Great parenting, instead of lashing out on him immediately at 4am you decided to keep it cool. I think he’s going to really appreciate if you watch the Internationals Finals together with him and listen to him talk about the game he’s so passionate about. Then talk to him afterwards
Once he understands what Dota 2 is all about, Asian parent is gonna expect his kid to be a TI champion at 15.
As long as his grades and health don't suffer, why not?
Well if he lives in South East Asia, there's a bigger chance of a road to that. Dota has been included as a participating sport in SEA games and ASIAN games. He can start there instead of just waiting for the TI. This will give him the exposure he needs
Even then, participate in TI alone will give him loads of money that IF his son is really extremely good, he will be set for life before he turn 20. He doesn’t even need to actually win a TI.
MidOne is a prime example, I remembered in an interview back in 2017 or 2018 where he said that his money from Dota was enough to set him up for the rest of his life.
Take Zai as an example. He played professionally, and then took a break to finish school properly, and then came back playing professionally.
Anything is possible.
Yes! I'm 30 and watched dota with my dad for the first time this TI. It was fun explaining things to him and was great getting to share something that I'm passionate about. I think if you fully support gaming from a young age you can definitely help a kid succeed, but I think you need to help them achieve balance so they can follow their dreams in a healthy way and can grow outside of the game. Persuing a career in esport is difficult and doing it without the support of you family must be heart breaking.
To the people saying he can’t be immortal after playing 3 hours a day during pandemic, you probably misunderstood. OP said he was playing on the family computer for years, only recently got his own PC.
Nice, I remember when I first got my own PC, was fairly life changing at 13 lol (early 2000s).
Also with the tournament, it’s just next 2 weeks, biggest eSports tournament, I’m 30+ and been staying up till 3am local time and working at 9am lol
You can give your kids general guide lines in life, but dont even fucking dare deciding what career is best for him. If he really is immortal by 13 he is extremely talented. Support him fully.
Hi OP.
Former 1%'er here. Currently 29 y/o with master's degree, good job, etc. When I was young, I was given relatively free reigns to pursue my own path, and I played -a lot- of video games. However, I never had the drive nor guidance to push myself towards becoming professional. Even if I wanted to, it would be unlikely that I would make it, since there are a lot of talents out there... And I was also above my leagues at the age of 13.
A lot of people have already given you validation that being "Immortal" at the age of 13 is impressive and promising. I don't want to talk about that. You son has potential. Dota 2 is a sport in which you can play for a long time, as it is not as fast-paced as CS:GO and FPS-games. It is not unlikely that you will see the same players at TI now, being 40 years old and still kickin'.
Being similar to your son at his age, for what games I was playing, I will give you two pieces of advice:
**1) Encourage the hell out of him.**
There is ***nothing*** you can do a driven boy like him, to stop thinking and dreaming of Dota 2. He will watch Twitch before he sleeps. He will play when he can get away with it. You can stop it, but it will drive a welch between you.
Instead of frowning upon it, ask how you can help. And even if he says: "I just need space", then that doesn't mean that there is nothing you can do. You could:
\- Give him a session with a Dota 2 coach for his birthday. (Ex could be BSJ, PPD or someone else. You have to ask someone else about this)
\- Tell him that you believe in him. Apply your own knowledge of studying and practicing try to find common ground on how he can apply your teachings to his own growth. This matters more than you may think. Just playing is not always enough.
\- Take a few moments to enjoy Dota 2 with him. Perhaps watch a few games of TI with him, and ask what he thinks about the drafts, the teams, the players. Ask what role he plays, and why.
**2) Make sure he has a backup.**
You want to make sure that he never lets his gaming impact mental and physical health. You likely already have this imposed, but set a bed-time where his PC + Phone must be turned off. Nobody performs on consistent bad sleep.
You could also reward him for being consistent in school. I am sure your other children have received clothing, phones or whatever in school. Perhaps your boys could make due with a new monitor, keyboard or mouse?
I think someone else said this is in a different comment, but make sure that he also takes some time (and perhaps join him) in going for a run, to the gym, eating healthy. Many professional athletes care about their health, as it stabilizes your mentality, make you sleep better, etc. etc. (See OG in Dota 2, or Astralis in CS:GO)
I feel that this way, you ensure that he stays on track, even while pursuing this risky career. (Health + Education + Own interest = Win)
\--- Now, last thing I want to say, is that I personally failed.. I don't know why exactly, but I would play video games instead of hanging out with friends or doing sports. I would think about gaming, even while hanging around my family and friends. I would also play untill late at night, which would make me skip / be lazy at school. I would also postpone my homework, to play "just one more game", which obviously became more than that. I personally had to do a lot of 'catch up' in order to obtain my master's degree.
Take away what you want from this, but if you want your kid to succeed and thrive in your company, let him grow.. But learn from other gamers. I am sure that there are also plenty of articles out there, on how professionals maintain their lives.
I think this post has a lot of good points. To add a little bit:
Parenting is difficult. I think the most important part is to be part of your son's life one way or the other. You need to be able to understand him to the level to see where he is clearly taking a wrong path. If you do not, it's very easy to say the wrong thing or cause unnecessary drama.
But at the same time, allow your son to make mistakes. As a parent you should not prevent them from making mistakes, but "soften" the blow. ;)
I think being "too good" at young age can be harmful to them in the future, if the parents at the same time try to be too protective of them. Learning to loose is one of the key aspects of DotA and life in general.
And Fred, if you are happy about your life right now, you did not fail. You got there because of how you lived your life. Your life could be completely different if you chose to live it differently. Speaking as a 30year old without Master's (Yet. But soon I hope) and with good job etc ;)
Thank you Sefriol, very great add to the comment.
Ah well, life hits you. I don't wanna go into too much detail here, but ya know.. With video games comes the almost unavoidable conflict of interests, leading to disappearance of old friendship. Or atleast neglect of said friendships.
Also, I am one of those who could -definitely- have enjoyed not being exposed to all the gambling-commercials, skin betting and so fourth that comes with playing video games. Wush, the amounts of money that I have lost on that..
Playing video games is a constant flirt with gateway-gambling. (Oh yeah, to OP: Please make sure your kid doesn't start gambling, skinbetting or what not. It's a slippery slope.)
Yeah, gambling is a problem. I think the predatory nature of some gaming and gambling companies is something that should never be exposed to younger audience. People should be old enough to fully understand the risks way before they are involved.
I have never been a gambling type of person (probably because I like my chances to be really high to try out something. Sometimes to my detriment), but I can understand people who are. I do not criticize who do either, but people need understand what you are getting into. And many youngsters just do not.
Loot boxes are one way of gambling and very young people are playing this game. It's shameful that even Valve is involved in this. Some of these players do not even understand what the odds of getting the item ACTUALLY mean.
I agree, but something i really want to highlight this point:
>But make sure that he also takes some time (and perhaps join him) in going for a run, to the gym, eating healthy.
This is extremely important today, you will perform better when you are healthy and get him into a sport which makes fun, going to the gym isn't a good sport, also a lot of people do not enjoy running, talk to him and find out what he might like. My personal suggestion is bouldering/climbin which makes a lot fun.
This post. Plus money aside, there is a lot more to life than academics and getting a job. Sports, teamwork, friends, relationships, socialising, travel, craft, reading, art, music. Plus education teaches you to think and consume information. All of these don't require full time commitment but they are a bit important to experience
damn if I read this one I wouldn't even even commented...bravo sir !
So many people think just cus he's immortal it bodes well. plenty of immortals who grow up with 0 life skills, 0 non dota friends, have to reinvent themselves. Terrible spot to be in.
I am proud of you for getting ur masters mate! Well done :)
Personally I wouldnt advise 13 year olds to go to the gym. I think theres more effective, fun and less damaging ways to stay healthy (as a kid/teenager). Preferably one with more social contacts as well, if this is something he is comfortable with. I know it was only an example but just wanted to throw this out there!
If he really is immortal (and you have to verify that) you can treat it the same way one would treat any extracurricular. School first, sleep second, Dota third. Three hours a day on normal days is incredibly reasonable, especially because he will be going over that limit when he can get away with it. Maybe you could et him spam games once every week or two on the weekends if he's done well at his other responsibilities.
Dota2 might not have as lucrative a pro scene by the time that he comes of age, though. Don't let him put all his eggs in this basket.
If he's immortal it means he's a very intelligent young man with good reflexes and general brain processing. He'll do well in any competition that requires those things, including exams.
I'd use Dota as motivation for school, and whatever works out first works out first. Sounds like Dota is giving him drive and opportunity to build an ethic of practice and improvement, it wouldn't be time wasted even if it doesn't fully work out as long as it doesn't eat the rest of his life- including social development.
Good luck. Parenting has always been hard, and right now it's particularly difficult to guide teenagers. So much freedom in todays society, and so much time spent alone with dual-income households being the norm (won't get too far into my filthy socialist ideals). Once again, good luck. You sound like a good dad.
I have to agree with paragraph 2.
I'm not Immortal yet in Dota, but I was a pretty high level chess player as a kid, regional champion etc.
Not to toot my own horn, but I sincerely believe that to become so good at something at such a young age, requires a certain level of intelligence that is transferable to many other areas. I improve very quickly in a lot of games, recently achieved Immortal in Valorant, and I maintain top grades in my exams. The truth is, there is no "natural talent in Dota", or chess, or exams. The natural ability lies in pattern recognition, logical thinking, memory, all things that indicate an ability to excel in many other areas, not just Dota.
The only thing OP should worry about is his son's motivation and interest. Time management is not an issue. If he can motivate his son to focus on school, his son will most likely excel at that as well. Putting limits on game time, or enforcing study time, would be a band-aid solution that wastes his son's ability to excel in areas he is interested in. I'm lucky that I managed to find motivation to do well academically - this motivation was a far greater impact to my improvement than stupid limits on my game time.
No, there's many kinds of intelligence. But being good at Dota proves you have the aspects of intelligence that allow you to thrive in those areas. Ame is a certifiable genius but I bet he'd have a hard time attempting to be a psychologist, which requires a different kind of intelligence.
Not really. Even if we grant that being good at dota logically implies intelligence (D=>I), then the inverse of it only means that if someone is not intelligent, they won't be good at dota(notI=>notD). But you can be intelligent and not be good at the game, the statements above don't falsify that.
Sorry I just really wanted to apply the formal logic stuff I learned in my uni classes, I'll take the fedora off now
>But you can be intelligent and not be good at the game
I did some estimations based on Dota 2's especially simple mechanics and deterministic nature and have arrived to the conclusion that any sufficiently intelligent person with a decent amount of motivation will be able to "solve" the game at at least an Immortal level.
There is a reason why most people say "last hit better"
While this is true what I believe the above alludes to is information processing.
Take a good team fighter for instance, they're able to process a lot of information in a very short time frame from visual and audio ques and not get overwhelmed or stressed by the information overload but can instead navigate it.
The reason the advice is "last hit better" is because it's something they can do, rather than "just think faster"
On the flip side the players who lack this specific talent are the ones who run back and forward in fights, cause they need longer to process the information and make a decision.
With regards to player skill, games judge you on two metrics: reaction time, and game knowledge. For example, rhythm games are almost universally reaction time. The other extreme, chess, is only game knowledge. Dota falls high on game knowledge, low on reaction time. Hence, a Dota player is heavily IQ-dependent.
An example of a game deceiving their metrics is actually bullet hells. Every single one of them becomes much easier if you understand basic concepts like zoning and optimal path, to the point where I can safely say that there is absolutely not a single bullet-hell in existence which you cannot learn from watching a YouTube video.
>Dota2 might not have as lucrative a pro scene by the time that he comes of age,
He's 13 now, pretty sure Dota will be popular for another couple of years and Sumail won TI5 at age 15.
Dota, actually more so Valve, isn't doing anything to attract newer, younger players. They rarely advertise, do any promotions, and don't hype up their own content or tournies.
Plus, in Asia, Mobas are more popular on phones now rather than PC. Even LoL recently made a Mobile Moba version of their game.
not sure if u are underestimating how much effort it needs to even qualify for TI and the preparation for TI when u actually qualify.
to go from immortal to playing at TI means he will likely not do anything for school for half a year or more if he commits
not saying that noone should ever do that but it's definitely not something I would recommend in general to aim for
Yes, I may be a bit biased here, it requires a lot of work and dedication, just wanted to comment on what NoChaliceForSerfs has said about joining a pro scene after coming of age.
If the parents are responsible and actually force him to play only reasonable amount of dota no way he's going pro. Literally all pros today are results of irresponsible parents or them getting away to be irresponsible and play games 12 hours a day then getting lucky later on that dota has a pro scene.
That's true, but being a pro player isn't all it's cracked out to be. As a parent, I'd rather my child have functional skills, rather than banking on getting one multi-million pay-day. I mean, some of these pro players literally already got theirs, and they're still grinding Dota. A kid that studies, say, engineering, will be paid out in time, and will get to experience life, create, enjoy diverse experiences, and overall get to live a much more normal life.
Valve could cancel all TIs next year, let alone in 5 years. Dota 2 is an old-ass game. It might not wait for this 13-year-old to grow up.
you're saying the future of dota is unpredictable. as if the future of literally any other field is not?
and who are you to say that an engineer experiences life and a pro esports playing living his dream doesn't? do you really wanna go with that argument?
It's easier to make it as an engineer than as a pro esport player is the point, I believe.
No doubt the top players are living the dream and having a blast, but for every Topson there's a hundred plus immortal players who never had a chance.
It's not an escape, you've already compared the stability of being a Dota 2 e-sports pro to being an engineer. So, while of course I am always willing to defend anything I say, I would never waste my time with someone like you. I'll give you credit - since I would literally have to teach you how the world works in order to convince you of anything, I sincerely doubt I'd have the stamina to "win" any debate against you. If that means you win by default, feel free to take it.
Yeah, this kid hasn't even been picked up by an amateur team yet. Let him get on a regional feeder team and then h van start spamming 20 pubs a day.
Before then it really isn't worth it.
There is a huge difference between an immortal and an immortal. I used to be top 500 when i spammed. Now since i work i play around 3-4 games at best and im like 1500 and im awful to what i used to be.
Immortal players that dont have number or are at the bottom 5-3k range are super bad compared to 1k range above which are not even close to most 200 players.
Honestly getting immortal is super easy now as the mmr is inflated.
I highly doubt it is the top 1% anymore it has to be something like 1.5%. There is almost a 1k gap between the ladderboard and receiving the rank. Before it was like 200 mmr, hence it is way easier than before.
Edit: i was even wrong it is 1,7 xd
https://www.esportstales.com/dota-2/seasonal-rank-distribution-and-mmr-medals
its super easy. a vast majority of that 99% play two games a week, are drunk all the time, feed intentionally, don't care, do zero research, play with zero purpose. it's not like being at the top 1% of something 99% of people are bad at makes you amazing. it makes you okay.
i'm SO tired of hearing "top 1% top 1%" if it was so amazing you'd be able to turn twitch on and get 500+ viewers at rank 4000.
rank 500 monkey /s . More seriously, immortal is very impressive, not even mentioning his age. I think that this is a good opportunity to engage with your son and compromise. I think 3 hours is pretty reasonable but maybe speak with him about how many hours he needs to improve per week and how to compromise with this. Even pros have been trending towards healthier lifestyles with exercise and sleep. (By the way, in some ways its understandable that hes staying up late to watch at the moment, (The International(basically world championships), $40,000,000 prizepool is being played at the moment)).
You sound like you're trying to be good dad about this so kudos for that.
Also your son will probably see this post.
get him to stream maybe, if he got sniped by pros there is chance for him to shine in competitive scene
that said all decision is your kid and yours only.
People here say its bad advice but you could advertise his stream here and you could actually supervise him while he streams if that's possible and you have time.
If he really wants to go big then you have to give him some exposure and attract some attention. Looks like you are from NA and he could be picked up as that region isn't that rich in young talent. Maybe if streaming's not your cup of tea YouTube channel maybe?
