Will Partin
Kotaku
New York, NY, United States
Contact Will
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Past articles by Will:
Microsoft Flight Simulator: The Kotaku Review
One of the first places I flew in Microsoft Flight Simulator was the Grasberg Mine, an open pit mine high in the Sudirman Mountain Range of Indonesia. At least, I tried to—turns out it wasn’t there. → Read More
The 2010s were a banner decade for big money and tech — and esports reaped the rewards
The esports industry is as much a product of the 2010s as irony Twitter, VSCO teens, WeWork and the Streaming Wars. → Read More
The International Is Bad For Dota 2
Dota 2’s annual championship, The International, has the biggest prize pool in all of esports – $21 million and counting. Unlike Overwatch League or the League Championship Series, The International doesn’t rely on big-name sponsors or media rights. Instead, it is almost entirely crowdfunded by fans, putting a democratic twist on professional gaming despite its massive scope. For fans, it’s the… → Read More
Twitch Isn't For Esports, It's For Streamers
On Friday afternoon, news leaked that Twitch had cut more than 25 jobs, mostly from Twitch Studios, an in-house production group, and the company’s community and marketing teams. The laid-off employees—some of whom had been with Twitch since its inception—were reportedly told that the company had overhired and needed to resize as part of what a spokesperson called an “aggressive growth strategy”… → Read More
No One Knows How To Run An Overwatch League Team Yet
When it launches tonight, Overwatch League will become the biggest undertaking in the history of esports. Backed by massive investments from sports billionaires and tech companies, esports, if you choose to believe the hype, has finally grown up. → Read More
A new study proves it – most data in esports is bullshit
Last week, the discerning users of the esports corner of Twitter dot com were presented with a pair of studies (I’m using that word in its most expansive sense) by the market research groups Newzoo and onalytica. For those keeping score, Newzoo has been around the esports ecosystem for a while, whereas onalytica has never … Continued → Read More
Watchlist: Proleague
Header art by Gareth Damian Martin. The Pitch: Since the mid 2000s, Proleague has been one of the most prestigious StarCraft tournaments in South Korea. Now, as StarCraft II struggles to maintain an audience, the finals of the current season of Proleague may very well be the last. How to Watch: Free on Saturday, September … Continued → Read More
Metagame looks to raise the bar on esports documentaries
In the surprisingly large canon of esports documentaries, The Smash Brothers (2013) stands out as one of the genre’s best. Whereas many better-funded productions are riddled with all kinds of cringe-inducing displays—ESPN’s Throne of Games never forget—The Smash Brothers feels less like a movie held together by the skill of its directors, and more by a … Continued → Read More
Watchlist: The International 2016 (Again)
The pitch: Professional Dota 2’s premier event, The International 6, the biggest tournament in the history of esports, comes to a close this weekend. Already, it’s being hailed as a classic thanks to a series of upsets that eliminated many of the teams expected to win it all. But the big story—or, at least, one of them—is just … Continued → Read More
Watchlist: The International 6
The Pitch: The sixteen best Dota 2 teams in the world gather in Seattle for the sixth iteration of The International, Dota 2‘s premier event (and possibly esports’ premier event, depending on who you ask). Outdoing itself in terms of prize money, viewership (probably), and just about any other metric you could possibly think of, … Continued → Read More
A short history of the biggest prize in esports
Never one to do today what can be put off ‘til the Dota 2 subreddit breaks out into a collective conniption, Valve Software has released the ruleset, format, and prize distribution of The International 2016. By the way, it starts today. Valve’s governance of professional Dota 2 has always been somewhat laissez-faire, especially in comparison to Riot Games’ punctilious micromanagement … Continued → Read More
Letter from the editor
Dear Reader, Picture this: It’s 2007, I’m 17 years old and wide awake at 4 a.m., excavating the depths of South Korean Google. I’m dredging forums with more malware than words I understand, failing to find the object of my search: a restream of the OnGameNet StarLeague Season 3 finals. It’s saviOr vs. NaDa, about … Continued → Read More
Videogames and the end of sleep
In 2005, following the public outrage over the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, the research group Gallup organized a survey to gauge Americans’ attitudes towards the “enhanced interrogation techniques” employed by intelligence services in the War on Terror. When presented with descriptions of such methods, including waterboarding, mock executions, religious violation, and the… → Read More
Democracy 3: Electioneering is a misguided publicity stunt
In his 1989 essay “The End of History?,” the political scientist Francis Fukuyama, engorged by the collapse of the Soviet Union, claimed that human civilization had reached the conclusion of its sociopolitical development. “What we may be witnessing,” he writes in summary,“is the endpoint of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form… → Read More
Dota 2 might be nearing its Moneyball moment
In one of the most famous single season performances in Major League Baseball history, the 2002 Oakland Athletics won a league-topping 105 games on a paltry $33 million budget. Their secret? Sabermetrics—that is, the use of statistical analysis, rather than subjective judgement, to evaluate players’ relative strengths and weaknesses. The value of this kind of analysis is rather self-evident now,… → Read More
Watch a rare, perfect game of Dota 2
Perfection is a rare and beautiful thing in Dota 2 (2013) no less than any other competition. In terms of prestige, a flawless game in Dota 2—by which I mean a game in which the winning team destroys the opposing team’s ancient without suffering a single death—ranks up there with a hole-in-one on a par five or a perfect nine inning outing in baseball. It’s really, really rare. Entire careers… → Read More
Homefront: The Revolution is everything wrong with America
By the most recent estimate of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), there are just under 300 non-governmental militias active in the United States. Though the specifics of their agendas vary, their shibboleth is what’s often labeled “insurrection theory,” the supposed right of the body politic to take up arms against tyranny, no matter its source. What constitutes tyranny is somewhat open to… → Read More
Ace of Seafood is all too human
Borne onto Steam by a zephyr of Nipponese weirdness, Ace of Seafood is the fish-‘em-up I never knew I was missing. An unsolicited sequel to Neo-Aquarium: The King of Crustaceans (2012), the progeni… → Read More
The Loneliness of the Professional Gamer
If you haven’t heard of Jonathan Sutak, producer and director of The Foreigner, a new documentary about professional StarCraft II (2010), you can take solace in knowing that you’ve probably seen so… → Read More
Author in the machine: An XCOM 2 Review
Vigilo Confido goes the motto of the titular fighting force in Firaxis Studio’s excellent XCOM 2. To any English speaker, even one without any specialized knowledge of Latin, the meaning of the mot… → Read More