Indonesian Accomplished in Gaming Community: The International 10
The International, or often known as its abbreviated form TI, is a tournament held by the Valve Corporation for the game DotA2. If you didn’t know what DotA2 is, it stands for “Defend of the Ancients”, a 5v5 multi-player online battle arena game where you can choose over hundred of characters and clash against the enemy team to destroy their ancient.
The game itself was officially released almost a decade ago, on July 9, 2013. The game gained its popularity when Valve decided to conduct its first ever The International (also known as TI1), with the total prize pool of $1.6 million USD, with $1 million for the winning team. The total prize was unbelievable for people at that time, the news then spread quickly over the community. Throughout the 16 teams who were invited, Na’vi was the champion of the first International.
Image taken from https://liquipedia.net/dota2/File:Navi_TI1_Win.jpp
Over the years, The International has become the annual event for the DotA2 community. The number of players increased, and so did the prize pool. In every TI held by the Valve Corporation, the tournament always gets the title as the esport competition with the largest prize pool in history. The tournament is held every year, and attended by players all around the world.
Indonesian however, despite having multiple talented players and teams, struggled to join the competition as only 16 slots were available for the Internationals, and they had to face the other competitors all around South East Asia. For years and years of The International, no Indonesian has ever reached the TI stage. However, in 2021 at the 10th event of The International, two Indonesian duo finally fulfilled many Indonesian players’ dreams.
Kenny “Xepher” Deo and Matthew “Whitemon” Filemon are the two talented Indonesian players who have successfully reached the International stage. The Indonesian duo played in the South Korean based team, T1 alongside with their teammates from Philippine and Thailand.
Image taken from https://esports.id/dota-2/news/2021/07/1627164498da566c0eb500803f9b5f4a/raih-banyak-prestasi-tim-dota-2-t1-mulai-disayang-seperti-divisi-lol
Although they didn’t win the competition, many Indonesians were proud to have Xepher and Whitemon to represent Indonesia. Xepher even made the internet go wild after his funny, yet heart-warming post-match interview. When Xepher was asked to give any words to his Indonesian fans, he asked if he could say it in Indonesian, surprisingly what Xepher said was “Mama aku di TI” which means “Mom I’m at the TI”. The phrase then became so viral for referring to the “making mama proud” meme.
T1 only reached the 7th-8th place in The International and brought the prize of $1,000,500 USD out of the total $40,018,195 USD prize pool. Based from esportsearnings.com, Xepher became the highest earnings esport player in Indonesia with the total earnings of $350,563.71 USD. Whitemon became the second Indonesian player after Xepher with the highest earnings of $294,970,00 USD.
With the appearance of these two Indonesians, they have given hope to many Indonesian gamers that going to The International is possible, although it takes 10 Internationals, Indonesians have proved that they can reach the stage of the largest gaming tournament in history.
Editor: Handiko Wijaya