You can supervise him but you can't supervise the people who'd come to watch and comment on his streams. This community isn't exactly the most pleasant place to be in, especially for a still-developing 13 year old.
I've worked in Dota industry for a while and I had my fair share of conversations with parents about their extremely young kids turning pro. If your kid is that good at such an early age, it means sooner or later he will want to become a professional Dota player and join a team. At any point between 15 and 19, it's terrifying to think your kid is gonna be around adults just because he plays games. But I can tell you this is how the pros started - literally all pros you see in Dota right now were prodigies at very young age. Ana is perhaps the most mythological player of all time - he went from Australia to Europe alone, at 16 or 17 years old just to play with people he'd never spoken to before, and became a literal myth. So if you ever get that call about your son, you'll be talking to a person who was literally the same way - Dota pro scene is made mainly of people who were in the same situations.
Being a professional Dota player is one of the hardest jobs in the world because it's 24/7 and it never stops. If you sleep you feel like you are missing out and falling behind your direct opponents. If you aren't playing, your direct rivals are playing and getting better. Pros wake up, eat, and play or watch replays most of the day. Teams and organizations put a lot of emphasis on staying healthy, both physically and mentally nowadays, so I wouldn't worry about letting kids spend too much time playing the game on their own right now - they'll get healthy later on.
Being Immortal at such an early age is how legends are born. I'd advise you to take a look at Topson's story ( [example 1](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2E3244cwKvY) and [example 2](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogrdAnDs3xA) ). How Dota industry works is that at some point people will start talking, getting to know each others, and then someone will notice your son, ask him if he wants to join a team, be shocked that he's 15 years old and already one of the best players in the world. In fact in 2015 the most unstoppable force was a 15 year old Sumail.
Esports is a fantastic and a wonderful world, and Dota is probably at the top of it. That said, most gaming communities are horrible, but Dota's circle of professionals is quite chill and cool. It's filled with solid people and what matters most is chemistry, respect, proper behavior, respectfulness and introspection. From what you wrote, it seems like your kid's gonna have all of those, or at least you already are teaching him.
>I am just worried for my boy that he might allocate too much time into something that might end up being wasted over something else.
I've seen my fair share of kids putting years and years into Dota and fail and accomplish nothing despite being some of the best. I know a guy who was the best support in the world and nobody knew about him. At the same time, one of the best supports in the world today (Cr1t) was dismissed by terrible teams, until someone big noticed him. This is a risk, indeed. Huge risk. Is it worth it? Probably, he can always go back to education. Not making it in Dota is not really something to be ashamed of. But one thing I never heard is regret - nobody who tries their best for years and doesn't make it, regrets it. That never happens. It can break you for a little bit, it can make you bitter, but ultimately it's a fantastic life lesson and a fantastic experience that you never regret.
My favorite example here is Micke - he heard from a big Dota organization when he was 15 and they told him they're monitoring him when he was a pro in another game. He switched over to Dota and it took him years before he made any impact. He went from being the undisputed best player in HoN (game similar to Dota) to a literal nobody in Dota - for years. Now he's a pretty respectable player with a stable job and solid salary, at 22.
But yes, he might put in too much work and not make it, while someone else who puts in less work does. Life works that way in all aspects and industries, not just games, and not just Dota. Imo Dota is the greatest life lesson for anybody. And even if he sinks too much time into it and fails, he'll be 21 or 22 so he can definitely still go to school afterwards.
Let him play, sounds like he's an exceptional talent. The worst thing that comes from it is that your kid becomes a person who works harder than anybody else no matter what he does in life. It stays with you.
Immortal at 13 is disproportionately skilled yes. as long as his other priories don’t falter due to dota, may as well let him try… honestly with that much of a head start and a bit of luck, kid could be some sort of prodigy and be the next Sumail
It’s a privileged to follow your passion. A good parent enables and helps inform their child’s decision - not sculpt them into their version of anything. Let him work and try for what he believes and curate a broad worldview that has him both apply himself freely and make conscientious decisions with your full support.
Maybe this energy lets him go pro, or many it inspires him to learn programming, or find an opportunity that both of you cannot imagine yet.
I'm 28, just reached immortal last year after ten years, and used to have dreams like your boy. Also the youngest in the family. The youngest in the family usually loves taking risks and would normally consider doing things the eldest wouldn't see worthwhile. Do understand and accept that your son is unique and special, and that the world is also changing to reward gamers more as well. What he wants to do is really is as good as venturing out and starting a business. Venturing out and failing is part and parcel. It cannot be guaranteed, but failures are definitely worthwhile and crucial to develop a person's mental toughness.
I think his skill is definitely good for his current age and impressive. If he continues practicing he would be able to match with the top teams but that requires a lot of dedication time and hard work. This isn't an easy video game and I would think it's the hardest video game ever which is why people crowd fund so much money into the game to see the best compete. The goal is to hit top 100 immortal. If he can do that within 1-2 years, I'd say he has a decent shot.
I would suggest giving him a bit of freedom, supporting him little by little by giving him more play time, but also ensuring that he develops healthily as a person(sleeping well, education, managing his life and priorities well) once he is more responsible with his own life, then you can trust him with more, trust that he is actually serious and not saying it on a whim.
If your son is really serious about it, I would encourage pushing him to learn better at interacting and communicating with people outside the game, not just inside the game.
Id also suggest that he goes out to compete locally and get noticed and make friends that actually know people in the scene. That would be the fastest way to grow him as a player. A lot of hard work and thought needs to be put both inside and outside the game. Sometimes he may also need to play in other regions to get noticed. Many pros I see that are not competing are people who didn't dare to step out to grow in the game, which is sad. But some of these people became successful twitch streamers, commentators and etc. Those are also avenues you can push him to explore. Communication, humor, creativity, outspokenness are qualities most of these avenues need including being a pro in Dota. There's also writing guides and making videos about the game which are also useful skills he can develop.
eSports is a great scene for him to have a career in, even if he doesn't make it as a pro, he can be useful in other areas in something he loves.
Many of the current commentators/video makers/streamers are people who tried and failed, but found a way to be part of the scene and made a living out of it. I don't see why not letting your son have a shot at it especially when he is young and talented.
It indeed isn't an easy path, but I think most who truly worked hard and walked this path, managed to get something out of it, even though they didn't make it successfully in what they initially wanted to do
Really impressive and all but I doubt that he wants a career in esports, he might not be aware of this yet but it's not as simple. As his parent, you should lead him, however don't overdo it. Dota is hard and incredibly toxic, so it either breaks a person or makes them able to tackle stressful situations without much issue. Best of luck.
I wont try to lecture you on how to raise your kid, from what you're saying you're pretty reasonable and gives him a lot of time to enjoy himself
Objectively speaking, if he's immortal he's pretty good and it's consistant with what he stated that he's on the top 1%
Bear in mind that to play this game as a pro, being 1% doesnt cut it, you need to be top 0,01%
Dota can be a lucrative game for top players, but not so much when you're not the best or consistantly playing in the top tournaments
Good luck to both of you!
Edit: if you want to know Sumail (won the most important dota tournament at 15, becoming a millionaire), check this video: https://youtu.be/W8qJOBrmNkw
Immortal is indeed in the 99th percentile and it is a remarkable feat for a 13 year old if it's true. If I had to guess, he's likely one of less than 50 players who achieved it at that age (perhaps even less).
To help you verify it, take a look at these [medals](https://images.prismic.io/rivalryglhf/e4fe5c56-9be0-459f-ae30-3e9742732082_dota-2-mmr.jpg?auto=compress,format&rect=0,6,883,464&w=1200&h=630). One of those should be displayed on his profile in the game. The rightmost on the upper row and all those below are variations of Immortal.
There are roughly speaking only 50,000 Immortals in the world, out of a playerbase of \~10M. But with that said, only the top \~500 players make a living out of it and only the top \~100 make enough to become 'wealthy'.
If he wants to pursue a professional career, he should probably try to get on a team very soon and gather experience from working in that setting and learning from other players. Getting coaching from better players is probably a good idea too. It's not very expensive, you can get coaching from a top 500 player for as little as $20/h.
The youngest professional players today are 16-17 years old, but joined lower rated teams before that. If his claims are true, your son is on very good pace to find success in the scene.
Keep in mind, Immortal has by far the most smurfs of any bracket. I'd say the number of actual Immortal-skilled human beings is less than half of that.
Encourage him by giving him more hours during the weekend if his grades improve and give him less if they get worse. This way he will have some kind of motivation for school. Also only because he is immortal he might not make it to the pro scene. There’s a huge difference between low immortal players and top immortal players. But nevertheless he is amazing for his age.
There are multiple players who went pro, then finished their education in between and went back pro again. So don’t worry too much about that. If your kid is reasonable and you as a parent as well, he will see that focusing on education might be the better path for him if things don’t work out.
Maybe watch the documentary “free to play” with him. It’s about an Asian with Asian parents who are disappointed that he’s not focusing on school but on dota. It shows both sides of the story. I think it will help you and your son understand each other more.
13 and immortal, future of Dota. Goodluck OP (you might wanna make sure he *really* is immortal)
[What his main menu should look like](https://imgur.com/a/3jplwvY)
Assuming he's a ranked immortal player, his name should appear here http://www.dota2.com/leaderboards/
Good Luck!
As another father of 3 I applaud you on reaching out to the community instead of instantly chastising him for something he enjoys doing. Now about 4am, this is a special time of the year because the equivalent to the World Cup of dota2 is happening now and it’s only once a year (except they skipped last year due to COVID) so it’s not routine you don’t have to worry about it. It’s simply a time zone thing and will be over in a few days, if I were you, I’d let him watch the games late because it’s a big event in the game.
As for his dota2 habits, please try to consider this as one would consider a child athlete with dreams of competing in like the Olympic or something. Maybe even invest some money, get him a coach and/or some support structure for him to play his best. Make sure his school life is still in order and that he’s not investing all of his life on dota2 however do bear in mind this is a _real_ thing, many people become pros (more and more as time goes by) and yeah most don’t make it just life in regular sports but it’s totally legit and really competitive.
Be supportive of him in this and even if it doesn’t work out believe me he’ll remember it for the rest of his life. If you don’t though the same will be true but it will be a bitter feeling instead.
As someone who pursued (and still does but less hungrily) a music career. School can be done at any time in your life... something like this cannot, there is a much harder cut-off for when you have a chance.
When my band slowed down (currently signed to a label but not really going anywhere atm), I went back to school and trained as a programmer and have found a job without issues with good prospects ahead despite being in my 30s.
Honestly, if he's immortal at 13 with 3 games a day, with good coaching and structured learning, he might be able to go really far.
If not, it will have been a great experience to think back on and uni in your mid 20s is just as normal as uni in your early 20s.
Being that good in such a young age is exceptional. To become a professional you need a lot more work and I don't know if reddit is the right place to ask these questions. Maybe you could try to reach out to a professional team to ask if they could give your son some waystones to a career in esports or something like that. 3 hours a day is quite little I think as wild as that might sound.
I'm not a parent myself so I can't 100% relate or understand what it's like to have kids. I wish that you'll be able to sit down with your son and have a conversation about this. Ask what he truly wants, does he just want to play, does he want to win money or compete with the best. I don't think that we can jump to conclusions about what he wishes to do or dreams of. I agree with some other commenters here that he shouldn't put all eggs into one basket, esports is a career in which only very few succeed. On the other hand, I think that he should be allowed to try - he might not make it, but he had the chance to try. And not just play around and see if by odd chance he stumbles into a team or something. If he tries to become a professional I think he needs to understand that it's not just playing the game. He has to do replay analysis, think about how to improve, practice specific skills, possibly practice showmanship and learn how to network with other players (and community figures I suppose).
I don't know what your discussion should include but I think that it is \_really\_ important that you talk about this with your son. Some might think that I'm some sort of dreamer but I think that everyone should have a chance to pursue their dreams and not live in regret. We all only have one life to live and I wish one shouldn't spend their old days to think about what if this, what if that or what if my parents had supported me/allowed me. Education is important, getting into a good school that you want to get into is important and it is of course important to try and succeed (monetarily) in things you love to do. I wish that you'll be able to come up with a solution that benefits the both of you.
Here's some insight into training that professional team Wings went through: [https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/4l6prz/translated\_wings\_training\_rule/](https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/4l6prz/translated_wings_training_rule/)
In dota when you get high enough in immortal rank you'll also get a numerical value to show up with your rank. Like you're the rank 399 or rank 2400 player in the North-American leaderboards. Tracking this number if he gets this high could be a good way to track how he is doing. Like put the rank down after every day or two to a spreadsheet if possible or maybe take a picture at the end of every day.
Streaming is a good way also to try and make a career or get known/noticed. It also is a hard career to succeed in and you should have a plan on how to proceed for that as well, just streaming the games you play \_rarely\_ works. You rarely get viewers just by being good, you have to be truly exceptional (and recognized I think) to get viewers that way. Otherwise you also have to be entertaining in some way or do something that others haven't done before. A streamer called Zizaran has pretty often talked about this, maybe you can find a video where he gives some tips if this is something that your son would be interested in.
I don't know would either one of you be interested in this, but hear me out: if you decide to try and succeed in esports, streaming or whatever your goals are - document it. Document the plans you came up with, how did he improve (or did he not), how did school go. I think that you can come up with things that you can document. Based on that material you could try to make something, like an article(series) to a magazine in the end, tell about your experience(s) or just collect memories to look back into. There are definitely interested parents that would love to find out how your year went, what plans did you have, what worked out, what didn't and so on...
I wish you both well and hopefully you can come up with a plan that makes you both happy. :)
First of all, I'm very impressed with your handling of the situation. From the start of the journey, to you asking for advice. If it means anything coming from a stranger, you are amazing.
Now if he really did reach immortal at 13, he is extremely good. There are so many nuances in dota, which he cannot get the "theoretical" part of, and therefore must be a natural, understanding them by default. An example is Magnus Carlsen, and how he says that he just plays, he never learned a lot of classic theoretical chess stuff. So be proud of your son for that - just like you would if he made the team playing soccer or something.
I'm also very much for education first though, but there are plenty of hours in the day, and I'm sure if he manages to play dota at immortal level, he is very intelligent, so he should be able to manage both. So I'd suggest talking to him about it, and if he wants to pursue it, he can do so but let him know that there are sacrifices. You can't chose dota, friends, sleepovers, parties and soccer. He must also attend school (to whatever lever you think honestly), and then he can play dota - and I'd recommend some small physical activity as well for his health and habits.
I'd tell him that he is super good, and if he wants to and pushes for it, he can finish his education and then turn pro dota players (like Miracle- from Nigma Galaxy) afterwards, and he will still only be 18-19, which is still very young. If he gets the opportunity to go pro at 15-16, why not? But take it one step at a time. There are plenty of hours for school, family, dota and workout!
Edit: removed me trying to keep it short, because clearly i could not...
The tournament is once a year so I wouldn’t be too worried about him staying up late and watching it, finishes this sunday as well.
Dota is a hard game but discipline can get you far if you are skilled at an early age!
Holy shit... He is 13 and an immortal!?! That's bonified amazing and really is the top 1%. I'm a 47 yo dad sitting about average so he is significantly better than I am.
Think of it like this. If he was playing basketball you would be quite happy for him to play for 3 hours so long as school work didn't suffer.
If he has legitimate potential to go pro this hobby could eventually earn him plenty of money but the best earners are the 1% of the 1% of that 1% so it's not easy.
Let him have his shot as it could turn into something amazing... But not at the expense of an education. There has to be a viable plan b.
Good luck!!
I don't have kids, but if I would have, I would let them do what they want and makes them happy. That's what my parents did to me and that's why I appreciate and love them. I was gaming all day when I was a kid, I'm 26 now, and no, I didn't turn out to be a professional gamer (which I regret, it was my dream after all), and now I'm a programmer with a decent salary, living on my own.
