We Talk to Erik Johnson

Erik Johnson, Director of Dota 2, leader of the masses, and savior to those who support Dota's next generation renaissance. Man of mystery.

Really Erik is the man behind Dota 2. He is the leader, the grand overseer of those who work on Dota and he handles everything from making sure each effect is perfect to arranging the details of The International, in addition to being instrumental in Dota 2's conception. While Valve is known for not having the same kind of traditional structure that many developers adhere to, they still need someone to take charge and be responsible for the bulk of development. Erik is that man, and he was kind enough to take some time away from being IceFrog's boss to talk to us about how he sees the game and why Valve loves it in their lineup.

To what extent does Valve look at other esports to get ideas for what works and what doesn’t? Have there been any important lessons about approaching the esports side of it from the side of a developer?

Erik JohnsonWe get our most of our feedback directly from people in the community. Professional players, the organizations they play for, and fans of the game are all really efficient at telling us what we’re doing well, and more importantly, what we’ve done poorly. For the first International in Germany we viewed it as an experiment to see how the community would react, and also as a way to understand how to run an event like this going forward.

The biggest thing we learned from the first event was that we wanted more people from Valve to be able to experience the event in-person, both because we felt like the event would be better if we had more people from the office being able to add value wherever they could, and also because it is incredibly entertaining to watch people play at that level play the game you’ve worked on in-person.

What do you think Valve’s role is in helping establish and support a competitive scene? The International is funded entirely by Valve, do you think the developer can help with finding third party sponsors or working with other organizations to get that kind of funding?

Erik JohnsonWe certainly hope that The International is additive to all of the other Dota tournament organizers that run events over the course of the year. We view professional players as incredibly high value members of the community, given the effect they have on the community as a whole. Our job is to figure out interesting ways for those players to have a more direct relationship with their fans, inside of the Dota 2 economy.
Third party sponsors are most interested in reaching audiences that will eventually buy their products, and if Valve was making those kinds of products, I would be pretty interested in using Dota 2 players and teams as a way of reaching potential customers. If you’re a fan of stock car racing in the US, I’m not sure how much more likely you are to buy a specific brand of detergent based your favorite driver’s sponsorship. The difference with Dota 2 fans is that they are also people that play the exact same game as the professionals. To us, it seems like trying to use the same mouse, keyboard, or headset as one of your favorite players could give you real value over and above just affiliation.

In a recent interview with Kotaku you spoke of how it can be hard to jump into a Dota game and follow who is winning and what is happening. What kinds of ideas are you looking at to make parsing games easier?

Erik JohnsonMany of the issues for someone that is watching a Dota match for the first time are similar to what a first time player will run in to. Over the years we’ve learned that the only way to build a good system for teaching people how a game works is to try out a bunch of different ideas, test them with people that are new to the game, and then iterate based on that feedback. Our guess is that there isn’t a magic bullet to make playing or watching Dota 2 easier for new players, more likely it will be a case where we need to build a good system to get data on the problems players that are new to the game are actually running into, and then build the right features based on those problems.

One of the problems that has been present through Starcraft’s history is the lack of a good player union. Has any consideration been given to Valve stepping in and help protect players as the scene grows?

Erik JohnsonWe’re just as big of fans of these players internally as people are externally, so we are naturally going to do whatever we can to make sure they are being taken care of appropriately. We also view all of the professional players as a unique group in terms of how important they are to the rest of the community, which also gives us a strong incentive to make sure that they are being treated fairly.

The International had a pretty cool system where fans could buy pennants of their favorite teams to show support and have a chance to win in-game items. Does some of this go to supporting the teams, and can we expect more of these kinds of ideas in the future?

Erik JohnsonYes, and yes. The pennants were what we could get built in time for The International, and gave us a bunch of useful data to figure out other ways that teams and players can fit inside the Dota 2 economy.

Do you take crowd reactions as game feedback? A lot of people booed at Naga’s ult for instance, is that the kind of thing that would prompt a discussion on the mechanic?

Erik JohnsonThe thing that really stuck out to us during the event was how smart everyone in the crowd was with respect to Dota. When the crowd was cheering for Puppey using a neutral creep to block the spawn of the ancient creep camp so they couldn’t be stacked was pretty cool. We also noticed that while some teams were crowd favorites, good plays would always get a big roar from the crowd, no matter who the team was.

Given all of this, I think those Naga boos were really about the people in the crowd identifying with having that exact same experience online. Naga’s ult wasn’t booed when used offensively, it actually built up some cool anticipation, but the time it was used purely defensively I think the whole crowd was having a collective “I’ve been there” moment.

The International is a huge event, are there any concerns this places too much emphasis on a single week? In terms of both the amount of stress placed on a team, and how small it can make other events feel.

Erik JohnsonWhile it was a lot of long days for people at Valve, it was a hugely positive thing for people inside the company. Everyone here is already looking forward to doing it again.

We also built a lot of software for the event that isn’t specific to The International, that will be useful for all third-party tournaments. One of the big reasons we run the event is because the best way for us to figure out how to make life easier and business better for tournament organizers is for us to run one ourselves and figure out what tools and features we need to build. Also, being able to get the Dota 2 team together with all of the casters, players, and team managers for a week is really valuable for us to learn about what we can build into the game to make it a better platform for what they do.

Valve currently has Dota and CS:GO as titles that have a long history in the competitive scene and there are already rumors of TI3 having a Counter-Strike event, do these teams work together very closely or have much influence on one another? Can we expect a kind of mixed esports department at Valve to handle both of these in the future?

Erik JohnsonWe haven’t really thought that far ahead yet in terms of the next event.

For the second part of your question around having an esports department, the answer is a more general one about Valve and how people on the team decide what to work on. The Dota 2 team has (and likely always will) more work to do than they can ever get done, because the game is always moving forward and evolving. We think having specific people at the company that are only thinking about esports would be a mistake, because only the people on the team that can write code, affect game design, animate, create models, etc., can actually build the tools and features that are important to the competitive community. We’d much rather these problems stay as close to the team as possible, since they are closest to the data around the community and also have the capability to actually solve the interesting problems.

Valve Gallery

A month ago during The International, we got a peek at Valve's offices and saw the place where it all happens. We took a few pictures and hopefully the overall awesomeness of that atmosphere comes through.

Interview with Valve Dota 2 Director Erik Johnson

We Talk to Erik Johnson

Valve Gallery