“The Super Bowl of esports,” “the most important esports event in the world,” “the only title that counts”: These and other superlatives are used to describe The International, the eighth iteration of the annual Dota 2 esports championship tournament.
For the uninitiated, Dota 2 is a free-to-play multiplayer online video battle game. This year, 18 Dota teams are fighting for the “Aegis of Champions” from August 15-25 in Vancouver, Canada. The defending champion: our esports sponsoring partner Team Liquid. So far, no team has ever defended the The International title — Team Liquid is lined up to change that and #BreakTheCurse.
SAP Technology Supports Team Liquid at The International
Since SAP launched its partnership with Team Liquid in April 2018, an esports development team at SAP has worked closely with the Team Liquid Dota team to improve the players’ performances.
“The Team Liquid Dota team is ready for The International in Vancouver, so they can pursue the ultimate goal of defending their title they have earned last year,” says Melvin Metzger, one of two SAP HANA developers who have been hired exclusively to work on the esports partnership. “As this is an extremely difficult task that no other team has accomplished before, the collaboration between the team and SAP has come at the right time.”
SAP has delivered a cloud-based analytics app, built on the SAP HANA platform, that allows Team Liquid to more quickly and efficiently analyze opponents’ in-game strategies, such as which heroes are picked or banned and corresponding win rates. The app draws on historical data from previous DOTA 2 matches, which Team Liquid can analyze and use to create pre-tournament and pre-match strategies. Players will also have immediate access to game analytics following each tournament match.
“We’ve been sitting together with the players and management of Team Liquid and discussed their needs and what we can do for them to support with data analytics,” says Maik Vogt, the second person in the esports development team at SAP. “Team Liquid’s captain KuroKy and his team will be using SAP software for their preparation and who knows, perhaps it will give them that competitive edge needed to succeed against all the other top teams participating in TI8.”
Fingers crossed!
