In an earlier post, I briefly described a 'career option' I explored, something rather unique and new to most people. For those not up to speed, with my proficiency in the popular MOBA 'DotA 2', I climbed its brackets; attaining a repsectable enough rank to be considered one of its best players. On the 6th of August 2014, my hard efforts had come to fruition.
Anyone can claim to be good at dota, but without the credentials to prove it, nobody would care or believe you. Fortunately for me, my personal skill at the game was enough to trudge me to a matchmaking rating of 5409, and the 193th place on the top 200 of the Southeast Asian leaderboards. It was a long and grueling journey, stressful but incredibly satisfying.
There are leaderboards for America, Europe, SE Asia and China, with only 200 rankings for each respectively. Hence, there are only 800 people worldwide on them at any given time, and I was one of them! In case you haven't put the puzzle pieces together yet, this was the humble beginning of dota growing into a little more than just a pastime of mine.
Dota, sleeping, and self-loathing
My daily life schedule now revolved around dota related things. This comprised of making youtube videos, streaming, watching pro games, and of course, playing the game itself. Without going too deep into details, I had dropped out of school for quite some time now and had no plans for the future. It might sound pathetic to some of you, but for longer than I'd care to admit, my life was now just eat, sleep and play dota.
I did gain a bit of a small following, both from my shitty youtube videos and streams filled with technical issues. Of course I haven't gotten really anywhere in those areas, as of today I have a 736 subscribers and even if you're a big fan of dota, my name doesn't mean anything to you. Nevertheless, they were fun experiences I don't regret.
But even the most driftless of NEETs require a disposable income, and I was ready to jump at any opportunites. Upon a friend's suggestion, I registered for a coaching platform 'DotaCoach'
What actually is DotaCoach?
DotaCoach is a service for both people who want to learn, and those who teach dota. They primarily act as a middleman, holding a potential student's money first, prior to an actual lesson. This means that they have 'insurance', in case of an unsatisfactory lesson, or a coach pulling something funny, such as disappearing after taking payment.
Consequently, if someone purchases an hour of lessons from me, my earnings are only deposited after 3 days. This gives the student plenty of time for a full refund, or to be referred to one of my 'colleagues'.
In addition, since everything is automated through Paypal, chargebacks are always a thing if all goes awry. However, it does mean having to go through their exchange rates, and the hassle of having to wire those funds over to my bank account.
The site also has a one dollar comission fee for every transaction. When I first started out, I charged the lowest amount possible of 5 USD an hour. This leaves me with 4 USD per hour booking, provided anyone even bought a lesson. Wowee, not very lucrative looking, I might as well be working cash register at MacDonalds right?
Not exactly! Coaching dota had many perks a regular job couldn't offer, considering I had no qualifications whatsoever. The temporary cheap rates were just a good way to attract students, to try-out new coaches (like myself back then) who had no reviews or history whatsoever. If you've read Part 1, you'll know I did end up increasing my fee down the line, once I had reputation beyond my MMR (Match Making Rating, AKA my rank).
Let's Review!
Dota Coaching Pros:
- A refund policy that protects both me and the student
- Flexible hours (I could always decline students, there was no 'quota' to meet)
- I like teaching/helping people
- Free promotion of services, (provided you're actually helping)
- Dota is something I'm an expert on
- Playing videogames is part of my job instead of standing at a cash register
Dota Coaching Cons:
- Getting your first student could be hard
- You could work for peanuts until you're an established name
- Students of other timezones may need you to stay up at 4 in the God damn morning
- Your payment goes through Paypal
- Being good at dota doesn't automatically make you a good teacher
At the time, I naturally hadn't known about most of this stuff, I just know of it now from experience. Instead, I initally taught people dota and tried out DotaCoach for a much simpler, underlying reason:
For a NEET with no ambition beyond getting better at dota, nor the motivation to return to the public education system, this was the perfect job.
My first lesson
A few days after I signed up, I got my first booking. It took me by surprise, I was still busy in my unhealthy cycle of grinding ranked games, trying to work my way up the top dogs.
