At the end of June some of the best Dota 2 teams in the world will meet in the 51,000-seat Commerzbank Arena to battle for a prize pool of nearly $200,000. It's sure to be a terrific event for anyone who loves Dota, or watching esports with huge crowds of fans, and we have five pairs of weekend passes to give away.

Teams include Fnatic, EG and International champs, Alliance and Na'Vi. They're playing for a prize pot enhanced by ESL's own version of the Dota 2 Compendium, with its own stretch goals.

The finals take place on Saturday 28 and Sunday 29 of June. The tickets we're giving away will grant access to both days of competition. Alongside the games there will be autograph sessions, sessions with some of the Dota 2 workshop's most talented artists, a cosplay competition and a secret shop full of Dota 2 goodies.

To win a pair of tickets, invent a Dota 2 hero and describe them in under 50 words. Give them a name, and an ability. Please email your answer to tom.senior@futurenet.com with the subject header "ESL One Frankfurt Answer". Winners will be announced next Monday. NB: travel to Frankfurt isn't included as part of the prize.

UPDATE: we've had so many entries, we're going push back the announcement of the winners to Wednesday June 4. You're free to send your answers up until June 4, so there's still time!

If you'd like to buy tickets, you'll find various options on the ESL One Frankfurt bookings page. You can find out more in the event FAQ and on the ESL One Frankfurt site.

Three Lane Highway is Chris' sometimes silly, sometimes serious column about Dota 2.

Somewhere, in the offices of a distant videogame publisher, a mid-level business guy is crying. He's crying because a couple of years ago he was all like "we should sell an internet magic computer book for our competitive online game" and his bosses were all like "lol no". He's crying because everyday he has to fill out reports with words like "outreach" and "conversion" on them. He's crying because the Dota community has, at the time of writing, spent $18,867,328 on internet magic computer books.

The Dota 2 community has purchased almost 1.9 million of these books in just shy of two weeks. Every day, 150,000 people equivalent to the entire population of the Dota subreddit think "yes, it's time for another magical computer book, thank you." I am not in a position to question the value of the Compendium. It's really well made! And I own two and a half of them.

But these are still the kind of numbers that make you think. It's hard to explain exactly why 2014's Compendium has been so much more popular than last year's. It's a better product, certainly. You get more items for buying it, the stretch goals have more of an immediate impact on the game itself, and leveling it up is compulsive and carries a tangible if ephemeral benefit. It could just be that a lot of people are willing to drop the price of an indie game on a battle booster and the promise of a special hat.

It could also be that the community really does want The International to be a big deal that all that investment really is targeted at inflating the prize pool to the point where this year's winners will become some of the richest people in e-sports. There's credibility in that. This is after all a game about ego, competition, and victory through sheer weight of numbers: it is not out of the question for the Dota community to sit back and decide to farm out their lategame advantage.

Then there's the outlying chance that we've all been hypnotised. That Valve's experimental psychoeconomics has exploded out across the internet in a great flash of purple light, wallets bursting in its wake.

I think there's probably a little bit of truth in all of these. They all contribute to the notion that The International is an event and that the Compendium, while not a ticket, is nonetheless a way of confirming your participation in that event. People want to belong, and they want to be seen to belong. Valve's genius is evident in the moments when other people get to see just how much everybody else has participated in the countdown at the start of a match where you find out how big everybody's magical internet book is. The community's genius, on the other hand, has been to collectively amplify the importance of the Compendium itself. I didn't even think before buying the Compendium. I just saw it and bought it, because I'm a part of this community and, well, that's what you do.

Without the community, for example, the Arcana item vote would be a transparent means of gathering marketing information a little like those internet quizzes that tie into your Facebook profile and ask you pointed questions about your spending patterns. The community makes this whole process less cynical, turns the vote into something fun where people can argue about whether or not Io should get a face painted on him. The Compendium becomes, thanks to the discussion it creates, part of the life and character of the game.

Then you extrapolate this process across the game's expanding audience, across the ambassadorial role of e-sports and the popularity driven by last year's International and, yeah many internet magic computer books get sold.

The funny thing about success like this is that it makes it very difficult to figure out what the future of the game is going to look like. At the moment, it feels like the good things about the Dota community expand fractally across the scene at every level from the jokes shared by friends who regularly play together to forum communities, reddit, and outwards. Accross nationalities and languages. I wonder about how long that will be the case whether or not we'll reach a point where Dota is so big that this sense of a singular collective effort expressed through the Compendium drive won't be quite so pronounced. That'd be a shame, I guess, but it'd also signify actual global saturation.

