Everyone needs a hobby. Something that they can do after work to de-stress and bring joy into days that would otherwise be bland and dull. For me, that hobby is Dota 2, a competitive online multiplayer game. My fondest memories of the game came from my first few years of play, between 2013 and 2015. I dipped my toe into a new gaming world, found new friends, deepened otherwise shallow relationships, and even grew closer to the person who would later become my wife. All throughout, we experienced the wonder of playing on the same team, trying to win our digital battles.
I had grown up as almost the stereotype of a young white male in South Africa. While my family was firmly middle-class, I had been fortunate enough to attend one of the top schools in the country. I had graduated with results that could get me into any university that I wanted. I even completed a year of A-levels to study in the UK, before realizing how ludicrously expensive that would be. So, in 2010, I enrolled at the most well-regarded university in my city in a Commerce degree, majoring in Law and Economics. I found solid friends through the university’s nerd society – even being elected their president for a year. In mid-2012, I met a young woman named Kristen, fell in love instantly, and we began to date soon afterwards. Everything was rosy, apart from my second-year Economics results. I had failed the course in 2011, and was on the road to doing so again. After looking around during a third-year class, I realized that I disliked everyone in the room, the lecturer included. I promptly changed my major from Economics to Psychology, and my degree from Commerce to Arts. The path that had been set before me was shifting, and my concept of who I was, was in flux. The entirety of my 2013 would be spent catching up on Psychology units and questioning whether I had made the right choice.
At the beginning of the year, I heard about Dota 2 for the first time. I saw people playing it at a gaming event at the university, and I was intrigued by it. Dota 2 is a game based on DotA, a popular mod to Blizzard’s Warcraft 3. Players are divided into two teams of five, with each player controlling one hero each. Players can choose from over 120 heroes, each with unique abilities, strengths, and weaknesses. Players aim to get gold, which they use to buy items, and experience, which can make their character more powerful by levelling up. Teams work together to take the advantage in gold and experience from across the game map, with the final goal being to destroy the enemy Ancient, a towering building in the centre of their base. Once a team’s Ancient is destroyed, they lose the game. Games are generally between 30 and 60 minutes long, with shorter and longer games possible depending on the specific heroes that are chosen in the game. Dota 2 is a game of back-and-forth, trying to outwit your opponents. Your team needs to get more gold and experience than your opposition, and use your hero’s abilities to kill your enemies and destroy their Ancient.
As Dota 2 is a team game, the fact that I attempted to do all of this entirely by myself for my first few weeks of playing made my initial experiences much more confusing and challenging than they ever ought to have been. I had played the original DotA a decent amount in computer class in high school (yes, during the class – our poor computer class teacher was too nice to handle a room of 17-year-old boys), so I was familiar with the basic idea of the game, a good portion of the heroes, and some of the strategy. However, I was entirely new to the interface, and as someone who hadn’t played any team-based video games growing up, working together with strangers in a digital space was not a skill that I had yet acquired. Nevertheless, I persisted. The gameplay loop was immensely satisfying to me. Every game, I would start out weak and poor. I would then gradually build myself up. The game would go through tense periods where it could go either way, until one team won a definitive teamfight (where all members of the two teams clash, abilities fly, and one team generally ends up with fewer people dead than the other team). Then, the game would end with an Ancient blasting apart with a satisfying explosion. I was hooked.
I began to mention my appreciation for the game to anyone that I thought would have a vague interest in it, in the hope that we could play together. I raved about it to the members of my family of gaming age. I debated its merits at length with members of the university nerd club. I even got into a conversation about it with Sean, one of my opponents at a Magic: the Gathering tournament. I met Sean at a previous tournament. We’d had some polite banter then, so I struck up a conversation with him again. We talked about which video games we were currently playing, and I told him of my new obsession with Dota 2. He mentioned that he and a couple of his friends played occasionally. My eyes lit up, less in an endearing and hopeful way, and more in the manner of a man possessed by a mischievous imp. We exchanged our in-game information, and promised to meet up online in the following week. Thus, the seed for the stack was born.