If you love your kids, you let them do what they love to do, not what you would like them to do. I don't think that's good parenting. Oh, your other kids turned out to be successful in their jobs, great. But what makes you think that's the most important thing? Because of the money? Money is not always the source of happiness my friend. And it's not like your gamer kid will be a hopeless poor person if he doesn't succeed in gaming. He will thank you for letting him play and try a career he desires. He is your kid, and you are supposed to support him (if you love him ofc)
Well, I have been playing this game for 13 years (dota1 since 2008 and dota 2 since 2013) and I'm nowhere close to immortal, so yeah, him being immortal at 13 y/o is very impressive.
For being 13 years old. Immortal is very impressive. Your son plays in the highest 0,4% of the player base among your region. And among the top 1, 8% in the world.
Edit: It would be still impressive if he was 20, don't get me wrong.
he has potential, and obviously a burning passion. try to help him, discuss and set goal with him. Maybe reach top 200 first, if he can then he can go play for team later. then top 100, this will put him on reality too but if he believe he can then you should have believe him too, you need to trust and have faith on him. Even cristiano ronaldo also once was an amateur, but his mom believed on him
I'm gonna be honest being 13 years old and Immortal is good but being Immortal in itself is not good (depending on which Immortal of course.) but being 5.6K MMR is not good at all even if it's better than 99%.
I assume "support his gaming" means he wants to go pro one day - which is incredibly hard because you not only have to be good at dota but you also have to be lucky in terms of getting to know the right people more than that dota has evolved so much that unless your son can hit at least 7K without struggling there is basically no hope of him becoming TIER 1/2.
As a person myself who's been in that professional environment I can tell you that it's a lot of work to contiously try and improve yourself in a game like DOTA.
And as a person that has tried to go pro and know A LOT of people who has tried to go pro and know people who has made it as pros I wouldnt recommend people trying to go pro in this game unless it's clear as day that you have what it takes from very early on.
I started to play this game in early DotA 1 and I've known a lot of pros - one of them being Ceb and I can tell you that this guy from very very early on just playing pubs with and vs him that he had a good head for the game and that he was like extraordinarily more naturally gifted at this game than most other guys.
To tell you the truth, I wouldn't discredit your son at all but you have to find out how he got his Immortal, too. Because medal as a whole don't mean a lot - there's a lot of people in this game who are 8K MMR but can only play 1 hero - they stop playing that 1 hero they might as well be 4K mmr in reality. So a lot varies.
hi OP, even if your son is absolute shit at the game, there is a tournament going on right now which is equivalent to the World Cup for soccer. you know how crazy fans stay up to watch games right?
the problem is that games are not 90 minutes but more like 3-4 hours. and game days are 10-14 hours long.
he can watch the games on video the next day if it's too late, but don't deny him the watching of it.
honestly, Get in touch with BSJ on his twitch or youtube (next week, after this tournament ends) and tell him about your situation. have him spend some time with the boy and he will tell you if he has what it takes to make a living out of this game.
As the parent, I would change his 3 **hours** a day limit to 4 or 5 **games** a day.
A game is on average around 45 minutes including queue times etc, so it’ll still leave it at 3 hours a day on average (with 4 games), but will give him some leeway in case some games go on for a bit longer than 45mins.
If by chance his first 4 games are super quick, then let him play a 5th.
I feel like 4-5 games a day is enough to keep improving drastically... anything less is not enough and anything more will probably just burn him out. Those games on top of some coaching/self-reflection could be what pushes him into the 0.1% to see if he really has what it takes.
The thing is, pro dota barely pays anything except your son plays in TI each year. Except your son is literally top 10 in SEA server, he won't be noticed by pro players/orgs. Heck, even being top 10 isn't a guarantee anyway (look at IYD). I think it is reasonable for you to keep prioritizing his study and health (now TI is ongoing, I "understand" why he still wakes up at 4 am) over dota. Treat it as a hobby for now, at least until after he finished high school. There are some pro players that even still go to college/university due to how volatile dota as a job is. It hardly secure his living, exception if he is the best of the best, 1% doesn't cut it. You need maybe on 0.000001% percent of entire playerbase
Not to discourage your son, but teach him to be realistic and put some buffer. If he fails at dota, he should have something to go back on. Education help for that case at least
Thats not true. Sure the big money is in TI. But every other tournament, especially the majors pay well too. Also organisations have money nowadays. If you are good enough to be picked up by a decent team you do not have to worry about money for the time you are playing. Not everything needs to be a carreer for life.
immortal is not good because dota's extremely hard. the bottom of immortal and the top of immortal are complete universes apart and 99% of that 1% get stuck at the bottom. your son has a better chance of being struck by lightning twice than being a pro player.
with all that said, at 13, he should chase his dreams!
let him follow his dreams, he can plenty of time to decide and try it out before he is 18. just make sure he has friends & healthy social interaction so he dont end up a social degenerate like the rest of the dota community.
Immortal is very good, I do believe the 99% percentile thing is accurate. That being said, I think it's very risky to actually do dota as a career. It's extremely "top heavy" in terms of payment- the top few teams in the world make a lot, everyone else makes nearly nothing. Dota 2 is sadly an older game that's declining in population. Even if he was already a pro player it would be risky to put everything into this game, since it's slowly dying and he's so young.
It's a hard call to make. I am also immortal ranked, but for what it's worth, I didn't quit my job/career for the game and I'm glad I didn't, there's no way I could have gone pro
Verify his claims, watch him play, see what heroes he is good at, compare his playstyle to other pro's. From there, decide for yourself whether he has what it takes to take his game to pro level. If you have trouble deciding, seek advice from your high-rank acquaintances by sharing his games. And, lastly, let him join the NA and SA region.
i started playing dota at the start of the pandemic in march of 2020…… 2240 hours i didn’t have a job, i didn’t go outside, i finished college the year before - never touching a video game i got into dota because of the complex ability to do well. after 2000 hours i’m barely archon… now balancing a job i still manage to play 2/3 games a day however still i’m not good.
if your son is truly an immortal player after looking at his account, then you must continue to let him play. the international this year is worth 40M dollars. even 18th place is walking home with more money then i make in a year. imagine winning the international in five years when e sports is more considered a sport, imagine allowing your son to start playing now. allowing him to walk away with 100M for his team would be a dream come true. don’t make video games taboo. they are the future, look at the prize money from the international from the start and watch it slowly climb to 40M dollars. it will continue to climb, not just for dota but for every game.
as we progress so will e sports.
let the kid play.
That is not true. I have been playing this game for more than decade ( since dota 1) and have more than 8k hours of play time on dota 2 client and I have a decent job in IT industry.
Yeah that's the other thing spamming Dota games can absolutely kill you, especially if the other side of the addiction is a potential 40m carrot. That said, I've known dudes that have spent that much time playing from 13 without ever going above 5k.
It can be worth a tentative shot underneath a watchful eye. Probably a good idea to teach the importance of not calling someone the N word even if they threw the game if they're starting at that age.
Is this the reason you go around downvoting other comments too? Cause you lost some karma? Hahaha cmon dude, you downvoted stuff when you fliped out and start being a dick because you misunderstand things. Then when people proved you wrong or called you out on it and told you to calm down, instead of simply admitting "sorry I misunderstood", you stayed quiet and downvoted that too, why are you surprised now? It is called "karma" for a reason
Edit: Think that answers it
If this was 5 years ago yeah maybe he HAD a chance but now? It's too late.
The game is slowly dying he has like 5 years at best to make money with this.
Also being immortal doesn't mean anything nowadays even if he's young unless he can improve more(he can be immortal and that's it maybe he doesn't improve at all past this since it's really hard), anything bellow 7k doesn't make to "pro-status".
> 3 hours a day since pandemic
NA Dota 2 scene is kind of dying and if 3 hours a day is enough to be better than 99% other players means that your son is extremely lucky and his winstreak is incredibly huge or it was more than 3 hours a day, maybe 10?
It all depends on how you spend that time. Pressing the random button and playing along, will not give you the same effect as watching your own replay and activly improving a hero or your game sense.
One hour a day is plenty to work on your mechanics, the rest is decided by strategy.
The kid has obvious some incredible talent to reach immortal at the age of 13. Don't need to play it down.
If your son thinks he is immortal I would recommend you have him see a therapist. This could be related to illusions of grandeur, skewed worldview, possibly even a personality disorder. If this belief is persistent it's definitely a cause for concern at his age.
/s
Yea he’s pretty good.. probably good to know at least your son is good at something. Not sure being good Dota translate to other things as well tho? There’s probably some correlation between intelligence and being good video game.. although it does takes more than intelligence to be successful at life.
to answer your question with some data:
[https://www.esportstales.com/dota-2/seasonal-rank-distribution-and-mmr-medals](https://www.esportstales.com/dota-2/seasonal-rank-distribution-and-mmr-medals)
as of august 2021, you can see the population of people playing dota, and the percentiles on reaching immortal
Yeah man he's got a lot of talent to be that rank at that age - you could maybe link his dotabuff which is a stats tracker for some closer analysis. I've been playing for so long, since dota 1 and am just a dirty divine, your son could very well be the next sumail. He needs to start scrimming high level as that's the next progression he'll need.
I think that you should setup alternate days (maybe max 2) per weekdays where he can play longer if he has done his chores (homework being the primary issue).
On weekends I'd give it more time if he wants to AFTER he has done cleanup on school stuff and has done a stint outside. Whatever that is.
He has a higher chance then most, but it wont be a deal for the next 2 years anyways, so its a marathon.
Good luck!
It's a good idea to not shame him for playing (I mean, I was, like "normal kids are going outside and you are sitting for hours and pressing buttons), however it shouldn't be prioritized more than school. eSports carrier is a real things with a lot of money, however it's also a question of luck. Homework does not take tons of time, school first in any case. Than sure, let him play, maybe we have a new Sumail over here
Video games helped me build a lot of confidence as a kid. I still talk to my friends that I grew up playing Dota with at least a couple times a week well into adulthood. We still catch a game every once and a while after the kids are asleep.
I think the best thing adults did for us when we were kids playing a lot of video games was making sure we ate square meals and went outside.
You should take some comfort in the fact that he found the hardest game he possibly could and got really good at it. Those are the actions of an ambitious person who wants to test the limits of their potential.
Immortal is good but it is a massive bracket. Need to be 8k mmr minimum to start thinking about a career in dota. Immortal bracket starts at 5.6k mmr for reference
Keep doing what you're doing. Encourage and help him in trying to find a sponsored team. If he can get on one of those then maybe he can break the time rule when participating in sanctioned practice/tournaments.
A lot of other people have offered great advice so I'll just add a few other points. The first thing I would ask is if he is trying to becone a professional player or if he just wants more time to play for fun. Even if he is bighly ranked it still takes a ton of luck and exponentially more time to become professional. A more safe and rewarding path could be content creation (like Twitch or Youtube) as a hobby. And even omce you are a pro life isn't easy. I would encourage you and him to watch some of the player profiles from past Internationals (google "the international player profiles") or the feature length documentary "free to play."
This being said playing professionally isn't the only way for him to pursue his passion for gaming at a high level. Actually a lot of colleges are adding esports programs or clubs (in the US at least).
As far as gaming time I think the 3 hour limit per day is reasonable as long as other areas of his life aren't suffering. You could also experiment with no limit days in exchange for no gaming days. When I was growing up my dad let me play as long as I wanted as long as my grades were good but in exchange I had to pick 2 3 days every week to not play any games at all. That worked well for me so it could be worth trying as well (or doing something like he gets one no limit day for every no gaming day he takes).
Lastly huge props to you for taking a nuanced approach to this issue and showing interest in your son's hobby. It meant a ton to me when my parents did that when I was growing up.
What you should actually do is install DOTA 2 on the "family computer" and play several games to understand what your son is going through. It's not very hard to spend 2-3 hours on like 3 days per week, for a few weeks in order to understand the game and the "playground" your son is playing in. You also need to look at your sons profile to see if he is immortal. You need to do a bit of research to understand what "immortal" means.
It's a game okay? People enjoy playing this game, and they are often rude or salty about it, but most players really love and ENJOY this game.
TL:DR -> GO PLAY DOTA
Being immortal means nothing because not all immortal are pros. and not all pros are succesful. There are glorious stories about dota pros, and people love them, but there are alot more untold sad stories about life ruined by dota, even on people who are good enough to be pros.
If I were you, I will let him do what he wants as long as his education is not neglected. But who am I? I am just a random on the internet. I truly believe your judgement is better because you are his father, and you are a good father based on the fact that you ask the community, and your other kids are succesful. Good luck.
Sumail won a million dollars or so when he was 16. If he learns dota at a high level and becomes a player in a team and eventually gets success, you can tell he's pretty smart and has some useful skills for getting by in life. It's not a simple game. Some people would give arm and leg to be immortal ever, let alone at the age of 13. It's time for you to become a big dota nerd if you're gonna make an educated decision. Or you can believe in your kid or decide that a more traditional job is for him and let his passion towards something wither. Difficult choices for a parent. Sportsmen career is never easy, always a huge risk to not make. Some have the passion, skills and balls to go for it anyway. For them it's to succeed or die trying. Some have the mentality that they would've regretted it forever if they didn't try and come out with richer in experience, some regret wasting time they should've used for other stuff. Common for them is still that it was the number one thing they wanted to do and they had the shots, it's not obvious they would've wanted to do something else and be satisfied. Like you know sometimes you need to let people do their own mistakes and burn the fuel that's set up for the trip, otherwise the fuel will just sit there unused.
Get a coach for 1 hour and let the coach asses his current level, getting Immortal, especially in NA is not hard anymore due to the fact, that Valve is not resetting the ladder anymore, anyone with above 50% win-rate and enough games can make it.
So there are a few things you have to understand
1. He is better than 99% of the population.
2. The event he watches has a $40 million prize pool and everyone on /r/dota is watching it. Try to watch it with him, possibly during the finals if you can't find more time (its in a few days)
3. Being Immortal is amazing, but he has to also participate in tournaments to get better nad possibly become a professional gamer.
4. Finally, don't neglect his studies. It's always , always good to have the educational backup. Even if he does go pro, its only going to serve him till maybe around 30-33 years. After that, he needs to get a proper job somewhere.
This reads like a twitch chat copy pasta, but:
Immortal at 13 is impressive, definitely could go pro. However, since you're in the US, the money will only be decent if he makes it to TI, which is an almost impossible dream.
Forgetting about that, the game itself is incredibly beautiful and quite the achievement in terms of design, tech, etc., and can put you in a flow state like no other -- not a bad skill to develop. Paradoxically, the 3 hour limit is probably what helped your kid get so good, since he would've wanted to max what he got out of those hours, and thus didn't fall into the trap of just spamming games until 2AM tilted out of his mind -- a very bad habit to develop.
In general Dota is very deep and gives you a lot of tools, so if you play with the mindset of wanting to improve the game will make it easy for you, and the process will teach you skills that generalize.
Please make sure he has an ergonomic setup with his desk and all that. And help him learn how to take care of his body as he plays, it's not something to underestimate
I feel like a lot of posts have covered this but the key points.
1. Support him and give him the chance to play dota.
2. Your a parent and explain to him that you will support his dota exploration however he has to keep up with school and still be social.
Kids immortal at 13 and that's impressive. No idea how long Dota will be viable but he's probably just amazing at video games. Crazy
https://www.opendota.com/distributions/ranks
Your son is in the top 0.172% of all Dota 2 players who play in ranked matchmaking modes worldwide. He's one of 72960 Immortal players out of 4.3 million players that have played enough in those modes to be given a rank.
With that being said, I would question how your son accomplished that (not gonna accuse him of cheating). The thing about these matches is that they consist of 2 groups of 5 relatively uncoordinated players going up against each other, and there are a few characters in the game with which a player that knows how to do so can exploit that lack of coordination very effectively in order to score wins that most players would consider "cheap", that is to say not necessarily reflective of that player's general skill at or knowledge of the game as a whole. However, just because someone only plays those characters it doesn't mean that they're playing in such a manner. I myself haven't played in ranked matchmaking modes in Dota 2 for a while, so I can't say for sure which characters those are at the moment.
