One thing I did get out of our failed tournament participation was that I found out that my brother is playing for a professional DotA 2 team. In fact, they were invited to The International - and if Valve is willing to give them an all-expenses paid trip to the US, they must be pretty damn good. I did a bit of Googling, and found an interview and a bunch of posts by other people. It's a bit weird, as I have known him his entire life, but there are people on the Internet that seem to know more about him than I do at the moment.
I have had people tell me that I should try talking to him again, but it has been so long since we last had a proper conversation, and I honestly don't remember why we stopped talking in the first place. We did a lot together as kids, and during primary school, I think I spent more time with his friends than with my own. It probably helped that he had a friend who had a giant collection of N64 games (he even had duplicates of some games, since his parents were divorced, and were both trying to spoil him). Or maybe I was just a loner. Then there is this big gap when we stopped talking to each other, and now it's just now. A part of me is wondering if the only reason I want to talk to him again is because he is (somewhat) famous. Though another part of me says that it doesn't matter why I want to talk to him again, it's good for the family if I do, and it'd make mum happy.
Sometimes I wonder if I only got into DotA 2 and chose poker as my second game because I wanted to keep some connection with him. I only saw him during one of my poker shifts, and whenever I wasn't dealing, I kept wandering over to his table to make sure that he was doing OK. I never told him though. After I found out about his DotA 2 team, I got a bit obsessed and tried to find out all I could about him. I tried to watch all of his TI2 games, but only managed to catch one of them live - the one where they got eliminated from the tournament.
I kinda feel a bit bad, I was mostly the good kid. I studied in high school, went to uni, didn't do drugs, tried to live up to the Asian parents' dream. He was the opposite once he hit high school. But the thing is, he was always better than me. He could practice something over and over, something I still cannot do. I think I've always preferred to live on the safe side - pick a degree that is likely to get me a job, and even though it will mean years of slaving away to make a decent amount of money, it's almost guaranteed. Whereas he seems to be fine with the idea of being a progamer and having a tiny chance of being successful, but once he makes it, then he'll have made it big.
We just seem to have such different personalities and backgrounds. If it weren't for the fact that we're related, I don't think we'd talk to each other at all. He drove me home a few days ago, and the entire car ride felt really awkward. I asked him a bit about The International, but seeing as his team didn't do so well, I didn't really want to ask too much. He asked me a bit about work, but after I briefly explained foreign exchange, the conversation died again.
He did mention that he wanted to take a year off uni to play DotA 2 exclusively, but he was worried about telling our parents, because he didn't think they'd understand. He also wanted to try and get a better Internet connection back at home, so that he could stream games and make a bit of money (though he said he'd need about 2000 viewers over 6 hours to make $150 - seems like a tough life to me).
The big sister in me wants to help him out, but I really don't know how. I mentioned that I watched him play, but when he asked why I was watching him, I lied and said I happened to be watching the stream of his teammate. Which I was, but the only reason I subscribed to that stream in the first place was to be able to watch him play. Am I bordering on stalker territory? Is it too late to make amends?
Monday 24 September 2012
Monday 10 September 2012
Death of Democracy
August was a pretty busy month for me. Olek, Rangers, Cousin Andrew and Cousin Simon and I signed up for a DotA 2 tournament. We got completely smashed in all games except our last which we won! (But they lost a player halfway due to a power outage.)
While our losses had a lot to do with lack of teamwork, I think that what Olek said was correct: our team really lacked a leader - someone who would call all the shots. As the team captain, I guess that should have been my job. I've read a few posts that said the captain should never be the hard carry as they are too emotionally invested in the game. They need to be someone who can see the bigger picture. But they also need to be someone that the team respects. I think that it's a lot like management.
If you have a boss who you think has no clue (which can be common in IT), whenever they ask you to do something, there is always that feeling that you are better than they are, and so you either do what they say and mutter under your breath that they're incompetent, or you go behind their back and do what you want. If you think your boss is competent, then you are more likely to go with something they say, because you trust that there is a good reason behind it. On the other hand, a good boss should be able to tell their underlings what to do, but also give them enough autonomy and trust that they will do the job correctly, i.e. don't micromanage.
So I think it's the captain's job to know their entire team's strengths and weaknesses so that they can give those kinds of commands, and have faith that people will listen. I know a lot of the failures in our games were due to the fact that we just had no team cohesion as we barely played any games together, but I have played many games with each of the different players individually, and so I think I should have known people's personalities better.
Following from Olek's point that we needed someone to call the shots, I think my personal management style is more democratic. I believe everyone should be able to have a say, and value everyone's input equally. That was a complete disaster. Our picks and bans were a complete mess, and it felt a bit like we just grabbed whichever heroes had some farfetched link with each other. I don't think we're at The International level (hahaha), but I think a lot of the points coL.Fluff says in the first part of his "mistakes" section apply to us also.
Oddly enough, I'm starting to see how bad it is to let everyone have a say. Even though we all had the same end goal (killing the throne), we all had a different idea on how to get there, and each person was pulling the team in a different direction. I think next time I'll pick people who play well together rather than people who play well in general. I also need to build up my own respectability so that people will actually listen to me.
While our losses had a lot to do with lack of teamwork, I think that what Olek said was correct: our team really lacked a leader - someone who would call all the shots. As the team captain, I guess that should have been my job. I've read a few posts that said the captain should never be the hard carry as they are too emotionally invested in the game. They need to be someone who can see the bigger picture. But they also need to be someone that the team respects. I think that it's a lot like management.
If you have a boss who you think has no clue (which can be common in IT), whenever they ask you to do something, there is always that feeling that you are better than they are, and so you either do what they say and mutter under your breath that they're incompetent, or you go behind their back and do what you want. If you think your boss is competent, then you are more likely to go with something they say, because you trust that there is a good reason behind it. On the other hand, a good boss should be able to tell their underlings what to do, but also give them enough autonomy and trust that they will do the job correctly, i.e. don't micromanage.
So I think it's the captain's job to know their entire team's strengths and weaknesses so that they can give those kinds of commands, and have faith that people will listen. I know a lot of the failures in our games were due to the fact that we just had no team cohesion as we barely played any games together, but I have played many games with each of the different players individually, and so I think I should have known people's personalities better.
Following from Olek's point that we needed someone to call the shots, I think my personal management style is more democratic. I believe everyone should be able to have a say, and value everyone's input equally. That was a complete disaster. Our picks and bans were a complete mess, and it felt a bit like we just grabbed whichever heroes had some farfetched link with each other. I don't think we're at The International level (hahaha), but I think a lot of the points coL.Fluff says in the first part of his "mistakes" section apply to us also.
Oddly enough, I'm starting to see how bad it is to let everyone have a say. Even though we all had the same end goal (killing the throne), we all had a different idea on how to get there, and each person was pulling the team in a different direction. I think next time I'll pick people who play well together rather than people who play well in general. I also need to build up my own respectability so that people will actually listen to me.
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