Quinn on Gaimin Gladiators’ TI 2023 hopes: “We’re treating it like any other tournament”

Quinn ‘Quinn’ Callahan has spoken about Gaimin Gladiators’ dominance throughout the 2022-23 Dota Pro Circuit Season and how he’s preparing for DreamLeague Season 21 and The International 2023. The American mid laner also expressed his feelings about the DPC changes and who he will miss at TI12.

Quinn played an integral role as Gaimin Gladiators made history by becoming the first team to win all Dota 2 Majors in a single season, establishing themselves as frontrunners for The International 2023. This will be the American mid laner’s fifth TI appearance, each time with a different team.

Quinn, who joined the core of the Gaimin Gladiators’ roster at the end of last year, is a seasoned competitor in the Dota scene. He didn’t have much to show for his performances earlier in his career, but he has won almost all there is to win this season heading into the event in Seattle.

Quinn talks Gaimin Gladiators’ preparations for DreamLeague Season 21 and TI12

In a conversation with Dexerto, Quinn addressed the stigma surrounding a team heading into TI as the red-hot favorites. Over the years, several teams that were heavily favored to win TI have found themselves knocked out of the championship relatively early. Some examples include OG from TI6 and TI7, and Team Secret from TI9.

“To be honest, I don’t really know. This is the first year that I’ve ever really won anything or been successful in any way,” Quinn said. “To be honest, I don’t really know what goes wrong. Maybe I’ll know after this TI, but hopefully not. Hopefully, it’ll go well, and I won’t have that experience.”

“We’re just trying to treat it like any other tournament. We’re trying to practice well, be in a good mindset, not take things too seriously, but also try our hardest and put a good effort in, have good ideas, and play good Dota. And if you play good Dota and you lose, then somebody just played better Dota, and that’s okay at the end of the day.”

What happened at Riyadh Masters and the current state of Dota 2

Riyadh Masters featured the highest prize pool ($15,000,000) so far in this DPC Season, and, needless to say, every participating team wanted to snatch the championship. After winning the Majors in Lima, Berlin, and Bali, Gaimin Gladiators couldn’t even crack the podium in Riyadh and had to survive three elimination series just to get to fourth place.

“Our gameplay was quite shaky, and we got really lucky in that series against Tundra that we just got to scrape by and keep playing. We shouldn’t have gotten to win those games, we should have lost.”

“We got super lucky, and so we got to keep playing, which is great, but I think we learned a lot from those, and I think we’re going to try to be much more vigilant in realizing our mistakes and areas where we have shortcomings and try to fix that and just stay sharp along.”

With Valve being much more transparent with the community in recent months with their blog posts and in-game updates, Quinn expressed his feelings about the direction in which the game is headed.

“I’m always down for Valve to communicate more. That’s great. I think that can never really be a bad thing. The game is in a really good state right now. The behavior score changes now that they’ve been fixed seem like a really good thing.”

“I like the patch. I think the map changes, while a lot, are not bad for the game. And I think the draft changes are good for the game, too. So I’m happy with the direction the game is headed.”

Quinn feels excited about the DPC changes

Valve recently confirmed that the long-running structure of the Dota Pro Circuit will end after the current season, with the invitational system used before 2017 set to make a return.

Given the numerous outcries from the community and pro players over the years, this change from Valve has been welcomed with open arms by many, including Quinn.

“I personally think it’ll overall be a good thing for the scene. The structure before was totally fine. I feel there were maybe one or two instances where Valve messed up invites. But I think you can also argue that invites have been messed up. Like, the DPC is not perfect.”

“There are a lot of teams that are invited that perform poorly, and teams that go through qualifiers do well. You can look at last year, right? Team Liquid and Secret had very low [DPC] points, [but they got] top two and three at the TI.”

“I feel both systems have flaws in terms of the accuracy of the invites. For the tier-one pro scene, having no DPC will probably be better. I think most people were sort of sick of the DPC, and I think it also feels a bit stale when almost all the best teams in the world are from Europe.”

“You basically have like a little baby TI three times a year, and then you go to the Major, and then all the teams that were top three in the DPC now get top three at a Major. It just feels like a broken record. I can listen to the same song over and over again.”

“To go back into the system where there are like random tournaments, different teams turn tournaments down because they’re tired, and so you have a different mixing and matching of teams. You get to see different matchups, you get to see teams you wouldn’t see playing against each other in the past because they get knocked out earlier, and different things like that. I feel the past ecosystems were more entertaining and interesting. I’m looking forward to things being different. I think DPC was getting a little bit old.”

Looking ahead to TI, Quinn said that he is looking forward to facing Team Liquid’s mid laner, Michal ‘Nisha’ Jankowski, on the main stage. Additionally, he lamented that Clement ‘Puppey’ Ivanov’s perfect TI streak has come to an end. “Puppey not being there and not completing the every-year TI attendance [streak] is a bit sad,” he said.

Gaimin Gladiators returned to winning ways last weekend as they won BetBoom Dacha, which was held in Armenia. The team is now competing in DreamLeague Season 21, their last tournament before The International 2023 in October, where they will be looking to complete a sweep of an entire DPC season by lifting the Aegis of Champions.