Cover-Credits:
It is inevitable that a new generation of players will be rising to prominence more now that Dota 2 has come a long way since the first The International (TI) in 2011. In his recent 'We Say Things' podcast, Dota 2 analyst/commentator Troels Lyngholt "syndereN" Nielsen provided one more explanation as to why so many teams are picking up young players. In syndereN's opinion, the recent TIs, where a number of young players were a part of winning teams, have altered the teams' approach to recruitment. According to him, most teams now tend to follow ideologies similar to those of the TI winning teams, searching for players who may be young, but bring a fresh perspective and are highly motivated to succeed.
SyndereN explains the reasons for a rise in young players in Dota 2
During the past couple of years, a lot of young players have clawed their way to the top of competitive Dota 2. This was evident at TI10, where there were a lot more first timers in comparison to the past two editions, and a very young group of Team Spirit prevailed, edging out household names to claim the Aegis of Championship.
In the Dota Pro Circuit (DPC) 2021-22, we also see teams like OG, TNC Predator, and Vici Gaming investing in young and unproven players.
For a team such as OG, which has players as young as 16 years old, syndereN mentioned that it can be hard to predict their performance, but he notes how they can also surprise anyone. In his opinion, the tradition of recruiting young players began with Syed "SumaiL" Sumail Hassan's victory at TI5 with Evil Geniuses at the age of 16. SyndereN mentioned that a culture shift has taken place since then, where teams have begun to welcome emerging talent instead of simply switching between experienced players.
“We have seen this story at least lately with these up-and-coming talents that really make a splash. It’s funny to me to see how the meta of building teams seems to change based on who wins TI. People put a lot of stock in the ideology of what team won, right so after the year EG won, at TI5, teams started picking up young talent because SumaiL was owning as a 16 year old, right. So, it changed the mindset where all the other teams at the time were just shuffling the old guard - the 25 year olds who have been playing with loads of experience. Now you started bringing in fresh players with a different perspective and now that TI was won with a team of super young players, I just a lot of these rosters, not all of them, but I see a lot of rosters really looking to, “Okay what new players are there who are hungry that haven’t played very much.”
“I think this year in Division 1, looking at these teams, there are so many new players compared to usual, so it’s pretty interesting,” syndereN added.
Further, syndereN also mentioned that Dota 2 has radically changed over the past few years, explaining how young players have better mechanisms at their disposal to cope with these changes than older ones.
Many young players have found themselves in top squads after the recent post-TI shuffle, so the DPC 2021-22 promises to be an exciting time to see which players will rise to the top and make a name for themselves.