In online gaming, a stack is the group of players that you queue together to play the game with. I had, up until this point, been playing in a stack entirely by myself. Not a very large or effective stack at all. The following week, Sean messaged me via Steam (the client that Dota 2 is launched through) and told me that his stack was getting together at his home that coming Friday to have an evening of Dota 2, and he asked if I’d like to join them. I tried my best to express my enthusiasm like a normal human being and not a feral animal. I’m not entirely sure that I succeeded, but Sean and the rest of the stack accepted me into their fold anyway.
When Friday came, I was nervous. I had played about two hundred games in my two months of experience with the game, but looking at the profiles of the people I would be joining, my achievements weren’t very impressive at all. Sean had played more than double the number of games, and he hadn’t even played the most. I pulled up to his driveway, was let through the gate, and I sat in the driveway for a moment, gathering my courage. I had met everyone before at Magic: the Gathering events, but I felt like this was a different arena, one where I was much less knowledgeable. I stepped out, laptop bag hanging over my left shoulder, and went into Sean’s house with the weight of nerves more than equalling that of the bag.
I was greeted by Sean. He is a large and gentle man with a warm smile. He talks in bursts, building up his confidence to express his opinions as fast and clearly as he can. Next I saw Richard. I had known him the longest. At the time, he was dating a good friend of mine, and we’d had a couple of prior conversations. Richard was even quieter than Sean, and equally as warm-hearted. His lanky build and unassuming demeanour helped ease me into the group. The final member was Duncan, who came in from the back porch after having a smoke. Duncan’s deep voice seemed at odds with his thin frame, but suited his philosophical nature perfectly. He greeted me with a chuckle and a firm handshake. I set up my laptop at the end of the long table. We all logged in and started queueing for a game. The next thing we knew, it was three in the morning, we had played five games together, and had the first of many nights of Dota 2 as a group. Too tired to drive home, Duncan, Richard, and I spent that night at Sean’s. We discussed the games we’d played and the most hilarious moments therein, and bid each other goodnight. We enjoyed the time so much, we played two more games the next day, even though we all had university deadlines pressing.
After that first meeting of our stack, our midweek games of Dota 2 would almost always involve at least two of us. Sean and I played together most often, with the others joining us when they could. We bonded over the sheer hours we would spend in contact, forming a friendship through text messages. We would give each other shit for stupid things we did in-game, share the latest strategies from the professional scene, and bask in victories that we definitely earned (and were not based in luck at all). When game talk was exhausted, we’d talk about life, our anxieties, and learn more about each other. Occasionally, we’d all get together for another evening of the Dotes (as we called it), have some drinks, and have even more fun.
During this time, my girlfriend Kristen grew increasingly frustrated with Dota 2. We lived about twenty minutes away from each other, and we saw each other every day. While I never started a game of Dotes while she was visiting, she would sometimes arrive at my house and I was in the middle of a game I had to finish. It never took more than twenty minutes or so, but claims of “Sorry love, I’m almost done!” happened enough to irk her. After one such claim, she sat down and decreed:
“Alright. I know that you really enjoy Dota. I understand that. I’ve tried to make sense of it while watching you as you’re playing. I know, I know, it’s hard to explain while you’re playing, that’s fine. Now. Here is what’s going to happen: I want to try learn Dota. I’d like you to teach me. If I end up liking it, then we can play together, which is much better than me waiting around for you to finish a game. If I don’t, you stop playing for good. I just can’t take it anymore, I’m sorry.”
I sat stunned for a moment. I loved Kristen, and had done from the moment I first met her. She was definitely way out of my league. She was far more beautiful and an infinitely better person than I deserved (she still is). As such, I agreed to her terms. I would be her coach as she learned the game. It is said that Dota 2 has one of the biggest learning curves in all of gaming, and I would be the one to show her the easiest path upward. I started by going through all of the heroes, telling her a bit about their backstory, and giving her a basic idea of what they could do. From there, she picked a handful that she wanted to use to learn, and I would sit behind her as she played, encouraging her and explaining the game mechanics. I could see the spark beginning to glint in her eyes. Soon, we were playing side-by-side, winning and losing together. Through her determination to try something I loved, we had gained a hobby that we could share, and we were both overjoyed. She liked playing strong female characters and styling on all the men, and I just loved doing anything with her, including playing Dotes.
