My six pages long essay on DotA(First Draft)

If you ever ask me what I do every day, I will reply you that I eat, sleep, and play DotA. DotA? What is DotA?
Defense of the Ancients (DotA) is the most popular spinoff of Warcraft III : Frozen Throne multiplayer game. Note that Warcraft III: Frozen Throne is needed to run DotA as DotA is a spinoff of Warcraft III : Frozen Throne multiplayer game. DotA is originally created around December of 2002 by a scenario developer known as Eul based on the “Aeon of Strife” map from Warcraft III : Frozen Throne predecessor: Starcraft. However, Eul did not update his creation. The incredible growth of DotA occurs when a scenario developer Steve Feak (under the alias Guinsoo) begin developing the original DotA. According to Feak, he had no idea how popular the game would eventually become when he first developed Dota.[1] As for now, a group of scenario developers by the name of IceFrog took over development of the scenario. With successive versions, IceFrog updates DotA’s features. To put simple, DotA is a game where two teams each consist of maximum five players: Sentinel and Scoruge fight against each other. Every player is given a choice of 93 characters (the number of characters increase from time to time) to choose from. The main goal of the game is to destroy the opponent’s main building (known as the “Ancient”)
DotA is one of the most popular game around worldwide. Even in Garena (a multifunction platform that allows gamers to chat, challenge opponents challenge opponents, and play their favorite games online with millions of gamers world-wide) itself, there is an average of 120,000 people worldwide playing Dota at any time of the day. This is only a miniscule part of the whole Dota community. First, the 120,000 people do not include those not playing Dota at that particular time. Second, the number does not include those who are playing Dota on other platforms such as Blueserver and Battlenet, and Local Area Network(LAN), and their own computers with bots. From here, one can easily imagine the how large the number of DotA players in the world can be. The interesting question here is why DotA is so popular for such a long time. It has been around for more than six years and more and more people are playing it; it seems like it will be a never ending trend.
The evident source of the popularity of DotA is the rapid advancement of technology. Technology makes playing DotA more convenient. First, you need a desktop or a laptop to play the game. As technology advance, desktops and laptops get cheaper to the extent that the price drops a few hundred dollars in just less than half a year; present desktops and laptops become obsolete in a mere half a year as more advance desktops and laptops go into the market. When DotA first came out in 2003(Note that the version create on December 2002 is the beta version), only high end laptops and desktops can run the game Warcraft III : Frozen Throne. However, these high end desktops become cheaper and affordable to the larger population in a matter of time. This makes DotA available to the larger population. Second, days where people need to meet up in cyber cafes to play DotA with human players through local network (LAN) is coming to an end. One only needs a simple computer or laptop which is capable of running Warcraft III: Frozen Throne and a decent internet service to play with DotA players around the world through platforms like Garena, Battlenet, and Blueserver. Besides, all these platforms are free. This platforms really make playing DotA extremely convenient. People do not even need to get of their house to play DotA as compare to sports like football and swimming. Other than that, those who want to play a full-fledge five versus five DotA match can easily find players around the world as compare to other games like football, basketball, and soccer. For instance, there are two person, one who wants to play a full-fledge DotA match and the other wants to play a full-fledge basketball match. Both games need five players on each side and a total of 10 players both sides. The person who wants to play DotA can easily find players from around the world who want to play DotA at that particular time through previously mentioned platforms whereas the pitiful basketball player needs to make an effort to call his friends or join other players in the basketball court which end up with more or less than ten players most of the time.
In addition, DotA is promoted either explicitly or implicitly by gaming websites and forums that are clustering in the internet. Being promoted explicitly here means that this websites post DotA advertisements on their homepage. For instance, the official site of DotA, http://www.dota-allstars.com/index.php, advertise DotA events to attract the interest of people. However, most of the time DotA is advertised implicitly. Implicit here means that gaming websites do not purposely post advertisement to attract people to play DotA but promote DotA through their forums and links. For instance, in a online gaming forum, forum.esnation.com, it implicitly promotes DotA by showing the number of posts in DotA discussion sites and links to it. When someone who is surfing the website for information of other games, they will come across the information on DotA. As humans are naturally curious, they will access the links to find out more about DotA. The more they find out about DotA, the more these curious people are eager to try out of DotA. Once these curious people try out DotA, they will end up getting addicted to it and join the DotA community.
True to say, if DotA can get popular through advancement of technology and promotion by gaming websites and forum, any computers games will also get popular. Then why aren’t other computers games gaining as much popularity as DotA? The reason behind is DotA is more than a computer game. It provides the means to fulfill the basic and inherent human social needs: the need of belonging and esteem. In fact, the ability of DotA to provide means to fulfill human social needs provides the foundation for the expansion of DotA through technology advancement and promotions by gaming websites and forums. Let put it this way. Platforms that connect DotA players around the world will not be introduced in the first place if DotA is not widespread enough. Gaming websites and forums will not even post anything about DotA if nobody cares about it. It is the desire to fulfill society needs that makes DotA widespread enough for the introduction of platforms that connects DotA players and discussion and promotion of DotA in gaming websites and forums.