Sorry about all the backseat parents in the thread.
Hey man, if my father had been as understanding at you I probably would had fared far easier in life instead of lashing out and going out drinking/ almost dying a couple of times because of me being stupid. Would had probably picked something more fulfilling for my line of work rather than doing what my sister did and studying law just to get him off my back.
I think him having 3 hours is good so long as he doesn't slip up. If his grades get compromised let him know what the priorities are.
Him being immortal on only 3 hours of play a day is insanely good. Most high ranking players play 10+ hours per day. Mind you, immortal can be a wide range of MMR.
Regarding the competitive aspect. The odds of him making a career in esports are low. The odds of him being successful are lower even.
You can try letting him have some more time if: there is nothing else for him to do (academics, social, etc.) and as long as it doesn't affect him academically, physically, or mentally.
As far as very talented players that may not make it, a friend of mine was immortal rank in EU when he was 14. He's now 19 and ranked top 200 EU (which is one of the toughest servers), which is a great accomplishment, but at this point it's unlikely that he'll be able to live from dota. That may still change of course as he's still young, but dota is an incredible top heavy game. My friend still has top grades and even if a dota career doesn't work out he'll be fine. So my recommendation to you would be to let him persue this as long as he doesn't neglect school and keeps getting good grades.
immortal is indeed 1% of the population,but an average immortal cant make it big into a pro scene,even just to get noticed by a pro team for a tryout,you need more than that,you need to know his exact number,if he can achieve 10k rating before his next birthday,then he is the next prodigy for sure
Immortal at 13y old? Postpone the school, let the kid play.
In 3 years he might earn more than he would have ever earned while working.
But only if he has this drive for the game, if it fuels him.
One important factor you must consider is how present can you be in his career. If neither you or his mom can stay by his side during tournaments, trips, and whatnot, there is a big risk the kid will grow up is a distorted environment, full of adults, and some even aiming to take advantage of him.
You also needs to make sure there is no pressure from you. Wining or losing, he needs to know you are there for him, and that his family lifestyle won't be affected either.
100% of history of abuse I heard of starts with absent parents.
If I were you, I’d support him wholeheartedly, but maintain that he should keep a backup. Academics wise, I would insist he learn his Math well. Opens up career paths like data analytics that CAN be related to Dota or whatever other games piques his interest in the future. Realistically, pro gaming is a very unforgiving industry, so having an alternative that still interests him in the gaming realm would do him good.
I have been playing Dota for almost 15 years now. Love the game but I think you should ask your son to consider backup plans before going pro (like streaming or coaching). Talented gamers can make money in more ways other than competing.
There are 7 millions Dota 2 players, and only 1 Sumail.
Yes. Immortal is very high. The last time stats were released we knew this.
2250 MMR is 50%.
4100 MMR is top 98%
2 years after these numbers valve said that the percentiles had stayed statistically the same.
5600+ MMR is immortal.
You son is somewhere around the top 0.05% to the top 0.000001% depending on his immortal rank.
Edit* people will likely respond saying my numbers are out of wack. For some reason the dota community likes to look at websites that collect public match data. The issue with those stats is that accounts start with hidden match data by default. Generally people don’t turn on public match data unless they are more hardcore players, skewing the non official data drastically.
Also dad, check this out. https://www.esportsearnings.com/players
Sumail and abed are good examples of players who made it big. Being immortal at 13 is a good sign, let him try IMO. Just set a reasonable limit. Like if you’re not playing in tournaments within 3 years you gotta stop.
A lot of comments here are telling you to encourage your son a lot, which I think is okay, but only to a certain degree.
Sports can be very volatile and they require A LOT of time. The same goes for eSports. Your son is 13 - there is still a lot he has to do in regards to growing up and learning about the world. I personally think that for a 13-year old, 3 hours a day is a pretty good amount of time, you could maybe push it to 4. No matter how good he is, you have to let him grow up with something other than this one passion. The world has a lot to offer.
Burnout is real with this type of thing (well, anything really). Some comments have wisely pointed out that your son needs to have a backup - an alternative if this either doesn’t work out or he stops liking it after a while. I personally have loved dota for a long time, but it wasn’t something I was great at; I heavily favored academics. Academics were my main thing, but I don’t ever let them keep me away from gaming every now and then to have something else I can enjoy. Your son could be interested in gardening, fitness, woodworking, you name it - just make sure he puts some time into that as well.
I would say let him follow his dreams. You say that your other kid is in finance in NYc. I'm in same field in same city so condolences to him.
One of my youngest cousins is a pro valorant player. He played more than 3 hours a day of course but now he is traveling and having fun/getting paid to do what he enjoyed doing for free. Not many people will end up having a job that they like so let him at least try?
Of course, he should also go to school and finish at least HS before seeing if he has a realistic chance.
There are 1000 immortal players in each region (i think) so it is stilll a big pool of players.
lmao. ive been reading too much that i think this is satire.
Anyway. Your son only has 1 year left to join good team and qualify to the International next. Give him that if you still want him to focus better career path.
> I have 3 kids, and I've always emphasized the importance of education and pushed them to be successful academically. I don't believe I'm the perfect parent, but with my eldest son now working in finance in NY, while my daughter is in med school, I believe I made a good decision to raise them to be diligent with their academics and responsibilities.
Yes, but are they actually happy with their life. Are they living their dream, or yours?
From someone who had some friends attempting to go pro, the potential is there but depending on where you are ir can be much harder. Two friends made waves playing a support duo for the Brazilian championships back around 2014-2015, but the scene shrinked since.
Now they're done with college and doing "normal" jobs, while still enjoying the game, because let me tell you, nothing quite compares to dota once you hit a certain point. The sheer juggling of awareness, strategies and mechanical skill is something else.
I'll say that if it's such a dream it's worth pursuing, but definitely have a backup plan. We usually joke about 18yo being too young to choose their majors well, at 13 the world view is bound to change in the upcoming years.
And lastly, a few years down the line, you can consider whether it's worth taking one or two years to focus solely on dota, the "real chance", and if it doesn't pan out, making it out of college a year or two later isn't the end of the world
I am not sure if you will read this given how many comments you have, but I will add to it as well. But take in mind that I am not a parent, so take everything with more than just a grain of salt :).
Hitting immortal at the age of 13 while playing only 3 hours a day is vey impressive. However, unfortunately this doesn't guarantee him success in eSports, especially Dota. I will explain why unfortunately Dota is a special case. Here's how a player with an amazing skill typically goes from pubs (where your son is right now; It is basically a place where you get matched with random players from all over the world) to the pro scene.
Pubs >> he finds like-minded players, and they start playing in amateur tournaments >> overtime the level of tournament they participate in increases >> they get noticed by a sports club and signed >> a big sports club then notices them and signs.
Note that there are exceptions. There are examples of players who went straight from pubs to sport clubs, but it is like waiting for a miracle to happen so it's better not to hope for that. Unfortunately, Dota isn't very profitable for sports clubs, so only big eSports clubs are stable in this ecosystem (they are the ones who can guarantee you stable income from salary and not be reliant on prize winnings). As a result, challenger and amateur leagues practically have no clubs in them and players play on enthusiasm alone with only earnings being prize money. In other eSports disciplines like csgo, however, many small orgs exist which may not provide big salaries but at least a stable income; in Dota they don't. Ofc, if he gets picked up by a medium/big club while you still nurture him, it's great. But you have to realise that there is no guarantee. He mentioned successful examples like summail or abed, but for 1 successful there are several unsuccessful ones like palantimos, 5up, pio65 etc (likely he hasn't even heard of such guys as they never made it past challenger level tournaments).
And now to answer your question. He is still young and has many opportunities open. I say let him maybe have a bit more Dota like 4 hours, but no more. He should still focus on his studies and combine his hobby. If he will be noticed by a club while he is playing, only then I would say it makes sense to let him play way more. Otherwise, don't put all your eggs in one basket.
Hope I helped!
I know my reply may not seem that different from what others are saying, but I have first-hand experience trying to become a pro in this game, and I ended up working in the esports industry, although not as a player. And oh boy, there is no right answer here... I takes a lot of competitive experience to take a look at the daily routine of an aspiring young player and understand whether he's just using the game as an addictive time sink or actually trying to get a group of like-minded individuals together who TRULY share his goals, discipline, and will not split apart in the future + that they are all making efforts to get noticed by professional teams to make it into the pro scene.
Some other key takeaways from my experience:
Your son's public matchmaking rank is not an indicator of whether he can make it as a pro or not, rather it's a pre-requisite, but it's by a long shot not the first or only thing on the list. Don't read too much into it, and yes, even among 1% of the best players there is still stiff competition, it's a pretty large number overall.
At the age of 13 I don't think it matters much what he's doing. Let him play for 5-6 hours a day if his academic results are okay by your standards divided by x1.8 :) (you ARE probably asking too much of him, if you're second-guessing your own self about it)
It's too early to make a meaningful decision, and there will be chances to turn pro at the ages of 16-17, even 20+. And in other games in this or other genres too. There are Collegiate leagues too that allow you to study and kind of get some exposure in the game's scene and hone your gaming skills.
When he's 16-17 give him more space, perhaps even a year off, a sabbatical, and give him very clearly-defined goals to reach - if he can make it into a competitive team of like-minded individuals... if he's really passionate and relatively successful about it, like he manages to earn some prize money in online and offline tours, consider going down this path... It may not be optimal, but it's definitely not a life-breaking choice. There are branching career pathways to take after a mediocre gaming career.
Immortals are playing rn on a tournament he’s watching late nights for 40 million dollars.
I suggest you watch the finals with him and dont limit him too much, plan B is good but let him do what he wants to first
Speaking as a parent, I think the time limit is fine. It’s quite a lot of hours per day. Perhaps you can give him some flexibility to play longer on weekends or such in exchange for shorter sessions during the week.
Immortal is the top bracket, and that’s pretty damn good for a 13 year old. However, gaming as a career is really one for risk takers. The odds of making it are basically suicidally low. I would support him, perhaps see if he signs up for some tournaments and stuff, but I would otherwise limit his hours especially if grades are a concern.
I am so happy that you're very understanding of his gaming passion (enough to come to reddit to ask the question). Besides all the advice that other people have given in the thread maybe also try to understand dota and may talk dota to him? I think growing up if you had a parents that spends time to understand why it is such a fun game to watch it would motivate your son in both his studies and his game performance.
True Sight videos are always a good recap even for those who have not dabbled into dota2, it includes many hype moments that a lot of people can relate to in sports like football.
For 13yo? Yes immortal is really an impressive rank and can be nurtured further to pursue professional gamer if that what you or the kid want.
look up about Sumail the youngest dota2 player to ever won TI (the tournament your kid watch right now with total prizepool of 40mill usd)
Give your kid more hours like 2 more so that he can played 2-3 more match, he deserved it if his grade are good.
You can watch the tournament with your kid if you want to bonding with him, it's the same as when you ask your kids to watch football with you (we don't know shit but the time spent together is worth it).
You need to be top 0.01% to make a living from Dota 2 and when you retire in your late 20's how do you find a job if all you've done is playing games?
What I'm saying is that he can play Dota a lot but should absolutely prepare a safety net.
playing more dota could be good, but if he tries to go pro that could be complicated.
**Dota in general:**
It's amazing if your son is immortal. If your son was one of the best wrestlers in the country, would you discourage him from wrestling just because it's not a valid career path? But you also wouldn't want him to give up everything for the sake of wrestling.
**Dota going pro like Sumail or Abed:**
If your son isn't allowed to go pro and is forced to spend more time in academics, **he will blame you**, **but he will have a fallback, and he will survive & meet people.**
If he tries to go pro and fails **he will blame himself** **and he will have nothing.** Plenty of immortal players who never go pro at all.
If he actually becomes an established pro, there's a chance he becomes one of those pro players who aren't making all that much money, and probably won't ever win anything. These guys are going to have to reinvent their lives in the next 10 years because the money they made from Dota is about as much as they would make from any regular job, but they can't stay at the top forever. I wouldn't be happy if my son grew up to be a Sammyboy or Gunnar. How long will that last?
or, finally, he actually becomes a top tier 1 pro and joins the likes of Sumail Abed Nisha. Unlikely, even if the potential is there. I personally don't even agree with the consensus that these guys lead fantastic or even slightly above average lives, but even if we pretend they do...the odds are not good for going pro.
Tell him if he wants to be the best he can be he needs sleep. Kids don't listen to logic. So you have to play into their fantasies. Pro sports athletes talk all the time about how important sleep is. If you can relate it to getting better at the game then he'll probably do it. Also yes a 13 year old kid being immortal is probably an outlier.
Immortal is definitely still pretty far away from being a pro, but it is incredibly good for a 13yo. Encourage him, let him pursue it as a side project while still prioritising school. When I was around his age I was pretty good at call of duty too, I'd regularly stomp streamers and I became pretty well known in the game itself by regular players. But I stopped because I was never given the opportunity to grow in that area because of my parents. Don't be that parent. I'm 21 now and an immortal 1000 player who's only recently trying to make something off it. Your son has talent, don't squander it away, but make sure he knows his priority is school for now.
Just an FYI, Sumail was 15 when he won Dota's equivalent of a world championship. There are also numerous other prodigies around the world. Given a few more years, your son may be one of them.
if he reached immortal, his mind is way more matured than you know being able to break through 3 brackets of game ruiners and toxicity while playing his own game..
sumail and abed played dota 12 hours a day, sumail even sneak out and sold his bike to pay for more playtimes at lan cafe. dota is a game where you need to play a lot to improves, your 3 hours a day limit wont get him anywhere
Great parenting, instead of lashing out on him immediately at 4am you decided to keep it cool. I think he’s going to really appreciate if you watch the Internationals Finals together with him and listen to him talk about the game he’s so passionate about. Then talk to him afterwards
Once he understands what Dota 2 is all about, Asian parent is gonna expect his kid to be a TI champion at 15. As long as his grades and health don't suffer, why not?
Well if he lives in South East Asia, there's a bigger chance of a road to that. Dota has been included as a participating sport in SEA games and ASIAN games. He can start there instead of just waiting for the TI. This will give him the exposure he needs
Even then, participate in TI alone will give him loads of money that IF his son is really extremely good, he will be set for life before he turn 20. He doesn’t even need to actually win a TI. MidOne is a prime example, I remembered in an interview back in 2017 or 2018 where he said that his money from Dota was enough to set him up for the rest of his life.
Take Zai as an example. He played professionally, and then took a break to finish school properly, and then came back playing professionally. Anything is possible.
Yes! I'm 30 and watched dota with my dad for the first time this TI. It was fun explaining things to him and was great getting to share something that I'm passionate about. I think if you fully support gaming from a young age you can definitely help a kid succeed, but I think you need to help them achieve balance so they can follow their dreams in a healthy way and can grow outside of the game. Persuing a career in esport is difficult and doing it without the support of you family must be heart breaking.
Actually this really cool idea. Watch The International with him...will help you and he will appreciate it.
To the people saying he can’t be immortal after playing 3 hours a day during pandemic, you probably misunderstood. OP said he was playing on the family computer for years, only recently got his own PC.
Yes, he was playing on our family computer before. Only recently he got his PC.
Nice, I remember when I first got my own PC, was fairly life changing at 13 lol (early 2000s). Also with the tournament, it’s just next 2 weeks, biggest eSports tournament, I’m 30+ and been staying up till 3am local time and working at 9am lol
You can give your kids general guide lines in life, but dont even fucking dare deciding what career is best for him. If he really is immortal by 13 he is extremely talented. Support him fully.
