ldDOTA

I started commentating DOTA 1 replays and submitted a few to Dotacommentaries. Eventually Luminous gave me feedback after a lot of nagging messages from me. He graciously agreed to co-cast a few replays with me, and then I slowly found more opportunities to do live commentary as time went on! It took a lot of persistence and a bit of luck to get noticed, and I'd expect the same is true for most players.

Morphling because AQUAMAN

It was a pretty huge risk financially, but I have a very supportive family and had saved up a decent amount from my previous work running my own consulting practice. I had a decent work history before I started commentating and a college degree from Dartmouth, so I had more of a fall-back plan than a lot of other people in esports. That said, these past few years have been incredibly exciting and fulfilling, and I'm glad I took the leap back in 2012.

I don't have any regrets about BTS, but if I could go back and change something, I think we'd try to do a better job of being transparent about how much work goes into everything we do off-camera. I think 2GD is one of the best people in the DOTA 2 space at showcasing how much he's doing behind the scenes in a positive way that makes people appreciate his contributions. There are a lot of other people who do as much or more, but most of them aren't nearly as good at conveying that to the community in a positive / fun way.

I pretty much work on BTS 24/7, and the same is true for the majority of our people. If I'm not casting, I'm helping build PCs, stress-testing our network / internet, negotiating with talent working our events, booking flights / hotels for players, setting up production equipment for our events, writing rules, collecting paperwork from teams, meeting with sponsors, etc. To be honest, I grew up fairly introverted, and sometimes I don't invest enough time/energy in communicating with the community (partially just because of how busy we are, and partially because it's probably not my biggest strength).

We're still in that transition phase between small startup and full-time commercial business, which is where sometimes our people end up being stretched a little thin with more areas of responsibilities than at a more traditional, established company. It can be tough to navigate, and there are growing pains, but we're working hard to continue growing as a brand and adding value to the DOTA 2 community wherever we can.

I've probably played / commentated somewhere between 10,000-25,000 hours total between DOTA 1 and DOTA 2. Really hard to say for sure, but years of my life as a kid / college student were spent playing like 6-8 hours of pubs a day.