When you ask someone the reason he started playing DotA, he will probably tell you that his friends persuaded him to play. You further ask him the reason he did not ignored his friends. He will probably tell you that he will be left out by his friends. From here, we can see a strong sense of peer pressure that contributes to people ended up playing DotA. Peer pressure arises from the human need of self-belonging. Most people play DotA so that they want a sense of self-belonging among their social group. They do not want to be left out by a social group. To a more extreme extent, DotA become a culture to a society. For instance, DotA has become the culture of my home country Malaysia. Almost everyone knows about DotA. Even if they do not play DotA, they have general idea about the game. As DotA is part of Malaysian culture, those who does not have any knowledge about DotA will be stigmatized as non-Malaysians. Here, we can see a powerful social force that drives many Malaysians to play or at least have minimum knowledge about DotA because they want a sense of belonging to their society.
When you read the previous part of my essay, you will probably ask the reason DotA is such big thing in other parts of the world to the extent that it fulfills human social needs while nobody knows about it in United States. This is because Americans still stigmatize those who sit in front of their computers gaming as nerds; nobody wants to be call nerds. Hence, DotA is ineffective to provide means to fulfill social needs because the social norm of United States is working against it. Consequently, DotA is not so popular in United States.
When humans gain the sense belonging, they yearn for esteem: the need of self-esteem, confidence, achievements and respect from others. DotA provides the means to meet humans’ end of esteem. Everyone begins playing DotA as noobs (a term use in DotA for those who play badly). These pitiful noobs will be scolded, and sometimes cursed by other players. All these cursing and scolding trigger the self-esteem of noobs to play better; they ended up playing more DotA and discuss DotA on gaming websites and forums to gain more skills and experience. This leads to the clustering of tones of information on DotA in gaming websites and forums. As these noobs reach the amateur level, they will start to gain more confidence in DotA. This confidence which came from pawning( a term use in DotA for “thrashing”) opponents drives the amateurs who were once noobs to play more; it is only natural for human keep doing something they are confident with. Some amateurs who want more achievements such as qualifying and winning tournaments ended up playing and discussing more DotA in online forums to enhance their skills. By qualifying and winning international level tournaments such as World Cyber Games, these amateurs will gained the title as professionals and respect from others. From here, we can see that DotA is played by many because it provides the means to achieve esteem; a lot of DotA matches need to be played before someone finally achieve the desired esteem.
Why then DotA is not played throughout the ages of the population from babies to old but only teenagers and young adults since it can fulfills human social needs? This is because DotA is too complex for babies while too childish for adults.
Well, if Dota is so popular because of advancement of technology, promotion throughout the internet, and its ability to fulfill human basic and inherent social need, why aren’t other computer games become popular through the sources that make DotA popular? The ultimate source of the popularity of DotA is that DotA is a fun and interesting game to begin with; it has a high variation of characters and items and the characters and items are added for every new version of DotA. First, DotA matches last for an optimum time of around one hour which is neither too long nor too short. Second, players can try different combination of the number of players in a team, characters, and item build each time they play. Hence, each DotA match will be different from the others. Furthermore, the number of heroes and items increase every time a new version of DotA; it only takes about the maximum of three months for a new version of DotA to be out. All these contribute to large varieties of strategies and game play in DotA which make DotA is always fresh with unending surprises and combinations.
If not for the fact that DotA is fun and interesting game, other sources that make DotA popular will be meaningless. Technology advancement may help increase the DotA community by making DotA more convenient and available to the larger population, but DotA itself need to be fun and interesting to begin with so that people will keep playing it. Other than that, the ability of DotA as the means to fulfill human basic and inherent social needs may push the popularity even further but again, Dota needs to be fun and interesting. It needs to be fun and interesting enough for people to get addicted to it and introduce friends before it is able to become the means to fulfill human social needs. For example, I came across a obsolete game name “Real War”. It is so boring that I do not want to play the game myself let alone introducing the game to a friend. In contrast, when I play DotA, I feel the thrill and fun of the game that I persuade my friends to play it. The point I want to make from this example is that DotA need to be fun and interesting so that it get spreaded across some extent of the society before it becomes the means to fulfill human social needs that make DotA become even more popular.
At the end of the day, it is no use reading my essay on the sources that make DotA popular. You need to play and experience the fun and excitement of DotA to really understand the points that I made. So, grab a copy of Warcraft III: Frozen Throne and download DotA today to experience the fun and excitement of DotA.



[1] http://www.1up.com/do/previewPage?cId=3172308&p=1