I don’t understand half of these words in the title

I had the pleasure to visit the ESL Hamburg 2019 Dota 2 Tournament for Accenture on 27 October 2019. But what do you mean with „I don’t understand half of these words in the title?“

Okay let’s break it up.

ESL is short for Electronic Sports League. That’s an organization that is highly involved in the E-Sports scene and organises many events and tournaments. Just check out the amount of tournaments on the Switzerland’s page here. Wow!

Now Hamburg is a city in Germany where the famous Reeperbahn is located. Everyone told me I should give it a visit but sadly I didn’t have time to do so. What a shame! 😥

Now Dota 2… Ahhh my beloved Dota 2… ❤ ❤ ❤ Dota 2 is not much… Not much but the best video game ever created! I will tell you a little bit more about it later.

And Accenture is an awesome company that organises awesome events like this one at the ESL Hamburg 2019 Dota 2 championship!

Do you now understand these words?

How was the event?

When I arrived at the event on Sunday morning we went directly into our own reserve lodge. It was a comfy room with an own service waitress that kept giving us good things to drink.

After a short welcome meeting the invited candidates arrived including the main star of our little event: C4mlann, a famous Hearthstone Twitch streamer, has been invited by Accenture to attend the event and meet his fans.

Here you see the outside of the lodge where we could follow the Dota 2 games.

The Dota 2 tournament took place three whole days, from Friday until Sunday. 12 teams have been fighting for a 300’000 dollar prize pool. The event was professinally organised, you wouldn’t believe it!

They had a flying camera that captured the atmosphere perfectly, they had famous moderators commenting the Dota 2 matches and there was even a guy that post-analyzed every Dota 2 match and explained what went wrong for the losing team.

The warriors that actually attended the tournament were all sitting on stage – always 5 versus 5 – and fighting each other in bloody virtual battles.

Next to the main event you also had the opportunity to join many side activities. There was for example an Airbrush studio. But really, who would be stupid enough to let a stranger paint a big Dota 2 logo on to the middle of his forehead?

Many companies took the chance and opened up a stand with a certain competition for players to take. You had a small Dota Underlords tournament, several virtual reality games and even a booth where a lucky attendant could smash the hell out of old hardware with a hammer. If there is a better way to calm your nerves I don’t know it!

SAP for example created a software in cooperation with Team Liquid, a famous E-Sports team, to analyze the games and all the data that is generated during a game. This is of course a big opportunity in the category of Big Data or even Artifical Intelligence.

What did Accenture actually do at the event?

Accenture has invited several participants (most of them viewers of C4mlann’s stream) to join the event, watch some Dota 2 matches, learn about the work in Accenture and talk to C4mlann. The event was more or less informal and interest-focused: Some people immediately used the opportunity to gather around C4mlann and listen to his wise words.

They asked questions like: How is life as a Twitch Streamer? What is your daily routine? Do you know the Dota 2 hero Juggernaut?

People that know me also know that I am a very shy guy. 😳 Because of that I only talked 70% of the time when I spoke to the different people at the event and let them have generous 30% of speaking time. I asked them if they know Accenture, if they work in IT and so on.

In short: Yes they know Accenture but not so much (that’s why I myself explained a lot about my personal daily routine). They all work in IT in different roles and they all have a big passion for gaming.

Soon we realized that there are many commonalities between playing video games / E-Sports and people that work in IT. And this was exactly the intention that Accenture had all the way: People from Accenture believe in strong personalities and that gamers bring the right mindset to work in information technology. Gamers are usually very technology affine and have no problem to adapt to complex environments.

(Also certain gamers require a salary increase)

What is Dota 2?

Wow, finally we come to the important question. No, to be honest, it’s totally fine if you don’t know what Dota 2 is. I know that you can not force people to their happiness but that they need to find it themselves.

Dota 2 is a video game that you can play for free. There is no catch, you can go ahead and download it right now.

It is a really complex game, and the best advice for beginners usually is: Don’t try to kill enemies, just try not to die too often 🙂

It is a very deep game, but in short:

• 5 players (usually russians) fight against 5 other players
• The team that first destroys the enemy base wins
• A game usually lasts around 40 minutes
• Ever player chooses one of around 100 heroes at the beginning of every game

Every game starts at zero, but your hero gains experience by killing enemy heroes and every game can snowball out of control really easily. If you have a hero that kills other heroes with ease, you will get stronger and stronger very quickly and can kill enemy heroes even easier.

