From Warcraft III mod to Valve-developed sequel: Defense Of The Ancients is now standing on its own two feet. This new installment (simply “DOTA 2“) made its public debut at Cologne’s 2011 Gamescom with a huge tournment — where historical DOTA teams that have been together for years competed for a $1.6 million prize. During the event, we asked project director Erik Johnson and Valve co-founder Gabe Newell a few questions about the game.
Valve — explains Newell — got into this project because several staff members were playing the original DOTA and got obsessed with it to the point that people such as Robin Walker (Team Fortress 2 guru), Adrian Finol (software developer), and Johnson actually formed a team and got into a league — ending up badly stomped, he confesses. At some point, they decided to contact DOTA developer IceFrog under the pretense that they were game developers, but in fact it was just an excuse to send him fan mail.
