KOCHI: I’ve devoted my free time to Dota and the game will always be a part of me,” says Tenzin Wangyal, a professional Dota player. Tenzin has been playing video game since he was four. Today he is in the top 1,000 best Dota players, among 13 million people in the world according to leaderboard ranking. “I started with Duck Hunt on consoles and Prince, Mario on my laptop. Later, I played games on different consoles like PC, PSP, PS2, Game Boy, etc. All this changed when I started playing Dota. It went from playing for fun to wanting to be the best. I aim to become one of the top 100 best Dota players in the world,” he says.
Tenzin started playing Dota in class 7. He realised that to become the best at Dota he has to devote all his time to the game, and now he is addicted to it. “Yes, I am. It’s worse than any drug. But the game has shaped me as a person by enhancing skills like quick decision making and teamwork,” he shares.
He has played many tournaments. One of them was the Indian Esports Championship 2016, where the prize pool was `8 lakh. “My team was one of the favourites to win. But, we became overconfident and ended up between the 5th and 8th place,” he says.
In LAN tourneys, like VGF 2014 and others, Tenzin was always among the top three. In the online world, he is called Lagmaster. Sharing the story behind his name, he says, “Blame that on my BSNL broadband which was the worst to play online games. The game used to lag and had ping issues. I used to play with 250-300 pings, so I had to anticipate things in advance just to keep up. Hence, the name, Lagmaster.”
Dota 2 is one of the most played games on Steam. “Dota has got over 10 million players worldwide and boasts of the highest prize pools,” he says. The game always has new updates to surprise the players. Tenzin feels that the combinations create something new, making you want to play it more. “I’ve been playing the game for 10 years now and I’m still not bored of it.”
Tenzin is a software engineer at Aruba Networks, Bengaluru and he is finding it difficult to manage his work and passion, but he makes sure that he plays at least for four hours a day. “It’s difficult, but I still try to play at least two games of Dota and read up on anything new in the game. When you play a high level game, it’s not just for practice,” he shares.
He didn’t take up gaming as a profession as he didn’t want to risk it, especially in India. “I want to pursue it as a profession, but that would mean giving up everything else to practice. That’s extremely risky. My family and friends will oppose to it. Gaming in India still isn’t a viable option to make a living,” says Tenzin. Gaming as a career should be chosen only if you are the best at it. Tenzin advocates this to all passionate Dota players, “If you aren’t already one of the best players in your country by just playing casually, then it’s nothing but a pipe dream. So, please don’t throw away your future for nothing.”