7 Iconic Video Games That Were Created By Accident
2. DOTA Was A Mash-Up Of Warcraft And StarCraft
Dozens of games started life as mods or have roots in community development, but when a team of talented developers created a Warcraft-Starcraft mashup in the early 2000s, who would have predicted it would go on to spawn a genre in its own right?
The Defense of the Ancients map was essentially the Starcraft scenario Aeon of Strife converted to the Warcraft III engine using the game's editing software, which was released for free by developer Blizzard.
The modified map came with altered gameplay loosely based in the tower defence concept, and it caught on like wildfire on the Battle.net platform. Over time, DOTA was shaped by the community, with fans logging onto official forums to post ideas about its future direction.
Most games with mod beginnings evolve over time, and DOTA was no exception, eventually becoming nothing like Warcraft or Starcraft. It isn't every day a new genre is born, but once the game had found its own identity, the mobile battle arena category was up and running.
Valve enlisted the services of DOTA developer Icefrog to take the series forward, and the sequel they developed together, DOTA 2, has been a Steam favourite and a mainstay on eSports circuits since its launch in 2013.