ari: “I was choosing between League of Legends and Dota 2, which game to try to become a pro player in”

1win Team support Matthew 'ari' Walker spoke on the ALL CHAT podcast about his introduction to Dota 2 and the decision to become a pro player, and also spoke about his choice of current role.

[ How did you initially get into Dota? And when did you decide to become a professional player? ] I actually decided to become a professional player before I even started playing. I was choosing between League of Legends and Dota 2, in which game to try to become a pro player. The last game I played and where I almost entered the pro scene closed.

Then I thought, “Okay, I still want to be a professional player. I’ll just choose another discipline and become an e-sportsman in it.” I played about five public games each in Dota and League of Legends. I studied both games a little and just felt that Dota suited my style better.

So from the very beginning I knew that I wanted to become a pro player in it. But I was still in school at the time, so I just played it off and on for three or four years. During this time, I reached approximately rank 2000, just playing for fun.

When I graduated from high school at 18, I asked my family to give me a gap year so that I could devote full time to Dota and try to get into the pro scene. The first half of the year was pretty bad and I made very little progress. But then I changed the role to “four”, and it became much better - after that everything worked out quite quickly.

I started getting into lobbies with professional players and was constantly getting flamed. It seemed to me that the pace in games was too high, that I was not ready for it, that it was too difficult for me.

The real problem was that the carry was just a terrible role that I hated and never wanted to play again. She's really terrible. The only reason I played position 1 before was because the archetype of heroes in that role was similar to the ones I played before in Heroes of the Storm. But the role itself is very different and I hate it. So I moved to fourth position.

When I moved to fourth position, it was like enlightenment. The game became so easy for me, so natural and brought much more pleasure. I just can't believe I stuck with carry for four years.

It definitely helped that in the last discipline I had already shown that I had offers from professional teams and that I was ranked first. That is, it was clear that this was not just some crazy idea. This could actually become a reality. So they believed in me, but I don't think it was some kind of absolute faith, because getting to a level where you can actually make a living at it is something that obviously a very small percentage of people do.

And at that time I studied in a good school, received a good education - in general, everything was quite simple and already arranged. So from their point of view, it looked like I was giving up something that was already very good, or delaying my development for several years to try something that would only work for very, very few people.

They just wanted the best for me, I guess. But it definitely helped that I already had proof in the last game that it was possible. So yeah, they gave me a chance and at least believed in me enough to do it. And now they love it - they watch every game I play.

The podcast was previously visited by Jorien 'Sheever' van der Heijden. Caster recalled the beginning of her career and meeting IceFrog, and also explained how she came up with the phrase “Where'd he go?” for the Compendium.