posted by NanaKrustofski,
This week's Position 6 guest is none other than Toby 'TobiWanKenobi' Dawson. He has been part of the scene since its earliest days and attended every The International as only English talent.


Tobi reveals that he originally intended to retire after The International 2020. He didn't enjoy broadcasting at that time due to the huge stress, including questioning himself if he was even still good enough to work at LAN events.

For him, casting is also a rather selfish endeavour. Being a good caster requires a lot of time to prepare and he felt he could not fulfill this role anymore – and the competition for the sparse amount of LAN slots is tough, as even he ended up not being invited to tournaments.

I don't know Dota as well as Cap and ODPixel. They deserve to be where they are.


A new project is coming soon



Tobi is not only working as a caster, he also focused on other jobs in the past. As he teased in the podcast, he is currently working on a new project which will go into beta release soon.

His project aims to be an educational platform that helps others finding a job opportunity in esports. Around ten years ago, Tobi got his first fulltime job in esports at joinDOTA.

Now the scene is a lot different (...). It's easier to get into opportunities, but I feel the competition is also rising along with it.




It would be a huge mistake to host The International this year



Being involved in the scene since its beginnings, this year will be the first time for Tobi without attending The International. But he says it's the right decision to postpone it. For him, the feeling of TI has changed for the worse anyways. He notes that it should be important for such a big event to reinvent itself constantly.

The atmosphere of TI has gotten a little bit more generic over time. (...) WePlay has innovated more than TI has. This for me is shocking.




What makes TI the greatest if you took away the teams and the prize money?



As Jake 'SirActionSlacks' Kenner revealed in another episode of Position 6, they started working on TI10 right after The International 2019 finished. But Tobi says, he is not sure how much Valve will focus on reinventing the tournament.

Without the large prize pool and teams, there is not much of a show going on, so Tobi. Money is everywhere in esports and someone who does not know the teams should be interested in the tournament as well. He draws a comparison to Riot Games and their product League of Legend: there, they create a digital dragon flying around the stadium, 3D augmented reality on the sheets which turned into as spectacle and so on.



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Photo credit: WePlay! Esports

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