Patrick LeMieux

Every Game in This City 207: Monkey Business It’s Day 5 and PSG.LGD finally face off against their TI8 rivals, OG (formerly Monkey Business), in one of the most anticipated matches of the International Dota 2 Championships in Shanghai. Luckily, esports researcher and MIT professor T. L. Taylor joins us to discuss our experiences both inside the stadium during an intense match full of cheers and jeers and then outside during an equally intense session of bartering for blind boxes, swag bags, and secret shop spoils. From one of the most memorable matches of the tournament to tournament memorabilia, in this episode T. L. helps us make sense of the monkey business. Listen on the Episode Page Listen on Soundcloud Listen on iTunes Listen on Spotify

Every Game in This City 206: The Art in ARTS In this episode, we put the art back into ARTS on Day 4 of the International Dota 2 Championship. First Yang Jing will tour UnArt Center, a media art gallery that doubles as an esports venue, then Peter will exhibit AutoSave: Redoubt, a Counter-Strike map reconstructing the scene where Japanese and the English first encountered one another in the Battle of Hong Kong during World War Two. But is Dota an ARTS or an art? Listen on the Episode Page Listen on Soundcloud Listen in iTunes Listen on Spotify

Every Game in This City 205: Welcome to Dota, We Suck It’s Day 3 of the International Dota Championships in Shanghai and the whole cast is back in one room to talk about how we’ve been playing Dota. From the Mercedes Benz Arena and the Super Brand Mall to laptops in our apartment and the night cafe across the street, everyone has their own way of playing. And after catching up with the cast, we’ll interview Murielle "Kips" Huisman, a Dota 2 analyst and the former coach of TNC Predator, Vega Squadron, and Complexity Gaming. Listen on the Episode Page Listen on Soundcloud Listen in iTunes Listen on Spotify

Hi all! We put together this panel of cast members from Season 1 and Season 2 for Melbourne International Games Week around the start of this month! It steamed on the Steam front page (in Australia) and is now archived on YouTube. If you missed the panel, this is a great intro to our podcast and a way to put some faces to our voices. We also play an ad hoc escape room puzzle and some Dota 2 trivia on the back half of the video!

Every Game in This City at Melbourne International Games Week: Every Game in this City at Melbourne International Games Week Every Game in This City is a podcast about playing well together. In Season 1, ten game designers, researchers, and curators met up in Malaysia to try and play every escape room in Kuala Lumpur. In Season 2, four familiar voices and four new friends gathered in China to try and watch every game at the International Dota 2 Championships in Shanghai. From escape rooms to esports, in this Melbourne International Games Week panel Goldie Bartlett, Stephanie Boluk, Yang Jing, Alex Lee, Lee Shang Lun, Will Partin, and Chad Toprak will discuss the cities we visited, people we met, and how we recorded daily discussions documenting our experience trying to play every game in this city!

Super fun to hear Shang Lun (one of our escape room experts who had never played or watched Dota before) interview so many of the cast and crew at TI9. We've been thinking back on our experience while watching TI10 this week and will hopefully do a bit of a reunion during the finals!

Every Game in This City 204: Shang Lun's Late Game In our last episode Shang Lun was about to narrate his long night at The Late Game, a Dota 2 talk show where he got to interview the cast and crew of the International Dota 2 Championships in Shanghai. So this time we’ll tune in and hear about his adventures with shout casters, camera operators, Chinese translators, TV producers, and a certain buffoonish dad who seems to hate pizza rolls! Listen on the Episode Page Listen on Soundcloud Listen in iTunes Listen on Spotify

I was a day late on posting this episode but won't make a habit of it! We've been working on some cool stuff this week w/ folks from Season 1 and Season 2

Every Game in This City 203: Anti-Junzi Activities 24 Histories, 4 Arts, 1 Dota. In this episode we meet our final cast member, Felania Mengfei Liu, who takes us on a tour of Chinese Game Studies, including a deep dive into the etymology of gaming and gambling, sport and esport in China. Then Stephanie, Patrick, and Will tell us about the long history of Dota, from Aeon of Strife to DotA: Allstars and beyond. Finally, the cast recounts a series of adventures around the stadium on Day 2 of the International Dota 2 Championships in Shanghai! Listen on the Episode Page Listen on Soundcloud Listen in iTunes Listen in Spotify

This is such a jam packed episode with audio diaries, match commentaries, and interviews both in and around the stadium—sometimes Every Game feels more like a documentary than a discussion podcast. Speaking of documentary, we actually have video of that moment when Shang Lun, Alex, Yang Jing, and Peter enter the stadium and see Dota for the first time! For announcements and extras check out the Every Game twitter account!

Every Game in This City 202: On the Surface of Boiled Underwear Water From our local police station to Mercedes-Benz Stadium, we finally watch our first match together at the International Dota 2 Championships...and it's a doozy! After unpacking the hour-long contest between Vici Gaming and TNC Predator, Alex, Shang Lun, Peter, and Yang Jing teach us a little about what they learned on Day 1 before before we take a deep dive into the Dota 2 ecosystem with our first special guest: CEO of Chaos Esports Club, Greg Laird! Listen on the Episode Page Listen on Soundcloud Listen on iTunes Listen on Spotify

Hi everyone! We're back with another season of Every Game in This City—but instead of trying to play every escape room in Kuala Lumpur, our motley crew met up in Shanghai during the summer of 2019 to try and watch every game of the International Dota 2 Championship! We originally planned to release this season in the lead up to the International in 2020, but we fell behind during the pandemic (and then the tournament was cancelled!) Fortunately, even though we recorded in the before times, the conversations we had and experiences we documented are still relevant in 2021. Following our first season, the cast is a mixture of people who know a lot about Dota with those who had never played it. There were also folks who know a lot about China alongside those who were visiting for the first time. So we'll be coming at Dota from a different perspective and trying to capture the way we played together in and around TI9! Oh, also, we didn't have the Idle Forums hooked up for season 1 (should I make a thread?) but figured it might be useful for season 2. Feel free to post reactions, questions, and your own experiences playing and watching Dota!

Every Game in This City 200 and 201: From Escape Rooms to Esports We're back! In Season 2 of Every Game in This City eight game designers, researchers, journalists, and curators meet up in Shanghai to try and watch every game in the 2019 International Dota 2 Championships. In this short introduction, Stephanie, Patrick, and Will try to connect the dots between escape rooms and esports: What are we doing? What aren't we doing? And what do we hope to learn as we jump into a new game in a new city with a new cast? Listen on the Episode Page Listen on Soundcloud Listen on iTunes Listen on Spotify FIFA in a Magical Forest The battle begins! In the first full episode of Every Game in This City Season 2, the team gathers at the top of a penthouse in Huangpu, Shanghai the day before the International Dota 2 Championships in 2019 to talk about our Dota pasts, Dota predictions, and the case of the missing tickets! In the interlude Will, Stephanie, and Patrick try to explain the ins and outs of Dota 2 (with sound effects!) before the group reveals the thorny reality of actually getting tickets for a Dota tournament. Listen on the Episode Page Listen on Soundcloud Listen in iTunes Listen on Spotify