It'd be hard to be too angry about not being special any more when Dota games are being shown on television, or projected onto the moon, or something.

This year's International is going to be telling either way. Last year, Valve's Erik Johnson told me in an interview that they were probably going to stick with Benaroya Hall for 2014 that the focus would be expanding the spectator experience online, rather than allowing more people to attend in person. For whatever reason, that's not the decision that was made. This year's tournament is going to take place in a much bigger space, with much more people in the audience and a worse view, inevitably, for some. The money will mean more to the victors and falling short of that money, if Valve stick to the old distribution model, will have an even greater effect on the scene in the year that follows. It's easy to see that $18m investment as one part of a fractal expansion of competitive Dota at every level.

Is this the pattern for the future, I wonder? Endless growth without fractures forming, without oversaturation or compromise? I ask now, because that has never happened before.

If you'd like to read more Three Lane Highway, click here.

Well, that was inevitable. Yesterday, the Dota 2 community completed their quest to give Valve all of the money. The prize pool for the upcoming International tournament stood at $6 million, meaning over $4.4 million had been raised from sales of the Compendium sticker-book and its corresponding point system. Now, Valve have unveiled more stretch goals, with potential rewards reaching to the 10 million mark.

Here's what the new stretch goals will unlock:


$6,800,000: Earn 25 compendium points every day by winning a game with the Hero we choose for you.
$7,200,000: Vote for the Hero you'd like to receive a new, alternate voice & dialogue pack.
$7,600,000: Select one of your Least Played heroes and we'll provide a GPM/XPM analysis tool during the game to help you compare your performances with previous games
$8,000,000: Vote for the Hero you'd like to receive a reworked model.
$8,400,000: You'll receive an item that customizes your Multi-Kill Banner.
$8,800,000: Live Broadcasting of the after party with special guest Darude.
$9,200,000: Unlocks new models for your creeps after you've killed the enemy barracks. (Available to all players, not just Compendium Owners)
$9,600,000: A new quest system will be added to track your progress, and earn you rewards as you win. (Available to all players)
$10,000,000: Unlocks the ability for you to perform a voice taunt with your Hero in the early stages of the game.


Will the community spring to an extra $4 million? Based on the trends of these graphs, it's certainly a possibility. But then, only 25% of each Compendium and point sale goes towards the prize pool total. If the $10 million marker is reached, it will mean that approximately $33.6 million will have been spent on International items.

Here's a quick maths question for you. If a copy of Dota 2's Compendium costs $10/ 6 (which it does), and $2.50 of that goes to the International 2014's prize pool (which it does), and that prize pool which launched at a base level of $1.6 million currently stands at over $6 million (which it does), then how much deeper is Gabe Newell's swimming pool tribute to Scrooge McDuck? The answer is lots.* Valve aren't the only winner of this equation, though. The participants of the Dota 2 tournament have a much bigger prize to compete for, and the Dota 2 community have now secured the entirety of the Compendium's stretch goals.

It's not just the amount that's impressive, but the speed at which it's been raised. If you take a look at CyborgMatt's Prize Pool Tracker, you can see the comparison to last year's fund-raiser. In 2013, the community raised $1,274,407 across the entirety of that Compendium's funding period. This year, they've made $4.4 million in just eleven days. If nothing else, it's a testament to how much the community has grown in the year since the game's official release.

The last few stretch goals guarantee Compendium owners new music, environmental effects and base customisation options. Additionally, a 1v1 mid-lane-only matchmaking option will be made available to all players.

As it stands assuming the prize pool's distribution remains the same as last year the winners of The International will make over $3 million. That's great news for whoever proves to be the top team, but, in his most recent Three Lane Highway, Chris argues that all this year's finalists should be getting a percentage of the pot.

*You can apply this same answer to almost any question regarding Valve and money, which should make your end of year exam quite a bit easier.

Every Friday the PC Gamer team turns around, bright eyes, and looks back at the best and the worst of the previous week

THE HIGHS

Wes Fenlon: Playing and reviewing The Walking Dead: Season 2 Episode 3 was the highlight of my week. The episode wasn't quite as strong as episode two, for me, which found a near-perfect balance between interesting conversations, character progression and hard choices. But I loved reviewing episode three because it left me with so much to think about. It really made me question player agency in story-driven games and the difficulty of balancing the player's influence with the character's own personality. I think Clementine is a little too reliable in episode three compared to the adults around her, but Telltale really nailed making every decision a labor of fear and uncertainty.

Phil Savage: Over the last few months, Gone Home's Steve Gaynor has been talking to a selection of game designers, and releasing their conversations as a podcast. It's called Tone Control, and it's now completed its first 'season' with Gaynor taking a break as he works on The Fullbright Company's next project. That makes it a great time to dip into the archive, which is well worth doing if you're the sort of person who likes to spend hours listening to hot, intimate games chat. Which I am.

