually fall apart. Blizzard was very interested in acquiring the Dota IP, but lost the rights to Valve after Valve offered Dota's main developer - IceFrog - more beneficial terms. This had significant effects on Blizzard down the line - not only through Heroes of the Storm, but also via the controversial clause in WC3 ReForged where Blizzard claimed the rights to new Custom Maps developed in ReForged.
Still, not only did Dota give rise to an entire genre - which its younger sibling LoL would later name "MOBA" - but it and its more famous sibling also helped the rise of several VoIP programs. Discord being a particularily noticeable example - which itself has impacted the Smash community because now a lot of Smash organizations and people interested in maining specific characters rely on Discord. Likewise, Dota 2's infamous rivalry with LoL helped Twitch become what it is today, which has indirectly impacted Smash itself.
If you ever wonder why Fortnite sported a $30 million prize pool for its world championship (2019), the reason is A) Dota 2's world championship - the International - initially sported $1,6 million in 2011, B) Riot one-upped Valve with $2 million in 2012, C) Valve decided to one-up Riot with a Battle Pass-esque Compendium introduced in 2013 (the third International) that functioned kinda like Kickstarter with skins and take back top spot with $2.8 million (and rising every year since). Riot's since used that model too, D) Years later - 2019 - Epic gave Fortnite its $30 million so they could claim Biggest E-Sports prize pool... E) only to see Valve crowdfund their way to $35 million.
Sure, Dota 2 does not have LoL's sheer popularity (due to it being way more complex than LoL, Valve failing somewhat to make it understandable to newcomers and Valve relying on Steam for its marketing) but it has retained a very large playerbase for years - in fact, it and CS GO have been the most played Steam games since 2012-ish. It's immensely impactful in several "non-traditional" countries. Russia, the Phillipines and Peru are particular hotbeds for the game, and Dota (alongside CS GO) are key reasons why Steam became very popular in Russia. Not Half Life, not TF 2, not Portal. Those two.
Dota 2's gotten its own map creator nowadays, which helped spawn another genre - the Auto Chess (which naturally both Valve and Riot have made games in). It feels a bit weird to say that the standalone Auto Chess game itself made its way over to the Switch sooner than Dota did, but it speaks to how far the tree and apples have spread in this case.
Dota 2's also been used in pioneering AI research akin to chess and Go, with OpenAI's team of machine-learned neural networks showcased in 2019.
The AI team played two games against the reigning world champions, and managed to win one of them. I should note that said reigning champs repeated their successes in 2019's International, Partly because the champion team is one of the goofiest teams out there.
While Dota's completely and utterly obscure in Japan (which is one of the biggest knocks against it) Japanese corps like Square-Enix and Capcom have shown interest in promoting its upcoming Steam releases through bundles released in Dota 2 (Final Fantasy Type 0 and Okami HD respectively). This is something Nintendo's completely uninterested in so far - my bet is that Steam would have to release on the Switch or future Nintendo consoles. And that's what I suspect is a primary reason for Valve's and Nintendo's lack of interaction: Steam and Nintendo have practically functioned as separate ecosystems.
But if the two start interacting more seriously, I wouldn't count out Dota, since it has a wide ranging impact on the industry itself.
As for Dota's characters, they vary wiildly - Dota has ca 120 characters, in the same ballpark as LoL's 150 - and all characters are balanced around the idea of a team game with some extremely disruptive spells, abilities and what not. There's a reason I've talked about "4 sec AoE stuns" a lot (and I haven't mentioned some of the jankier **** like Global Silence).
While there quite a few characters who are popular enough to be "frontrunners" going into detail here would take a bit more time, so I'll let
Eldrake do that. I've leaned towards the game's Lina (who's a living Slayers reference, yes. It would help overcome obscurity in Japan. Another reason is that she'd be relatively simple to implement) and the resident shape-shifting Water Elemental / nuke-level burst annoyance Morphling.
And honestly, I wouldn't mind an AT from this game if Gordon or Heavy appears in a future base game - while I'd obviously prefer a playable character, I'll take what I can get really.
Shout outs to Evil Trapezium for all the Cortez posting too.
Barely anyone else here would know Cortez even exists if not for the frequent posts.
I'm one of the very few that do know - having played 2 andf Future Perfect myself - so seeing him resurface was quite reassuring honestly. It helps that TimeSplitters does have a lot of potential weapons (and not just realistic ones - a lot of sci-fi ones too).
(Echo)
