"Dota who?" we hear you shout. Well, at this point in the year the majority of people are probably unaware of the series' existence, despite it being the first televised gaming 'sport' at last month's 'International' - opening up a whole can of worms when it comes to whether or not hardcore gamers can ever be called 'athletes'. A top-down 'MOBA' or 'Massive Online Battle Arena' (think Command and Conquer, but way bigger) the game is a free-to-play download on PC and Mac that sees you commanding a huge amount of units, characters and abilities alongside dedicated teams and players. The catch in the bigger leagues is that there's real money on the line, with first place last month taking home $5,000,000 (yes, that's not a typo). It takes real dedication to get to that sort of level - with the mental capacity to instigate multiple complex plans and react to situations on the fly being something that only a select few have been able to execute well - but the game asks that you give up considerable chunks of your life learning every little facet of its combat. Although it's weird to say that 'everyone loves' Dota 2 (or Defence Of The Ancients if you're being old school) the fanbase is actually staggeringly huge. The fact that amongst years of eSports and fighting game tournaments this was the title that took gaming in a whole new direction speaks volumes.
