Dota 2 has been a huge passion of mine over the last 10 years. I began playing in the beta in March of 2012, and proceeded to immerse myself in the community in basically every way I could imagine.
In 2013, I started up a Youtube channel where I broadcasted any available Dota games from the public ladder. I was an amateur with very little broadcasting experience, and was looking for basically any way to get my voice out there and learn.
I continued working on my shoutcasting, and networked my way into regular appearances on the broadcasts of multiple amateur leagues including the AD2L, RD2L, Canada Cup, UGC League, and others. The casts for these groups garnered enough attention that I was invited to shoutcast live at local events such as GottaCon, UBC Cup, and LANtasy, as well as international events such as Pax East, and Insomnia festival.
Through casting, I discovered an immense passion for organizing the community and hosting events. Since I tended to do a lot of organizing for the teams in the leagues I casted anyways, I figured it made sense to just run the events myself, thus spawned the British Columbia Gaming Community. For a little over a year, I ran competitive events for Dota and League of Legends, hosting dozens of teams competing for a prize pool paid out of my own pocket. Eventually the self-sustained prize pool pinched me a bit too hard, and I ran myself thin spending most nights connecting team captains and broadcasting games. While I enjoyed every moment of it, I eventually shuttered the league, hoping to pass it on to eager volunteers, but sadly, never found the right home.
Through all of the years lifting up competitive players and organizing competition, I ignited my own desire to play Dota competitively. In 2017 I set my sights on playing professionally, and started shifting my focus from shoutcasting to honing my game. I spent more time streaming my personal play, and built a network of players I trusted and got along with. From 2017-19, my team competed in a number of local LANs, and grew as players, eventually culminating in qualification for a 4-team in-person LAN in Toronto. The experience was detailed in a blog post here. I eventually peaked in the top 400 players in North America, and fell on a frustrating plateau of improvement, failing to push my game as far as I’d like.
As I neared my peak in Dota performance, I was contacted about potentially taking a position as a Product Manager at a company called Elo Entertainment, better known by their primary product, Dotabuff. Feeling that prospects as a pro gamer were tenuous at best, I dove head first into the opportunity, excited to be able to bridge my experience building consumer entertainment products with my love of Dota. With Elo, I helped expand the feature set of Dotabuff, and launched three new properties: Reach, TrackDota, and the Dotabuff App. Each provided me an opportunity to put some of what I’d learned in all my years of Dota out there in a professional product. With Reach, I leveraged my event organizing to host a $240,000 prize pool event for ESL. With TrackDota, I got to leverage my years of broadcasting and viewing esports events to create an amazing tracking tool for live games, and with the Dotabuff app, I got to leverage years of coaching and Game knowledge to build a tool for newer players to improve with.
Eventually I encountered a bit of Dota burnout, having spent 3 years engaging with it as a full time career, and as a passionate hobby on the side. While it was an amazing time, it ended with me taking a serious break from playing. I took a year away from playing Dota, and only popped in for occasional casual games with old friends. What eventually reeled me back in, was a desire to return to content creation. I had spent so much time in this community and experienced so much, that I wanted to share it however I could, and thought it would be amazing to seek out a casting or analyst position in some regard. To that extent, I produced a new demo cast, and started looking for new events and players to work with.
This cast eventually garnered me a position casting with Dota Valkyries, an amazing organization supporting women in the Dota scene. I’ve done a number of shoutcasts for them, and hope to do more in the future.
As well as returning to casting, I also dove head first into coaching Dota. I found a number of consistent students who I’ve been happy to help develop and assist in working on their play. I host weekly broadcasts of these sessions on my twitch channel, and share all of the VODs on Youtube for others to learn from. It’s brought me a lot of joy to be able to re-engage with the game I love so much in such a constructive way that hasn’t been tied to high-pressure performance, or my day-to-day career.
And that brings us to today! I still coach weekly, I’m still on the lookout for casting opportunities, and I still maintain an immortal rank on the ladder. If you’re looking for someone to offer commentary or insight on a professional broadcast, to coach your pro or pro-amateur team, or to help guide esports related products, I’m your guy. If you’re interested in working with me on anything Dota related, please reach out via social media. I hope to continue adding new chapters to this blog. Dota has been a huge part of my life, and I hope it continues to be going forward.