Dota is an online multiplayer game that’s so popular,
its championship trophy comes with an $11 million prize.
It takes thousands of hours to learn Dota’s rules,
and most people give up long before they achieve basic understanding.
Dexter Thomas went to Dota’s championship tournament
to see if anyone could explain the world’s most annoyingly complex video game.
— Please give a warm welcome
to the finest Dota teams in the world!
— A ticket to the Dota tournament costs over $100,
and nearly 17,000 people paid that—
and 5 million more watched the free broadcast online.
There’s teams of commentators at the arena that broadcast live analysis of the games
in English, Chinese, and Russian.
But if you aren’t already a Dota fan,
it doesn’t really matter what language it’s in.
It’s all gonna sound pretty foreign.
— This is Shannon Scotten,
but his fans know him by his gamer tag, SUNSfan.
He has a huge following on his gaming broadcasts,
and he even co-founded his own professional Dota team.
He’s also passionate about getting newcomers into Dota.
So if you need someone to explain the game to you,
Shannon’s your guy.
— This is basically my first experience with Dota, period.
— Right.
— I'm a little bit overwhelmed.
— To be expected.
— It's not like I don’t play games.
Because I do, I play a lot of video games.
— This isn’t a game, bro.
This is life, alright?
— So start me on the basics.
How do you explain Dota to somebody who has no idea what's going on?
— The way I would try to describe it is,
it's five-versus-five online play.
Players will choose a hero,
which there are 100-plus of—
there are a ton of heroes to choose from.
And each of them have their own skill set.
So the objective, there’s three lanes—
see, it’s already getting complicated.
— Yeah.
— There’s three lanes to a level, let’s say.
You start on one side,
the other team starts on the other,
and the idea is to push the other team to the other side and kill their base.
It's obviously easier if you play a bit,
but Dota is just one of those games that the base level is very high.
Which is why, you know,
the barrier to entry is one of the worst in all of e-sports for sure.
— So how many hours would you say you put in?
— So y’all are experts?
— That’s right, a clash of titans here,
going the distance to start off day one.
Winner of this match, already guaranteed $1 million…
This could be the real first blood…
chance to start, call-up from Kuro,
Crush comes through, and…
— Watching Dota as a beginner
is kinda like watching a really intricate game of tug of war,
except with goblins and magic.
— You understand 5 percent, maybe?
— Kind-of.
I mean, I understand now why people are hitting each other.
Which is good, it’s a step.