As you can imagine, Dota for me, was not only extremely competitive but also hard to keep up with. In order to get to where I was, I had to maintain my cool while most would have suffered multiple aneurysms, dedicating tons of time to practice. How else could I compete with those who play Dota for a living, or the ones who reign as the kings of the leaderboards?
There were times where I played Dota from dawn to night, just 14 hours of non-stop matches, only pausing to take a leak or stuff food into my face. It was frustrating to say the least, and it drove me mad on more than one occasion. Trying to impart dota knowledge instead of losing another match seemed like a nice bit of respite. The student sent me a friend request as soon as he had purchased an hour of my time, and asked if I was ready right there and then. After deciding a VOIP to use, we got started right away.
An air of awkwardness
Since my student used a mandarin allias, (and for the sake of anonymity) let's call him 'Smith'. Smith had english as a second language, and found my accent slightly hard to follow. I found myself having to substitute words beyond his vocabulary, and rephrasing in simpler English often. The good thing about dota is that no matter what country you're from, many terms and labels in the game use the same name. For example, the name 'Roshan' (an in-game boss) is universal. This also applies for many items, their various English acronyms are used just the same, even by the Chinese or Russians.
I hadn't even thought of a 'lesson plan' of any kind, so I decided to use an already existing feature in dota. Aptly named 'Coaching', it allows you to spectate a friend while he plays a live game. You can toggle his perspective on, (so you know exactly where they're looking at) use sound cues for alerts, and even make simple drawings on their hud.
With these tools at hand, I guided and watched Smith play a regular match of dota, giving hints where possible and pointing out dangers that weren't apparent to him. From my first 'official' lesson ever, I noticed a pretty big flaw with coaching a live game, and it started to shape my perspective on what an ideal learning enviroment should be like.
Smith was having a lot trouble multitasking. Not only was I feeding him far more information than he was capable of processing, he was not familiar with many of the methods and techniques that advanced players used. This isn't just the case with 'average players' either. I've personally live coached many high ranking students, (not far from my rank) on things I specialize in, and they struggle just the same.
This is because of a combination of several issues. Here's a couple of them:
- It's hard to focus on the game while there's a second voice in your head
- Said voice is telling you to do unorthodox or unusual moves
- It takes time to execute heard orders into actions, even 'GTFO' or 'Wait a sec'
- There's not enough time to explain things, only 'Monkey see monkey do'
- If I listed anymore this article would be too long
No less than Victory
Smith, an average dota player was already having trouble with the pacing of a casual match, it didn't make much sense to make things any more tense for him. It's true that some people do perform well while under pressure, but the main goal wasn't to help him win just this one game of dota. My job was making him become a better player, and what was being taught here wasn't substantial, at least not to what I set out to do.
Regardless, my advice led him to a rather easy victory and he was very pleased with how it was going. With 10 minutes left of his one hour with me, I suggested a 'Q & A' session, since there wasn't enough time for another match. An average dota game takes 40 minutes, but players in lower skilled brackets tend to drag them out. To my surprise, he asked if I was free for another hour, and offered to pay for not just one more, but several more hours of lessons. I agreed, and within the next hour, he had won another match and thanked me for my time.
DotaCoach features a 'review' system, where students who have had lessons under me can write and rate me on several qualities for others to see on my profile. I think my first lesson was definitely not worth of a 5/5 rating, but he gave me the max possible scores on Coach Skill, Communication, and Impact.
The way forward
WIth my first lesson done, I was already a step ahead of many other registered coaches on the site. DotaCoach tries to be fair and equal, by allowing anyone (even with no existing rank) to offer coaching. But for those with no reviews, history of lessons or a rank below 5000, you are rather invisible to most vistors of the site, who will flock to the top coaches instead.
I pondered a little bit more on what I could do, to amend this live coaching problem, but nothing much came to mind. Returning to grind my ranked games, I felt a little strange knowing I had now made money off Dota. In some ways, it was a lot like the first time I discovered cryptocurrency! DotaCoach also handed me a cute little 'to-do list'.
Needless to say I wasn't already a top coach at the time, nor had I been offered to be a part of the 'On Demand Coaching Service' yet, those things happened much later. Interested in more? Follow me, and stay tuned for Part III and IV!