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well done guys, now upload your outline here so that we can see how you incorporated these materials in your writing.

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Byte Magazine Volume 07 Number 12 - Game Plan 1982

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CHINA vs WORLD - ALL STAR MATCH - DAC 2017 DOTA 2

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Team China: BurNIng, rOtk, Sccc, fy, Faith_bian Team World: Miracle-, EternaLEnVy, JerAx, Suma1L, iceiceice Commentary by: Dakota‏ Fogged Skrff Dota 2 Asia Championships 2017: All-Star Match (Reverse Captains) Subscribe► http://bit.ly/noobfromua

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Because of Valve's new System, artists struggle to make a living by creating items for Dota 2. Now they are leaving the workshop.
The opening of the Dota 2 Workshop 7 years ago was a great success. Artists from all around the world could create sets for heros and other ingame items. After enough votes from the community, Valve brought those modifications to the game and the artists received a portion of the profits. But now this system seems to collapse.

In a statement on reddit, the artist community explains the current situation. Due to some changes in how Valves pays out the artists, especially regarding the Battle Pass, the profit they receive from selling their items decreased rapidly during the Fall 2016 Major.

"Without exaggeration, we went from a 25% revenue share to roughly 6% over the course of a single year," the statement claims. And it seems like this trend continues. As the Battle Pass for Winter 2017 did not only contain less chests but also had significantly lower sales, things are "effectively 6 times worse as before."

Previously, successfull artists could make a decent living by creating modifications for the workshop. But the new pricing model could kill this opportunity soon. As a result, the artists leave the platform.

"Not only has Valve touted it as a full-time job through articles in the past and the revenue they've distributed to artists, but that revenue is the biggest thing that has kept the Workshop competitive and productive enough to be successful as a funding engine for Dota 2 for all these years. It has attracted and continued to enjoy AAA talent for that reason, talent that is now forced to exit the Workshop because it is no longer viable compared to other work. It has always been a huge risk, but the Workshop only functions when the rare payouts you only have a small chance to get are worth the extensive work you have to produce to get those opportunities."

You can find the complete statement on Reddit.

Comments

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DotA 2 Artists: The Workshop is Dying - Making Games

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Because of Valve's new System, artists struggle to make a living by creating items for Dota 2. Now they are leaving the workshop. The opening of the Dota 2 Workshop 7 years ago was a great success.

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Official YouTube-Channel of hOlyhexOr, a professional Dota 2 movie maker and ex-professional Dota 2 player. ► Creating Dota 2 Videos with Passion. ►► Currently searching for new Dota 2 Video Editors! Send over an E-Mail if you're interested!

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DOTA 2 gathers all gamers around the world in one stage

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DOTA 2 gathers all gamers around the world in one stage

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For the world-class players competing at KeyArena this week, video gaming is more than play. It's a sport where they can win almost $9 million. But the biggest winner may just be Bellevue gaming giant Valve.

Share story

The team of five digital heroes - among them, an archer, a shape-shifter and a bat-riding imp - vanquished the last of their foes. A roar went up from the crowd of a few thousand spectators.

The virtual gladiators' human pilotshigh-fived and hugged in a soundproof booth. The team, members of a video-gaming squad from the Philippines called TNC, stepped out onto the stage of Seattle's KeyArena to acknowledge their fans.

Their victory Thursday morning kept TNC alive for the $9 million top prize on the biggest stage in e-sports, as competitive video gaming is known. Picked to finish last in this week's professional "Dota 2" video-gaming tournament, TNC instead became a crowd favorite during an improbable run that included an upset of the tournament favorites.

Where: KeyArena, Seattle

Format: 16-team tournament
Source: Valve
Along with 15 other teams, TNC came to this week's "The International" tournament in search of a share of a $20 million prize pool, the largest in the history of e-sports.

The weeklong annual tournament, which continues through Saturday, draws thousands of fans live, and hundreds of thousands more online, a marquee event in an increasingly popular spectator sport for the generation raised on high-definition video games and the internet.

Game-maker's gold mine

For Valve, the quiet, Bellevue-based giant of video gaming, "Dota 2" is a gold mine.

Founded by a pair of ex-Microsoft executives in 1996, Valve is behind touchstone franchises of "Half Life" and "Portal," as well as Steam, the de-facto online storefront for computer games.

Apart from its commercial success, Valve is known for a corporate culture that eschews hierarchy.

According to an employee handbook Valve posted online in 2012, the company has no management structure. Employees are free to propose projects or set out on their own, and collaborate on whatever effort they feel is the best use of their time.

Gabe Newell, a Valve co-founder, said in an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek that the inspiration for Valve's structure came while he was at Microsoft, working on the Windows operating system.

Newell was struck that Windows, the work of hundreds of engineers and a vast marketing department, was less popular among PC users than "Doom," a first-person shooter video game created by a motley crew of a dozen developers in Texas.

"To me, that was a lightning bolt," Newell said.

Labor of love

"Dota" has a similar creation story.

The game started in the mid-2000s as a labor of love led by three developers who made a multiplayer-focused modification of "Warcraft III."

"Dota" - short for Defense of the Ancients - plays out with teams of up to five players piloting fantasy hero characters around a tabletoplike map.

The overhead view of the action, with teams competing to destroy the opposition's base, is a familiar setup in P.C. gaming, resembling classics such as "Starcraft" and "Age of Empires." Unlike those games, which require players to manage a mini-economy of resources and buildings, "Dota's" focus lives in combat and teamwork.

The game's style was a hit in the then-nascent world of competitive online video gaming, and was featured in tournaments as early as 2005.

Some Valve employees took interest, and the company in 2009 hired away the lead developer on the game and began work on a polished sequel. "Dota 2" was released in 2013.

The game's secret sauce, players and game-industry analysts say, is a system that rewards players for knowing their heroes' strengths and weaknesses, and the creatures they can summon.

"It's simple to pick up and play, but there's so much depth to the strategy and skills," said Sartori Bernbeck, a senior manager with EEDAR, a San Diego video-game research firm. "It can be fun to put hundreds of hours into it."

Free to play

The game also has role-playing and collection elements, which helps make it a moneymaker for Valve.

Technically, "Dota 2" is free to play. Customizing the look of your heroes, however, comes at a small cost.

Players can also purchase, for $10, a package pegged to the annual tournament that unlocks access to special in-game features.

Three-fourths of that cash goes to Valve. The rest goes into the prize pool for the tournament.

The commercialization doesn't stop there.

Some spectators wandering Seattle Center this week carried bags full of "Dota 2" swag, and companies from hardware makers to Seattle craft brewer Two Beers -- which made specially branded "Dota 2" taps for the occasion - advertise their wares in the arena.

Tickets to the tournament cost between $75 and $100.

All told, "Dota 2" likely generates more than $200 million a year in revenue for Valve, according to EEDAR estimates.

"It's just remarkable that they convince players to throw more and more money in every single year," Bernbeck said. "They've really built this out to be a very remarkable product."

Postgame analysis

For underdogs TNC, the fairy tale came to an end Thursday afternoon. After a dominant win in the first of their best-of-three series, the team dropped the next two matches to U.S.-based team Digital Chaos, falling out of the tournament.

A suit-clad crew of postgame analysts broadcasting online, in a production with all the trappings of an NFL television broadcast (others were broadcasting live in Russian, Chinese and other languages), attributed TNC's loss to predictability in their strategy.

"They fought a hard one, there's no doubt about that," one commentator said. "TNC's games in the last couple of rounds have just been inspiring."

The games roll on.

Still alive is Evil Geniuses, the victor in last year's tournament.

EG, as the team is known, is managed full time by Phil Aram, a 26-year-old University of Washington graduate who tried his hand at political campaign management before jumping into e-sports.

The team is owned by Twitch, the popular video-game streaming service that Amazon.com bought for $1 billion in 2014. Twitch, which controls several e-sports squads, is relatively hands-off, leaving Aram as day-to-day business manager, adviser and agent for his crew of American, Pakistani and Swedish players.

"We have a really good chance," he said Thursday during a break in the action, with his team bouncing from autograph sessions to game film viewing and practice. "We've been in this spot before; we feel pretty good to be here."

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'Dota 2' brings gamers from around the world to e-sports' biggest stage

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For the world-class players competing at KeyArena this week, video gaming is more than play. It's a sport where they can win almost $9 million. But the biggest winner may just be Bellevue gaming giant Valve. Share story The team of five digital heroes - among them, an archer, a shape-shifter and a bat-riding imp - vanquished the last of their foes.

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This is the first part in a new series looking at contemporary multiplayer gaming and the e-sports phenomenon.

Since Steam's inception, just a handful of marvellous gems have topped the Steam Stats page. Games like Counter-Strike, Team Fortress 2 and Sid Meier's Civilization V have earned accolades, snared players in their thousands, and then hovered around the 50,000 mark. For Valve's Dota 2, now just wrapping its beta period, that figure currently sits at 500,000 concurrent users (not including China and South Korea). Five hundred thousand!

More users play Dota 2 simultaneously than the nine other ranked games combined and it is only going up from there. Why?

Despite the growing popularity of Dota 2, there are still many people on the outside who peer in on those multiplayer matches and just don't understand what they're seeing. Is it a real-time strategy game? Is it like an episodic form of a MMO? Is it something entirely new? Or something old and misunderstood? A little of all of these things, and I think that's part of why it is so popular: it's a broad recipe.
THE IDEA
In essence, ARTS stands for Arena Real-Time Strategy game, which is a brief description of the elements of this offshoot of the strategy genre. Dota 2 is a team-based multiplayer game that revolves around the concept of tri-lane tug-of-war style gameplay. In short: a team of five players choose specific heroes to overcome their five-strong foes on the other side of the map. Automatic waves of minions called "creeps" spawn consistently to help these heroes push their respective lanes; which are roads that lead up to the enemy base. Each hero has a selection of four abilities to both work cooperatively with one another as well as to overcome their foes through a variety of spells or direct physical attacks. Destruction of tiered defensive towers on these "roads", as well the death of your foes, earns you a reward of gold to which you can purchase items to further bolster your character's capabilities. Fairly straightforward, right?

Though the concept is simple, the amount of knowledge about the game, the mechanics, each heroes' capabilities, limitations, exceptions, and strengths can be overwhelming. Arguably, it's this almanac of knowledge that provides much of the appeal of playing. There's so much to know. Dota is multileveled in its difficulty and understanding of that difficulty. It is a delicious learning curve, and it's that curve which grips players from their first moments. Initially, you learn how to lane; a beginning phase of tiptoeing near foes to hit creeps (known as farming). Later on, ganking (grouping up with allies to jump on foes who are away from their team) becomes an important part in gaining an advantage over your foes, experience and gold-wise. Later in the game, pushing and full team engagements become a hectic, but exhilarating sequence of pulling off combinations of abilties, strategy and ultimately: communication. This is only an outline of how each match progresses without going into of techniques and roles within these phases, but the point is: this is a game which rewards persistence. Like the best games, the basics are easily grasped, while the mastery of far off, thanks to the vast array of possibilities its rules create.

