Netflix's Dragon's Blood may spark potential turnaround for Dota 2

Valve Corporation, the company behind Dota 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO), last month announced their plans to launch the anime Dragon’s Blood. This anime will be based on the backstory/lore of their game Dota 2, and is slated for a Netflix release on 25 March, 2021. Dragon’s Blood Book 1 will be released first, and it is likely to have eight episodes. The series will feature Ashley Edward Miller as creator and executive producer (best known for X-Men: First Class, Thor, and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles). The animation is being handled by Studio MIR of South Korea. Studio MIR are famous for their work on Avatar: The Legend of Korra, Voltron: Legendary Defender, and Boondocks. It should be noted that Studio MIR have worked with game developers before (League of Legends – Road to the Cup, League of Legends – Bard: Mountain). The anime has reportedly been in the works for a very long time, as revealed by Robert Meyer Burnett (animatic director for Dragon’s Blood) on his YouTube show ROBSERVATIONS. He revealed that the anime has been in development since 2019, and will feature at least 24 episodes.

The cast chosen for the anime includes the likes of Yuri Lowenthal (Sasuke Uchiha in Naruto, Peter Parker in Spiderman games and Suzaku Kururugi in Code Geass series English voice-overs), Tony Todd (Darkseid in several DC films, voiced Dragon Knight, Viper, and Night Stalker in the Dota 2 game) and JB Blanc (multiple roles in anime such as Naruto, Bleach and Hellsing). Dragon’s Blood has garnered a lot of attention, and several well-known personalities within the Dota 2 community have tweeted their support for it. Former champion of Dota 2’s flagship tournament, The International, Jonathan “Loda” Berg expressed how this anime is exactly what the gaming giant needed.

Perhaps the best example of the excitement generated by the anime is the fact that at the time of writing, the official trailer put up by Netflix on YouTube has over 1.9 million views in the two weeks since it was put out. Even the teaser that was put up at the time of announcement has over 1.5 Million views. All of this throws up an interesting question, what does this anime mean for Dota 2 and Valve corporation? If we look at the historical data for the daily average player count for Dota 2 since February 2016, when it was at its peak of 709,178.3, we’ll notice that the years since then have only shown a systematic decrease. In February 2017, the average player count was at 591,567.3 which is an overall decline of 25.22 percent year-on-year. Looking at February 2018, the figure drops further to 438,847.7. Although the numbers did improve slightly by February 2019 and reached 564,909.7, they have never come close to the highs of 2016. Dota last crossed a daily average player count of 500,000 back in June 2019 and this figure had dropped to 378,925.4 by January 2020. The daily average player count for the last 30 days has fallen below 400,000 (at the time of writing). According to the data collected by esportsearnings.com, between 2014 to 2018, Dota 2 was the eSport with the highest cumulative prize pool offered across the year. In 2019, Dota fell to the second spot and 2020 was even worse as it dropped down to third. When the information for Dota 2 is compared with Valve Corporation’s other popular game CS:GO, the reality looks grim. CS:GO, that had historically always played second fiddle to Dota 2 in terms of both prize money and player counts, has become first now on both accounts. In 2019, Dota had a yearly cumulative prize pool that was more than $25 million greater than CS:GO. The last 30 days have seen the figures for CS:GO sit at 748,539.4 (at time of writing) which is even higher than Dota 2’s peak figure. In April 2020, during the worst of the pandemic, the average player count for CS:GO was at an all-time high of 857,604.2. Another point to note is that according to Statista.com, the global eSports market revenue was $776.4 million in 2016, and as of 2019, this had crossed $950 million. The figures for 2020 are similar. In 2023, the figure is projected to be worth a massive $1,598.2 million. The figures show that the market is growing and given the parallel growth of CS:GO, Dota 2 might be an outlier falling into decay. Games’ popularity is decided by a combination of criterion. Great gameplay experience, powerful and compelling storylines, a well-behaved community, and proactive communication from the developers are some of the better-known factors. Dota 2 has always received criticism for the fact that they have failed to impress in most of these categories. While gameplay experience remains their forte, poor communication from Valve Corporation is so well recognised that back in October 2020, they addressed the issue in an official announcement. At the time, they promised to work on improving in this regard, resulting in a minor upswing in the player count for October 2020. Dota 2 have had the Overwatch System introduced into the game to help punish misbehaving players . Last year, there have also been mass bans against accounts that consistently show poor behaviour. When a game developer fails to keep fans engaged, the game suffers and many fans and players switch over to a different game. In my personal experience, many close friends who once played close to 10 hours of Dota 2 switched over to other online games mainly due to the problems mentioned above. Traditionally, game developers have used in-game events to help introduce backstories or make additions to the lore of the story. This is done in a bid to help improve the level of engagement offered by the game so that the experience does not become stale. Given the fact that Dota 2 have seen a steep decline in recent years, it is very likely that Dragon’s Blood is a unique new approach thought up by Valve Corporation to boost their dwindling numbers. As is the case with every trend, it is imminently possible that several other big organisations within the gaming industry may attempt to replicate this approach if it proves to be a success for Valve Corporation.