DOTA 2 Gaining Traction in China

The week of November 10th, we issued a proprietary mini-survey on the usage of Dota 2 in China. Dota 2, the standalone sequel to Valve’s Defense of the Ancients (Dota) that was based on a Warcraft 3 mod, licensed to and operated in mainland China by Perfect World, has been highly anticipated in China. However, as with other regions of Asia, gamers who loved Dota do not necessarily want to play Dota 2 because Dota 2 is monetized whereas Dota is not. Perfect World launched an unlimited closed beta test in China on September 25th.

We figured that six weeks after that launch would be an interesting time to ask a few questions about the game. We had zero screening criteria – we simply issued the questions and closed the survey after the first 1,000 responses within 3 days. One of the downsides of that is that many of the respondents do not play this type of game at all, and that we do not have any demographic or psychographic data about the respondents.

The data showed that of the 1,059 respondents, 622 claim to be gamers (Note: they may have interpreted this as hard-core gamers, ignoring that playing casual or mobile games also qualifies as being a gamer). Of the 622, 34% have recently played Dota 2. Most of these gamers who play Dota 2 do so at home or in the dorm, for less than 1 hour per day. If they also play another MoBA style game, it would be League of Legends or Dota. The biggest reasons not to play Dota 2 among gamers who like MoBA games are that they already enjoy a competing title, or that they haven’t taken the time to try Dota 2.