Terms such as "stacking" and "pulling jungle creeps", "initiation" and "counter-initiation" and "denying your own creeps" all refer to the tiny sets of actions you can master as you play, and each helps you earn small advantages during these sections of each match that could lead to large victories. Regardless of how much you know about the game, the overall appeal of Dota 2 and ARTS/MOBA games in general is the feeling of coming together with friends or strangers and working towards a common goal of overcoming adversity and executing what you know in a real and challenging setting. For players in this genre, no other game type can invoke that feeling of achievement where you spent 20 to 30 minutes farming, ganking and the result of coming out of a huge 5 vs. 5 hero fight with you pushing straight through the middle path into their base to destroy their Ancient (final base establishment to defeat your opponents). That sense of victory is another reason why Dota 2 is so big. But we'll come back to that.
THE SERVICE
Valve's dedication to keeping Dota 2 just as similar to Defense of the Ancients - the original Warcraft mode on which it is based - and to their enhancement and facilitation of the contemporary shift of competitive games into eSports, is what makes them and their players not just fans of the game, but devotees. Valve are providing their players with a deeply featured service, and that makes playing the game - committing to it long-term - all the easier.

While Dota 2 remains, mostly, unchanged as DotA, the features the client has to offer are formidable, and perhaps offer some insight into how the game has grasped such a huge and persistent playerbase. For new users logging into the client for the first-time, they are offered more than just the game; they are given an array of tools to enjoy Dota 2 on any level of interest: spectating, matchmaking with the A.I or other players, finding a game to suit their skills. In addition, features are offered for newcomers easing them into the series of depths that is of Dota 2's difficulty such as the tutorial areas, in-game specific hero and item guides and a table of information for all the heroes and items. The utility of offering such a diverse base of areas for the user to engage with allows them to be as playful or serious as they want to be. In terms of spectating, a person can watch a friend's match with a small two-minute delay, directly in-game and can see every cursor and camera movement of the friend, their vision and what menus they access.

It's almost as if you were at home with your friend watching him or her play! For tournament matches, you can hear the shoutcasters drumming up excitement directly within the client, offering easy-to-read in-game stats of the players' heroes net worth, experience gains and various important graphs to help you better understand the situation and match. It's these fine touches that keep players returning and relying on the Dota 2 client for all of their interest in eSports and Dota 2. For users disinterested in eSports, the matchmaking system is greatly diversified. Ranging from solo queue (where you queue up only with other non-partied strangers) to specific regions and matchmaking preferences (All Random - where all the heroes are randomly chosen, Random Draft, Captain's Mode, All Pick and Least Picked) a mode can be found for anyone depending on how dedicated they are to the game.

The fine balance between maintaining the unique quirks of Defense of the Ancients back when it was a custom game in WarCraft III, to updating its visuals and demonstration of abilities is a slow and steady process for Valve. Bugs that were once exploited during the game also emerged new strategies and dimensions to the original custom game and for some heroes. Strategies such as stacking the jungle creeps (so that more would spawn in one area, allowing a player to farm a specific camp faster and with a better reward) were once exploitation of the WarCraft III engine but then later became an integral part of the game and rectified to be more consistent and balanced. This is one of the foundational innovations of DotA and Dota 2, where interesting mishaps of interaction between heroes, due to how the WarCraft III engine mishandled certain interactions, become part of the game and improved for consistency. This same effect of community finding and exploitation is replicated in Dota 2, sometimes unintentionally, but also creating new strategies that were never once intended or could be replicated in the original DotA. A strong example of this is when professional player Dendi and the Pudge Hook/Chen combination was publicly shown, where, if coordinated exactly right, the hero Pudge can hook another hero to him as he is getting teleported back to base thanks to Chen's ability (see video below):

Within that video are two bugs, one that will be repaired and the other offers an incredible combination that would require a lot of effort to pull off. Less fantastical bugs such as a type in the range of the Illuminate ability from the hero: Keeper of the Light seemed imbalanced, but instead of immediately rectifying the issue, developers started seeing the worth of giving such range to the ability and how much it impacted certain phases of the game. Balance remains a constant battle as the game aims to make all heroes viable working with one another rather than self-completing in their array of abilities. In keeping with their dedication to the original custom game, Valve hired IceFrog, the original developer of DotA back in 2005 (since the departure of Steve Freak), as their lead game designer. An assurance to long-time fans that the game would be recreated properly and also extended in the same tradition and goals that everyone has been familiar with since the early 2000s.
THE SPORT
Although Dota 2 honors its past, Valve looks to the future of competitive gaming to inform how the game should grow. Despite the company only hosting one major event a year; The International, their constant progress towards creating a constant flow of earnings to tournament organizers and teams is unlike any other. Cosmetic items such as team pennants, couriers created by the team organizations themselves, and tournament tickets to be able to watch exclusive tournament broadcasts within the Dota 2 client are sold for real money to fans in the virtual store. These virtual items create revenue for the team and an underground financial livelihood to help support organizations getting interested in Dota 2. For the customers who buy some of these items, they may be rewarded during broadcasts of their favourite players if they equip their pennants or bought an exclusive tournament ticket, earning them a chance to earn more items through randomized item drops. These forms of fundraising are also what raised the prize-pool of the international tournament: The International to a whopping 2.8 million dollars thanks to ideas such as the interactive compendium.

The compendium is a great display of both the amount of users who are generally interested in eSports but are also looking to support it. Valve has hit a fine line of finding rewards that appeal to the greater mass of their userbase and propelling funding of eSports major prizes through the players. Many tournament organizations rely on the ticket sales made through the Dota 2 store to support their causes and further propel opportunity for professional players. Instead of being at the forefront of funding entire seasons for their game, Valve aims to unify their playerbase with their client as an outlet to advertise both legitimate competitions and the broadcasters who aim to take eSports to an even higher professional level of earnings and marketable stature. Common players are starting to see how exciting competitive matches are and are getting behind it for the right reasons. Valve is a big part of that reason.

If eSports gains more and more popularity, so will interest in these games. That seems to be happening. Newcomers are starting to see the hype of each match, regardless of how unfamiliar they are with the game names and faces, because the right stories are being shown: the major cash prize, the epic tales of defeat and comebacks, the storylines of individual players and how far they've come and prepared for these matches. People are seeing an athleticism not in terms of physical achievement or gain, but in determination and dedication to perfecting their strategy, ability to perform and to outplay their foes. The height of these competitions is an adrenaline rush for viewers and fans of the game. eSports is marketing and with good marketing comes a new wave of curious folks. If you are going to ask why Dota 2 is so popular, you might as well ask why any sport is popular, and why that sport perpetuates. Football doesn't get superceded and abandoned, it moves from generation to generation. Something similar is true here.
THE VICTORY
New people are getting interested all the time. For these newer players, Valve offers a variety of assistance in understanding the mechanics of Dota 2 through a structured tutorial system and limited hero pool mode (20 easy-to-understand heros are selected from a pool of over 100 for newcomers to learn and play) as well as in-game Dota 2 hero guides that you can subscribe and use directly in the game. Additionally, Valve has future modes coming such as mentoring, where more experienced players can mentor others similar to how they do in Team Fortress 2 as well as a last-hit single player mode where players can practice their "last-hitting". It is mastering the skills of this game - and winning with the skills you've learned - that bring players their greatest pleasure.

Sadly, the ecology of ARTS games seems to attract trolls and aggressive players. Teaching these players to behave, while also rewarding people for cooperative play and good behavior, can be a finicky procedure. It's perhaps a measure of DOTA 2's understanding of this problem that it has retained players in spite of some anti-social atmospheres. In Dota 2, players are punished for aggressive language, trolling, abandoning matches early and also for failing to ready up for their match. Set punishments range according to the infraction: abusive language can have the player muted up to a week. Failing to ready up can be a 2-minute lock-out from queuing against for matches, while abandoning matches can lead up to a low-priority queue where one essentially plays for no points or earnings and are against other punished users. These steps in toning down the impulsive negative attitudes is just the starting point for Valve as they ramp up development of these details.

Dota 2's size on Steam is also, of course, partly down to it being free. The genre that the original Dota inspired has proven this model across several games, and it is one of the most successful approaches to sustaining large multiplayer populations. (To raise the sport analogy again, if you have the equipment available, then anyone can play. You don't have to pay to get in through the sportsfield gate.) As the game maintains its free-to-play status, so do the amount of people who consider and try the game out. Valve's dice roll is its monetary system in which everything that is a part of the game is provided automatically: no real-money purchasing of buffs or elements, heroes to play or anything beyond cosmetics. Unlike in Team Fortress 2 where players can purchase weapons to offer more variability in play, all of Dota 2's items are purely for aesthetic purposes, yet generate enough for community members to make a living off of it. Nearly all aesthetics in the shop are made by community members and earn a cut of the pay from Valve for each purchase. The idea of the community building off each other through either financially supporting eSports or custom item workshop artists further propels the omnipresent role of Valve and their outreach to all forms of users who access and use the workshop. Valve makes the game a fair playing field for all users, no matter how deep their pockets are, emphasizing just how free it is to play Dota 2.
THE REASON
The root of DOTA 2's enormity, however, is perhaps due to the game, and the genre, already commanding an enduring hardcore audience. Without the hardcore to champion and sustain a game like this, it has nothing. During the early 2000s, Defense of the Ancient was amongst the most popular games to be played around the world, and part of Valve's brilliance was in identifying that this was a vast, unseen community that required a well-funded developmental core to step in and make it whole. What Brood War was to the Koreans in terms of competitions, was rivaled by China's adoration for Dota and WarCraft III.

This, perhaps, is the true answer: it is that passion for the game that has truly made it the biggest game on Steam. Without people, without absolutely devotees, no game like this could ever reach such heights. This is no casual game, after all. Valve understood that. Just as they did with Counter-Strike, and just as they likely will with other games.

Though Dota 2 has a late-start in this new global market compared to other strategy games, its approach and strategy from a business standpoint and a design perspective is careful and steady. It is, like so many games that evolve over time, something that is less like a product, and more like a series of events: were you there when X happened? It's a tale you'll tell other DOTA 2 players, if not your grandchildren. With heroes still left to port over and Valve continuing to churn out great ideas to ease players into the game, Valve is looking at a very good year ahead.

So too are DOTA 2 players. However many millions of them there may soon be.

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Why Is Dota 2 The Biggest Game On Steam?