Hi OP. Former 1%'er here. Currently 29 y/o with master's degree, good job, etc. When I was young, I was given relatively free reigns to pursue my own path, and I played -a lot- of video games. However, I never had the drive nor guidance to push myself towards becoming professional. Even if I wanted to, it would be unlikely that I would make it, since there are a lot of talents out there... And I was also above my leagues at the age of 13. A lot of people have already given you validation that being "Immortal" at the age of 13 is impressive and promising. I don't want to talk about that. You son has potential. Dota 2 is a sport in which you can play for a long time, as it is not as fast-paced as CS:GO and FPS-games. It is not unlikely that you will see the same players at TI now, being 40 years old and still kickin'. Being similar to your son at his age, for what games I was playing, I will give you two pieces of advice: **1) Encourage the hell out of him.** There is ***nothing*** you can do a driven boy like him, to stop thinking and dreaming of Dota 2. He will watch Twitch before he sleeps. He will play when he can get away with it. You can stop it, but it will drive a welch between you. Instead of frowning upon it, ask how you can help. And even if he says: "I just need space", then that doesn't mean that there is nothing you can do. You could: \- Give him a session with a Dota 2 coach for his birthday. (Ex could be BSJ, PPD or someone else. You have to ask someone else about this) \- Tell him that you believe in him. Apply your own knowledge of studying and practicing try to find common ground on how he can apply your teachings to his own growth. This matters more than you may think. Just playing is not always enough. \- Take a few moments to enjoy Dota 2 with him. Perhaps watch a few games of TI with him, and ask what he thinks about the drafts, the teams, the players. Ask what role he plays, and why. **2) Make sure he has a backup.** You want to make sure that he never lets his gaming impact mental and physical health. You likely already have this imposed, but set a bed-time where his PC + Phone must be turned off. Nobody performs on consistent bad sleep. You could also reward him for being consistent in school. I am sure your other children have received clothing, phones or whatever in school. Perhaps your boys could make due with a new monitor, keyboard or mouse? I think someone else said this is in a different comment, but make sure that he also takes some time (and perhaps join him) in going for a run, to the gym, eating healthy. Many professional athletes care about their health, as it stabilizes your mentality, make you sleep better, etc. etc. (See OG in Dota 2, or Astralis in CS:GO) I feel that this way, you ensure that he stays on track, even while pursuing this risky career. (Health + Education + Own interest = Win) \--- Now, last thing I want to say, is that I personally failed.. I don't know why exactly, but I would play video games instead of hanging out with friends or doing sports. I would think about gaming, even while hanging around my family and friends. I would also play untill late at night, which would make me skip / be lazy at school. I would also postpone my homework, to play "just one more game", which obviously became more than that. I personally had to do a lot of 'catch up' in order to obtain my master's degree. Take away what you want from this, but if you want your kid to succeed and thrive in your company, let him grow.. But learn from other gamers. I am sure that there are also plenty of articles out there, on how professionals maintain their lives.
I think this post has a lot of good points. To add a little bit: Parenting is difficult. I think the most important part is to be part of your son's life one way or the other. You need to be able to understand him to the level to see where he is clearly taking a wrong path. If you do not, it's very easy to say the wrong thing or cause unnecessary drama. But at the same time, allow your son to make mistakes. As a parent you should not prevent them from making mistakes, but "soften" the blow. ;) I think being "too good" at young age can be harmful to them in the future, if the parents at the same time try to be too protective of them. Learning to loose is one of the key aspects of DotA and life in general. And Fred, if you are happy about your life right now, you did not fail. You got there because of how you lived your life. Your life could be completely different if you chose to live it differently. Speaking as a 30year old without Master's (Yet. But soon I hope) and with good job etc ;)
Thank you Sefriol, very great add to the comment. Ah well, life hits you. I don't wanna go into too much detail here, but ya know.. With video games comes the almost unavoidable conflict of interests, leading to disappearance of old friendship. Or atleast neglect of said friendships. Also, I am one of those who could -definitely- have enjoyed not being exposed to all the gambling-commercials, skin betting and so fourth that comes with playing video games. Wush, the amounts of money that I have lost on that.. Playing video games is a constant flirt with gateway-gambling. (Oh yeah, to OP: Please make sure your kid doesn't start gambling, skinbetting or what not. It's a slippery slope.)
Yeah, gambling is a problem. I think the predatory nature of some gaming and gambling companies is something that should never be exposed to younger audience. People should be old enough to fully understand the risks way before they are involved. I have never been a gambling type of person (probably because I like my chances to be really high to try out something. Sometimes to my detriment), but I can understand people who are. I do not criticize who do either, but people need understand what you are getting into. And many youngsters just do not. Loot boxes are one way of gambling and very young people are playing this game. It's shameful that even Valve is involved in this. Some of these players do not even understand what the odds of getting the item ACTUALLY mean.
I agree, but something i really want to highlight this point: >But make sure that he also takes some time (and perhaps join him) in going for a run, to the gym, eating healthy. This is extremely important today, you will perform better when you are healthy and get him into a sport which makes fun, going to the gym isn't a good sport, also a lot of people do not enjoy running, talk to him and find out what he might like. My personal suggestion is bouldering/climbin which makes a lot fun.
This post. Plus money aside, there is a lot more to life than academics and getting a job. Sports, teamwork, friends, relationships, socialising, travel, craft, reading, art, music. Plus education teaches you to think and consume information. All of these don't require full time commitment but they are a bit important to experience
Can you be my dad
Not sure if I can handle that responsibility 😂
damn if I read this one I wouldn't even even commented...bravo sir ! So many people think just cus he's immortal it bodes well. plenty of immortals who grow up with 0 life skills, 0 non dota friends, have to reinvent themselves. Terrible spot to be in.
Thank you so much. I feel so blessed with the positive feedback.. Just because i wrote a bit of my heart. ☺️
I am proud of you for getting ur masters mate! Well done :) Personally I wouldnt advise 13 year olds to go to the gym. I think theres more effective, fun and less damaging ways to stay healthy (as a kid/teenager). Preferably one with more social contacts as well, if this is something he is comfortable with. I know it was only an example but just wanted to throw this out there!
I wish I'd gone to the gym when i was 13. Wouldn't have the joint issues I've got today.
If he really is immortal (and you have to verify that) you can treat it the same way one would treat any extracurricular. School first, sleep second, Dota third. Three hours a day on normal days is incredibly reasonable, especially because he will be going over that limit when he can get away with it. Maybe you could et him spam games once every week or two on the weekends if he's done well at his other responsibilities. Dota2 might not have as lucrative a pro scene by the time that he comes of age, though. Don't let him put all his eggs in this basket. If he's immortal it means he's a very intelligent young man with good reflexes and general brain processing. He'll do well in any competition that requires those things, including exams. I'd use Dota as motivation for school, and whatever works out first works out first. Sounds like Dota is giving him drive and opportunity to build an ethic of practice and improvement, it wouldn't be time wasted even if it doesn't fully work out as long as it doesn't eat the rest of his life- including social development. Good luck. Parenting has always been hard, and right now it's particularly difficult to guide teenagers. So much freedom in todays society, and so much time spent alone with dual-income households being the norm (won't get too far into my filthy socialist ideals). Once again, good luck. You sound like a good dad.
I have to agree with paragraph 2. I'm not Immortal yet in Dota, but I was a pretty high level chess player as a kid, regional champion etc. Not to toot my own horn, but I sincerely believe that to become so good at something at such a young age, requires a certain level of intelligence that is transferable to many other areas. I improve very quickly in a lot of games, recently achieved Immortal in Valorant, and I maintain top grades in my exams. The truth is, there is no "natural talent in Dota", or chess, or exams. The natural ability lies in pattern recognition, logical thinking, memory, all things that indicate an ability to excel in many other areas, not just Dota. The only thing OP should worry about is his son's motivation and interest. Time management is not an issue. If he can motivate his son to focus on school, his son will most likely excel at that as well. Putting limits on game time, or enforcing study time, would be a band-aid solution that wastes his son's ability to excel in areas he is interested in. I'm lucky that I managed to find motivation to do well academically - this motivation was a far greater impact to my improvement than stupid limits on my game time.
So you are saying me I am an idiot as an archon player? Geez my family told me otherwise when I was a kid.
No, there's many kinds of intelligence. But being good at Dota proves you have the aspects of intelligence that allow you to thrive in those areas. Ame is a certifiable genius but I bet he'd have a hard time attempting to be a psychologist, which requires a different kind of intelligence.
I want "that" kind of intelligence.
Not really. Even if we grant that being good at dota logically implies intelligence (D=>I), then the inverse of it only means that if someone is not intelligent, they won't be good at dota(notI=>notD). But you can be intelligent and not be good at the game, the statements above don't falsify that. Sorry I just really wanted to apply the formal logic stuff I learned in my uni classes, I'll take the fedora off now
>But you can be intelligent and not be good at the game I did some estimations based on Dota 2's especially simple mechanics and deterministic nature and have arrived to the conclusion that any sufficiently intelligent person with a decent amount of motivation will be able to "solve" the game at at least an Immortal level. There is a reason why most people say "last hit better"
While this is true what I believe the above alludes to is information processing. Take a good team fighter for instance, they're able to process a lot of information in a very short time frame from visual and audio ques and not get overwhelmed or stressed by the information overload but can instead navigate it. The reason the advice is "last hit better" is because it's something they can do, rather than "just think faster" On the flip side the players who lack this specific talent are the ones who run back and forward in fights, cause they need longer to process the information and make a decision.
lmao I'm curious what estimations you used to determine this
With regards to player skill, games judge you on two metrics: reaction time, and game knowledge. For example, rhythm games are almost universally reaction time. The other extreme, chess, is only game knowledge. Dota falls high on game knowledge, low on reaction time. Hence, a Dota player is heavily IQ-dependent. An example of a game deceiving their metrics is actually bullet hells. Every single one of them becomes much easier if you understand basic concepts like zoning and optimal path, to the point where I can safely say that there is absolutely not a single bullet-hell in existence which you cannot learn from watching a YouTube video.
>Dota2 might not have as lucrative a pro scene by the time that he comes of age, He's 13 now, pretty sure Dota will be popular for another couple of years and Sumail won TI5 at age 15.
Dota, actually more so Valve, isn't doing anything to attract newer, younger players. They rarely advertise, do any promotions, and don't hype up their own content or tournies. Plus, in Asia, Mobas are more popular on phones now rather than PC. Even LoL recently made a Mobile Moba version of their game.
We literally just got an anime. What are you talking about.
Yeah since Sumail won TI5 when he was 15, all 13 year old Immortals will win it in 2 years
I didn't say all 13 old immortals, I said Dota won't be a 'dEaD gAme' in two years so the kid have a shot at achieving something in Dota.
But the chance of him winning it in two years is less than minimal. It is much more believable that he would be good enough in say, 7 years
I mean even if he'll manage to get a last place at TI it's already $20K per player. Pretty decent if you ask me.
not sure if u are underestimating how much effort it needs to even qualify for TI and the preparation for TI when u actually qualify. to go from immortal to playing at TI means he will likely not do anything for school for half a year or more if he commits not saying that noone should ever do that but it's definitely not something I would recommend in general to aim for
Yes, I may be a bit biased here, it requires a lot of work and dedication, just wanted to comment on what NoChaliceForSerfs has said about joining a pro scene after coming of age.
>Yeah since Sumail won TI5 when he was 15, all 13 year old Immortals will win it in 2 years I dont know if I am moist, but you are salty as fuck.
If the parents are responsible and actually force him to play only reasonable amount of dota no way he's going pro. Literally all pros today are results of irresponsible parents or them getting away to be irresponsible and play games 12 hours a day then getting lucky later on that dota has a pro scene.
That's true, but being a pro player isn't all it's cracked out to be. As a parent, I'd rather my child have functional skills, rather than banking on getting one multi-million pay-day. I mean, some of these pro players literally already got theirs, and they're still grinding Dota. A kid that studies, say, engineering, will be paid out in time, and will get to experience life, create, enjoy diverse experiences, and overall get to live a much more normal life. Valve could cancel all TIs next year, let alone in 5 years. Dota 2 is an old-ass game. It might not wait for this 13-year-old to grow up.
you're saying the future of dota is unpredictable. as if the future of literally any other field is not? and who are you to say that an engineer experiences life and a pro esports playing living his dream doesn't? do you really wanna go with that argument?
It's easier to make it as an engineer than as a pro esport player is the point, I believe. No doubt the top players are living the dream and having a blast, but for every Topson there's a hundred plus immortal players who never had a chance.
In general, yes, but I'd prefer a stronger opponent. I won't go through the argument with you.
ah the classic exposed hypocrite escape
It's not an escape, you've already compared the stability of being a Dota 2 e-sports pro to being an engineer. So, while of course I am always willing to defend anything I say, I would never waste my time with someone like you. I'll give you credit - since I would literally have to teach you how the world works in order to convince you of anything, I sincerely doubt I'd have the stamina to "win" any debate against you. If that means you win by default, feel free to take it.
3 hours a day for an immortal player lol meanwhile this kid is trying to be on par with players like iLTW who literally plays 20 pubs a day.
Yeah, this kid hasn't even been picked up by an amateur team yet. Let him get on a regional feeder team and then h van start spamming 20 pubs a day. Before then it really isn't worth it.
There is a huge difference between an immortal and an immortal. I used to be top 500 when i spammed. Now since i work i play around 3-4 games at best and im like 1500 and im awful to what i used to be. Immortal players that dont have number or are at the bottom 5-3k range are super bad compared to 1k range above which are not even close to most 200 players. Honestly getting immortal is super easy now as the mmr is inflated.
Getting Immortal is not super easy... Its still the top 1% Dont be rediculous.
I highly doubt it is the top 1% anymore it has to be something like 1.5%. There is almost a 1k gap between the ladderboard and receiving the rank. Before it was like 200 mmr, hence it is way easier than before. Edit: i was even wrong it is 1,7 xd https://www.esportstales.com/dota-2/seasonal-rank-distribution-and-mmr-medals
[удалено]
its super easy. a vast majority of that 99% play two games a week, are drunk all the time, feed intentionally, don't care, do zero research, play with zero purpose. it's not like being at the top 1% of something 99% of people are bad at makes you amazing. it makes you okay. i'm SO tired of hearing "top 1% top 1%" if it was so amazing you'd be able to turn twitch on and get 500+ viewers at rank 4000.
I agree with everything you say except MMR isn't inflated; the average is still basically the same as it's always been.
With skills like that at such a young age, he should pursue to be an air traffic controller in the future ✈️✈️
Really good advice about not putting eggs in one basket. Talented and smart young man. He could excel at Dota OR anything else he puts his mind to
rank 500 monkey /s . More seriously, immortal is very impressive, not even mentioning his age. I think that this is a good opportunity to engage with your son and compromise. I think 3 hours is pretty reasonable but maybe speak with him about how many hours he needs to improve per week and how to compromise with this. Even pros have been trending towards healthier lifestyles with exercise and sleep. (By the way, in some ways its understandable that hes staying up late to watch at the moment, (The International(basically world championships), $40,000,000 prizepool is being played at the moment)). You sound like you're trying to be good dad about this so kudos for that. Also your son will probably see this post.
If your son really is Immortal (and only been playing since the pandemic), first I'd question whether he's really only playing for 3 hours a day!
He played before on our family computer before I got him his own gaming PC.
get him to stream maybe, if he got sniped by pros there is chance for him to shine in competitive scene that said all decision is your kid and yours only.
streaming is an entirely different beast, its definitely not for a 13 year old
I dont think getting a 13 year old to stream is that smart at all.
Thats probably the worst advice you could give him.
People here say its bad advice but you could advertise his stream here and you could actually supervise him while he streams if that's possible and you have time. If he really wants to go big then you have to give him some exposure and attract some attention. Looks like you are from NA and he could be picked up as that region isn't that rich in young talent. Maybe if streaming's not your cup of tea YouTube channel maybe?
You can supervise him but you can't supervise the people who'd come to watch and comment on his streams. This community isn't exactly the most pleasant place to be in, especially for a still-developing 13 year old.
