DOJO MADNESS

Updates, insights, facts, trivia… DOJO MADNESS has got you covered. Get your regular dosage of gaming madness from people who live it every day! http://dojomadness.com

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DOJO Madness Expands Shadow.gg’s Enterprise-Level Analytics Software for Professional Esports Teams to Include Dota 2

Berlin-based esports startup, DOJO Madness, announced today the expansion of their market-leading analytics software for professional esports teams, Shadow.gg, to include Dota 2, offering advanced tools that empower professional Dota 2 teams to analyze matches using superior data.  

Used by three of the teams at The International 2017, Shadow Dota 2 provides the power to scout any professional team through access to aggregated data, precise replay parsing, and intuitive interfaces. Even the best players are predictable and Shadow Dota 2 gives pro teams the opportunity to simplify complex analytics to identify patterns, provide real-time data on key opponents and visually display data to expose trends, gain insight and create strategic advantages.

“We aim to provide the cutting-edge tools professional gamers need to outpace their opponents. Every professional match featuring every kill, smoke, bit of movement, draft decision; every action teams care about is captured, processed, and stored on Shadow. Shadow Dota 2 delivers the ultimate data unlock in gaming,” said DOJO Madness Shadow Dota 2 Product Lead, Ben “Noxville” Steenhuisen.

Before joining DOJO Madness, Ben Steenhuisen provided statistics for notable events including both The International 2015 and 2016, and has worked alongside companies and studios such as Valve, ESL, PGL, Dreamhack, Twitch, BeyondTheSummit, in addition to running the community stats site datdota.

“With Shadow, I spend significantly less time gathering statistics and can instead turn my focus to successfully coaching my team. Improving the team is a full-time job, and thanks to Shadow I can easily brief my guys on what’s coming at them when we’re playing officials”, said former analyst and current coach of Vega Squadron, Muriëlle "Kips" Huisman.

Dota 2 is the latest title offered by Shadow.gg, and joins Shadow CS:GO, currently used by ten of the world’s best Counter-Strike teams and ELEAGUE, and Shadow LoL, used by multiple LCS teams. DOJO Madness, through Shadow.gg, continues to transform the professional gaming landscape by providing a comprehensive platform that accelerates professional team advancement.  

Shadow Dota 2 plans to continually develop with future features that enable users to upload and analyze private scrim matches. Full platform details and pricing can be found on the Shadow.GG website.

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DOJO Madness Launches Shadow.LoL, a Professional Analytics Platform for League of Legends, Led by Tim “Magic” Sevenhuysen

Berlin, Germany, July 13, 2017 -- Berlin-based esports startup DOJO Madness announced the launch of Shadow.LoL, a SaaS platform providing analytics and data visualizations for professional League of Legends teams that will dramatically improve how teams prepare for and analyze matches. Leading the team is Tim “Magic” Sevenhuysen, the world’s foremost League of Legends statistician.

Shadow.LoL was built in partnership with Team Liquid. Each feature and function is specifically designed to help pro teams win games, as well as help broadcasters tell more advanced data-driven narratives. Shadow.LoL offers powerful, efficient ways to track teams’ performances on stage and in scrims, monitor players’ champion pools, scout opponents’ tendencies, prepare strategies and drafts for upcoming matches, and dive deep into statistical analysis, all in one place.

“League of Legends is a highly complex game, and the fact that most teams are basing their analysis on simple spreadsheets and gut feelings is insane. We worked closely with Shadow during their beta to make sure their tools and data will enhance the work of our coaches, analysts, and players. We see Shadow as essential to our long-term success,” said Team Liquid Co-CEO, Steve Arhancet.

Tim “Magic” Sevenhuysen, the creator of OraclesElixir.com, is leading the team. Tim married his background in statistics and research with his love of esports to become a leading voice in the creation and application of LoL analytics. In addition to providing data to broadcasters, journalists, and coaches around the world, both directly and through his website, Tim also served as Statistical Consultant to Fnatic during their 2015 summer EU LCS championship and run to the World Championship semifinals.

“DOJO Madness has an unmatched foundation in both League of Legends statistics experience and data science. Every feature in Shadow LOL is designed and refined to add real value for coaches and analysts,” said Shadow LoL Team Lead, Tim Sevenhuysen.

DOJO Madness was founded in December 2014 by Jens Hilgers, a twenty-year Esports veteran and Founder of ESL, Markus Fuhrmann, co-founder of food delivery unicorn, Delivery Hero, and Christian Gruber.