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This is the first part in a new series looking at contemporary multiplayer gaming and the e-sports phenomenon. Since Steam's inception, just a handful of marvellous gems have topped the Steam Stats page. Games like Counter-Strike, Team Fortress 2 and Sid Meier's Civilization V have earned accolades, snared players in their thousands, and then hovered [...]

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Competency in Dota is also measured differently than most games. Some games prioritize APM (actions per minute) - RTS games, frequency/reliability of landing head shots - FPS games, or maximizing one's abilities to "straighten" trajectories - racing games.

Success in Dota is largely dependent on CTPM (critical thoughts per minute) and communication. Critical thinking is often required in other games/genres but the depth, breadth, and speed at which it needs to be applied in Dota is what sets it apart in my opinion. At lower skill levels in Dota superior mechanical skill and mechanics knowledge may be sufficient to grant you some victories but at higher skill levels strategy, quick critical thinking, and communication are essential.

This challenge is what makes it so compelling to players like me who enjoy competitive challenges.

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Answer (1 of 4): For me Dota was the first video game that really felt like a team game in the same way sports do. It also provides a path for player growth as opposed to character/avatar growth. In many games your sense of progression comes from completing levels, beating the game, advancing you...

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December 3, 2018 - Dota Team

We've been following the recent situation regarding TNC and the Chongqing Major and how it has unfolded. First, for clarification, Kuku is not banned by the Chinese government. While there is a lot of anxiety around his attendance and problems it may create, we do not believe his presence creates a real security threat.

Our view on the situation is that responsibility resides with teams to handle these types of issues professionally. When they fail to do so, we will step in. While it is one thing to make a mistake and apologize, it is quite another thing for the team to lie about it or try to create cover for an individual player. TNC has mishandled the situation on multiple occasions, making the situation much worse than it needed to be.

TNC contacted Valve last Tuesday, asking if they would get a DPC point penalty for replacing Kuku; we told them that they wouldn't. We assumed that they were then working on a plan to replace Kuku with another player. However it seems like TNC is currently not taking proper responsibility for their actions, coupled with the attempted cover up by the team, so we are now stepping in directly and banning Kuku from attending this event. To be clear, TNC is not the victim in this case. It is not okay to cover up the situation, avoid any real sense of responsibility and then deflect it onto the community. We expect them to disagree with this.

Players and teams will make mistakes in the future, and they should accept responsibility for them. We want there to be opportunities to learn from their errors, but taking responsibility doesn't mean making mistakes don't come with a cost. Covering up the situation is not an acceptable approach to the problem, and demonstrates poor decision making from TNC that requires accountability. In addition to being required to replace Kuku, we will also be docking 20% of TNC's current DPC points. The player restriction does not affect future tournaments.

November 28, 2018 - Dota Team

We are disqualifying Pain X from the South American regional qualifiers, and giving their spot to the runner-up, Thunder Predator.

Three months ago, we were contacted by Pain X inquiring about playing in the South American qualifiers. They asked if they could participate in them by traveling back and forth to the region to play in the qualifiers, rather than staying in the region. We explained to them that they couldn't do that. We walked them through our reasoning, and what the purpose of regional qualifiers are, and why we thought that neither we nor fans would consider them an actual South American team.

The reasons for guaranteed spots for each region is because we want to help nurture competitive growth in different regions, as well as have regional representation for fans around the world. We think it's important for fans to be able to see their regions grow, and their teams compete in global events. A team temporarily traveling to and from a region just to compete in the qualifiers clearly does not provide any meaningful benefit to the region, and harms growth overall. When you are an actual team that lives in a region, you end up practicing with other teams, nurturing the region and growing local fans there. We explained this to Pain X three months ago, and as such, after investigating, we are removing them from the South American qualifiers.

For teams that try to bend the rules on this to gain a competitive advantage over other teams, you run the risk of being disqualified outright. We will always reserve discretion to decide what is in the spirit of the regional goals and what is not. If a team wants to move to a new region completely, they are free to contact us and try to make their case on why they think they will be an actual team in that region going forward.

November 19, 2018 - Dota Team

The 7.20 Gameplay Update is now live, bringing with it a large number of gameplay changes, dozens of updated abilities, and much more.

Head over to the update page to learn about all the changes.

November 10, 2018 - Dota Team

We are about to embark on another journey towards The International. The previous International concluded with an historic 5 game series between LGD and OG that had fans on the edge of their seats. With the playoffs of the first Major about to begin shortly, teams now set their sights on competing once again at The International next year.

The International has always been about bringing fans from diverse cultures all around the world together to celebrate the game we love with one another. Professional players compete year-round, hoping for a chance to prove themselves on the grand stage. They have strong competitive spirits, with high emotions and drive to perform. That's why we love watching them compete. We've always had an approach of letting the players be themselves, and to express themselves freely. That's how it's always been for a long time. However, we also expect pro players to understand that they represent the Dota community regardless of where they are. Words carry a lot of meaning. Some people may not agree or understand why certain words are harmful, but it doesn't make it any less so to those on the receiving end. The language used by multiple players over the last week has caused many of our fans a lot of pain and is not behavior that we condone.

We've been spending the past few days talking to various pro players and community leaders about this. From all the interactions we've seen over the years, we know that deep down professional players respect each other immensely. However, we want to be very clear that Valve will not tolerate racist language between pro players in any form. We think it is really damaging to the entire Dota community whenever even a single professional player uses discriminatory language. It pits fans against each other, belittles and demeans entire groups and makes them feel like they are not as important. Going forward, we expect all teams who participate in our tournaments to hold its players accountable, and be prepared to follow up with strong punishments when players represent Dota and its community poorly.

We hope that players and the community around the world will become better educated and more respectful as a result of the recent incidents. We think the communities everywhere around the world want the same things: for our favorite players and teams to do well, and for a great display of Dota. With the group stages over and the playoffs about to begin, we want to wish good luck to all the teams participating. Let's enjoy some Dota together.

November 5, 2018 - Dota Team

The new season of the Dota Pro Circuit is now underway. With the conclusion of the first Minor Championship, the first DPC points have already been awarded, and Tigers-as the last team standing in Stockholm-have earned the right to join the tournament roll in Kuala Lumpur at the opening Dota 2 Major Championship of this competitive season.

They round out a field of 16 competitors qualified from six regions who all seek to start the year off strong when The Kuala Lumpur Major kicks off on Friday, November 9 at 10:00 am Malaysia Time. With $1,000,000 USD and 15,000 DPC points up for grabs, teams have a chance to show their fans and rivals alike what each can expect to find on the road to next year's championship showdown in Shanghai.

Fans around the world can catch all The Kuala Lumpur Major action in the Dota 2 client, on SteamTV, or on PGL's Twitch stream daily from November 9 through Sunday, November 18, and fans in Malaysia are welcome to join in live at Axiata Arena from Friday, November 16 for the final three days of the event.

Once the next Major Champion is crowned, the 7.20 gameplay update will be released the following day on Monday, November 19th.

October 17, 2018 - Dota Team

Today's update includes the debut of the Treasure of the Carmine Cascade, featuring all-new item bundles for Ancient Apparition, Ember Spirit, Oracle, Batrider, Visage, Skywrath Mage, and Razor. In addition, each of these treasures you open also offers escalating odds to receive a rare Earthshaker bundle, a very rare Dark Willow bundle, or an extremely rare Nature's Prophet bundle.

We've also taken this opportunity to simplify and rework the way we calculate escalating odds for this treasure and going forward. You can now click on the escalating odds arrow next to each of the rare, very rare, or extremely rare drops to see the exact odds of receiving them based on how many you've already opened.

Dota Plus subscribers now have an access to a new perk where unwanted rewards from this treasure can be recycled into treasure fragments. When you've acquired 6 fragments from the same treasure, they are automatically transformed into an extra copy of that treasure and 2000 Dota Plus shards.

This update also introduces a new feature that allows all players to automatically shuffle between item sets for a hero after every match. Enable the shuffle icon next to the Full Sets loadout and then designate which sets you want to include in the pool.

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December 3, 2018 - Dota Team We've been following the recent situation regarding TNC and the Chongqing Major and how it has unfolded. First, for clarification, Kuku is not banned by the Chinese government. While there is a lot of anxiety around his attendance and problems it may create, we do not believe his presence creates a real security threat.

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An ongoing analysis of Steam's player numbers, seeing what's been played the most.

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League of Legends just hit monthly user milestone, Dota 2 just hosted one of the most successful tournaments of all time, but how do the numbers compare in 2016? The world's top two MOBA, sharing one of the biggest markets, are often compared neck and neck by not only what type of players frequent each game, but how many players are actively playing.

In 2014, eSports enthusiast Zoe Hawkins compared the two by numbers, and today I'd like to give an update to see just how far we've come in two years. I'll follow a similar structure as I feel the original post encompasses the important aspects.

Number of players

On September 13th, Riot co-owners Marc Merrill and Brandon Beck told Polygon that they'd estimate League's active monthly player base at around 100 million. While they haven't released a statement regarding the peak concurrent users, there is a rough 33% increase annually, which means that number should sit around 13-14 million peak concurrent players. Don't take the number to heart as it's just my maths, and not official.

Dota 2 is slightly easier to track with Steam Charts offering an updated number of players frequently. August 2016, after the International, Dota 2 saw an average of 635,795, with Peak players at 1,117,519. The number is still surprisingly lower than League of Legends, even though their number has not been officially released yet. According to Dota 2's official Blog, the unique players in the last month is currently over 13 million, which is a significant increase since the last time we talked numbers. If my maths is correct, that's on average 87 million less than League of Legends.

The most surprising deduction from the above figures is that even though League of Legends is not strictly free-to-play (in-game purchases, heroes, skins, etc), they still outmatch Dota 2 on a monthly basis.

Prize Money

League of Legends offers a unique monetary system for players and organizations involved in the LCS. The LCS is the League Championship Series, which involves a circuit of professional tournaments paying out at each competition. The players who are part of the LCS also receive a salary, so this comparison is tough one to make. In 2015 the LCS World Championships had a prize pool of $2.13 million, while the crowd funded Dota 2 International 2015 prize pool sat at $18.4 million.

In latest 2015 Valve instated the Majors which paid out $3 million each (there were three). The International 2016, which ended in August, had a whopping $20.7 million prize pool, which is the highest prize pool for any eSports, to date.

The overall numbers speak for themselves, as well as the highest earning eSports players are mostly Dota 2, according to eSports Earnings, who make up the top 55 players in the World. While it seems Dota 2 is winning by a mile, we cannot forget that League of Legends has a very unique system comparable to conventional sports and it's hard to gauge which title offers the bigger prizes. However, in terms of tournament winnings, Dota 2 takes this one.

