Free to Play

Production quality is good, but the whole thing is soulless pandering to its audience and cheap appeals to emotion, with a hint of infomercial thrown in. 1 Million Dollars! e-sports are going to be the biggest thing ever! Cheer on these saps throwing away their future chasing a fruitless dream!! There are some throwaway comments that hint at reality, but the film quickly brushes them off a silly pessimism. The peeks under the glossy veneer at the stunted reality are interesting, though.

A) DOTA is full of psychotic Russians and there was a severe lack of that shown. B) We need to stop calling online competitive gaming "e-sports". That is a shitty term that will win over no sports fans. C) 25% of this is a DOTA commercial which is why you should skip this film unless you are a fan of gaming. D) If Danil's sister is interested in forging a new life in America, I am open to the possibility.

Dendimon, :kappa:, 4, etc.

Call me a faggot but as someone who actually participated in competitive gaming this got to me. for me it's pretty interesting to see insight of Dendi's and Fear's life which I actually found myself relating to. That said though, even when I was competitive I never stopped going to school or pursuing legitimate career paths and this movie acts as if you can do that so long as you "work hard." The funny thing is even pros realize they need school and use gaming to jumpstart their education.

If this really wanted to be honest about Dota/MOBAs and e-league sporting (which it can't be because it was released by Valve), it would have to look into the detrimental qualities which would be much more common among gamers of this genre, i.e., addiction, depression, and anti-social behaviour. The furthest it went with this idea is examining the 'sacrifices' a professional gamer must make, but, overall, they were glorified and sugar-coated, leading to a terribly saccharine ending.

It's not very good, but I love dota. What can I say? - 3/19/14

Looks gorgeous

In the end it is a presentation of Valve's product: Dota2. As a result it's quite one-sided but you can say the same thing about a lot of other sports documentaries so I won't disregard it simply on that. It highly succeeds on capturing the atmosphere of the spectacular event that is The International. The emotional depth they try to add to the personal lives of the players may be questionable, but feeling when they are in the booth is fascinating.

It's well made and shows clearly and movingly who some of these players are and how their different backgrounds still allow them to end up in the same place. But all the same, you can never quite forget that it's just as much advertisement as it is a documentary, even if it is very well made advertising.

people find their way to live. not always. but mostly.