About DOJO Madness

DOJO Madness harnesses the power of big data to build tools and services that help players and fans to understand and master their favorite esports games. DOJO’s first line of products, the SUMO apps, are virtual coaching apps for League of Legends, Dota 2, and Overwatch. The SUMO apps provide personalized guides and actionable insights based on individualized game data. In addition, DOJO Madness offers a B2B data service and a separate SaaS platform that provides analytics and data visualizations for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO), League of Legends, and Dota 2 professional teams and broadcasters. DOJO Madness has 45 full time employees, and has raised a total of $12.75M in funding from backers including The Raine Group, March Capital Partners, London Venture Partners, DN Capital, K Cube Ventures, Kristian Segerstrale and the Investment Bank of Berlin (IBB). For more information, visit www.dojomadness.com.

For more information about Shadow, visit www.shadow.gg/league-of-legends

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DOJO Madness Raises $6 Million Series A II Round Led by Raine Ventures

Berlin, Germany, April 5, 2017 – DOJO Madness, an esports big data startup, announced today that it has raised a $6M Series A II round. The capital will be used to further expand DOJO’s data driven products, including its SUMO coaching apps, Shadow SaaS platforms and its newly acquired Coaching marketplace, as well as to further support the introduction of the company’s products into new regions starting with Southeast Asia. Raine Ventures, the venture capital arm of The Raine Group, led the round with participation from Kakao’s K Cube Ventures and existing investors including March Capital and DN Capital. The round brings DOJO’s total funding raised to $12.75 million.   

“Raine Ventures is an excellent fit for DOJO Madness because of their specific sports and entertainment focus, as well as their access to Asia,” said Jens Hilgers, the CEO of DOJO Madness. “Asia is a key market for us as we continue to execute on further scaling our products, and Raine, with its network of relationships and deep partnerships, will be an invaluable partner to us.”

“Many popular esports titles exhibit a very steep learning curve. DOJO’s products improve the experience and engagement of players in their favorite games, and as such, are equally of great value to publishers.  We couldn’t be more thrilled to partner with such an experienced and passionate team,” commented Blair Ford, Venture Partner of The Raine Group.

No longer a niche pastime, the global esports audience will reach nearly 400 million in 2017, split equally between devoted esports enthusiasts and occasional viewers. This audience is projected to grow 50% over the next three years, according to market research firm Newzoo.

DOJO’s product offerings are rooted in big data and strengthen the broad esports ecosystem.  DOJO’s growing series of coaching apps have over one million monthly active users. Apps include LOLSUMO, which provides personalized guidance and actionable insights and is the top rated real-time coaching app for League of Legends on both the App Store and Google Play, as well as OVERSUMO and DOTASUMO, which help players master popular esports titles Overwatch and Dota 2. DOJO recently acquired coaching marketplace, Leaguecoaching.gg, adding a human coaching layer to their product offerings. In addition to its coaching apps, DOJO Madness offers a B2B data service and a separate SaaS platform that provides analytics and data visualizations for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO), League of Legends, and Dota 2 professional teams and broadcasters.  

Founded in December 2014 by Jens Hilgers, esports veteran and Founder of ESL, Markus Fuhrmann, co-founder of Delivery Hero, and Christian Gruber, DOJO Madness was recently named one of the top 100 European startups by Wired Magazine.

About DOJO Madness

DOJO Madness harnesses the power of big data to build tools and services that help players and fans to understand and master their favorite esports games. DOJO’s first line of products, the SUMO apps, are virtual coaching apps for League of Legends, Dota 2, and Overwatch. The SUMO apps provide personalized guides and actionable insights based on individualized game data. In addition, DOJO Madness offers a B2B data service and a separate SaaS platform that provides analytics and data visualizations for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO), League of Legends, and Dota 2 professional teams and broadcasters. DOJO Madness has 45 full time employees, and has raised a total of $12.75M in funding from backers including The Raine Group, March Capital Partners, London Venture Partners, DN Capital, K Cube Ventures, Kristian Segerstrale and the Investment Bank of Berlin (IBB). For more information, visit www.dojomadness.com.

About The Raine Group

The Raine Group is a global merchant bank focused exclusively on technology, media, and telecommunications. Raine has in excess of $2.5 billion in assets under management. The firm has offices in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, London, and Shanghai. With a global reach, Raine focuses on investment and advisory opportunities where its deep industry experience and unique network of strategic relationships can create value for portfolio companies and clients. For more information visit www.raine.com.