Viewership

The most recent data showcasing League viewership came from the 2015 LCS World Championship where League boasted an all-time recording breaking viewership. Below is an extraction from their official statement on 2015 Viewership:

Total cumulative daily unique impressions (the amount of unique viewers that tuned in every day via online and television channels) reached 334 million over the four weeks (from 288 million in 2014). In fact, over the course of all 73 games, we saw an average concurrent viewership (ACU) of over 4.2 million, with the average fan watching for well over an hour per viewing session.

And for the Grand Final:

For the final between SKT and Koo Tigers in Berlin's Mercedes-Benz Arena, peak concurrent viewership (PCU - the highest number of fans tuned in at any one point) was 14 million - up from 11 million in 2014. Overall, the unique viewer count for the Final was 36 million - a record-breaking high for any esports event and a climb from last year's Samsung White-Royal Club matchup at Sangam Stadium which drew 27 million unique viewers.

Dota 2's 2015 International brought in roughly 20 million viewers, after their partnership with ESPN for TI5. This number is still considerably low when comparing League's performance in 2015, but with a larger player base comes larger viewers.

While we would have to wait for the 2016 World Championships (starting next month) to compare it directly to the International 2016, we can compare their numbers to the above shown information. Valve have not released the exact numbers for the 2016 Dota 2 International, but Dota 2 did top the Twitch.tv charts in August with over 33.2 million hours watched. The one number released was for the opening match of the International which brought in 1.1 million viewers.

Rising Competition

If we take a look at the two titles, operating in the same genre, there isn't any real competition. Smite (the last comapred title) has fallen off considerably, and the only title which now somewhat comes close is Overwatch which has seen considerable growth over the past few months. Overwatch, however, is still in its infancy, and while the numbers are growing, they are still miles away from. For the Atlantic Showdown which took place at Gamescom, Overwatch pulled in 75,000 concurrent viewers. The ELEAGUE Overwatch Open kicks off next month, and again this will truly gauge whether this eSport can compete.

So, from the above numbers it seems League of Legends is still the dominant MOBA, with Dota 2 forever trailing. However, we'd like you fight it out in the comments.

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Dota 2 vs. League of Legends: Updating the numbers

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League of Legends just hit monthly user milestone, Dota 2 just hosted one of the most successful tournaments of all time, but how do the numbers compare in 2016? The world's top two MOBA, sharing one of the biggest markets, are often compared neck and neck by not only what type of players frequent each game, but how many players are actively playing.

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In this guide I will be teaching 10 incredibly useful tricks & habits to incorporate in your game for increased efficiency and game knowledge.

To jump to the sections, click on a link below.

1. Always be treadswapping

Treadswapping is essentially the concept of changing your ( power treads) between intelligence, agility, and strength at the most opportune times. To know the benefits of switching between these three attributes, we must first go through what each attribute gives you. Some things to keep in mind are that treads give you +9 points of any one attribute at any one time, and every point of your heroes primary attribute gives you one damage.

Intelligence:

Every point gives you +12 mana (9 intelligence reads would give you 108)

Each point gives you +0.04 mana regen or mana per second (9 intelligence would give you +0.36 mana persecond)

Every point in intelligence adds 0.0625% spell damage, meaning the 9 intelligence from treads would give you slightly more than ~0.5% damage on your spells additionally.

Strength:

Every point gives you 20 hp (9 strength reads would give you 180 hp)

Each point increases health regeneration by 0.03 HP per second, strength treads gives you 0.27 health per second additionally.

Agility:

Every point gives you 0.14 armor, meaning treads will give you roughly 1.5 armor.

Each point in agility gives you 1 attack speed, agility treads will give you +9 attack speed.

So now that we know what each attribute of your power treads does, it's important to discuss the core philosophy of treadswapping:

Current health and mana percentages stay unchanged upon switching attributes!

If you are missing 50% of your HP, and you buy a vitality booster (+250 hp), you will still be missing 50% of your hp - the only difference will be what that 50% of your total health pool actually is. Pay close attention to the health bar in the gif below.

Notice how despite buying six vitality boosters (+1500 hp) my health bar doesn't seem to change? That's because your health bar is a representation of your health percentage. And the percentages do not change, no matter whether you add health or mana through strength and intelligence (attributes) or through raw health and mana (vitality and energy booster).

Now that we've talked about how gaining attributes works, it's time to answer the two big questions: How and when do I treadswap and how can losing attributes help me?

Treadswapping is a simple concept once you grasp the understanding, and there are three main concepts to nail down:

1. Taking damage when on strength treads will effectively mitigate damage by increasing your health pool.

2. Healing mana & health when on agility will increase your gains due to having both a smaller health pool.

3. Casting spells on intelligence will increase spell damage by a small margin & effectively save you mana by increasing your total mana pool.

You want to be gaining mana (mango, mana potion, arcane boots, soul ring) with the least intelligence possible, in order to increase your total mana percentage the most. You want to be gaining mana on strength or agility treads whenever possible.

Contrarily, when losing mana (casting spells), you want the most intelligence possible - in order to reduce your mana percentage losses.

You want to be gaining health (health potion, bottle, heals) with the least strength possible, in order to increase your total health percentage the most You want to be gaining health on agility or intelligence.

Contrarily, when losing health (taking damage), you want the most strength possible - in order to reduce your health percentage losses.

Other aspects of treadswapping:

Ancient apparition's ult deals damage every time you treadswap from strength

Swapping treads also cancels teleports, removes invis, and cancels channels.

2. Directional Movement

'Directional move' is found in options -> hotkeys -> advanced hotkeys.

What is directional movement?

Directional movement, or direct pathing, is essentially moving while ignoring the games path finder. Holding down your direct pathing button and your move button (for me it's G as seen above + right click) will ignore and attempt to walk through creeps, buildings, heroes, walls, cliffs, trees, and more. Watch the video below for an example:

Directional movement allows you to:

Force staff in the perfect direction every time

Land shadowfiend razes from uphill & downhill

Head into Earth Shaker wall before it fades, ignoring pathing & saving your life!

In summary, ignoring pathing around all obstacles has endless potential! It's up to you and your creativity to find situations where you can use directional pathing.

3. Always be using your Helm Of The Dominator (HOTD)

Many low rated players suffer from a problem. They buy helm of the dominator and just use it for the lifesteal. The item is an extremely good bargain with the ability to take over creeps withh lots of purposes including stacking, purging, dealing magic damage, slowing, stunning, draining mana, giving physical armor & giving magic armor.

Stacking with your HOTD

The most basic use of a helm of the dominator is to stack your ancients, but you can stack any camp with a melee or ranged lane creep or any jungle creep. If you need help, use this stacking guide to help you. If you are not stacking with a creep, you should always be having a creep doing something; and in this section we will go over options for you and your dominated creeps.

Useful creeps, what they do, and when you can use them outside of stacking

If your creep is about to die, disassemble the item (if safe)

Disassembling your HOTD instantly kills the creep and grants zero experience to any nearby enemies that may be killing the creep, effectively wasting their time.

Additionally, disassembling your helm of the dominator while killing your Golem creeps, will still create two shard golems. Both last 60 seconds and each has a 125 magic damage, 0.6 second stun. Watch Arteezy take advantage of this gimmick to net himself an easy kill below.

4. Bottle crowing & Bottle Sharing

When teleporting out of the base, you keep a residual fountain buff on your hero for 3 seconds after the teleport to a tower or unit finishes. This buff will fill bottles, heal you, and give mana. If you're the mid player, you can hand your bottle off to a hero that ports middle from base and they can have enough time to fill it with the buff, use a charge or two (on you), and have it fill again. Watch below if you need help understanding.

Bottle crowing is essentially sending your courier back to base with your bottle on it to get that same fountain buff on the courier and have it fill your bottle. Here's an example. Typically you would shift queue the couriers 4th then 5th spell if you have additional items to get, or shift queue the courier from fountain back to mid.

5. Take advantage of shift queueing

What are shift clicking and/or shift queuing?

Shift queuing is essentially assigning multiple actions to queue up after one another with the shift button. Essentially creating a queue of actions for your hero to complete; be it spells, movement, or otherwise. In this section we're going to go over how this can be useful to you nearly every single game.

Keep in mind that most spell combinations will be slowed down by shift queueing, and its only certain heroes - particularly channel using heroes - that should be shift queueing their spell combinations. However most heroes in most games can utilize shift queueing in some capacity. We're going to go over some of the examples in which you should be shift queueing.

Shift queuing after spell usage

Many channeled spells allow you time to queue your next actions; including enigmas black hole, sand kings epicenter, and more. Here are some examples on how you can utilize shift queueing to be more successful with these spells.

Watch the video below to see that shift queueing your blink dagger to go off immediately after sand kings epicentre allows you to NOT miss a pulse of his ultimate, adding 110 damage to your combo that you wouldn't have had otherwise.

Be disciplined in using this though, because 'cancelling' a shift queue with S or H will cancel your channel as well. You don't want to make the mistake of realizing you shouldn't be blinking a certain way after you've already shift queued it up!

The next video shows how shift queueing movement after a spell cast will prevent you from attacking after spell usage. This is useful on lion for example, so you don't automatically auto attack heroes (pulling agro for example) or creeps (pushing lane for example) by mistake.

Shift clicking; queueing movement with the shift key

Shift clicking is essentially queueing up movement with movement and not spells or other hero interactions. This can be useful in many ways including picking up runes more efficiently, farming with illusions more efficiently, and having a more observant eye on the game while farming.

The video below shows how you can shift queue both your illusions and your hero to attack-move (a+left click) in order to farm both camps with more efficiency and less micromanagement.

The next video demonstrates how you can shift queue your own heroes farming in order to give you time to check out the other lanes, the heroes in them, their items, and what they've skilled.

6. If necessary, change your options to suit your hero

There are hundreds of options, hotkey combinations, and ways to customize your game. Many top players will change small options or several keybinds depending on what hero they are playing. In this section I'm going to show you how you can improve your game by changing some settings through examples.

Naga Siren, Terrorblade, Nature's Prophet

'Summoned unit auto attack' is found in options -> advanced options-> top left
For these three heroes the one commonality is that you send your units to lanes and jungle camps to farm and push. It's an incredible nuisance micro units that won't auto attack by default. Setting 'summoned unit auto attack' to 'always' allows you to send your summons (naga illusions, terrorblade illusions, and natures prophet treants) to any lane or jungle creep and have them auto attack by default. This saves you a lot of micromanagement time & effort. Watch the video below to see the difference.

7. Check what spells your enemy has early in lane

You can see (most of) what spells your enemy has skilled based on whether or not there is a green range indicator around the hero. This only works with spells that require a certain range to be used, and doesn't work with passives & other similar spells. Here's an example with nyx assasin.