Every hero has a different role. You have killer heroes especially made to kill enemies but usually weak when alone. You have early game heroes that shine in the first 15 minutes of a game. You have late game heroes that only start to shine once the game lasts around 40 minutes. You have mages, sorcerer, elves, orcs, monsters and even a walking green snake-thingy.

And you also have support heroes, that’s what I usually play. Your main goal is not to kill enemy heroes, but to support your team by scouting and buying healing items and so on. For me it’s enough to play a support hero, 😎 I don’t need to be in the spotlight of killing enemy heroes. I already know that I am the best player in every game. 😎 I am such a noble person I let other people shine while I help them from the back. Just like in real life. To be honest, I think people should start sending money to my bank account because I am such a kind individual! 😎 😎 😎

Am I exaggarating???

Dota 2 is also a very psychological game. If a team wins the early game it usually starts to lean back because „Pah we will win this game anyways!“ At the same time the losing team will fight even harder to win, stay together and choose it’s fights carefully. Because of this a game can turn 180 degrees in the middle of the time.

So what are the commonalities between E-Sports and working in IT?

The most obvious one: Teamwork. Even if you have been really lucky in a Dota 2 game and are so called fed (meaning you were able to kill many enemy heroes and gained a lot of experience) you usually still have no chance alone against the enemy team.

Second one: Gamers often have the right mindset like IT people: They are passionate about a topic and have no problems spending a longer time on complex tasks. Like programmers analysing software code so are gamers analysing the matches to find ways to improve. They all are usually realiable and responsible personalities and some folks even spend their whole life learning about either their favourite game or their work.

Now for me the biggest common thing between Dota 2 and working in an IT team: You always have different roles or personalities in a team. Like I said, in Dota 2 you have killers and supportes and pushers and they all depend on each other. In an IT team you also have different roles, you have business analysts, project leaders, programmers, devops-engineers or testers. And even within one of those groups, for example in a programming team, you have people that are super skilled in coding while others are better in talking to the business or documenting and presenting topics.

And in the end we all depend on each other and need to respect us as competent individuals.

Amen!

Now who has won the tournament? Was it a boring finale?

Exceptionally not! The winners of the finale has the name TNC Predators, a team from the Philippines, and the finale game was the best one in my opinion! (The finale was a best out of 5 games, they play a maximum of 5 games and the team who wins 3 games first wins)

So for once forget all this theory that I have written about four minutes ago about „Blabla teamwork is important and if you play alone you have no chance“.

There was one player in the winning team, and he played Alchemist, a hero that has a special ability to gain more money than other heroes. And if you let him farm enough money during the early game, he will be up to unbeatable in the late game. And that’s exactly what happened!

You don’t see this very often, but this Alchemist was so strong, the whole enemy team was afraid of him and could not take a fight with him. In the meantime Alchemist just casually walked into the enemy base (while beeing attacked by defensive towers) and chilled there forever without dying!

And don’t remember! … uhm I mean remember, while Alchemist kept the whole enemy team busy his 4 friends were also in the game farming money or pushing to the enemy base. It was a nightmare for the enemy team, they just couldn’t keep up with the snowballing-out-of-control-Alchemist.

Really really great finale and in the winning ceremony millions of little paper pieces have been shot into the air I almost spilled my beer.

Did Accenture accomplish it’s goal?

Accenture organised this event in order to bring E-Sports and IT together. To show people that Accenture is a cool company that is worth joining as it is possible as Accenture employee that you end up in a great place like the stadium in Hamburg attending the ESL 2019 Dota 2 tournament in Hamburg.

I tried not to speak too positively about Accenture and not to do too much of surreptitious advertising 🙂 But to be honest my life has changed dramatically since I joined Accenture in February 2019. I became much more confident in myself and my technical and social skills. I was able to attend many events like a Blockchain event in London or an Advanced Java Course in Frankfurt because Accenture does not have products that they sell. For Accenture their employees are their „products“ and the company uses a lot of effort to create the best professionals in the market.

And after my third beer I felt very professional in the spectator seats!

And really: In the end some of the participants said they would consider applying for a job in Accenture. (But only if they could again join the next ESL championship in 2020 😉 *cough cough* )

If you are interested in joining Accenture head over to a page like this one and start growing!

Too much advertising? Well it just happens 🙂