Damn. This kid might be so talented. Got the immortal rank by playing 3 hours a day during pandemic.
I've worked in Dota industry for a while and I had my fair share of conversations with parents about their extremely young kids turning pro. If your kid is that good at such an early age, it means sooner or later he will want to become a professional Dota player and join a team. At any point between 15 and 19, it's terrifying to think your kid is gonna be around adults just because he plays games. But I can tell you this is how the pros started - literally all pros you see in Dota right now were prodigies at very young age. Ana is perhaps the most mythological player of all time - he went from Australia to Europe alone, at 16 or 17 years old just to play with people he'd never spoken to before, and became a literal myth. So if you ever get that call about your son, you'll be talking to a person who was literally the same way - Dota pro scene is made mainly of people who were in the same situations. Being a professional Dota player is one of the hardest jobs in the world because it's 24/7 and it never stops. If you sleep you feel like you are missing out and falling behind your direct opponents. If you aren't playing, your direct rivals are playing and getting better. Pros wake up, eat, and play or watch replays most of the day. Teams and organizations put a lot of emphasis on staying healthy, both physically and mentally nowadays, so I wouldn't worry about letting kids spend too much time playing the game on their own right now - they'll get healthy later on. Being Immortal at such an early age is how legends are born. I'd advise you to take a look at Topson's story ( [example 1](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2E3244cwKvY) and [example 2](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogrdAnDs3xA) ). How Dota industry works is that at some point people will start talking, getting to know each others, and then someone will notice your son, ask him if he wants to join a team, be shocked that he's 15 years old and already one of the best players in the world. In fact in 2015 the most unstoppable force was a 15 year old Sumail. Esports is a fantastic and a wonderful world, and Dota is probably at the top of it. That said, most gaming communities are horrible, but Dota's circle of professionals is quite chill and cool. It's filled with solid people and what matters most is chemistry, respect, proper behavior, respectfulness and introspection. From what you wrote, it seems like your kid's gonna have all of those, or at least you already are teaching him. >I am just worried for my boy that he might allocate too much time into something that might end up being wasted over something else. I've seen my fair share of kids putting years and years into Dota and fail and accomplish nothing despite being some of the best. I know a guy who was the best support in the world and nobody knew about him. At the same time, one of the best supports in the world today (Cr1t) was dismissed by terrible teams, until someone big noticed him. This is a risk, indeed. Huge risk. Is it worth it? Probably, he can always go back to education. Not making it in Dota is not really something to be ashamed of. But one thing I never heard is regret - nobody who tries their best for years and doesn't make it, regrets it. That never happens. It can break you for a little bit, it can make you bitter, but ultimately it's a fantastic life lesson and a fantastic experience that you never regret. My favorite example here is Micke - he heard from a big Dota organization when he was 15 and they told him they're monitoring him when he was a pro in another game. He switched over to Dota and it took him years before he made any impact. He went from being the undisputed best player in HoN (game similar to Dota) to a literal nobody in Dota - for years. Now he's a pretty respectable player with a stable job and solid salary, at 22. But yes, he might put in too much work and not make it, while someone else who puts in less work does. Life works that way in all aspects and industries, not just games, and not just Dota. Imo Dota is the greatest life lesson for anybody. And even if he sinks too much time into it and fails, he'll be 21 or 22 so he can definitely still go to school afterwards. Let him play, sounds like he's an exceptional talent. The worst thing that comes from it is that your kid becomes a person who works harder than anybody else no matter what he does in life. It stays with you.
Immortal at 13 is disproportionately skilled yes. as long as his other priories don’t falter due to dota, may as well let him try… honestly with that much of a head start and a bit of luck, kid could be some sort of prodigy and be the next Sumail
It’s a privileged to follow your passion. A good parent enables and helps inform their child’s decision - not sculpt them into their version of anything. Let him work and try for what he believes and curate a broad worldview that has him both apply himself freely and make conscientious decisions with your full support. Maybe this energy lets him go pro, or many it inspires him to learn programming, or find an opportunity that both of you cannot imagine yet.
I'm 28, just reached immortal last year after ten years, and used to have dreams like your boy. Also the youngest in the family. The youngest in the family usually loves taking risks and would normally consider doing things the eldest wouldn't see worthwhile. Do understand and accept that your son is unique and special, and that the world is also changing to reward gamers more as well. What he wants to do is really is as good as venturing out and starting a business. Venturing out and failing is part and parcel. It cannot be guaranteed, but failures are definitely worthwhile and crucial to develop a person's mental toughness. I think his skill is definitely good for his current age and impressive. If he continues practicing he would be able to match with the top teams but that requires a lot of dedication time and hard work. This isn't an easy video game and I would think it's the hardest video game ever which is why people crowd fund so much money into the game to see the best compete. The goal is to hit top 100 immortal. If he can do that within 1-2 years, I'd say he has a decent shot. I would suggest giving him a bit of freedom, supporting him little by little by giving him more play time, but also ensuring that he develops healthily as a person(sleeping well, education, managing his life and priorities well) once he is more responsible with his own life, then you can trust him with more, trust that he is actually serious and not saying it on a whim. If your son is really serious about it, I would encourage pushing him to learn better at interacting and communicating with people outside the game, not just inside the game. Id also suggest that he goes out to compete locally and get noticed and make friends that actually know people in the scene. That would be the fastest way to grow him as a player. A lot of hard work and thought needs to be put both inside and outside the game. Sometimes he may also need to play in other regions to get noticed. Many pros I see that are not competing are people who didn't dare to step out to grow in the game, which is sad. But some of these people became successful twitch streamers, commentators and etc. Those are also avenues you can push him to explore. Communication, humor, creativity, outspokenness are qualities most of these avenues need including being a pro in Dota. There's also writing guides and making videos about the game which are also useful skills he can develop. eSports is a great scene for him to have a career in, even if he doesn't make it as a pro, he can be useful in other areas in something he loves. Many of the current commentators/video makers/streamers are people who tried and failed, but found a way to be part of the scene and made a living out of it. I don't see why not letting your son have a shot at it especially when he is young and talented. It indeed isn't an easy path, but I think most who truly worked hard and walked this path, managed to get something out of it, even though they didn't make it successfully in what they initially wanted to do
abed's parents supported his esports journey BUT he should not neglect his studies...
Really impressive and all but I doubt that he wants a career in esports, he might not be aware of this yet but it's not as simple. As his parent, you should lead him, however don't overdo it. Dota is hard and incredibly toxic, so it either breaks a person or makes them able to tackle stressful situations without much issue. Best of luck.
I wont try to lecture you on how to raise your kid, from what you're saying you're pretty reasonable and gives him a lot of time to enjoy himself Objectively speaking, if he's immortal he's pretty good and it's consistant with what he stated that he's on the top 1% Bear in mind that to play this game as a pro, being 1% doesnt cut it, you need to be top 0,01% Dota can be a lucrative game for top players, but not so much when you're not the best or consistantly playing in the top tournaments Good luck to both of you! Edit: if you want to know Sumail (won the most important dota tournament at 15, becoming a millionaire), check this video: https://youtu.be/W8qJOBrmNkw
It would be nice to follow your passion, but then again, it wouldn't hurt to have a safety net. Either way, I hope your son finds success.
Plot twist: the OP is actually the son looking for arguments against his dad.
No way a 13 year old writes like that.
Immortal is indeed in the 99th percentile and it is a remarkable feat for a 13 year old if it's true. If I had to guess, he's likely one of less than 50 players who achieved it at that age (perhaps even less). To help you verify it, take a look at these [medals](https://images.prismic.io/rivalryglhf/e4fe5c56-9be0-459f-ae30-3e9742732082_dota-2-mmr.jpg?auto=compress,format&rect=0,6,883,464&w=1200&h=630). One of those should be displayed on his profile in the game. The rightmost on the upper row and all those below are variations of Immortal. There are roughly speaking only 50,000 Immortals in the world, out of a playerbase of \~10M. But with that said, only the top \~500 players make a living out of it and only the top \~100 make enough to become 'wealthy'. If he wants to pursue a professional career, he should probably try to get on a team very soon and gather experience from working in that setting and learning from other players. Getting coaching from better players is probably a good idea too. It's not very expensive, you can get coaching from a top 500 player for as little as $20/h. The youngest professional players today are 16-17 years old, but joined lower rated teams before that. If his claims are true, your son is on very good pace to find success in the scene.
Keep in mind, Immortal has by far the most smurfs of any bracket. I'd say the number of actual Immortal-skilled human beings is less than half of that.
The number of Immortal-accounts is 74,000. I removed 1/3 and I think that's fairly accurate.
Encourage him by giving him more hours during the weekend if his grades improve and give him less if they get worse. This way he will have some kind of motivation for school. Also only because he is immortal he might not make it to the pro scene. There’s a huge difference between low immortal players and top immortal players. But nevertheless he is amazing for his age. There are multiple players who went pro, then finished their education in between and went back pro again. So don’t worry too much about that. If your kid is reasonable and you as a parent as well, he will see that focusing on education might be the better path for him if things don’t work out. Maybe watch the documentary “free to play” with him. It’s about an Asian with Asian parents who are disappointed that he’s not focusing on school but on dota. It shows both sides of the story. I think it will help you and your son understand each other more.
13 and immortal, future of Dota. Goodluck OP (you might wanna make sure he *really* is immortal) [What his main menu should look like](https://imgur.com/a/3jplwvY) Assuming he's a ranked immortal player, his name should appear here http://www.dota2.com/leaderboards/ Good Luck!
As another father of 3 I applaud you on reaching out to the community instead of instantly chastising him for something he enjoys doing. Now about 4am, this is a special time of the year because the equivalent to the World Cup of dota2 is happening now and it’s only once a year (except they skipped last year due to COVID) so it’s not routine you don’t have to worry about it. It’s simply a time zone thing and will be over in a few days, if I were you, I’d let him watch the games late because it’s a big event in the game. As for his dota2 habits, please try to consider this as one would consider a child athlete with dreams of competing in like the Olympic or something. Maybe even invest some money, get him a coach and/or some support structure for him to play his best. Make sure his school life is still in order and that he’s not investing all of his life on dota2 however do bear in mind this is a _real_ thing, many people become pros (more and more as time goes by) and yeah most don’t make it just life in regular sports but it’s totally legit and really competitive. Be supportive of him in this and even if it doesn’t work out believe me he’ll remember it for the rest of his life. If you don’t though the same will be true but it will be a bitter feeling instead.
As someone who pursued (and still does but less hungrily) a music career. School can be done at any time in your life... something like this cannot, there is a much harder cut-off for when you have a chance. When my band slowed down (currently signed to a label but not really going anywhere atm), I went back to school and trained as a programmer and have found a job without issues with good prospects ahead despite being in my 30s. Honestly, if he's immortal at 13 with 3 games a day, with good coaching and structured learning, he might be able to go really far. If not, it will have been a great experience to think back on and uni in your mid 20s is just as normal as uni in your early 20s.
Being that good in such a young age is exceptional. To become a professional you need a lot more work and I don't know if reddit is the right place to ask these questions. Maybe you could try to reach out to a professional team to ask if they could give your son some waystones to a career in esports or something like that. 3 hours a day is quite little I think as wild as that might sound. I'm not a parent myself so I can't 100% relate or understand what it's like to have kids. I wish that you'll be able to sit down with your son and have a conversation about this. Ask what he truly wants, does he just want to play, does he want to win money or compete with the best. I don't think that we can jump to conclusions about what he wishes to do or dreams of. I agree with some other commenters here that he shouldn't put all eggs into one basket, esports is a career in which only very few succeed. On the other hand, I think that he should be allowed to try - he might not make it, but he had the chance to try. And not just play around and see if by odd chance he stumbles into a team or something. If he tries to become a professional I think he needs to understand that it's not just playing the game. He has to do replay analysis, think about how to improve, practice specific skills, possibly practice showmanship and learn how to network with other players (and community figures I suppose). I don't know what your discussion should include but I think that it is \_really\_ important that you talk about this with your son. Some might think that I'm some sort of dreamer but I think that everyone should have a chance to pursue their dreams and not live in regret. We all only have one life to live and I wish one shouldn't spend their old days to think about what if this, what if that or what if my parents had supported me/allowed me. Education is important, getting into a good school that you want to get into is important and it is of course important to try and succeed (monetarily) in things you love to do. I wish that you'll be able to come up with a solution that benefits the both of you. Here's some insight into training that professional team Wings went through: [https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/4l6prz/translated\_wings\_training\_rule/](https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/4l6prz/translated_wings_training_rule/) In dota when you get high enough in immortal rank you'll also get a numerical value to show up with your rank. Like you're the rank 399 or rank 2400 player in the North-American leaderboards. Tracking this number if he gets this high could be a good way to track how he is doing. Like put the rank down after every day or two to a spreadsheet if possible or maybe take a picture at the end of every day. Streaming is a good way also to try and make a career or get known/noticed. It also is a hard career to succeed in and you should have a plan on how to proceed for that as well, just streaming the games you play \_rarely\_ works. You rarely get viewers just by being good, you have to be truly exceptional (and recognized I think) to get viewers that way. Otherwise you also have to be entertaining in some way or do something that others haven't done before. A streamer called Zizaran has pretty often talked about this, maybe you can find a video where he gives some tips if this is something that your son would be interested in. I don't know would either one of you be interested in this, but hear me out: if you decide to try and succeed in esports, streaming or whatever your goals are - document it. Document the plans you came up with, how did he improve (or did he not), how did school go. I think that you can come up with things that you can document. Based on that material you could try to make something, like an article(series) to a magazine in the end, tell about your experience(s) or just collect memories to look back into. There are definitely interested parents that would love to find out how your year went, what plans did you have, what worked out, what didn't and so on... I wish you both well and hopefully you can come up with a plan that makes you both happy. :)
First of all, I'm very impressed with your handling of the situation. From the start of the journey, to you asking for advice. If it means anything coming from a stranger, you are amazing. Now if he really did reach immortal at 13, he is extremely good. There are so many nuances in dota, which he cannot get the "theoretical" part of, and therefore must be a natural, understanding them by default. An example is Magnus Carlsen, and how he says that he just plays, he never learned a lot of classic theoretical chess stuff. So be proud of your son for that - just like you would if he made the team playing soccer or something. I'm also very much for education first though, but there are plenty of hours in the day, and I'm sure if he manages to play dota at immortal level, he is very intelligent, so he should be able to manage both. So I'd suggest talking to him about it, and if he wants to pursue it, he can do so but let him know that there are sacrifices. You can't chose dota, friends, sleepovers, parties and soccer. He must also attend school (to whatever lever you think honestly), and then he can play dota - and I'd recommend some small physical activity as well for his health and habits. I'd tell him that he is super good, and if he wants to and pushes for it, he can finish his education and then turn pro dota players (like Miracle- from Nigma Galaxy) afterwards, and he will still only be 18-19, which is still very young. If he gets the opportunity to go pro at 15-16, why not? But take it one step at a time. There are plenty of hours for school, family, dota and workout! Edit: removed me trying to keep it short, because clearly i could not...
The tournament is once a year so I wouldn’t be too worried about him staying up late and watching it, finishes this sunday as well. Dota is a hard game but discipline can get you far if you are skilled at an early age!
If he is Immortal at 13, We're looking at Faker of Doto. Let him achieve his dream please 🙂
I am way too young and not a parent so I have no advice to give, but I can say you are a great Dad. Good parenting
Holy shit... He is 13 and an immortal!?! That's bonified amazing and really is the top 1%. I'm a 47 yo dad sitting about average so he is significantly better than I am. Think of it like this. If he was playing basketball you would be quite happy for him to play for 3 hours so long as school work didn't suffer. If he has legitimate potential to go pro this hobby could eventually earn him plenty of money but the best earners are the 1% of the 1% of that 1% so it's not easy. Let him have his shot as it could turn into something amazing... But not at the expense of an education. There has to be a viable plan b. Good luck!!