Among other heroes that this trick is best against are some early-laning supports.

Knowing whether or not a disruptor has skilled glimpse, a dazzle has skilled shallow grave, or a crystal maiden has skilled her freeze is vital information. Take a look at the image below, I can clearly see that dazzle has shallow grave skilled at level one leaving him with weak damage output and no heal. This information is vital for early lane kills & ganks.

8. Keep track of timings

By clicking alt + left click on the clock at the top of the screen, you can note certain timings in the game. In this section I will share several timings you can keep note of.

Runes last two minutes inside of a bottle, afterwards they are automatically activated. If possible, note when your enemy picks up a rune. New runes also spawn every 2 minutes all game, independently of what runes are bottled.

Aegis lasts 5 minutes, mark down the timing of when your enemy or team picks up the aegis in order to know when it is a good time to fight.

After roshan dies, he will respawn between 8-11 minutes. Be aware of that timing in order to defend, contest, check, or sneak roshan!

Below I've listed some notable hero-ultimate cooldowns to keep track of whenever possible. Many top players have all of these ultimate timings memorized, and know when to take advantage of a window of opportunity do to a spell being down. They also know when to avoid a conflict or play safe (eg: mirana ulti is coming up and you are ill prepared).

Ultimate Cooldowns

9. Early last hitting tricks

For this section I'm actually going to start with a video instead of ending with a video. Please watch the video of ramzes getting perfect under-tower last hits with terrorblade. We're going to discuss the tricks he is using to get perfect last hits.

Notice how ramzes is dropping his quelling blade to secure last hits? This is what, in my uncreative way, I'm dubbing the 'quelling blade drop trick'. We're going to get into the math behind this trick, and teach you some valuable knowledge on when to use it.

There are multiple concepts at play here, so we'll go over the basics. Thanks to a phenomenal study by Physics Math Man we now have discernible math available to back up the instincts and 'feel' of when to last hit. Most pro players are aware of this math, and use it to their advantage when last hitting under tower. Math man provided the rule & benchmark for when to attack what creeps with what damage under the tower. Please watch PMM's video on the '6,7,8' rule below. Don't forget to subscribe and like the video if possible to support him.

If you are struggling with the concept, I've created a table below.

6 7 8 - Last hitting

Due to the way damage variation works, the 70-79 damage range is a dangerous area to be in. I've put 'probably' in each category, as does Physics Math Man, because the math allows room for variation but the statistics show which way you should hedge your bets.

Here's where it gets interesting: Melee heroes often have a quelling blade, giving them 140% attack damage on creeps as opposed to the damage they'd have otherwise. This ties back into ramzes's perfect last hitting and the reason for dropping his quelling blade: He wanted to stay out the 70 damage range. With 52 damage initially, ramzes had 72.8 damage with the quelling blade. By dropping it, he assured himself mathematical perfection under the tower, avoiding the variation and "probably's" that the 7 in the 6,7,8 rule provides.

For Ramzes's terrorblade, with zero stat items, he is not mathematically safe with a quelling blade until he's hit level four - when his attack damage reaches 60 and his quelling blade damage reaches 84. He could also probably hedge his bets at level 3, where his attack damage is 57 and his quelling blade damage is 79.8 (just short of our 'safe' zone).

To use Ramzes's quelling blade drop-trick, there's a simple rule that follows our 6,7,8 formula. If your damage is between 50 & 57, and you have a quelling blade (and are melee), your damage to creeps is between 70 and 79.8 and therefore in our dangerous zone. It's advised, if possible, to drop your quelling blade under tower for more successful last hitting.

If you'd rather use the table below to see when you should drop your quelling blade, feel free.

Melee Heroes with Quelling Blades - 6,8,7 rule

Damage

Quelling damage (melee hero)

Drop quelling blade if possible?

Melee Creep

Ranged Creep

Catapult

Finally, I have some final notes that may benefit you.

Catapults spawn every seventh wave (or every three minutes) By the first catapult wave, you should virtually always have 80+ damage to creeps with a quelling blade on a melee hero, so do not attack a catapult under tower until the last hit.

To practice this technique, download "Last hit excercises" by esvban here: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=531587903

10. Spend your unreliable gold, save your reliable gold

What is reliable gold?

Reliable gold is any bounty you get from objectives. It includes roshan gold, tower gold, hero kill gold, and courier gold. It also includes track gold & hand of midas gold.

What is unreliable gold?

Unreliable gold consists of everything else including gold gain over time, starting gold, creep kills, neutrals, etc.

How to see how my gold is distributed?
Gold distribution is found by hovering over your current gold next to the shop button at the bottom right.
So what does it matter?

Essentially unreliable gold is the gold you want to get rid of. Notice how in the image above, there is a death cost. Every hero always has a death cost. You lose money when you die. However, most people do not know that you only lose unreliable gold when you die. Riki's unreliable gold is less than his death cost, so he will lose all of his unreliable gold, but will not lose the entire 240 gold for his death cost.

When to spend my unreliable gold?

You essentially almost always want to be spending your unreliable gold if possible, while making sure you have a buyback would you need it ( many cases you know you won't need to buyback, so SPEND THAT UNRELIABLE GOLD!) In the lategame, as a core hero, you want to have enough reliable gold to buyback, but spend your unreliable gold so you lose none on death. In short:

Buyback takes reliable gold first, unreliable second.

Item purchases take unreliable gold first, reliable gold second.

Death will ONLY take unreliable gold.

Bonus: other habits to be building

Use the scan as much as possible

Many people have the habit of scanning once a game, and wasting it on roshan pit (where it does not work). Here are some instances of when you can use the scan.

If you are afraid an invis hero is in your lane (Riki, bounty, shadow bladed hero), use the scan on top of yourself. It lasts 8 seconds, which guarentees you 8 seconds of safety from invis hero ganks.

If you're afraid of a smoke gank coming into your lane or farming area, use the scan on a chokepoint to offer 8 seconds of detection.

On the contrary, if you're intending to smoke gank, use the scan to see if you can find an area where enemy heroes are definitely farming.

Use the scan to see when certain heroes are taking ancient stacks (Templar assasin, sven, gyrocopter) and see if you can intervene.

Keep your items in the same slots to build continuity and comfort

This is VP. Alohadance's juggernaut history:

This is Vega.no[o]one's juggernaut history

Notice anything similar? Besides the fact that they are playing on the same account; both of these players try as much as possible to keep key items such as manta, blink dagger, phase boots, travels, battle fury, and mask of madness in the same item slots of their inventory. This builds muscle memory and creates a form of continuity where you don't need to check your items to know where they are. I suggest all players do this and get used to making this a habit.

Credits, sources, thanks: NoobfromUA, Dotabuff, PhysicsMathMan, Gamepedia

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Ten DOTA Techniques you should make habits - rawdota

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In this guide I will be teaching 10 incredibly useful tricks & habits to incorporate in your game for increased efficiency and game knowledge. To jump to the sections, click on a link below.

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Dota 2 is a game played by millions of people worldwide, but it's also home to a committed group of artists who create and sell unique content for its many heroes through the Dota Workshop.

So while the continued success of Valve's free-to-play multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game is helping to grow the world of e-sports, the Dota 2 Store plays host to a shared business model that splits the proceeds from the sale of small in-game items between their creators and the publisher. Community members submit their own ideas - as fully-formed 3D models - for items like armor sets, companion animals, and wards to spy on enemies, and Valve selects the best for inclusion in the game store.

It's a model that has proved life-changing for many 2D and 3D artists previously employed at game studios who now find themselves with a staggering amount of creative freedom.

GamesBeat reached out to five of the artists making a living from the Dota 2 Workshop to find out about their creative process, their transition from gaming studios to independence, and what it's like working with the notoriously secretive gaming giant Valve, albeit from a distance.

Welcome to the Red Moon Workshop

The guys at Red Moon Workshop don't really keep office hours. They've created some of the most iconic items in the Dota 2 store - including the red panda courier, Redpaw, that brings supplies into the heat of battle - and their ongoing commitment to their work is clear.

"Our job schedules are ... very interesting," said Brent LaDue, also known as Bounchfx, at the start of my Skype call with the three-man team. "It's erratic. Is work done? No - stay up."

LaDue is the 3D artist responsible for modelling the team's designs for inclusion in Dota 2. Andrew Helenek is the animator in the team, bringing the designs to life, and Sirio Brozzi, known as Oroboros, is in charge of everything 2D-related, including initial concept art, marketing images, and icons.

From the outside, Red Moon Workshop looks like it's nailed the art of creating items for the Dota 2 Workshop, but it hasn't been easy getting this far, and the team insists it's still learning to navigating Valve's innovative but sometimes obscure user-generated content model.

"It's all uncharted territory," said Brozzi. "It's the Wild West."

Coming together

LaDue and Brozzi were both employed at development studios within the gaming industry when they started creating for Dota 2. At first, it was a side project for both, but it soon turned into a full-time gig.

Brozzi was working at Sony in Austin, Texas, but the studio ran into trouble. "I was laid off and was given a severance," he said. "That severance was enough for me to actually transition comfortably into full-time Dota."

The decision to set up independently came easily. "I've been in the industry for about five years, six years," he said, "and I had some dissatisfaction from what I'd seen of the industry, and I just wanted to break off into doing something of my own."

Brozzi and LaDue came together to create Dota 2 items thanks to an introduction from a mutual friend. For a while, LaDue was working 16-18 hour days - 10 hours in the office for his day job and up to 8 hours at home in the evening on Dota 2. It got to be too much despite the fact that he was loving creating, and he decided to jump into Dota 2 full-time with Brozzi "and see what happens."

Helenek then joined the team, having moved straight into designing for Dota 2 from his final year at college.

Taking a gamble

Making items for Dota 2 is a bit of a lottery. Although the community votes on which items they want to see make it into the game, Valve always has the final say. "I always tell people it's like gambling because you never know if your stuff is going to get in," said LaDue.

With its three-man team and organized structure, Red Moon Workshop manages to submit a lot of items to the Workshop, though, which in turn increases its chances of success.

"Our only advantage [over smaller teams] is how often we put stuff in," said LaDue. "We all work very hard, so we have more submissions. We roll more dice than other people."

In terms of financial reward, the team wouldn't talk numbers but said it's doing all right.

"If you work at it full-time like we do and get a decent number of submissions," said LaDue, "if you get stuff in semi-regularly - maybe quarterly, even - it can be comparable to doing a full-time job. Enough to live off of."

But avoiding gaming studio politics is the real deal-clincher for the Red Moon team.

"We're doing it because we've found it can give us a quality of life similar to what we had without having deal with the rest of the studio crap," said LaDue.

So, even though the guys are still working crazy hours at times, they're doing it on their terms.