Notable interviewees include Tim Schafer, Clint Hocking, Ken Levine, Craig Hubbard and more. Also, former PCG writer Tom Francis who isn't a long-standing industry veteran, but did once buy me a whiskey, and so deserves a mention. Whoever Gaynor's talking to, he uncovers some fascinating insights into game design and creation.



Tim Clark: The key art created to accompany the Far Cry 4 announcement is so I dunno, let s say startling that, like Phil, I wasn t even sure whether it was real or a particularly well-executed NeoGAF parody. Only a despotic junta leader of the most supreme self-confidence is able to rock that particular shade of purple.

What isn t in doubt is how glad I am to have a new Far Cry on the way. The heavily trailed Himalyan setting should provide plenty of opportunity to expand on the savage beauty vibe of the previous game, a shooter which has only grown in my admiration as more time has passed since I finished it. But here s the key question: will there be a yeti hidden away in those foothills? And what is the monetary value of a yetiskin wallet? Asking for a friend.

Ben Griffin: There are three things I love in this world. The first is Dark Souls. The second is my reflection. And third is FIFA. But for the purposes of this bit, let s just say third is The Sims (ordinarily it s fifth, behind Christmas and the smell of cut grass). I ve wasted my actual life playing the last three over the last 15 years, and yes before anyone points it out, I m bitterly aware of the irony.

The trailer shows off the revamped character creator which does away with clunky menus, a range of body shapes from slim and ripped to morbidly obese and depressed, and a feature that lets you finetune wrinkles. Unlike last time around, it s now possible to create someone without giving them a great honking moon face, and that s what I m most excited about. Now I can make my Sim as appealing as me. Also, it s not always online like SimCity was, so you might even get to play it at launch!



Tyler Wilde: I m really happy to see player communities band together to keep old multiplayer games going, as they have with the Battlefield series. I could wag my finger at EA for not fighting to keep its old games running post-GameSpy shutdown, but that s a dead end our effort is better spent praising the players who are knocking down barriers to keep playing the games they love.

Chris Thursten: Dota events always feel like Christmas, but The International is something else. Super Christmas? Let's go with 'Super Christmas'. The Compendium the in-game betting book that helps to crowdfund the tournament's prize pool is the best expression of what Valve are trying to do with the game. It's been great to watch the community take ownership of Dota as an e-sport, whether that's finding more inventive ways to present the qualifier games or inflating the prize pool north of $5 million. As much as I'd like to see that prize pool distributed more evenly, that's a small gripe with an otherwise-great system.

I've also enjoyed watching North American Rejects stampede through the American qualifiers. If you're one of the people on reddit who questioned my praise for the quality of play in that tournament this week, well, it was NAR I was referring to. The US has always struggled to pull together a team capable of living up to the hometown support they get at The International, and between EG and NAR this might just be the year where those chants of 'USA!' 'USA!' get heard outside of the lower bracket.

Read on for our lows of the week





THE LOWS

Tyler Wilde: I m disappointed by NPCs across all of gaming, something I ve been thinking about after reviewing Bound by Flame. I spend hours and hours with these characters talking to them, fighting alongside them and yet they re so often just encyclopedias of information about my current quest, or the same greeting over and over. Even the most complex of them usually stare blankly at me when I stop talking, or can t remember anything that wasn t baked into their database of dialogue. They have no brains.

I loved bonding with my crew in Mass Effect, and the way Telltale makes silence a choice. These are little steps, but NPCs still haven t changed all that much in the past 10 years. More than improvements in graphics, I hope for more experimentation with how we interact with AI characters, especially where it leans toward simulation. I m not ridiculously asking for true artificial intelligence, or guards who can beat the Turing test, just for characters who exhibit the illusion of intelligence well enough to surprise me now and then.

Tim Clark: The Division being delayed until 2015 is one of those things that, when it happens, seems so obvious that you have to take a mental inventory to check that it hasn t actually happened already, but you forgot in all the unexcitement. Which isn t to say I m not excited by the game. I am muchly. I just never for a moment thought anything that looked so ambitious could be turned around in time for a release date this year.

The same goes for The Witcher 3. As soon as you got a sense of that project s sprawling scope, you knew there were two hopes of it coming out on time. And the other was called Bob. There s probably a direct inverse relationship between the level of polish demonstrated by vertical slice demos of new games, and the likelihood of any of the other content existing at the time they re initially shown. Still, not that we should complain. Turns out there are quite a few other things to occupy ourselves with in the meantime



Phil Savage: Which version of Watch Dogs do you want. I've decided just now, at random that I'd like the basic game, the White Hat Pack, and the Conspiracy Mode Digital Trip DLC. Let me consult the big chart to see if... Well, shit.

