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I found all the discussions about Dota pretty amusing. I had no idea it was such a big thing for them early on.

If I’m replaced by a DOTA bot I'm going to be pissed. At least it could be a bot for a good game, like StarCraft or something.

I'm curious why they ended up focusing on DOTA. Prize money? Valve make the game particular amenable to machine interface?

Not sure. Off the cuff, as someone who only played MOBAs when they were Warcraft 3 maps,

* limited choices for actual commands to make, but still lots decision to make.

* a very active competitive community

* easy to evaluate win conditions and (I think?) somewhat easy to evaluate “am I doing well” conditions (like if you fall behind on experience you are doing poorly I think)

So maybe it is a convenient genre.

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