"I probably put in 70-90 hours a week," said LaDue. That's not a standard week, though, if such a thing exists in Dota 2.

"There was one project in May where I pretty much didn't sleep," said LaDue. "At that time, it might have been 120-hour work weeks. After that, we kind of chill out for two or three weeks."

The way they hand off work to each other as a project takes shape means that the team is never really on crunch at the same time - kind of like an artistic relay team, with Brozzi in charge of initial concept art and final marketing images, "always at the beginning and the end."

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Red pandas and armor sets: Meet the artists who earn their living creating Dota 2 items

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Dota 2 is a game played by millions of people worldwide, but it's also home to a committed group of artists who create and sell unique content for its many heroes through the Dota Workshop.

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DoTA 2 Skins and Cosmetic Items Explained

Posted on May 26, 15 at 4:16 pm / One comment
What are Dota2 skins and how do they improve your gaming experience? Where can you find great Dota2 skins? How much do they cost?
As a regular Dota 2 player, you're probably up to date with what skins are, what they are used for, and what they can do during the game. But if you are just getting started with Dota 2, or you simply want to find out more about Dota 2 skins, then this article is definitely for you.

Items versus Skins

Just like Counter Strike, Team Fortress, or Warframe, you can also purchase items and skins for Dota 2.

There are 2 types of items: cosmetic items and power boosting items. Skins are part of the first category, as they have a purely visually enhancing role; skins do not affect the abilities and powers of Heroes.

Did you know? Contributions to Dota 2's development consistently come from sources outside the main development team.

What are power boosting items? They give Heroes enhanced abilities and functions so they can perform better during a battle. Power/Ability enhancing items are not tied to a particular Hero, therefore you must pay increased attention when choosing your items. Some items won't work on some Heroes, while other items can be combined for improved results. In short, these items provide additional benefits to Heroes that the leveling up process cannot.

Tip: A Hero can have a maximum of 6 items in his Inventory, and a maximum of 6 items in his Stash. If you get more items, they will be automatically dropped in the fountain.

Dota 2 Skins You Can't Miss

There are a lot of skins to choose from in Dota 2. This is part of the game's charm, and a lot of players go above and beyond to personalize their Dota 2 experience. Skins don't interfere with the mechanics of the game, they are purely decorative.

Did you know? You can buy user-created skins in the Steam Workshop. They are only put out for sale if they have been approved by Valve.

1. Equipment Skins

This skins type is used to change the way a Hero looks, from their clothes to the way their weapons are designed. While these skins do not alter the Heroes' powers, they can definitely give your hero a fiercer look.

You can choose from:

2. Couriers

As the name suggests, the Couriers are items that take the form of a donkey / flying donkey. Their main responsibility is to carry your items to and from your base. Animal Couriers and Flying Couriers are considered Consumable Items.

You can also customize your courier in the loadout screen. You can equip the Couriers with specific visual elements. Once again, these elements do not influence the way the Courier performs. However, there are some Unusual Couriers which come with a special effect. The effect can be either Ethereal Gem or Prismatic Gem.

Custom Couriers are classified in 5 categories: Rare, Mythical, Legendary, Immortal, Ancient.

3. Announcers

This collection of cosmetic items is a bit different, because it does not change the way a Hero or a player looks. What it does is it changes the voice of the Announcer with explosive commentaries, unruly humor, or a drunken Pirate Captain. There are a lot of Announcers items to choose from - can you decide which voice is your favourite?

4. Custom Wards

Are you getting bored with the way your wards look? With Custom Wards you can change the appearance of your Observer Wards and Sentry Wards.

Did you know? Items such as skins are the main source of income for Dota2. Creators selling their items on the Steam Market receive a percentage of sales. In 2013 the income for an average contributor was $15k per year.

5. HUD Skins

This skins category is a bit special, as it allows you to change how the heads up display looks. What's even better about this skins category is that it can be equipped by other players in the same match.
There are more DoTA 2 skins that invite you to fully personalise your gaming experience:

Music

Emoticons

Mouse cursors

Weather effects

Blink effects

Teleport effects

Custom base items

Taunta

Multikill banners

Loading screens

...and more

Skin Categories: Rarity & Quality

Items and skins in Dota2 are usually categorized into Rarity. The rarer the item, the more valuable it is. Some players spend a lot of money on their items; there are even Dota 2 skins that cost a big-ticket. Depending on their rarity, items are classified as:

Did you know? Initially, DoTA was used as an acronym from Defense of The Ancients. Multiple versions of the same game were produced, but Dota Allstars was the most popular Dota version. Dota Allstars was the game that inspired the development of Dota 2.

When discussing the Quality of an item or a Dota2 skin, there are 4 categories it can fall into. Normal items are the most widespread, while genuine items are... well, highest in QUALITY. The 4 Quality types are:

Quality can be altered by Gems.

Did you know? DoTA emerged in 2003, and Dota 2 was officially released in 2013. The creator of the most popular version of DoTA retired in 2005, only 2 years after the game's launch. By 2008, DoTA was already one of the most prominent electronic sports titles.

What is the Steam Market?

As mentioned before, you can buy and sell skins and items forDota 2 in the Steam Market. The Steam Market also commercializes items for Counter Strike, Primal Carnage,Warframe, Team Fortress, The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot, Robot Roller, and more. The Dota2 skins you purchase from Store.SteamPowered.com cannot be re-sold earlier than 1 week from the moment of the purchase.

When you make your first purchase in the market you will pay real money. After that, as you earn more money, you will be allowed to use it to purchase other items or skins. You cannot withdraw your money to your card or use it in any way other than buying and selling on the Steam Market.
What are your solutions for solving this problem on Steam Market? Do you think that a new payment system that allows withdrawals to PayPal (for example) would be a good idea? Why / why not? Just leave your comments below and let's see how we can change it together!
This is one great drawback of the Steam Market system, because the money you earn stays on the website, whether you are an Items Creator or an Items Buyer.

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DoTA 2 Skins and Cosmetic Items Explained

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Posted on May 26, 15 at 4:16 pm / One comment What are Dota2 skins and how do they improve your gaming experience? Where can you find great Dota2 skins? How much do they cost? As a regular Dota 2 player, you're probably up to date with what skins are, what they are used for, and what they can do during the game.

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Test System And Graphics Hardware

As a free-to-play multiplayer online title, Dota 2 isn't aimed at hardcore PC gamers with enthusiast-class rigs. And as you'll see in the benchmarks, multiple graphics cards in SLI or CrossFire are overkill. So, we're only testing up to AMD's Radeon HD 7950 Boost and Nvidia's GeForce GTX 660 Ti, though those two boards are even a lot more than this game needs.

We planned to test the game at 5760x1080 using three screens, but Dota 2 doesn't support that setting. Maybe Valve doesn't want players with more desktop real estate to have an advantage. Thus, 2560x1600 is the highest resolution we're able to test.

Additionally, I'm adding multiple CPU tests, a mobile AMD A10-4600M (with integrated Radeon HD 7660G graphics), and an Intel Core i5-3210M (with integrated HD Graphics 4000) to the mix.

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Test System And Graphics Hardware - Dota 2 Performance, Benchmarked

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As a free-to-play multiplayer online title, Dota 2 isn't aimed at hardcore PC gamers with enthusiast-class rigs. And as you'll see in the benchmarks, multiple graphics cards in SLI or CrossFire are overkill. So, we're only testing up to AMD's Radeon H...

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Dota 2 Image Quality And Detail Settings

Like most of the latest titles developed by Valve, Dota 2 is powered by the venerable Source engine, modified and repurposed for top-down strategy style play instead of first-person shooting. The characters and environment are cartoony, but less so than LoL and far more detailed. The best way I can describe the art direction is a cross between World of Warcraft and Team Fortress 2.

There are a lot of available detail settings, but they're straightforward on/off toggles (except for Shadows, Textures, and Render Quality). We're going to keep this comparison simple by using two combinations: first, minimum detail settings with Med textures and 100% Render Quality, and then with all of the settings maxed-out.

The most striking differences come from the apparent depth that shadows add. Otherwise, post-process effects and anti-aliasing are also visible in the highest-detail shots. Even entry-level settings are attractive, though the most demanding configuration offers much better graphics.

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Dota 2 Image Quality And Detail Settings - Dota 2 Performance, Benchmarked

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Like most of the latest titles developed by Valve, Dota 2 is powered by the venerable Source engine, modified and repurposed for top-down strategy style play instead of first-person shooting. The characters and environment are cartoony, but less so th...

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Every Sunday, we dust off an article from the Eurogamer archive that you may have missed at the time or may enjoy again. Valve announced The International 2014 for Dota 2 this week, so we thought we'd revisit Paul Dean's piece on the origins of the MOBA genre. This article was originally published on 16th August 2011, so some facts and figures are now out of date, but it still tells an interesting back-story and provides a snapshot of the genre's progress at that time, back when Dota 2 was a barely known quantity.

It's not often that we get to declare that there's a new gaming genre in town. What began as a hybrid of real-time strategy and role-playing game elements, stitched together by a talented team of modders, has become a dominant online game type with millions of players. Those millions are now the target of two of the biggest game developers in the world: Valve and Blizzard.

This genre includes Heroes of Newerth, Demigod, in-development StarCraft 2 mod Blizzard DOTA, League of Legends and the forthcoming Dota 2 from the mighty Valve. The latter two will be facing off at the gamescom convention in Cologne this week: the hugely popular League of Legends will be showcasing its latest update, Dominion, while Valve will be debuting Dota 2 by giving away an unprecedented amount of money in a tournament.

How much money? The prize pool is $1.6 million, the largest for any single eSports event ever, with exactly $1 million of that going to the winning team. That's how big this genre has become.

But what is it, exactly? Where has it come from and how has all this grown from just one mod? The jury's still out on whether to call the genre MOBA, for Multiplayer Online Battle Arena, or DOTA, from Defense of the Ancients, one of its origins - and that may be more than a mere turn of phrase if Valve's move to trademark the word "Dota" ends up going to the courts.

A video games archaeologist dusting off the genre's genesis would uncover its RTS roots in the StarCraft map, Aeon of Strife. This was a considerably modified map on which, instead indulging in the usual base construction and unit command, each player controlled a single, powerful hero unit. While they still had a base and an army, the AI managed these, spawning and sending waves of units against a similar, opposing base along three different lanes of attack. These lanes were dotted with defensive towers, which the heroes and their armies would have to take down (or defend) before reaching the base proper.

This has caused some to liken the genre to tower defence, but it's a misleading comparison. Sure, there are towers involved, and you can defend them, but the gameplay is quite different.

In Aeon of Strife, the role of players was neither to micromanage this battle of attrition nor to build any structures, but instead to carefully nudge the balance of the carnage by being in the right place at the right time. By supporting their AI units, players could help them destroy enemy defensive structures and, eventually, the base. The other side's heroes would be doing the same and often both would clash upon the field of battle.

With the release of Warcraft 3 in 2003, a keen modder known by the handle Eul began development on a similar map that would support up to 10 players, which he called Defense of the Ancients (DOTA). This was where the RPG elements were further refined.

The core of the game remained the same - RTS-style point-and-click control of a single hero - but now these heroes wielded wildly different abilities, could purchase a variety of different weapons and would level up and gain even more skills. Killing opposing heroes and AI units rewarded a player with both experience and cash - and, of course, during the time that opposing heroes were respawning, their opponents could swing the battle in their favour.

After its release, Eul stopped work on DOTA and other modders stepped in and tried their own versions. The most successful of these was Steve Feak, better known by his bizarre handle: Guinsoo.

Guinsoo developed DOTA: Allstars, a kind of greatest hits mixing the best elements of other DOTA mods and adding his own content. Allstars featured a map dotted with neutral monsters, boasted many heroes and had an overwhelming array of special items, some of which could be combined in recipes to create even more powerful artefacts.

Guinsoo was joined by Steve "Pendragon" Mescon. Still a teenager, Pendragon built the forum that became the backbone of the DOTA community, allowing Allstars players to congregate, to arrange games and, critically, to provide feedback on the game's tweaks and balancing.

After two years, Guinsoo passed the reins to a reclusive modder called Abdul "IceFrog" Ismail. Inspired by the careful weighting of StarCraft and Warcraft, IceFrog endlessly tweaked the balance of the characters and items. While other multiplayer games might add new maps with each release, Allstars instead continued to focus on just one level in an attempt to create a perfectly, precisely honed experience. No combination of heroes or items should outweigh any other; no attribute should become too powerful.

Meanwhile, Pendragon's forum expanded like nobody's business, reaching 1.5 million users. Many of these actively participated in the development of the mod by providing additional content or artwork or testing AI bots. As the years rolled on, Allstars became an enormous collaborative project, endlessly rebalanced in an ongoing effort to add new content and perfect what was already included. It became a popular game amongst cyber-athletes, featured at many tournaments around the world, and was even the subject of a song by the Swedish singer Basshunter.

By 2008, after countless mind-bending iterations, DOTA had become something almost unique: a massively successful free game mod created entirely without developer support. The potential to go commercial with a game like this was becoming obvious. In 2009, two independently created DOTA-inspired titles were released. One was an enormous success.

Demigod, from Gas Powered Games, did moderately well, though players complained about its balance and numerous bugs. On the other hand, the free-to-play League of Legends, developed by Riot Games, was very much the spiritual successor to DOTA in both content and execution - and it also built up an enormous player base.

Both Guinsoo and Pendragon had joined Riot, with the latter working to foster the same community spirit that had made DOTA a success. League of Legends hardly touched DOTA's game mechanics, but it did introduce persistent accounts that allowed its players to gradually unlock more characters to play with, content that Riot has continued to add.

In a move that foreshadowed other free-to-play titles like World of Tanks, Riot allowed players to purchase any characters or content if they wished, but with the proviso that nothing bought couldn't be unlocked through gradual play anyway and, most importantly, would not unbalance the game. Paying money got you new stuff, but it wasn't better stuff.

The philosophy was not to hard-sell the game to a community that was already enjoying DOTA, but instead to offer them a new, more polished experience and the option to fast-track through it for just a little bit of cash. "We believe that if we deliver value, then people will reward us. It's not the other way around, like, 'Let's go monetise.' We don't think that's what gamers want," says Riot co-founder Marc Merrill. "It was a big leap of faith, of course. Trust me, there were many naysayers along the way. And there still are." It certainly worked, as LOL now boasts over 15 million registered accounts.

Riot encouraged team play by giving players experience if they assisted in killing an opponent, and introduced both a tutorial and in-game tips in response to new players struggling with the learning curve of DOTA-style games. They also ensured that finding a game was effortless; matchmaking algorithms made sure players were paired with team-mates and opponents of appropriate skill levels.

As Riot continually tweaked and added new content to its game, LOL sat largely unchallenged at the head of a genre that was still niche. In 2010, Heroes of Newerth joined what PC Gamer called this " great, unnoticed community of the PC gaming world" and though its developer S2 Games enjoyed strong sales, Newerth was unable to unseat League of Legends. Nevertheless, a much bigger rival was just over the horizon.

In October 2010, Valve Software announced Dota 2, a heavyweight challenger to LOL from a powerful software house. The announcement was not news to many. IceFrog had said a year before that he was leading a team at Valve and in August 2010 the company had moved to trademark the term 'DOTA'. It was obvious what was brewing.

However, the trademark move disappointed DOTA community members - who felt that DOTA was a non-profit project created and contributed to by many people - and also Blizzard, who publicly declared that Valve was " taking it away from the Blizzard and WarCraft 3 community," an uncharacteristic move for a mod-friendly developer. Shortly after, Pendragon filed for and obtained trademark for the phrase 'Defense of the Ancients', while 'DOTA' is still being disputed.

IceFrog has continued to tweak the original Dota, but most of his time is now devoted to what will become a high-budget remake of the game in Valve's Source engine. Like LOL, Dota 2 (note the lower-case styling - Valve argues that it's no longer an acronym, but a word in its own right) will feature bots, a tutorial and an in-game system for matching players of similar ability.

Meanwhile, Blizzard has also got in on the act - though some might say it's rather late in participating in a trend its games helped to create. Blizzard DOTA, an internally developed mod for StarCraft 2 that's still in production, is its own take on the genre and the mod's heroes will be lifted from Blizzard's various franchises, "a bit like Super Smash Bros," while a sprinkling of resource management will be added.

With Dota 2's public unveiling taking place opposite Dominion's, the two are bound to be compared. It's not yet clear if Dota 2 will be free-to-play, but if it is then it will be in direct competition with League of Legends. With the Steam platform behind it, as well as Valve's proven ability in remaking several other mods (such as Counter-Strike and Alien Swarm), Dota 2 is sure to be the first serious rival that LOL will face - and this rivalry could well dictate the development of this genre.

While Valve has remained extremely tight-lipped about Dota 2, and IceFrog still refuses to comment, Marc Merrill does not seem worried about this big-budget launch. He sees the genre as one that is still very much in development and which could take many new directions, which informs Riot's philosophy.

"One of my favourite quotes is from Charles Darwin," says Marc. "'It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.' It's such a dynamic industry, constantly changing, that the way to optimise is to have the smartest, most engaged people, great problem-solvers that can react to these circumstances."

It may well be that Riot will move further away from an adherence to the DOTA formula, as it has already abandoned the idea of endlessly honing one single map and game mode, something that must surely be getting tired after all these years. Dota 2, meanwhile, will have to boast more than just some fancier graphics, particularly if it wants to engage DOTA purists already happy with what they have.

While gamescom will be a showdown of sorts, it may also represent something of a parting of the ways, a chance for this new genre to flower and to flourish. Two things are for sure: it will certainly raise the profile of the genre born from DOTA - and it will make one gaming team very rich.

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The last few years has seen the release of a number of games, including the hugely popular League of Legends, derived from the fan-made Warcraft 3 add-on Defense of the Ancients. Now Valve is weighing in, with the high-profile introduction of Dota 2 scheduled for this week's gamescom.

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Any unit that is not a hero can be referred to as an NPC or Non-Player Character. Dota uses many types of customizable NPCs that require animations:

A full set of custom animations must always be provided for Couriers and Wards.

Ability Models have the option to use some or all of Valve's animations if the skeleton is the same as our default .

A totally new set of custom animations must be provided if a new skeleton is created for an Ability Model.

More information about animation requirements for ability models can be found on the Ability Model page.

It is helpful if idles, runs, and other important animations have the NPC's head or prominent features tilted slightly upward to read better from above in game view.

If the NPC you are authoring has options for capture (portrait) or loadout animations, these can be animated with the head at a normal angle

Non-looping animations play once, starting and ending in very different poses and actions.

Looping animations play in repeating cycles and must have a matching start and end pose.

It's also helpful if the movements near the end and start of looping animations are designed to smoothly transition into each other. Extreme movements or poses near the start or end of looping animations can cause a jarring transition when the cycle repeats.

Non-looping animations usually have to transition to a looping idle at the end of the sequence, so the requirements for matching poses and smooth movements apply.

Spawn animations are played when an NPC is first appears in game.

Spawning characters can emerge from the ground, fall from the sky, or fly into the scene from outside the map.

If you want your full spawn animation to play, it's best for this animation to be short, 30 frames maximum. Otherwise, if the NPC is given a command immediately after it spawns, the animation for the new behavior will cut off the spawn animation.

You could do a longer spawn animation if you are not concerned about interruptions but please try to keep the duration under a few seconds.

Regardless of duration, it's best for spawn animations to have one clear action instead of multiple, complicated movements.

Don't have very extreme movements or poses near the end of the spawn, otherwise there will be a jarring transition to the idle animation that follows the spawn.

Idle animations need to repeat in a looping cycle, with matching start and end poses.

Idle animation plays while the NPC stays in one place, waiting for a command to move or react.

Because idles are seen so often, rather than just have one simple cycle that mechanically repeats over and over, it's helpful, once you've established a cycle, to put several cycles together into one long sequence in your animation software and then add slight variations to body and head attitudes to make the character look more organic and alive. These variations should not be extreme, otherwise it will be very obviously repetitive when the animation loops. Extreme idle variations should be saved for rare idle animations, explained below.

This activity is for the animation your NPC will use for any type of walking or running movement.

If you are trying to match a specific movement speed, animation should travel forward at this rate every second.

Movement speeds vary with the type of NPC and with certain circumstances that affect movement speed, like haste, levelling, injured states and spells cast by other heroes. Test your NPC in game to make sure your run animations will work well at different speeds.

Run animations should be prepared with the character moving forward. Our animation system will automatically extract the motion along its forward movement axis and apply the different speeds required by the game.

Because NPCs often transition between idle and run animations, it's helpful if the two animations have similar core body positions.

Sentry/Observer Wards or Hero Wards, such as Venomancer Plague Wards, do not need run animations because they are always rooted in one place.

This animation is used when the NPC is killed. Normally the death animation ends once the character comes to rest on the ground.

Flying couriers require special handling for death animations. For more details, go to the Courier page.

There is no need to sink any NPCs except flying couriers into the ground after they die, the game code will handle this.

This is the looping animation, also known as portrait, that will play in the portrait frame when the NPC is selected in game.

Idle animation is used for the portrait if separate capture animation is not provided, but often the idle movements that read well in game view can be too extreme for the small portrait frame.