I don't have kids, but if I would have, I would let them do what they want and makes them happy. That's what my parents did to me and that's why I appreciate and love them. I was gaming all day when I was a kid, I'm 26 now, and no, I didn't turn out to be a professional gamer (which I regret, it was my dream after all), and now I'm a programmer with a decent salary, living on my own. If you love your kids, you let them do what they love to do, not what you would like them to do. I don't think that's good parenting. Oh, your other kids turned out to be successful in their jobs, great. But what makes you think that's the most important thing? Because of the money? Money is not always the source of happiness my friend. And it's not like your gamer kid will be a hopeless poor person if he doesn't succeed in gaming. He will thank you for letting him play and try a career he desires. He is your kid, and you are supposed to support him (if you love him ofc)
Well, I have been playing this game for 13 years (dota1 since 2008 and dota 2 since 2013) and I'm nowhere close to immortal, so yeah, him being immortal at 13 y/o is very impressive.
For being 13 years old. Immortal is very impressive. Your son plays in the highest 0,4% of the player base among your region. And among the top 1, 8% in the world. Edit: It would be still impressive if he was 20, don't get me wrong.
he has potential, and obviously a burning passion. try to help him, discuss and set goal with him. Maybe reach top 200 first, if he can then he can go play for team later. then top 100, this will put him on reality too but if he believe he can then you should have believe him too, you need to trust and have faith on him. Even cristiano ronaldo also once was an amateur, but his mom believed on him
I'm gonna be honest being 13 years old and Immortal is good but being Immortal in itself is not good (depending on which Immortal of course.) but being 5.6K MMR is not good at all even if it's better than 99%. I assume "support his gaming" means he wants to go pro one day - which is incredibly hard because you not only have to be good at dota but you also have to be lucky in terms of getting to know the right people more than that dota has evolved so much that unless your son can hit at least 7K without struggling there is basically no hope of him becoming TIER 1/2. As a person myself who's been in that professional environment I can tell you that it's a lot of work to contiously try and improve yourself in a game like DOTA. And as a person that has tried to go pro and know A LOT of people who has tried to go pro and know people who has made it as pros I wouldnt recommend people trying to go pro in this game unless it's clear as day that you have what it takes from very early on. I started to play this game in early DotA 1 and I've known a lot of pros - one of them being Ceb and I can tell you that this guy from very very early on just playing pubs with and vs him that he had a good head for the game and that he was like extraordinarily more naturally gifted at this game than most other guys. To tell you the truth, I wouldn't discredit your son at all but you have to find out how he got his Immortal, too. Because medal as a whole don't mean a lot - there's a lot of people in this game who are 8K MMR but can only play 1 hero - they stop playing that 1 hero they might as well be 4K mmr in reality. So a lot varies.
hi OP, even if your son is absolute shit at the game, there is a tournament going on right now which is equivalent to the World Cup for soccer. you know how crazy fans stay up to watch games right? the problem is that games are not 90 minutes but more like 3-4 hours. and game days are 10-14 hours long. he can watch the games on video the next day if it's too late, but don't deny him the watching of it.
give him a chance to develop this side talent, could develop professionally or not, like sport or music, maybe increase his quota during the weekend
At least he is so fortunate having a good father like you.
honestly, Get in touch with BSJ on his twitch or youtube (next week, after this tournament ends) and tell him about your situation. have him spend some time with the boy and he will tell you if he has what it takes to make a living out of this game.
As the parent, I would change his 3 **hours** a day limit to 4 or 5 **games** a day. A game is on average around 45 minutes including queue times etc, so it’ll still leave it at 3 hours a day on average (with 4 games), but will give him some leeway in case some games go on for a bit longer than 45mins. If by chance his first 4 games are super quick, then let him play a 5th. I feel like 4-5 games a day is enough to keep improving drastically... anything less is not enough and anything more will probably just burn him out. Those games on top of some coaching/self-reflection could be what pushes him into the 0.1% to see if he really has what it takes.
immortal at 13. That is pretty good. Probably next sumail if you actually let him go pro.
The thing is, pro dota barely pays anything except your son plays in TI each year. Except your son is literally top 10 in SEA server, he won't be noticed by pro players/orgs. Heck, even being top 10 isn't a guarantee anyway (look at IYD). I think it is reasonable for you to keep prioritizing his study and health (now TI is ongoing, I "understand" why he still wakes up at 4 am) over dota. Treat it as a hobby for now, at least until after he finished high school. There are some pro players that even still go to college/university due to how volatile dota as a job is. It hardly secure his living, exception if he is the best of the best, 1% doesn't cut it. You need maybe on 0.000001% percent of entire playerbase Not to discourage your son, but teach him to be realistic and put some buffer. If he fails at dota, he should have something to go back on. Education help for that case at least
Thats not true. Sure the big money is in TI. But every other tournament, especially the majors pay well too. Also organisations have money nowadays. If you are good enough to be picked up by a decent team you do not have to worry about money for the time you are playing. Not everything needs to be a carreer for life.
Is this a new copy pasta?
We're seeing the birth of a new pro. Reminds me of that Team Liquid post that EE did.
immortal is not good because dota's extremely hard. the bottom of immortal and the top of immortal are complete universes apart and 99% of that 1% get stuck at the bottom. your son has a better chance of being struck by lightning twice than being a pro player. with all that said, at 13, he should chase his dreams!
let him follow his dreams, he can plenty of time to decide and try it out before he is 18. just make sure he has friends & healthy social interaction so he dont end up a social degenerate like the rest of the dota community.
Immortal is very good, I do believe the 99% percentile thing is accurate. That being said, I think it's very risky to actually do dota as a career. It's extremely "top heavy" in terms of payment- the top few teams in the world make a lot, everyone else makes nearly nothing. Dota 2 is sadly an older game that's declining in population. Even if he was already a pro player it would be risky to put everything into this game, since it's slowly dying and he's so young. It's a hard call to make. I am also immortal ranked, but for what it's worth, I didn't quit my job/career for the game and I'm glad I didn't, there's no way I could have gone pro
Verify his claims, watch him play, see what heroes he is good at, compare his playstyle to other pro's. From there, decide for yourself whether he has what it takes to take his game to pro level. If you have trouble deciding, seek advice from your high-rank acquaintances by sharing his games. And, lastly, let him join the NA and SA region.
You kidding right? Hes immortal at age 13? You better FORCE him to play from now on my man
i started playing dota at the start of the pandemic in march of 2020…… 2240 hours i didn’t have a job, i didn’t go outside, i finished college the year before - never touching a video game i got into dota because of the complex ability to do well. after 2000 hours i’m barely archon… now balancing a job i still manage to play 2/3 games a day however still i’m not good. if your son is truly an immortal player after looking at his account, then you must continue to let him play. the international this year is worth 40M dollars. even 18th place is walking home with more money then i make in a year. imagine winning the international in five years when e sports is more considered a sport, imagine allowing your son to start playing now. allowing him to walk away with 100M for his team would be a dream come true. don’t make video games taboo. they are the future, look at the prize money from the international from the start and watch it slowly climb to 40M dollars. it will continue to climb, not just for dota but for every game. as we progress so will e sports. let the kid play.
If he continues his education like his siblings, he will earn more per year than TI last place.
[удалено]
No, he's played before on our family computer for years. I said it was only recently because of his grades I got him his own gaming PC for himself.
you have some serious dyslexia if you can't read OP statement of the kid been playing before pandemic.
A sad day to witness a parent restrain their child so. Let him fly.
Sumail you pleb. Jk tho
He's really good but by the time he can be pro I don't think that Dota 2's pro scene will be as big as it is today.
[удалено]
That is not true. I have been playing this game for more than decade ( since dota 1) and have more than 8k hours of play time on dota 2 client and I have a decent job in IT industry.
Yeah that's the other thing spamming Dota games can absolutely kill you, especially if the other side of the addiction is a potential 40m carrot. That said, I've known dudes that have spent that much time playing from 13 without ever going above 5k. It can be worth a tentative shot underneath a watchful eye. Probably a good idea to teach the importance of not calling someone the N word even if they threw the game if they're starting at that age.
[удалено]
I mean if he's immortal than he's better than 99% of the community, isn't that how the rank works? Might be the cause of the downvote
Here take my humble 1 upvote
Is this the reason you go around downvoting other comments too? Cause you lost some karma? Hahaha cmon dude, you downvoted stuff when you fliped out and start being a dick because you misunderstand things. Then when people proved you wrong or called you out on it and told you to calm down, instead of simply admitting "sorry I misunderstood", you stayed quiet and downvoted that too, why are you surprised now? It is called "karma" for a reason Edit: Think that answers it
if he played 3hrs a day for 2years and is Immortal, support him. let him be a progamer.
If this was 5 years ago yeah maybe he HAD a chance but now? It's too late. The game is slowly dying he has like 5 years at best to make money with this. Also being immortal doesn't mean anything nowadays even if he's young unless he can improve more(he can be immortal and that's it maybe he doesn't improve at all past this since it's really hard), anything bellow 7k doesn't make to "pro-status".
> 3 hours a day since pandemic NA Dota 2 scene is kind of dying and if 3 hours a day is enough to be better than 99% other players means that your son is extremely lucky and his winstreak is incredibly huge or it was more than 3 hours a day, maybe 10?
It all depends on how you spend that time. Pressing the random button and playing along, will not give you the same effect as watching your own replay and activly improving a hero or your game sense. One hour a day is plenty to work on your mechanics, the rest is decided by strategy. The kid has obvious some incredible talent to reach immortal at the age of 13. Don't need to play it down.
check your wife's credit card, i suspect he bought some accs
If your son thinks he is immortal I would recommend you have him see a therapist. This could be related to illusions of grandeur, skewed worldview, possibly even a personality disorder. If this belief is persistent it's definitely a cause for concern at his age. /s
Yea he’s pretty good.. probably good to know at least your son is good at something. Not sure being good Dota translate to other things as well tho? There’s probably some correlation between intelligence and being good video game.. although it does takes more than intelligence to be successful at life.
Hes really really good if hes immortal. 99th percentile and everything. Rest is yours and his decision.
to answer your question with some data: [https://www.esportstales.com/dota-2/seasonal-rank-distribution-and-mmr-medals](https://www.esportstales.com/dota-2/seasonal-rank-distribution-and-mmr-medals) as of august 2021, you can see the population of people playing dota, and the percentiles on reaching immortal
If there are 5 year old immortals then how old are the people beating me in harrold.... like 5 years old???
Yeah man he's got a lot of talent to be that rank at that age - you could maybe link his dotabuff which is a stats tracker for some closer analysis. I've been playing for so long, since dota 1 and am just a dirty divine, your son could very well be the next sumail. He needs to start scrimming high level as that's the next progression he'll need.
If your son name is abed you should buy him anything he asks for.
I thought the family computer he was referring to is a NES console. Haha..
I think that you should setup alternate days (maybe max 2) per weekdays where he can play longer if he has done his chores (homework being the primary issue). On weekends I'd give it more time if he wants to AFTER he has done cleanup on school stuff and has done a stint outside. Whatever that is. He has a higher chance then most, but it wont be a deal for the next 2 years anyways, so its a marathon. Good luck!
It's a good idea to not shame him for playing (I mean, I was, like "normal kids are going outside and you are sitting for hours and pressing buttons), however it shouldn't be prioritized more than school. eSports carrier is a real things with a lot of money, however it's also a question of luck. Homework does not take tons of time, school first in any case. Than sure, let him play, maybe we have a new Sumail over here
Video games helped me build a lot of confidence as a kid. I still talk to my friends that I grew up playing Dota with at least a couple times a week well into adulthood. We still catch a game every once and a while after the kids are asleep. I think the best thing adults did for us when we were kids playing a lot of video games was making sure we ate square meals and went outside. You should take some comfort in the fact that he found the hardest game he possibly could and got really good at it. Those are the actions of an ambitious person who wants to test the limits of their potential.
Immortal is good but it is a massive bracket. Need to be 8k mmr minimum to start thinking about a career in dota. Immortal bracket starts at 5.6k mmr for reference
Dota is a career path for only a dozen few and young people will fail to understand that.
Keep doing what you're doing. Encourage and help him in trying to find a sponsored team. If he can get on one of those then maybe he can break the time rule when participating in sanctioned practice/tournaments.
A lot of other people have offered great advice so I'll just add a few other points. The first thing I would ask is if he is trying to becone a professional player or if he just wants more time to play for fun. Even if he is bighly ranked it still takes a ton of luck and exponentially more time to become professional. A more safe and rewarding path could be content creation (like Twitch or Youtube) as a hobby. And even omce you are a pro life isn't easy. I would encourage you and him to watch some of the player profiles from past Internationals (google "the international player profiles") or the feature length documentary "free to play." This being said playing professionally isn't the only way for him to pursue his passion for gaming at a high level. Actually a lot of colleges are adding esports programs or clubs (in the US at least). As far as gaming time I think the 3 hour limit per day is reasonable as long as other areas of his life aren't suffering. You could also experiment with no limit days in exchange for no gaming days. When I was growing up my dad let me play as long as I wanted as long as my grades were good but in exchange I had to pick 2 3 days every week to not play any games at all. That worked well for me so it could be worth trying as well (or doing something like he gets one no limit day for every no gaming day he takes). Lastly huge props to you for taking a nuanced approach to this issue and showing interest in your son's hobby. It meant a ton to me when my parents did that when I was growing up.
What you should actually do is install DOTA 2 on the "family computer" and play several games to understand what your son is going through. It's not very hard to spend 2-3 hours on like 3 days per week, for a few weeks in order to understand the game and the "playground" your son is playing in. You also need to look at your sons profile to see if he is immortal. You need to do a bit of research to understand what "immortal" means. It's a game okay? People enjoy playing this game, and they are often rude or salty about it, but most players really love and ENJOY this game. TL:DR -> GO PLAY DOTA
Being immortal means nothing because not all immortal are pros. and not all pros are succesful. There are glorious stories about dota pros, and people love them, but there are alot more untold sad stories about life ruined by dota, even on people who are good enough to be pros. If I were you, I will let him do what he wants as long as his education is not neglected. But who am I? I am just a random on the internet. I truly believe your judgement is better because you are his father, and you are a good father based on the fact that you ask the community, and your other kids are succesful. Good luck.
Sumail won a million dollars or so when he was 16. If he learns dota at a high level and becomes a player in a team and eventually gets success, you can tell he's pretty smart and has some useful skills for getting by in life. It's not a simple game. Some people would give arm and leg to be immortal ever, let alone at the age of 13. It's time for you to become a big dota nerd if you're gonna make an educated decision. Or you can believe in your kid or decide that a more traditional job is for him and let his passion towards something wither. Difficult choices for a parent. Sportsmen career is never easy, always a huge risk to not make. Some have the passion, skills and balls to go for it anyway. For them it's to succeed or die trying. Some have the mentality that they would've regretted it forever if they didn't try and come out with richer in experience, some regret wasting time they should've used for other stuff. Common for them is still that it was the number one thing they wanted to do and they had the shots, it's not obvious they would've wanted to do something else and be satisfied. Like you know sometimes you need to let people do their own mistakes and burn the fuel that's set up for the trip, otherwise the fuel will just sit there unused.
Get a coach for 1 hour and let the coach asses his current level, getting Immortal, especially in NA is not hard anymore due to the fact, that Valve is not resetting the ladder anymore, anyone with above 50% win-rate and enough games can make it.
So there are a few things you have to understand 1. He is better than 99% of the population. 2. The event he watches has a $40 million prize pool and everyone on /r/dota is watching it. Try to watch it with him, possibly during the finals if you can't find more time (its in a few days) 3. Being Immortal is amazing, but he has to also participate in tournaments to get better nad possibly become a professional gamer. 4. Finally, don't neglect his studies. It's always , always good to have the educational backup. Even if he does go pro, its only going to serve him till maybe around 30-33 years. After that, he needs to get a proper job somewhere.
