December 30 – Happy Birthday, Dendi!

nPostednon December 30, 2015

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nTodaynis the birthday of “eSports” hero Danil Ishutin, aka Dendi.

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nIfnyou’ve never heard of Dendi, you might not live in the Ukraine ANDnyou might not be into Dota 2. But you might be impressed tonlearn that Dendi is the 24^th highest earning professionalngamer in the world. Just 26 years old today, he has earned more thann$600,000 U.S. dollars from various tournaments.

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nDendinwas one of the three Dota 2 players featured in the documentary Freento Play, and his YouTube stream is pretty famous.

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Okay,nso what is Dota 2?

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nDota 2nis a free-to-play MOBA.

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nAndna MOBA is a multiplayer online battle arena video game.

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nDota 2nwas created by Valve Corporation. It is a sequel to DotA,nDefense of the Ancients. And DotA is a modn(modification) of a video game called Warcraft III: The FrozennThrone. n

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nAndnWarcraft III: The Frozen Throne is an official expansion packnto Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos. n

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n(Inhope you’re taking notes. There will be a test at the end of thenpost.)

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I’venheard of World of Warcraft (WoW), the most popular MMORPG in thenworld, and the highest grossing video game of all time. (MMORPG meansnmassively multiplayer online role-playing game.) Well, World ofnWarcraft is the Warcraft game that follows Warcraft III: ThenFrozen Throne.

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Ahhh….therenare people who play video games…for money?

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nInmentioned that Dendi was an eSports hero; eSports are competitivenvideo gaming, also called pro-gaming. Most eSports competitions arenorganized multiplayer video games – real-time strategy games,nfirst-person shooter games, and of course MOBAs. (Apparently, manynfighting game players shun the eSports label.)

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nNowadays,nmany eSports tournaments provide live broadcasts of competitions andnprovide prize money and salaries to the competitors. n

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nCompetitionsnhave been a big part of video game culture since the beginning, butnpro-gaming has become way more common and popular now. As a matter ofnfact, many video game developers now create the games with featuresnthat are especially designed with such competition in mind. n

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Thenbiggest games in pro-gaming are MOBA games Dota 2 and Leaguenof Legends, the real time strategy game StarCraft II.nShooting games like Call of Duty have had some success asneSports—but not to MOBA or StarCraft levels. n

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nThenbiggest nation in eSports is apparently South Korea, which has beennofficially licensing pro-gamers since way back in 2000! In contrast,nit was just a few years ago, in 2013, that the first Americannpro-gamer received a special “Internationally Recognized Athlete”nvisa – a sign that the U.S. is finally beginning to recognizeneSports as sports.

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So…thisnis really a thing!?!

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nInn2013, more than 71 million people worldwide watched competitivengaming. By this year (2015), eSports have reached 134 million people!nThis is bigtime growth! Check out Superdata’s report on thengrowth of eSports popularity.

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nIfnyou want to know more, check out Twitch.tv – one of the mostnpopular streaming media platforms – and Major League Gamingn– the professional eSports organization.

nUm…where’s the test?

nI was just kidding about the test. But I noticed that there are a lot of names and acronyms when discussing eSports. Like anything else, video gaming has its own vocabulary!

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nAlsonon this date: