“My Facebook page is where I like to publicly flaunt all of my weird little successes and failures at cosplay. I love talking to people about whatever they may be working on and exchanging methods and ideas. Come at me b
Despite its success, Valve doesn’t seem to have as profitable of a business model as Riot. Comparing the two is like having a tech company compete with three unpaid men in a basement. Now normally, fans would rather thoroughly milk a cheaper game, but Riot somehow constantly pulls in its audience with shiny new changes. Fans sometimes forget that when a business succeeds, it performs better. More money goes into focus groups and reworking teams. So at the very least, a portion of Riots riches actually go into improving parts of the game that need to be fi
Dota 2 is by far one of the most popular games to both play and watch. The MOBA game strategy has a constant and high following on services like Twitch and YouTube , and has seen impressive attendance at past tournaments. Tickets for the upcoming Dota 2 tournament went on sale this week, but weren’t available long. In fact, despite the $99 price tag, the first round of tickets sold out in just six minutes. The second round of ticket sales beat the first round, selling out in an impressive four minu
The speed by which the tickets sold out is definitely a strong indicator that the eSports industry is alive and well. With viewers of tournaments growing alongside the award money, we’re sure this is still only the beginning of eSports. The prize pool for the previous Dota 2 International tournament, for instance, reached $11 million. Esports is definitely here to s
Long forgotten by Riot, Urgot is in desperate need of a rework to make him relevant again. Every once in a while, when the tank meta comes on too strong, you may see him make a reappearance, providing armor reduction for the rest of his team, but generally he’s an inconsequential pick. Don’t get me wrong, he’s fun to play and there are some players who are very good with him and useful. Unfortunately, they are a small minority and he has an abysmal win rate. So just the sight of him on your team usually sends your teammates into rage spirals before the game can even begin. If for nothing else, he needs a rework as an excuse to replace that Giant Enemy Crabgot splash art. Why Riot still has official art up of a big cyborg crab monster kidnapping a scantily clad girl is a mystery to
On the flipside, Dota 2 attempts to diversify its heroes’ roles. It’s a lot more feasible for a Dota 2 hero to begin as a support, but to finish the game as the one carrying the game. The heroes are grouped into three categories; Agility, Strength, and Intelligence. However, in and out of the same category, the heroes are vastly different from each other, some being extremely unique. Rubick can steal abilities. Invoker has ten spells. At the same time, equipment purchases are a lot less restrained. Any hero can buy Aghanim’s Scepter or a Blink Dagger. These choices allow for novel matches to happen fairly of
AHIII: Yeah, it is very much that principle. Thankfully, people have enjoyed my casting. It has led to other opportunities and snowballed into where I’m at now. I feel extremely lucky to have gotten the opportunities that I have. It’s just me trying to be
M: That is super important too. I think that is something a lot of people struggle with. For myself, sometimes I may do things that I feel disheartened by. But when I am happier with something I do and I personally think it’s fine — even when others don’t — that is something I can totally agree w
“The demon hunter was the project that I decided to do after I went to my first major convention and got a good look at what other people were producing. I mained a demon hunter all the way through Diablo 3 , had loved the character and the artwork associated with it. It seemed a natural choice for me at the time. I just kind of sat down one day, looked at my boyfriend, and said “This. This is what I want to do next.” So I did it. Rather poorly. It was pretty much glued together and the first time I wore it to Megacon, it hadn’t even been sealed, I just slapped paint on it. It evolved quite a bit between Megacon and Supercon. It now just sits on a mannequin in my room, it’s almost too fragile to wear out anymore. There’s a nostalgic part of me that wants to remake it knowing everything I know now
At this year’s Heroes of the Dorm tournament, DualShockers spoke to one of the casters of the event, Albert “Halorin” Haily III, to discuss his personal journey on becoming a caster, his dream opportunity, and his prediction for the winner of Blizzard’s collegiate eSports tournam
Both games are rife with a myriad of ways of griefing teammates, and it is done so regularly. The two games do attempt to dampen the spread of remarks that are too homophobic or racist (with penalties like being placed into lower priority queue). When thoroughly miffed, many players resort to ‘feeding,’ the act of dying to the enemy team on purpose to give them gold. To win games, some players even resort to ‘swatting,’ the act of making up a violent crime in order to goad a SWAT team to the streamer’s h