mYinsanity Buktop: “Dota 2 community and eSports are big enough to help the ones who need it the most”

Serbia's biggest Dota 2 community website has recently announced that they will be hosting a charity tournament with a goal to raise money for a child in need. Lana Jokic is a three year old suffering from cerebral palsy whose parents are not able to cover the costs of the necessary medical treatments. St. Louis hospital representatives in the US said that Lana is a perfect candidate for two surgeries, which can help her make her first step. A goal of raising €60,000 has been set, and onGamers briefly spoke to Viktor 'Buktop' Knezevic of mYinsanity.eu, the veteran of Serbian Dota 2 scene and one of the key people behind this proud venture.

What can you tell us about the Serbian Charity event for Lana Jokic? Who are the leaders and main people behind this initiative?

Serbian charity event was the initiative of Miodrag Karalejic, the streamer of the event and Kosanovic Milos, which I helped them with to the best of my ability. The 21^st century allows us to quickly find out about the people in need of help, as today you can find everything and anything on internet. I’m sure a lot of people have heard about the recent flooding problems in Serbia and understand what I’m talking about.

That’s how we found out about Lana too. Dota 2 Serbian community came up with the idea to host a charity event because that is the best way gamers can help and show their support – by playing games. The last charity event of this sort, that I can remember of, was hosted in 2005 in Belgrade.

What kind of support are you offering to Lana? In which way are you raising funds for her?

Apart from selling the in-game ticket for the event, there is also an entrance fee for the participants. So far we have sold over 1000 tickets and the event consists of 16 participating teams. The slots were filled in almost instantly and the tournament is currently ongoing. The event was promoted on every possible social media pages and community websites, including the biggest Dota 2 websites such as joinDOTA and onGamers. We are expecting even more support, until the end of the event. Right now we don’t have the exact number of money raised but the number of viewers on streams tells us that we should feel optimistic about this.

Do the recent flooding problems in Serbia affect the event?

The situation is pretty rough in Serbia at the moment. The best example would be that one of the main people behind this event has had to evacuate his hometown due to flooding problems. Nevertheless, the event keeps ongoing, and is also streamed by a few joinDOTA streamers. I’m really happy about how it is received, considering that it’s an amateur event.

What do you think about this initiative? Do you think that Dota 2 and eSports in general are big enough to make these events happen more frequently?

I am very happy about this initiative and therefore I involved myself and did as much as I could to promote it. Serbia is a small country, but we are showing how active and passionate we really are. Dota 2 community and eSports are strong, and my opinion is that they are big enough to help the ones who need it the most. If we keep hosting events like Serbian Charity event, we can attract a lot of attention from the non-gaming world. People will then realize how important the growing eSports and Dota 2 community is.

Are there any plans for future events of this sort? What do you think needs to be done in order to improve the whole experience?

There are definitely more plans for similar events in the future. We are hoping that we can soon host even bigger, LAN events. Hopefully we can attract more sponsors next time, maybe even some who aren’t directly related to gaming and eSports.

As a Dota 2 veteran, what do you think about the current state of Dota 2? TI4 will most likely reach a $6,000,000 prize pool, views on streams keep growing and the number of unique players per month is soon to be 8,000,000.

When I started playing Dota 2, I played it as much as I could because I loved the game itself. Along with that comes the passion about the game and there’s also the competitive factor and will to compete on events. The most important factors in attending these events were to meet people you play with on daily basis and to have fun by competing with each other. I remember that some events had a buy in fee of approximately 2 euros per team.

It’s a bit different now. Dota 2 is growing, there are more and more people playing it every day and that’s great. It’s also good for the Balkan community. When I turn to my right I see the cheque from Belgrade Gaming Festival held in November 2013 which me and my team won and earned $3,300. This amount was unimaginable to us before. But today, everything is more professional and more organized. I would like to send my message and advise the youngsters that they can’t start to play Dota 2 when they are 12 or 13 years old and put all of their focus on it. They should mainly start playing it because they love the game, but also do some sports along with it because sports teach you how to be disciplined and well organized, which are two mandatory factors for your Dota 2 career.

Your team consists of Serbian Dota 2 veterans, some of them even played for the first Fnatic Dota 2 team and you have recently signed with mYinsanity eSports team. What are your plans for the future?

Our team consists of three Serbian veterans (including myself) and two newcomers to the scene. So far we haven’t shown some significant results. We are yet to improve our communication and approach to the game. We are planning to have a bootcamp place once we overcome the problems I mentioned, and then slowly climb towards the very top of the European Dota 2 scene.

We have recently seen you in ESL events in Poland, as you participated in 2 events in 2013. Are there any plans for the upcoming European LAN events?

I would say that ESL events are the most well organized events I have attended. We had a strong will to qualify for the Frankfurt event but sadly we didn’t achieve that. Our next move is to attend as many regional events as possible. We have recently won the event held in Zagreb, Croatia, in June we’re attending the LAN event in Belgrade, Serbia, while Romanian and Macedonian events will be held right after. As for the other European events, we don’t have any plans at the moment. The next time we participate in the qualifier for a big LAN event, we will play the best we can in order to win it.

Who are your rooting for in EU, SEA and Chinese TI4 qualifiers?

My favorites for the TI4 qualifiers are Mousesports, CIS (because of Black^, ofc) and Scythe (I love Meracle). I have to admit that I’m rooting for CIS and Scythe as a fanboy.

Who are you rooting for at TI4?

Believe it or not, I haven’t followed any of the past International events, and this one will be the first one I’ll be closely watching and try to watch every match. I don’t think I will be rooting for anyone, but I’ll definitely cheer for some of the players I have good relationship with, as we had a lot of fun during the events in the past. It’s always so great to cheer for people you met in real life.

Thanks for your initiative with the Serbian Charity event and for your time to do this interview. Best of luck with the event and best of luck to you and your team in the future. Any final shoutouts?

Shoutout to mYi, Sensei, E-frag and our sponsors Logitech. I would also like to send my shoutout to Mitch, my former teammate.

Most importantly a huge thank you to everyone who is supporting Serbian Charity event. I invite everyone who wants to support the event to purchase the event ticket on the following link as 100% of the money goes to Lana Jokic.

Picture courtesy: E-frag