Sean "Snare" Rihlamvu is a relatively new face in the Dota 2 talent landscape. He started from the bottom, casting open qualifiers and trying various things, working tremendously to turn a dream into reality.
Coming from South Africa has made this journey of his even harder as the infrastructure in his country isn’t helpful for anyone who would chase a career in esports, as he explained to us.
Snare is now the stage host at Bali Major, and we couldn’t miss this opportunity to sit and talk to him about his long road, his dreams, the struggles and the chances he created for himself to get to where he is today.
Hi Snare, welcome to Bali! Is it your first time here? How do you find it?
Hi, yes, it's my first time in Bali, my first time in Asia actually. It's an amazing place to be, it's really gorgeous. I had a really, really good time here.
It’s been a great year for your career, but I’m sure it’s been a long road to get where you are today. So, let’s start with the beginnings. As far as I know, you started by aiming at a professional play career. When and how did you discover Dota?
I discovered DotA around 2008, but of course, I was playing just for fun with my friends because I was playing mostly fighting games at a high level back then. Then, I started to become more serious about Dota.
Around the time of TI3, there was an event that I went to and when I came back from that, I couldn’t sleep and the TI was happening so I was like, "let's see what's going on here." That's also when I started to see the Chinese teams as well, and it was something about the way they played the game that made me want to play more. I don't know, something just clicked and from there on, I just couldn't get enough of Dota.
After a while, I joined some teams, I wasn't that good, not the best thing in the world, but our team and the teams we were friends with, we would watch replays together and some people were like "hey, we actually like how you are talking about this thing, maybe you should cast a game or two." And I guess the rest is kind of history.
I realized that if I was going to be doing something with Dota, It wasn't going to be competitive play. I was simply not good enough for that, but I tried to figure out other ways to still be involved with the game.
We don’t have pro players in the tier 1 Dota 2 scene coming from South Africa and we don’t have many personalities in the game either. Why?
Infrastructure. In South Africa, a lot of the esports that people play would be things like FIFA, Street Fighter, Tekken, and Mortal Kombat. Generally speaking, games that have a somewhat lower way to enter them. Like, one person in the neighborhood can own a PlayStation or an Xbox and a bunch of people can come by and play with that person. While to play Dota, you don't need just 5 people, but you also need all of them have to have fairly good computers, all of them also need to have a fairly good internet connection and all of these things are somewhat rare in South Africa. I will admit, that the internet right now is pretty good, but the electricity situation is horrendous, most people can't afford the high-end PCs to play Dota, and people just don't know other Dota players.
To get better at this game, it requires you to play against really good players and because we don't have that many of them, that means there is less opportunity for you to practice and get good. So, a lot of people have to resort to things like playing on the EU servers. And that means you are always playing on 100 to 200 ping, so the opportunity for growth isn't there. Also, in South Africa esports is not a thing overall, so your parents will say, "hey, where are the results, why are you spending all day playing this game instead of going to school, or instead of going to work?"
Even some of the players we have had in the past, in order to make a career for themselves, they had to leave because they just couldn't find a way to sustain themselves in Dota. So, I would say that from a South African perspective, it's a very big gamble, a very big risk, and honestly, the only other people that are from South Africa and are prominent in the Dota 2 scene, they all had to move in order to make it successful.
This year you’ve been on the road back and forth from PGL studios in Romania to South Africa a few times. You’ve also made your Major debut in Lima, Peru. Now you’re in Bali. That’s a lot of travelling and we are only halfway through the year. How do you like this kind of living, are you happy to travel this much?
It's a new experience for me so, I'm very happy to do it. It was my first time visiting all these locations. I like learning about new places, and it's very nice to not have to pay for your plane ticket. It definitely is becoming a reality that I have to start paying attention to my health as well, travelling up and down like this. But for now, I want to do it for as long as humanly possible. It's very fun, and I also get to do the thing I enjoy the most.
What is the most pleasant memory from recent years related to your career in Dota 2?
I would say TI. I did the group stages and the last Chance Qualifiers for TI11 and I got to work with KheZu and Fluke, two people that I respect a lot, and who have helped me as well in developing my career. My favourite memory is after we were done with the event, somebody made a Reddit thread about all the casters and stuff, and just seeing the overwhelming amount of positive feedback, it was actually kind of ridiculous, it gave me that feeling that I legitimately belong.
It's a stupid story, but that's my favourite moment. Because that's also one of the hardest things in Dota, where we have a very competitive landscape, do you ever feel like you really made it? Usually, the answer is no. But in that moment, I was like I haven't made it, but now it actually seems possible. It's not a pipe dream anymore. So, yeah that is my favorite moment, even though it involved Reddit.
As far as I know, you are open to hosting events outside of the Dota 2 world. What other gigs have you done and are you looking forward to working more on other esports events as well?
I was actually supposed to be doing a Red Bull thing, it was just happening in the middle of the group stage matches here in Bali. I plan to do as many other esports events as possible because as much as I love Dota, it's not the only thing that I like. I've done a lot of FIFA, I've done a lot of Street Fighter, I've done Tekken and Mortal Kombat events, I've done Rocket League, I've done Counter-Strike, Call of Duty, Apex Legends, we did a VALORANT in South Africa. So I've done quite a lot of esports, and I still plan to do as many as possible.
What is the biggest dream that you chase in your career?
I want to be involved in some way with the TI finals. With it be casting with it be hosting, I want to be there, a part of that broadcast.
We have a special anniversary coming our way on July 9. Do you have any words to say to the Dota 2 community and to Valve at the 10-year anniversary since the game was officially launched?
Get the game out of beta? That would be nice. On a serious note, I think anniversaries like this are very important because you sit down and you reflect on what are we actually doing. What are we trying to achieve? Initially, at the first couple of TIs, the first couple of big events, it was very clear that for everyone involved, it was a passion project. It just so happened that we found a couple of million dollars lying around, let's see if we can spend it on making Dota cool. Then, we went through this period of time when everything got too inflated, I would say.
Right now, the thing I want out of Dota 2, its community, out of players, the talent and out of Valve is for all of us to think about the fact that we are not building this for us anymore and that there are people that have never heard of Dota. Right now, almost everybody that is involved in Dota, most of us used to play Warcraft III, used to play the original DotA mod, even if you weren't involved professionally back then, that's when you actually started with this game. Now, we are in an era where you want as many people as possible to fall in love with the game. So the thing I want everybody to do is to figure out ways to make sure that others, who have never heard about Dota, can still discover the passion and the joy that we already gained from this game. We shouldn't gate-keep it anymore, we should make sure it's as open to the world as humanly possible.
What I want from Dota is to be around for as long as possible. You know, even if you don't play Counter-Strike or Tekken, or FIFA, you know exactly what they are, you know that there are people playing them. You might not know how to get involved with those games yourself, but you are aware of their existence. And I want Dota to have the same degree of pedigree outside of just our community.
