In between the group stage and playoffs at ESL One Kuala Lumpur 2023, we caught up with Austin "Cap" Walsh.
Besides tournament predictions and talking about which teams look strong at the first tournament after the post TI12 shuffle, we discussed with Cap how the new competitive season might look like with Valve scrapping the Dota Pro Circuit and what should happen for the Dota 2 competitive scene to continue to exist.
Who do you think will be the two grand finalists at ESL One Kuala Lumpur 2023?
Azure Ray have super impressed me in the group stage. Gaimin Gladiators are obviously kind of the favourites for the tournament. Second place at TI, there is no Team Spirit here, so you would expect them to win this. Probably we might have a Gaimin Gladiators vs Azure Ray grand finals.
China had a pretty rough year until TI12. But then, they came to Seattle with two teams and had them both placed top 4. What are your thoughts on what happens with the Chinese region, which used to be the strongest one?
It's probably a symptom of some of the other problems that were happening. The pubs scene has been debilitated quite a bit in the Chinese region. There was that whole time when they were all playing on the Southeast Asian servers. There is a problem with the lack of new talent coming up as you can see the same thing in North America.
I don't know too much on this side, but I think there are also some organisational issues. I think it's something about the culture and the organisations there, maybe too much politics in player transfers and whatnot. From my perspective, it feels like in Western Europe they are actually trying to build rosters that are going to have a threat to win the entire thing. I don't know what they are trying to do in China, but from an outside perspective, it feels like in some of the past years it hasn't been quite that way. There's been this LGD powerhouse but who else other than them?
There was this move from Aster who picked up Sumail. That move always felt weird to me. I feel like there is no way that roster ever wins Riyadh or TI. Maybe they do well, but there is no way that a team that has communications limited like that will be able to beat rosters that are playing the entire year or multiple years together. I almost feel like it's arrogant to just say "oh yeah, just bring the best mid lane player and we are good to go." That era where one person comes in and just carries the team to win a tournament is long gone.
Entertainment value in esports
“ The third-party tournaments have to actually be profitable and making a product that brings viewership is super important.”
1v1 mid for solving the breaker is back. How do you like this format as opposed to an extra bo1 or bo3 series?
I love the possibility of a 1v1 to determine things. I think it's super fun. Entertainment wise, it's top-notch, and obviously, when there are time restrictions, 1v1 can help you a lot. I will always push for whatever is more entertaining within reason and I think this is reasonable.
I know that Reddit is gonna be very protective of competitive integrity, but I think Dota weighs way too heavily on the side of not caring enough about the entertainment aspect. Ultimately esports is in the entertainment field so, you need to create a product that people want to watch. The more people are watching, the more we can keep this scene going longer, especially now that Valve has taken a step out. The third-party tournaments have to actually be profitable and making a product that brings viewership is super important.
We are heading into a new competitive season which won’t have the DPC anymore. What are your thoughts on the DPC being discontinued?
Unfortunately, the talent is at the bottom of the ladder, but from what I have heard from other people, teams, players, etc, is that we will have plenty of tournaments coming up. This is what I heard, I personally have zero information directly about it, so I feel like I'm pretty blind to what's coming.
I think Dota would be in a terrible place if it wasn't for the fact that we have Saudi Arabia and gambling. If we didn't have these two backing-up tournaments, then I'm not sure if there would be a Dota 2 scene. Now, I think Valve understood that and knew that there was going to be a scene as they left.
ESL already showed very clearly that they wanted to do a league system, so it was at least them guaranteed. But, yes I was concerned if there would be any other tournament organisers outside ESL doing stuff, and it seems that there are.
To be honest, my biggest concern is the quality of events. Will they be able to maintain the quality of the events even if the prize pool goes down? That to me is super important for the same reason I mentioned earlier; the viewer is king and we should be putting on quality shows and entertaining products.
The one thing we shouldn't be trying to do is to keep prize pools up to get players happy but sacrifice other parts of the show, sacrificing the viewer experience, not doing LANs, sacrificing production, etc. That's the part that I want to stay top-notch.
“The viewer is king and we should be putting on quality shows and entertaining products.”
As we are preparing for the Frostivus season, do you have any of the Valve custom games that you would like to see making a comeback?
I have wanted Aghanim's Labyrinth to come back for a really long time. I think it is the best custom mode that Valve has ever done. And I think it fixes some of the problems that Dota 2 has. I can say this now that I play party queue a lot: if I don't want to try hard in Dota, there aren't a whole lot of options. If I party queue with friends, I end up running into some try hard stacks and it doesn't feel good to just be stomped into the ground. Turbo mode is a great way to be able to do that, but I know a lot of people who only play Turbo mode and they get super serious about it. So, I think Aghanim's Labyrint was a really fun and casual way to engage with Dota. This is a constant problem with Dota, it's too try-hard of a game for many people.
Aghanim's Labyrinth was a great way to get people who aren't comfortable with playing Dota 2 used to the basic mechanics of this game. The top-down view, the control of a hero, and stuff like that. It gives you a chance to be able to experience that without all the baggage of the 5v5 competition. It's a very nice introduction to Dota 2, if you want.
New Year’s Resolutions
Now that we are close to the end of the year it's time to ask you if you had any resolutions for 2023 and if you fulfilled them.
I guess I always have a resolution every Dota year: to cast TI finals. That's always the goal. I think it's important to have goals if you are working in any sort of career where you define your own success. So, every single year it's been like I want the community and Valve to think that I am good enough to cast the TI finals. My initial goal was to cast the final day of TI, because I had never done that before. But I guess throughout the year I and SVG created a product that was worth doing TI finals. I think we did a really good job with casting this last year, and the goal remains to keep improving. I'd like to think that my greatest strength is that no matter how slow the process is, I will keep getting better.
I feel like this has always been the case with you. Since your very first beginning in this scene, you always listened to all the criticism, you had the patience to go through all the Reddit and listen to what people say there, no matter how vicious they are, and make your improvement process quite open and directly connected to the community feedback.
One thing I thought about is the difference between esports and traditional sports and specifically commentary. And while it's doubtful that I will continue to be a commentator into my 50's or 60's, traditional sports commentary does actually have that kind of longevity and they have an infrastructure which you can rely upon. While in esports, every year it's like "I don't know, am I going to work anything this year?" I could be completely out of a job at any moment.
Those sports broadcasters have been doing it for literally decades and most of them have done their best work when they are 40-50. I've gone through a lot of sports casters reels and listened to a lot of their iconic moments and a lot of them are much older than I am. So, I think about that and I think about the fact that I have a lifetime where I can keep on improving, I can keep on being a better broadcaster for the rest of my life IF esports allows me to do so.
“I can keep on being a better broadcaster for the rest of my life IF esports allows me to do so.”
How about 2024 resolution, are you adding something to casting TI finals?
Yes, actually. I recently decided that I'm gonna put a lot more effort into YouTube and some other stuff which hopefully will happen. I'm trying to make a push to make it happen. Basically, the overall resolution is to try harder on content.
I watched your pre-shows at TI12 and I will take this opportunity to thank you for bringing Hot_Bid back in front of the camera and I hope we get to see guys working together more.
Yeah, he is a great guy and we live very close to each other in LA so I get to see him a lot, which is a lot of fun.
Alright Cap, with that, it's time to wrap up our interview. Thank you so much for your time. Wish you a happy holiday and I hope all your goals and resolutions come true next year.
Thanks for having me and to everyone watching and playing Dota2, I hope you had an excellent 2023, I hope you have an even better 2024 and I hope all your resolutions come true, including playing Dota 2 and getting that MMR you are looking for!
