Meet This Indian Pro Gaming Team Trying To Beat The Best Dota 2 Players In The World

I’m going to make a statement that goes something like this:

“Videogames are for kids”.

At this, probably over half of you are going to agree with me. After all responsible adults have better things to do than waste their time with some stupid game. A smaller, but perhaps growing, number of you will be up in arms, shouting me down and trying to prove me wrong. “It’s a way to relax, just like watching Netflix.” “Who are you to be making blanket statements?” and “Professional gaming is a very serious deal.”

(L to R) Omkar 'Pasoll' Urunkar, moin 'No_Chanc3' Ejaz, Balaji 'BlizzarD' Ramnarayan, 'Raunak 'Crowley' Sen, and Dhvanit 'Negi' Negi

Yeah, those statements are absolutely right, and I agree. And yet, even for all those gamers out there with their hackles raising up, only about half may actually know just HOW serious professional esports is. But Team Signify know. They’ve lived it. They still live it. 

Team Signify are an esports team, under Cobx Gaming, based right here in Mumbai. More specifically, the five-man team play Dota 2 professionally, in competitions around India and across the world. 

For those of you that aren’t tuned in, Dota 2 is a game with one of the biggest competitive scenes across the world, right up there alongside the likes of Counterstrike GO, League of Legends, and Overwatch. Like the others in the list, Dota 2 is a team-based brawl called a MOBA, short for multiplayer online battle arena. Here, players each control a single character over the course of a match, and to put it simply, kill all their enemies. That’s not the final goal here though, that’s just how you get stronger in order to level up your hero and kit them out with the deadliest weaponry in game. What you’re really aiming to do is work together with your team to destroy a series of turrets, and then destroy the base they were protecting. 

It’s a devilishly complex game that requires quick communication, quick reflexes, and even quicker thinking. When I met team Signify in Andheri, Mumbai, they told me just how much practice it takes for the team to be able to work as a cohesive unit. They don’t just play together, they live together in the same house, their “bootcamp”, where they’re honing their skills day and night in order to compete with the best. Unfortunately, I could only have a face to face with Raunak ‘Crowley’ Sen (20), Moin ‘No_Chanc3’ Ejaz (24), and Omkar ‘Pasoll’ Urunkar (25). The other two players, Dhvanit ‘Negi’ Negi (20) and Balaji ‘BlizzarD’ Ramnarayan (22), were away on personal business, before the team departed in two days for a tournament in Singapore.

The first thing you have to know is that pro gaming is not just messing around with your favourite pastime however you like. These guys mean business. Most of the team sleep in till around 12 (as one wakes up at 7 am to attend college), instead preferring to practice from two in the afternoon until night. They’ve set a bar of 8 hours of gameplay everyday as their own minimum requirement to stay sharp - 4 matches as a team, and about as many solo with other random players. This in a game where a single match can take anywhere from as low as 25 minutes to upwards of 45 minutes. And that’s the bare minimum, which isn’t enough for Team Signify. 

“We play as many solo matches as we can,” Crowley told me. When I asked whether they ever play anything else to take a break, the three of them snickered a little. “We don’t get bored of Dota 2,” Crowley clarified. “We’re serious about it, so we just keep going.” In fact, whenever the guys enjoy a couple of hours off, it’s not odd to find them at their kitted out gaming rigs, grinding out a few more matches in random public games.

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The second thing to remember is that it’s easy to think of Team Signify as “boys” enjoying a fun, well-paying gig, but that would be a grave injustice to them. They’re very clear that, despite the fact people only associate gaming with fun, this is also their full-time job. There’s no backup job, in case this doesn’t work out. The guys have put any other possible “normal” careers they might have had a chance at on the line to make this work, and damn it they’re not going to piss it away. The team needs to practice, and they need to practice together to be at the top of their game. You won’t skip an office meeting because you may get in trouble, and may get fired. These guys won’t skip a practice (unless for a valid emergency) because then they’re holding the entire team back. They have employers, a set number of leaves in a year, even a boss on hand to make sure they stay healthy, motivated, and at the peak of performance. The big difference with your corporate job is that they don’t have daily work per se. Their system is more like preparing for months to execute a project over a couple of days, before washing their hands and starting over on the next one.

So, how does the team stay together 24/7, and still stay a cohesive unit without being at each other’s throats? Well it helps that they’re all on the same page and have the same goals, but they’ve also learned how to blow off steam. That usually happens on the day off they take after every five days of training, in order to stave off burnout and fatigue. “Sometimes we go out together in the evening,” No_Chanc3 tells me. He and Crowley have been together on Signify’s roster for about 6 months after all, though the latter was part of Signify’s core for six months before that. Pasoll only just joined early in December, yet he seems to have embraced by his new team members with the sort of friendship and respect that comes from battling alongside a comrade-at-arms. When “We’re all here trying to win, so there’s not really any disagreements to worry about,” No_Chanc3 adds.

The team's blank exercise chart is woefully abandoned

Unfortunately, the guys do admit that they get less exercise than they should. After all, sitting at a computer all day can wreck your back. They showed me a nearby whiteboard, normally used to tally their daily practice games quota, which now instead marks their progress on a 30-day pull-up challenge someone suggested. There’s a lot of white space on that board. At the very least they say they at least go for a jog once a week. 

But make no mistake, Team Signify are athletes as sure as sprinters on their track or a cricket player on their field. It’s just as many grueling hours of practice, the same dedication to their craft. Like boxers preparing for a heavyweight fight, they even spend a couple of days before every tournament reviewing footage of their opponents’ matches, learning their strategy and finding their weaknesses. They have such a drive to get better and win that there’s never a moment they don’t think they could spend improving their game. They’ve already shown they’re the best India team Dota 2 has to offer, so they’re now attempting to best the world’s greatest players on the international stage. I ask Pasoll what would change if the Olympics introduces an esports category in the near future, as has been briefly considered in the past. Would that be their next goal? “Why not?” he responds. We’d love to play for India.”

In the meantime, Team Signify is happy to lead the way, showing other budding Indian gamers the path to nationals. “If you have a vision, a specific goal, and you pursue it you can get there,” Pasoll tells me emphatically. They’re not going to just give you the top spot though. You’re going to have to fight them and earn it.