In Kris’ training period, she had met the rest of the stack, now affectionately known as ‘the lads’, in-game. She had played a good deal with Sean and I, and with Richard and Duncan a handful of times. In order to improve relations, Sean decided to host another evening at his house, with Kris filling the as-yet-empty fifth slot in our stack. She was even more nervous than I was at my first evening. She perceived our gatherings as guy’s nights, where no women were allowed. She imagined us gathered round a fireplace smoking pipes and indulging in some jolly old digital escapism. Meeting everyone in person helped alleviate the tension. She saw that we all wanted her to be there, and we tried our best to make her feel like a true part of the stack, one of the lads. While she did not immediately take to the rest of the group like I had, within a couple of weeks playing together, we were a tight-knit group. She was soon yelling, throwing shade, and bantering with the best of us.
We revelled in each other’s company for over a year. We would get together once every few months, but meet up online at least once a week. Sean, Kris and I played together most often. We branched our friendship beyond Dotes, into board games and braais (a South African pastime similar to the American barbecue but superior in almost every way). The members of the stack were among the friends that I interacted with the most during that time of my life, all because of the hours we spent together trying to best the other team.
As inevitable as the fact that we couldn’t win every game was the realization that life would eventually pull us apart. In the beginning of 2015, Kris and I moved to South Korea for a year of teaching that turned into four years and counting. Rich moved to Australia, and Sean and Duncan graduated university and found jobs in their respective fields. The delay in the game between South Korea and South Africa proved unplayable, even with South Korea’s gloriously fast internet. We may not play together anymore, but I hold our times together as some of the fondest memories from those years. When Kris and I got married in 2017, we invited our stack, as they had invited us years before. Kris and I still play the Dotes almost every weeknight. We have had other, smaller stacks since, but nothing comparable to the one we had with Sean, Duncan, and Rich. There is yet to be a stack greater than the lads and the lady.
Someone once told me that friendships from a person’s school and university years are distinctly different from those formed in the years following, for the simple reason that the person spends significantly more time with school and university friends. Early friendships grow based on sheer masses of hours and days spent interacting with a person or group of people. When you have a job, you find fast friends all around, connecting and declaring friendship in moments rather than months. Time with friends has to be stolen from afternoons and evenings where you aren’t working, sleeping, eating, or working overtime.
It is this need for extra time with friends that I feel games like Dota 2 have helped with. It is mind-bogglingly difficult to arrange to meet up with a friend, particularly if they live in a different city or even on the other side of your own city. Many adult anxieties revolve around making plans with people. However, it is far easier to simply see that your friend is online in a game’s launcher, shoot them a simple ‘hey, wanna play a game or two?’, connect on voice chat, and catch up while destroying the enemy or being destroyed by them.
I have continued to use games as a means of connecting with people ever since I saw the potential through playing Dota 2. I use board games as my medium of choice these days, mostly because they are easier to teach than Dota 2, and are currently more in vogue. When I do find the rare people who either know the Dotes or are willing to learn it, I latch on to them quickly and fervently, and play together as often as possible. Living as an expat in South Korea means getting used to a cycle of people coming and going, and playing games together is one of the best ways that I’ve found to maximize connection in the often short period of time that we spend in the same country.
I’ve found Dota 2 the easiest and most effective way to build up time with a person. The game provides conversation starters, as you can talk about what’s happening in each game, their favourite heroes, or, if they are particularly interested, the professional matches going on at the time. There is ample time during the game to chat, as there are natural downtimes where both teams are simply acquiring gold or experience, and not teamfighting. There are also action-packed moments to fill what would otherwise be dead, awkward air between people who are getting to know each other. Even though Kris and I haven’t had a reliable stack of five people since we left South Africa, we have had many evenings making new friends or catching up with old ones over a few games of Dota 2.
Forging and maintaining friendships as an adult is a struggle shared by many people in the modern world. As a more introverted person, it is even more difficult for me, as activities like going out to a random bar and talking to strangers sounds like the opposite of how I would like to spend my time. I was fortunate to find Dota 2, an online gaming means to bond with others. It has helped me blossom relationships that would otherwise have wilted into awkwardness and disconnection. It has become a pastime that my wife and I have shared for thousands of hours at this point. It has been an escape for me when I needed one. Some might say that I am addicted, and they might be right, but when I reminisce about the moments I’ve shared with those I’ve been lucky enough to game with, I can’t help but feel love for the game.