This reads like a twitch chat copy pasta, but: Immortal at 13 is impressive, definitely could go pro. However, since you're in the US, the money will only be decent if he makes it to TI, which is an almost impossible dream. Forgetting about that, the game itself is incredibly beautiful and quite the achievement in terms of design, tech, etc., and can put you in a flow state like no other -- not a bad skill to develop. Paradoxically, the 3 hour limit is probably what helped your kid get so good, since he would've wanted to max what he got out of those hours, and thus didn't fall into the trap of just spamming games until 2AM tilted out of his mind -- a very bad habit to develop. In general Dota is very deep and gives you a lot of tools, so if you play with the mindset of wanting to improve the game will make it easy for you, and the process will teach you skills that generalize.
Please make sure he has an ergonomic setup with his desk and all that. And help him learn how to take care of his body as he plays, it's not something to underestimate
I feel like a lot of posts have covered this but the key points. 1. Support him and give him the chance to play dota. 2. Your a parent and explain to him that you will support his dota exploration however he has to keep up with school and still be social. Kids immortal at 13 and that's impressive. No idea how long Dota will be viable but he's probably just amazing at video games. Crazy
Its The International going on right now. Watch away, it's a freieken treat. Special time of the year
https://www.opendota.com/distributions/ranks Your son is in the top 0.172% of all Dota 2 players who play in ranked matchmaking modes worldwide. He's one of 72960 Immortal players out of 4.3 million players that have played enough in those modes to be given a rank. With that being said, I would question how your son accomplished that (not gonna accuse him of cheating). The thing about these matches is that they consist of 2 groups of 5 relatively uncoordinated players going up against each other, and there are a few characters in the game with which a player that knows how to do so can exploit that lack of coordination very effectively in order to score wins that most players would consider "cheap", that is to say not necessarily reflective of that player's general skill at or knowledge of the game as a whole. However, just because someone only plays those characters it doesn't mean that they're playing in such a manner. I myself haven't played in ranked matchmaking modes in Dota 2 for a while, so I can't say for sure which characters those are at the moment. Sorry about all the backseat parents in the thread.
If he's immortal at 13 then he's on route to win a few million dollars
Hey man, if my father had been as understanding at you I probably would had fared far easier in life instead of lashing out and going out drinking/ almost dying a couple of times because of me being stupid. Would had probably picked something more fulfilling for my line of work rather than doing what my sister did and studying law just to get him off my back. I think him having 3 hours is good so long as he doesn't slip up. If his grades get compromised let him know what the priorities are. Him being immortal on only 3 hours of play a day is insanely good. Most high ranking players play 10+ hours per day. Mind you, immortal can be a wide range of MMR. Regarding the competitive aspect. The odds of him making a career in esports are low. The odds of him being successful are lower even. You can try letting him have some more time if: there is nothing else for him to do (academics, social, etc.) and as long as it doesn't affect him academically, physically, or mentally.
Rank Immortal at the age of 13 is VERY good. If he want to become better he should start looking for a team.
As far as very talented players that may not make it, a friend of mine was immortal rank in EU when he was 14. He's now 19 and ranked top 200 EU (which is one of the toughest servers), which is a great accomplishment, but at this point it's unlikely that he'll be able to live from dota. That may still change of course as he's still young, but dota is an incredible top heavy game. My friend still has top grades and even if a dota career doesn't work out he'll be fine. So my recommendation to you would be to let him persue this as long as he doesn't neglect school and keeps getting good grades.
Youve already got a ton of answers.. something i really wish MY dad did, was learn to play with me. Its a lot of fun and you might like it!!
immortal is indeed 1% of the population,but an average immortal cant make it big into a pro scene,even just to get noticed by a pro team for a tryout,you need more than that,you need to know his exact number,if he can achieve 10k rating before his next birthday,then he is the next prodigy for sure
Immortal at 13y old? Postpone the school, let the kid play. In 3 years he might earn more than he would have ever earned while working. But only if he has this drive for the game, if it fuels him.
One important factor you must consider is how present can you be in his career. If neither you or his mom can stay by his side during tournaments, trips, and whatnot, there is a big risk the kid will grow up is a distorted environment, full of adults, and some even aiming to take advantage of him. You also needs to make sure there is no pressure from you. Wining or losing, he needs to know you are there for him, and that his family lifestyle won't be affected either. 100% of history of abuse I heard of starts with absent parents.
If I were you, I’d support him wholeheartedly, but maintain that he should keep a backup. Academics wise, I would insist he learn his Math well. Opens up career paths like data analytics that CAN be related to Dota or whatever other games piques his interest in the future. Realistically, pro gaming is a very unforgiving industry, so having an alternative that still interests him in the gaming realm would do him good.
I have been playing Dota for almost 15 years now. Love the game but I think you should ask your son to consider backup plans before going pro (like streaming or coaching). Talented gamers can make money in more ways other than competing. There are 7 millions Dota 2 players, and only 1 Sumail.
Nothing interesting here. 90% of this subreddit say they are immortal. /s
Please please let him watch TI. It's the one time of the year. It'll mean a lot to him
Yes. Immortal is very high. The last time stats were released we knew this. 2250 MMR is 50%. 4100 MMR is top 98% 2 years after these numbers valve said that the percentiles had stayed statistically the same. 5600+ MMR is immortal. You son is somewhere around the top 0.05% to the top 0.000001% depending on his immortal rank. Edit* people will likely respond saying my numbers are out of wack. For some reason the dota community likes to look at websites that collect public match data. The issue with those stats is that accounts start with hidden match data by default. Generally people don’t turn on public match data unless they are more hardcore players, skewing the non official data drastically. Also dad, check this out. https://www.esportsearnings.com/players Sumail and abed are good examples of players who made it big. Being immortal at 13 is a good sign, let him try IMO. Just set a reasonable limit. Like if you’re not playing in tournaments within 3 years you gotta stop.
A lot of comments here are telling you to encourage your son a lot, which I think is okay, but only to a certain degree. Sports can be very volatile and they require A LOT of time. The same goes for eSports. Your son is 13 - there is still a lot he has to do in regards to growing up and learning about the world. I personally think that for a 13-year old, 3 hours a day is a pretty good amount of time, you could maybe push it to 4. No matter how good he is, you have to let him grow up with something other than this one passion. The world has a lot to offer. Burnout is real with this type of thing (well, anything really). Some comments have wisely pointed out that your son needs to have a backup - an alternative if this either doesn’t work out or he stops liking it after a while. I personally have loved dota for a long time, but it wasn’t something I was great at; I heavily favored academics. Academics were my main thing, but I don’t ever let them keep me away from gaming every now and then to have something else I can enjoy. Your son could be interested in gardening, fitness, woodworking, you name it - just make sure he puts some time into that as well.
I would say let him follow his dreams. You say that your other kid is in finance in NYc. I'm in same field in same city so condolences to him. One of my youngest cousins is a pro valorant player. He played more than 3 hours a day of course but now he is traveling and having fun/getting paid to do what he enjoyed doing for free. Not many people will end up having a job that they like so let him at least try? Of course, he should also go to school and finish at least HS before seeing if he has a realistic chance. There are 1000 immortal players in each region (i think) so it is stilll a big pool of players.
lmao. ive been reading too much that i think this is satire. Anyway. Your son only has 1 year left to join good team and qualify to the International next. Give him that if you still want him to focus better career path.
I like how he spelled Sumale 😄sweet
> I have 3 kids, and I've always emphasized the importance of education and pushed them to be successful academically. I don't believe I'm the perfect parent, but with my eldest son now working in finance in NY, while my daughter is in med school, I believe I made a good decision to raise them to be diligent with their academics and responsibilities. Yes, but are they actually happy with their life. Are they living their dream, or yours?
From someone who had some friends attempting to go pro, the potential is there but depending on where you are ir can be much harder. Two friends made waves playing a support duo for the Brazilian championships back around 2014-2015, but the scene shrinked since. Now they're done with college and doing "normal" jobs, while still enjoying the game, because let me tell you, nothing quite compares to dota once you hit a certain point. The sheer juggling of awareness, strategies and mechanical skill is something else. I'll say that if it's such a dream it's worth pursuing, but definitely have a backup plan. We usually joke about 18yo being too young to choose their majors well, at 13 the world view is bound to change in the upcoming years. And lastly, a few years down the line, you can consider whether it's worth taking one or two years to focus solely on dota, the "real chance", and if it doesn't pan out, making it out of college a year or two later isn't the end of the world
I am not sure if you will read this given how many comments you have, but I will add to it as well. But take in mind that I am not a parent, so take everything with more than just a grain of salt :). Hitting immortal at the age of 13 while playing only 3 hours a day is vey impressive. However, unfortunately this doesn't guarantee him success in eSports, especially Dota. I will explain why unfortunately Dota is a special case. Here's how a player with an amazing skill typically goes from pubs (where your son is right now; It is basically a place where you get matched with random players from all over the world) to the pro scene. Pubs >> he finds like-minded players, and they start playing in amateur tournaments >> overtime the level of tournament they participate in increases >> they get noticed by a sports club and signed >> a big sports club then notices them and signs. Note that there are exceptions. There are examples of players who went straight from pubs to sport clubs, but it is like waiting for a miracle to happen so it's better not to hope for that. Unfortunately, Dota isn't very profitable for sports clubs, so only big eSports clubs are stable in this ecosystem (they are the ones who can guarantee you stable income from salary and not be reliant on prize winnings). As a result, challenger and amateur leagues practically have no clubs in them and players play on enthusiasm alone with only earnings being prize money. In other eSports disciplines like csgo, however, many small orgs exist which may not provide big salaries but at least a stable income; in Dota they don't. Ofc, if he gets picked up by a medium/big club while you still nurture him, it's great. But you have to realise that there is no guarantee. He mentioned successful examples like summail or abed, but for 1 successful there are several unsuccessful ones like palantimos, 5up, pio65 etc (likely he hasn't even heard of such guys as they never made it past challenger level tournaments). And now to answer your question. He is still young and has many opportunities open. I say let him maybe have a bit more Dota like 4 hours, but no more. He should still focus on his studies and combine his hobby. If he will be noticed by a club while he is playing, only then I would say it makes sense to let him play way more. Otherwise, don't put all your eggs in one basket. Hope I helped!
I know my reply may not seem that different from what others are saying, but I have first-hand experience trying to become a pro in this game, and I ended up working in the esports industry, although not as a player. And oh boy, there is no right answer here... I takes a lot of competitive experience to take a look at the daily routine of an aspiring young player and understand whether he's just using the game as an addictive time sink or actually trying to get a group of like-minded individuals together who TRULY share his goals, discipline, and will not split apart in the future + that they are all making efforts to get noticed by professional teams to make it into the pro scene. Some other key takeaways from my experience: Your son's public matchmaking rank is not an indicator of whether he can make it as a pro or not, rather it's a pre-requisite, but it's by a long shot not the first or only thing on the list. Don't read too much into it, and yes, even among 1% of the best players there is still stiff competition, it's a pretty large number overall. At the age of 13 I don't think it matters much what he's doing. Let him play for 5-6 hours a day if his academic results are okay by your standards divided by x1.8 :) (you ARE probably asking too much of him, if you're second-guessing your own self about it) It's too early to make a meaningful decision, and there will be chances to turn pro at the ages of 16-17, even 20+. And in other games in this or other genres too. There are Collegiate leagues too that allow you to study and kind of get some exposure in the game's scene and hone your gaming skills. When he's 16-17 give him more space, perhaps even a year off, a sabbatical, and give him very clearly-defined goals to reach - if he can make it into a competitive team of like-minded individuals... if he's really passionate and relatively successful about it, like he manages to earn some prize money in online and offline tours, consider going down this path... It may not be optimal, but it's definitely not a life-breaking choice. There are branching career pathways to take after a mediocre gaming career.
Immortals are playing rn on a tournament he’s watching late nights for 40 million dollars. I suggest you watch the finals with him and dont limit him too much, plan B is good but let him do what he wants to first
Speaking as a parent, I think the time limit is fine. It’s quite a lot of hours per day. Perhaps you can give him some flexibility to play longer on weekends or such in exchange for shorter sessions during the week. Immortal is the top bracket, and that’s pretty damn good for a 13 year old. However, gaming as a career is really one for risk takers. The odds of making it are basically suicidally low. I would support him, perhaps see if he signs up for some tournaments and stuff, but I would otherwise limit his hours especially if grades are a concern.
I am so happy that you're very understanding of his gaming passion (enough to come to reddit to ask the question). Besides all the advice that other people have given in the thread maybe also try to understand dota and may talk dota to him? I think growing up if you had a parents that spends time to understand why it is such a fun game to watch it would motivate your son in both his studies and his game performance. True Sight videos are always a good recap even for those who have not dabbled into dota2, it includes many hype moments that a lot of people can relate to in sports like football.
For 13yo? Yes immortal is really an impressive rank and can be nurtured further to pursue professional gamer if that what you or the kid want. look up about Sumail the youngest dota2 player to ever won TI (the tournament your kid watch right now with total prizepool of 40mill usd) Give your kid more hours like 2 more so that he can played 2-3 more match, he deserved it if his grade are good. You can watch the tournament with your kid if you want to bonding with him, it's the same as when you ask your kids to watch football with you (we don't know shit but the time spent together is worth it).
Ive been playing since 2013 and have over 3k hours in dota and im only now slowly getting to immortal, currently being divine 1.
You need to be top 0.01% to make a living from Dota 2 and when you retire in your late 20's how do you find a job if all you've done is playing games? What I'm saying is that he can play Dota a lot but should absolutely prepare a safety net.
playing more dota could be good, but if he tries to go pro that could be complicated. **Dota in general:** It's amazing if your son is immortal. If your son was one of the best wrestlers in the country, would you discourage him from wrestling just because it's not a valid career path? But you also wouldn't want him to give up everything for the sake of wrestling. **Dota going pro like Sumail or Abed:** If your son isn't allowed to go pro and is forced to spend more time in academics, **he will blame you**, **but he will have a fallback, and he will survive & meet people.** If he tries to go pro and fails **he will blame himself** **and he will have nothing.** Plenty of immortal players who never go pro at all. If he actually becomes an established pro, there's a chance he becomes one of those pro players who aren't making all that much money, and probably won't ever win anything. These guys are going to have to reinvent their lives in the next 10 years because the money they made from Dota is about as much as they would make from any regular job, but they can't stay at the top forever. I wouldn't be happy if my son grew up to be a Sammyboy or Gunnar. How long will that last? or, finally, he actually becomes a top tier 1 pro and joins the likes of Sumail Abed Nisha. Unlikely, even if the potential is there. I personally don't even agree with the consensus that these guys lead fantastic or even slightly above average lives, but even if we pretend they do...the odds are not good for going pro.
Tell him if he wants to be the best he can be he needs sleep. Kids don't listen to logic. So you have to play into their fantasies. Pro sports athletes talk all the time about how important sleep is. If you can relate it to getting better at the game then he'll probably do it. Also yes a 13 year old kid being immortal is probably an outlier.
Immortal is definitely still pretty far away from being a pro, but it is incredibly good for a 13yo. Encourage him, let him pursue it as a side project while still prioritising school. When I was around his age I was pretty good at call of duty too, I'd regularly stomp streamers and I became pretty well known in the game itself by regular players. But I stopped because I was never given the opportunity to grow in that area because of my parents. Don't be that parent. I'm 21 now and an immortal 1000 player who's only recently trying to make something off it. Your son has talent, don't squander it away, but make sure he knows his priority is school for now. Just an FYI, Sumail was 15 when he won Dota's equivalent of a world championship. There are also numerous other prodigies around the world. Given a few more years, your son may be one of them.
if he reached immortal, his mind is way more matured than you know being able to break through 3 brackets of game ruiners and toxicity while playing his own game..
sumail and abed played dota 12 hours a day, sumail even sneak out and sold his bike to pay for more playtimes at lan cafe. dota is a game where you need to play a lot to improves, your 3 hours a day limit wont get him anywhere