Like back when SC2 fans were excited over an NBA player ‘came out’ and said he enjoyed playing SC2, in Asia Dota2 is gradually hitting a sort of celebrity status as well. Except, well, the big names are a bit bigger in terms of following. Read on to find out more.
And of course, there was the iG party thrown by iG’s rich owners, which attracted rich and powerful people from all over: http://dota2.sgamer.com/albums/201209/7804_318406.html —- http://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/zp215/billionaire_owner_of_ig_throws_party_in/
Original: http://dota2.sgamer.com//news/201208/146823.html
A year ago, it was reported that mega-famous Chinese pop star JJ Lin (has 15 million followers on weibo, household name in Asia), and fellow singer Cao Ge had revealed on their Weibo accounts that they enjoy passing time by playing Dota and Starcraft 2, for a time piquing the interest and excitement of many Chinese fans. Now, Dota’s successor Dota2 approaches open beta, the question becomes whether or not these stars will move on to the embrace of Dota2?
Reality is just so, as in [late August] JJ Lin posted a picture to his weibo, with the invitation “Fellow otaku [nerd/recluse], let’s play!”, with the image clearly being a screenshot of Dota2 featuring Templar Assassin, Juggernaut, and Luna.
Commentator Haitao then quipped, “Please add me, I’ll buy the chick, sentries, and gem, I’ll give you the lane, creeps, and kills!!”. And following that, famous international snooker player Ding Junhui replied, “I’ve got it downloaded too, after training when I get home, I’ll otaku [nerd/recluse it up] too!”
It would seem that the magic of Dota2 isn’t limited to only us normal gamers, these superstars have also been wrapped in! In some match in the future, it could be one of them you’re playing with~
Original: http://dota2.sgamer.com/news/201209/147103.html
Now Dota2’s popularity is growing immensely, with stars and famous people from all over joining the ranks, using Dota2 as their relaxation in their off time. Bigshots from all sides are paying attention to Dota2, clearly it is a game of wide appeal. Not only do normal fans love it, the rich and powerful and famous are asking for invites too! After TI2, especially, the whole world has been taken by another wave of invite begging. Recently, a certain Beijing Guoan (Beijing’s top tier professional football/soccer team) player asking for invites further proved all of this!
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This is great news.China alone should be able to push Dota 2 at the very top of esports.Btw how is LoL doing there?
The most widespread sentiment amongst Chinese gamers is that LoL is a casual online game compared to Dota, even the owner of iG who also runs an LoL team says that LoL is an easy game that is inferior to Dota.
However, every single hour Valve wastes in opening up Dota2 to the world, and especially China, is an hour that LoL grows stronger. LoL is owned by one of China’s biggest companies and, while Dota is still by far the more popular game in the genre, LoL is free and open for anyone to just play right now, and more and more people are getting tired of waiting for Dota2 and just going to LoL instead.
The biggest leagues in China, G-league and ACE, both do not have anything for LoL but a few big Chinese teams have LoL squads so it’s starting to gain some ground.
Definitely this! Hopefully Dota 2 will be released with as much hype as possible. If Valve presses the right buttons, we can even have Dota 2 as the number 1 played game in South Korea and Taiwan as well.
Valve cannot stay complacent.
My biggest concern is that they are taking too long to get it into open beta. If needing to expand server capacity is truly the only barrier to going into open beta, then that’s a really dumb reason (because buying some servers shouldn’t be that hard at all) to delay it any further when there are visible signs that they are losing ground to other competitors. In Asia, once you lose that ground, it’s very hard to gain it back. With rumors that they’ve confirmed their Chinese partner, hopefully we’ll see things go open sooner than later.
While google translate proves other wise, I feel ‘otaku’ as a translation for ‘宅男’ is misleading. 宅 is used to refer to people who spends a lot of time in-doors, a shut-in and 男 referring to males. Otaku on the other hand while meaning similar to 宅男 in Japanese, its meaning in English are more so associated with the Japanese culture. Sorry for the nag but I’m just trying to make a constructive criticism.
Maybe ‘Recluse’ would be more accurate.
Maybe just ‘nerds’ to fit western culture.
You’re super correct. For some reason I had a mental block in trying to find the word ‘recluse’, that’s exactly what I was looking for.
Although, Chinese will often refer to themselves in English as ‘otaku’ as well when they’re saying 宅男, using the literal translation. Thanks!
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