Hey guys, I know that some people have already commented on how the odd names are kind of disconcerting. But it's never really bothered me until today. When watching an interview during the most recent Dota 2 tournament in Germany there was a physical interview between two men where one man called the other "banana" with a straight face.

I just....it just hit me so hard. i couldn't handle it. Has it started to grate on anyone else as well when they used to not mind? I'd love to hear if this is growing as an issue for anyone else.

Moved to the Dota 2 forum, please use game & platform-specific forums where appropriate. Thanks.

Also, I'd like to point out the irony of your username being ChristmasUnicorn as you post a thread complaining about Dota 2 names.

Sounds like you're describing a general 'esports' problem, not a problem specific to Dota.

@ajamafalous: That's probably true. I honestly only follow Dota on esports so I don't know if other games also call their players by their ingame names. It just seems like a weird way to go about it. Can't you just call someone John?

I have been watching competitions in a number of games for so long that i don't really ever think about it anymore. Hearing a caster talk about a player called Skadoodle sounds has normal as just calling him Tyler.

That said as esports continues to grow larger and larger and starts getting huge mainstream audiences outside of Twitch i wouldn't be particularly surprised if they just eventually drop these aliases and just call players by their real names. Nothing would really be lost by doing this either.

I honestly think that pseudonyms / aliases are here to stay, especially considering how international most scenes have become. I'm sure some announcers are already used to them, but I don't really see the viewers getting used to, let's say, CDEC's real names. And I wouldn't be surprised if players started using more normal monikers to attract sponsors.

It's worse when you get these dickheads who change their name every 5 minutes. If you're going to pick some lame ass nickname online, pick one and stick with it, stop changing it to some fucking anime name every other event

Nah I think the alias are a lot of fun in the esports scene. I don't really care for not see the need to switch to just using real names.

Hello Christmas Unicorn, which I will now assume is the name on your birth certificate, I don't really have a problem with usernames, no.

Seriously though, theyre no different to nicknames, which you see in all sports, and a lot of the time, it's definitely a lot easier for the commentators and the fan to use them over their real names. What's easier, Banana or 王蛟? FNG or Арцём Баршак?

Even for someone who writes his name with the Latin Alphabet, 1437 is a lot easier than Sivatheeban Sivanathapillai isn't it?

There's only a few players whose real names I even know. There's the obvious ones like kennyS, tarik, etc. (people who just use their real name). And there there is n0thing, who everyone calls Jordan at random times. Don't know why he is the one who got that, maybe because he's been around for so long.

I've never seen that really happen, at least at a professional level in CSGO.

Nicknames have always been one of the first questions a game or platform swings at you as soon as you try to play multiplayer.On top of that, it's an easy way for people on the internet to know eachother. Even looking at these forums you'll hardly find people who chose to use their own name as it's spelled in real life. Do you know about John Bain? who? oh Totalbiscuit. It's instantly recognizable.

Especially now that people all over the world are competing, it's easier to remember that Maybe and MMY are good mid and support players instead of having to remember how Lu Yao is a good midplayer and Lei Zengrong is a good support.

There are times that a tournament decides that commentators should use their real names instead of their nicknames, but that always feels forced. Outside of those tournaments everyone calls eachother by their nicknames. People know who Synderen and Dendi are. People don't know Troels Nielsen and Danil Ishutin.

as long as it's not the names I seem to come across playing dota which tends be peoples awful racist steam names I think it's ok.

My favorite thing is when people use their real name as their nickname. It's so normal that it loops around and becomes weird again.

There's a League player named Balls on Cloud 9. There was a short, but fantastic period where whenever the camera was on his character that the entire crowd would yell "Baaaaaaaaaaaallllllllllllllllsssssss"

One thing that clicked for me lately is this. It's a personal brand for the players themselves. Esports is a volatile business, always has been, will be for quite some time it seems. It's starting to get a little more stable, but things are still really rough for a player. Just recently a team qualified for the Spring 2016 season of the NA League Championship Series. The teams owners then sold their spot (LCS spots can go for >$1 million) and replaced just about the entire team and all the staff. Now they're just a bunch of amateurs, but their names are far more valuable than they were before and they can use that increased recognition to either get their foot in the door with another team, or double down on Twitch and Youtube, etc.

So Let them keep their dumb names, the world of esports is stacked against players and their identity is the one thing people can't take away from them

@alexw00d: 1437 is Tea Bun though :P

@e30bmw: For some reason I know the name of everyone on C9 but basically no other team. I guess that just comes with having a more relatable team to American fans and (largely) American sites like Reddit or whatnot, and having more familiar names (for those audiences). And the anime naming thing is purely a Dota thing, although people are starting to complain more and more about it and it's starting to happen less, at least at larger tournaments. I can think of a few instances of CS players changing their names, but it's mostly not too bad.

Overall I don't mind it at all. I call most of my online friends by their aliases - to me it is their name. It being "not official or proper enough" or any of those other arguments never rang true for me.

I do always find it kind of fun when people's real names become commonplace for whatever reason. ARTOUR BABAEV. Which, I kind of feel took off in part thanks to Charlie Yang switching away from his alias.

I think some pro gamers have some pretty fucking dumb names, but overall the use of nicknames instead of real names doesn't bother me. I don't think it ever has to be honest even when I first started getting into professional gaming. Just always sorta shrugged my shoulders at it I guess.

He really deserves an avatar of a Unicorn with its horn wrapped in Christmas lights.

@christmasunicorn Here you go you should set your avatar to this Merry Merry Christmas

Not really bothered by this, maybe because I've followed Dota for a long time. Would be nice if the tournament organizers enforced some sort of rule regarding this for clarity's sake.

But I will say this: Stop changing your name so damn often, EE! Also, 大鸡巴土匪 is not exactly appropriate, iceiceice, no matter how funny it might sound.

Pretty sure a lot of Asians, especially the Chinese, pick themselves English-sounding names anyway, so to them it's not a huge deal. Which is why you sometimes meet a girl whose name is Xia but who introduces herself as Sharon. Or sometimes it's something more abstract, like April, or Samosa, or Guitar.

People have weird names all over the place, anyway. I know a German guy who's legitimately called Banjo, and an Australian called Bo. I also once met a guy on a night bus in London who'd had his name legally changed to "Shark Attack". He showed me his driving license, he was for real. He was the most for real motherfucker I've ever met.

"Real problem"

@mike:What's ironic about it his post? I'd agree with you if the dude asked people to refer to him as ChristmasUnicorn in his everyday, real world interactions but I doubt that he does.