Buying AAA games is becoming an increasingly bizarre experience. I get why pre-orders matter to publishers, and why that leads to a series of exclusive deals made to retailers, but none of it seems to benefit the consumer. That's because, in my experience, these exclusive digital bonuses remain at best pointless, and at worst detrimental to the experience. In Watch Dogs, each outfit pack confers a bonus and, while that doesn't sound like a big thing, it has the potential to undermine the balance of the game. To make it worse, Watch Dogs has asymmetrical multiplayer. It may mean that, if I'm invading another player, I'm directly at a disadvantage for not having bought my copy through Game, or Uplay, or while riding a horse backwards through Tesco. Whatever you have to do to get the extra vehicle hitpoints of the Club Justice Single-Player Pack .

Wes Fenlon: I'm torn on this one. Steam has added more games in the first half of 2014 than it did in the entirety of 2013. That's a ton of games, and I'm sure Early Access and Steam Greenlight are playing a big role there. Is it too many games? Not necessarily I want everyone to have an opportunity to get a game on Steam but it highlights how big an issue curation is going to become in the near future.

Valve is taking steps to make it easier to find games. Devs are able to put their games on sale whenever they want. User reviews now indicate that a game was reviewed in Early Access. But the Steam front page still mostly drives people to what's on sale and what's currently selling well. There are so many games, it's going to become increasingly hard for the average user to browse and discover something new. Games are going to get lost in the shuffle. More shovelware is going to slip through the cracks. Valve's going to have to do more curation to ensure Steam stays a useful storefront.



Ben Griffin: What is this I don t even probably best describes my reaction upon watching what little of Bombshell s overlong, meaningless trailer I could stomach. It s a game about a bomb defusal expert called Shelley Bombshell Harrison, so already the metaphors are a being complexly layered. Does she like bath bombs, too? How about photobombs? No? Just the explodey kind. Like Mass Effect s Jack wearing a version of Ripley s Power Loader as reimagined by Victoria s Secret, Shelley enjoys "kicking ass, motorcycles, and kicking ass on motorcycles." Kinda like how I enjoy playing games, sitting in my chair, and playing games while sitting in my chair.

If you re smelling Eau de Nukem, your nose isn t wrong. This was a 3D Realms joint (in collaboration with developers Interceptor Entertainment) called Duke Nukem: Mass Destruction until Gearbox acquired the Duke Nukem IP in 2010 and tried to sue the everloving stuffing from them. See how far into the trailer you can get, if you must. It s a rubbish, dated top-down shooter with a rubbish, dated protagonist. Awesome name though. Bombshell. Strong.

Chris Thursten: This is one of those things that gets you widely derided in certain parts of the internet, but it s been on my mind this week and it might form the basis of a future Three Lane Highway column. In short: Twitch chat is one of the worst things about e-sports, and the only thing about the hobby that I find actively embarassing. This has been particularly apparent in the Hub streams being run for the TI4 qualifiers, Big Brother-style 24-hour shows where Dota personalities live and watch the games together while surrounded by kittens. It s a cool idea, but it s brought out a really ugly side of the community. The comments that get directed at women in particular make me embarrassed to associate myself with the scene.

Someone s probably going to argue in the comments that this is just how things are on the internet, but I don t see that as an excuse. It s exclusionary, unprofessional, hurtful and lame and it s holding back the game that these people purport to love. This might be as effective as yelling at a cloud, but seriously, guys: grow the fuck up.

Now you can get in the mood for DIGITAL SPORTS! with the help of the smooth, comforting and somewhat sociopathic Narrator from The Stanley Parable. As teased all those months ago, his gently mocking wit is now available as a Dota 2 announcer pack. Sure, it's not hard to make fun of an incomprehensible game about internet wizards, but it takes skill to do it and still make the game's fans want to give you money.

The announcer pack was made by The Stanley Parable creator Davey Wreden and the Narrator's voice actor Kevan Brighting. According to Wreden albeit jokingly it aims to make Dota 2 "not only understandable but even downright accessible to the common layperson". Has it succeeded? If you'd rather not experience the pack in a live Dota environment, you can get a full preview at the Dota 2 wiki.

If you're so entrenched in Dota 2 that you don't know what The Stanley Parable is, you can find out via a 50% weekend sale. The Stanley Parable Announcer Pack is out now, and will be 10% off for 48 hours after release.