Capture animation can be created by making a copy of the idle animation and reducing the amount the NPC's body moves.

If you have adjusted the angle of the head to face upward for the in-game idle, the head can be returned to a normal angle for the capture animation.

Rare capture animation can help provide variety and interest - see below.

ACT_DOTA_LOADOUT

This is the looping animation that will play in the loadout when you are selecting and previewing NPCs or hero items.

Idle animation is used for the loadout if separate loadout animation is not provided, but sometimes different or more detailed animation is preferred for the closeup view in the loadout.

Portrait animation can be created by making a copy of the idle animation and adding changes or enhancements.

If you have adjusted the angle of the head to face upward for the in-game idle, the head can be returned to a normal angle for the loadout animation.

In the case of flying couriers, you may want to adjust their flying height in a dedicated loadout idle animation (and rare idle if applicable) so they display at a good height in the loadout.

Rare loadout animation can help provide variety and interest - see below.

ACT_DOTA_ATTACK

If your Ability Model NPC can attack another unit, it will need at least one attack animation.

If your Ability Model NPC has active abilities it can cast, you will need to create these animations if you are replacing the default animations.

Rare animations will play once, randomly, if your NPC has been playing an idle animation with no commands for a while.

These alternate animations help break up the repetition of the idles and make the characters more interesting and life-like.

Rare animations can range from a simple head turn to a full body movement.

Rare animations should have one clear idea that is well executed. This is preferable over trying to fit in many complicated ideas and actions that may be confusing or that may too time consuming to finish at a good quality level.

Not all NPCs have options for rare animations but if they are offered, using these to add a bit of variety can increase the appeal of your character.

TURN ANIMATIONS

Though optional, these right, left, and center poses are very helpful for generating smooth transitions during turns, especially for horizontal or long creatures that can otherwise look somewhat mechanical when turning.

ANIMATION ACTIVITIES

Dota 2 Workshop animation activities are now determined by how the animation files are input through the workshop tool UI. The initial iteration of the Dota 2 Workshop required artists to edit qc text files to assign activities to animation sequences but qc text file editing is no longer required. Bear this in mind if you see references to the qc process in developer websites or in the workshops of other Valve games.

Dota 2 Item Workshop Guidelines Homepage

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Any unit that is not a hero can be referred to as an NPC or Non-Player Character. Dota uses many types of customizable NPCs that require animations: A full set of custom animations must always be provided for Couriers and Wards.

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Steam Community :: Guide :: Dota 2 Workshop - The go-to Guide for Anything Animated in Dota 2

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While I tackle the momumental task of give each character their own control rig, this guide will serve as a place where you can come to download the most up to date rigs available. You can use these r

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While the last three decades have provided gradual leaps in gaming technology, the next 10 years will bring an explosive shift in the way we play games. Welcome to the SKILLED channel and today we're talking about the future of gaming technology. Technology is advancing at a rate faster than it ever has before.

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The Art of Video Games is one of the first exhibitions to explore the forty-year evolution of video games as an artistic medium, with a focus on striking visual effects and the creative use of new technologies.

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Last year, ProZone, an analysis company, started a scouting program called Recruiter, combining its own and Football Manager’s treasure troves of data, to formalize that connection. Other scouting software programs, including Scout 7 and InStat, provide much more “sophisticated” analysis than Football Manager, according to Alexander, but their format would be easily interpreted by anyone who has played the game.

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THQ's <i>Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine</i>.

Despite a lack of attention in past years, the Australian games development industry is increasingly punching above its weight and is contributing more to the economic prosperity of the country than its profile would suggest.

According to the Game Developers' Association of Australia (GDAA), the industry body responsible for growing the profile of the Australian interactive game industry, the sector is a dynamic and sophisticated one driven by strong creative and management talent, advanced technology, and 30 years' games development experience.

It is also one which is supported by strong domestic demand for interactive entertainment. According to the Interactive Games & Entertainment Association (iGEA) and analyst house GfK, the Australian video game market in 2008 was double the size of the domestic box office and more than 40 per cent larger than the DVD film industry.

Based on sales figures, the interactive games industry grew some 112 per cent between 2006 and 2008. Video game sales in 2008 were worth $1.96 billion, a 47 per cent increase on 2007.

In many ways the recent success of Queensland developer Halfbrick mirrors the wider success of the Australian games development industry. In July the studio was lauded by the state's premier, Anna Bligh, for having its title, Age of Zombies, named the number one Playstation Minis download.

"That's an incredible achievement for a Queensland company when you consider the sheer size of the international market for companies producing Playstation games," Bligh told an industry IT luncheon held during the month in Brisbane.

"The talented Halfbrick team is also responsible for creating the international best seller Fruit Ninja, which has sold more than one million copies and been on the iPhone games global top ten list for weeks."

This success of this industry in no small part rests on its uniquely IT-intensive approach to business. In fact one could say that IT is the business. Here we chat to some of Australia's premier games development companies about how they use IT to get the job done.

Tools and Infrastructure

Blue Tongue Entertainment general manager, Kevin Chan, says the studio is heavily reliant on a large number of tools and packages for creating games. On the art side, these include Photoshop, 3DS Max, Maya, and ZBrush. Programmers use Visual Studio, and also proprietary software from Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo. Level designers mostly work in a proprietary level editor tool.

Besides software, there is also specialised hardware to support including development kits from Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo 3D monitors, and a grid of PCs that the company uses for distributed processing work, such as distributed compilation, asset packaging, and graphics rendering.

"The biggest challenge is the variety of users/software/hardware that IT needs to support," Chan says. "Additionally, most people on the team are very tech savvy, so IT doesn't usually get requests for simpler things like 'How do I set my default printer?' However, it means that the problems that do find their way to IT are usually the ones that can't be easily solved."

The games industry is very niche. There is no 'guild of game developer IT administrators'

The issue of support is something Creative Assembly systems administrator, Matthew Pawlowski, can sympathise with. Not only does the IT department need to support a myriad of commercial and in-house applications, but it must also support the individual platforms and applications of games console vendors such as Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft. It often also has to do so with a lack of publicly available resources or community help.

"There is a lot of support out there on the web for general IT stuff, but when it comes to games specific stuff, there isn't much," he says. "The games industry is very niche. There is no 'guild of game developer IT administrators' and one of the driving concerns is that when you are striving to get a next generation title out there, there really is no roadmap.

"The IT guy has to knock up things which are proprietary to your studio and if you leak that to another studio - information on how your internal IT is set up - then that could be an advantage to them."

A classic example of this, Pawlowski says, is the build system - the engine which combines a code base with digital assets such as videos, models, music, and game characters to create a build of a game.

"Because you put in all the hard work researching, prototyping and optimising that build platform you wouldn't want to share it with anyone as they could get it for free and it would be an advantage for them," he says.

THQ Asia Pacific, IT manager Heath Cox, says hardware - high-end PCs, multiple displays, development kits, games consoles and the like - are present in such high quantity at the studio that managing power and air conditioning are a big part of supporting the business.

"Our Australian Studios average eight to 10 power points per desk and when supporting 90 to 120 staff, IT need to ensure that ample power and air conditioning is available in the building," he says. "Heat output from all the equipment and PCs often requires us to upgrade or install more air conditioning units to keep the working environment at optimal temperature. The building must have ample power which requires IT to ensure there is enough power to cater not only for the studio now but also for future growth."

The studio's back-end requirements, namely, storage and networking, are also quite different to your average corporate environment, Cox says. As games increasingly shift to high definition the studio's storage requirements have grown significantly to the point where managing storage is now one of the company's biggest challenges. "We have implemented a NAS storage device that allows us to grow the storage as needed and are just about to add another 28TB into our network," he says.

"We shifted to this about two years ago from servers with direct attached storage. IT manages the storage requirements and allocates new space as needed. As resources can be used from older projects it becomes a balancing act of what is still needed and what can be archived off to tape and as data storage is costly IT need to keep track of this on a regular basis."

On the networking side, THQ uses Cisco gear and runs gigabit switches and cabling across its Australian studios. Internet connections range from 20Mb / 20Mb to 40Mb / 40Mb Ethernet links.

"Four years ago we started with 4Mb connections and as time has gone by we have progressively upgraded the links on an 'as needs' basis," he says. "As game builds are sent back to our US counterparts on a regular basis we need to have high bandwidth available at all times. Due to the size of game builds and the amount of time we send builds across the links we need to have unlimited downloads / uploads which comes at a high cost to the business."

2K Marin Canberra Studio general manager, Anthony Lawrence, says a solid network is essential for supporting the front-office function of collaborating - primarily using videoconferencing - between the studio and its US offices.

"We've got about four videoconference units within the studio and we pretty much book those out most of the time," he says. "Fairly standard stuff, whether that be PC-based for a one-on-one conference, or a camera in a meeting room hooked up via phone link to a large television.

"It's just really dependent on what the requirements of the communications are, whether we need to look at whole-level or whole-programming teams talking together, or simply the art directors at the studios talking one-on-one."

The Creative Assembly's Pawlowski says the studio has also made great use of virtualisation, not only to consolidate back-office hardware, but to quickly scale and respond to the changing needs of its staff.

"A department head might be trying a new technology out and it needs a head server to talk back to, or a producer might say they want to try some new project managementt software, or the testing department might need new bug tracking software," he says.

"The advantage is that I can go to the vendor, get a trial version of the software off the internet, and run up a virtual server in 30 minutes instead of waiting two weeks for a quote, another two weeks for it to get here, then install the software. An additional bonus is that if they find that the software didn't serve their purpose, then there's nothing lost but a bit of time."

Next: How IT managers help innovate

Tags games thq How do they do IT? games development Interactive Games and Entertainment Association (iGEA)The Creative Assembly Halfbrick Studios Plastic Wax ZBrush 3DS Max GDAA Maya Blue Tongue Entertainment

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interactive games and entertainment association (igea)

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Despite a lack of attention in past years, the Australian games development industry is increasingly punching above its weight and is contributing more to the economic prosperity of the country than its profile would suggest.

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there is also specialised hardware to support including development kits from Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo 3D monitors, and a grid of PCs that the company uses for distributed processing work, such as distributed compilation, asset packaging, and graphics rendering.

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According to the Interactive Games & Entertainment Association (iGEA) and analyst house GfK, the Australian video game market in 2008 was double the size of the domestic box office and more than 40 per cent larger than the DVD film industry.

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Technology used in making computer games

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Technology used in making computer games

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Blue Tongue Entertainment general manager, Kevin Chan, says the studio is heavily reliant on a large number of tools and packages for creating games. On the art side, these include Photoshop, 3DS Max, Maya, and ZBrush. Programmers use Visual Studio, and also proprietary software from Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo. Level designers mostly work in a proprietary level editor tool.

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what do you understand about computer game design?