Press Contact:

Kalie Moore

DOJO Madness Head of Communications

[email protected]

@kaliemoore

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DOJO Madness Announces the Launch of Shadow.GG an Esports Tech Tool for CS:GO Pros

The DOJO Team is thrilled to announce the launch of Shadow.GG, a SaaS platform providing analytics & data visualizations for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) professional teams that will dramatically improve how teams prepare for and analyze matches.Already used by top teams including Immortals and G2 Esports, 

Shadow.GG provides pro teams accurate, up-to-date data on every top-tier team, player, and match. Every useful point of data in the match is captured and stored, and this combined with advanced tactical replay views, heatmap generation tools, and statistical analysis views, enables players and teams to easily identify their opponent’s tendencies, as well as weaknesses, in their own play. For more information check out our official press release or this article via The Esports Observer. 

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Wired Magazine Names DOJO Madness as one of Europe’s 100 Hottest Startups

Each year Wired UK ask Europe's investors, entrepreneurs and technologists which local startups are "hot" - that is, being talked about as going places. We are thrilled to announce that we not only made the list this year, but we are only one of five gaming startups included.

2016 has been a banner year for the DOJO Madness team. Our first product, LOLSUMO, a real-time coach for League of Legends, which provides personalized guidance and actionable analysis while considering the user’s team-mates and opponents been downloaded over one million times since launch last September. The app delivers insights for 500k monthly active users, and is a top rated League of Legends app on both the App Store and Google Play.

Our $4.5M Series A round announced in May has been used to expand our coaching apps to other eSports titles, as well as to expand into new data services in eSports. Stay tuned for some very exciting announcements later this month!

The entire DOJO team is beyond honored to receive this recognition from Wired Magazine, the Berlin startup community, and all of our users!

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We closed our A Round!

We are incredibly proud to share the news on the closing of our A Round. Here is our official Press Release which you can also find on techcrunch.com and other tech magazines:

eSports Startup, DOJO Madness, raises $4.5 Million Series A Round to Expand its Machine Learning Data Services

Berlin, Germany, May 19, 2016 

Berlin-based eSports startup, DOJO Madness, announced today that it has raised a $4.5M Series A round. The round was led by March Capital Partners, with the Investment Bank of Berlin (IBB), and existing investors London Venture Partners and DN Capital, participating.

DOJO Madness has created a set of tools that harness the power of the latest innovations in machine learning to help gamers improve their skills. DOJO’s first product, LOLSUMO, a real-time coach for League of Legends, provides personalized guidance and actionable analysis while considering the user’s team-mates and opponents. With over 500,000 app downloads since launch last September, the app delivers insights for 70k daily active users, and is a  top rated League of Legends app on both the App Store and Google Play.

The new funding round will be used to expand DOJO’s coaching apps to other eSports titles, as well as to expand into new data services in eSports. League of Legends, the world’s most popular game sees over 67 million people playing each month.

The number of people both watching and playing different eSport games continues to grow at an unprecedented rate. From 2012-2017 the eSports audience is expected to grow 20% (CAGR) and revenues are projected to increase 29% (CAGR)*. “We launched our first coaching App, LOLSumo, a year ago, and we have been overwhelmed by the positive user feedback. With our new funding, we will continue to add great features, and launch our service for additional eSports games,” says Jens Hilgers, DOJO Madness CEO.

“We have monitored the explosive growth of eSports, and believe that the future is in data services,” says Gregory Milken, Managing Director of March Capital Partners. “The machine learning technology that Dojo Madness brings to the table is a game changer for League of Legend players, and I can’t wait to see it rolled out to additional games.”

DOJO Madness was founded in December 2014 by Jens Hilgers, eSports veteran and Founder of ESL, Markus Fuhrmann, co-founder of Delivery Hero, and Christian Gruber.

About DOJO Madness

Passionate gamers by heart, DOJO Madness is a team of eSports veterans building next generation tools that help gamers master their play. DOJO’s technology-driven products solve real issues gamers and community are facing every day.

*Source: Global Growth of eSports Report. 2015 Newzoo. More info can be found here.

Press Contact:

Kalie Moore

DOJO Madness Head of Communications

[email protected]

[phone]

@kaliemoore

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LOLSUMO User numbers keep growing past 30,000 Daily Actives

Berlin, 03/03/2016

User growth continues to speed up yet again for LOLSUMO. We grew our Daily Active Users to 30,000 just two months into 2016. This tripled the numbers from our December update.

We expect our DAU to continue along their present upward trend with our new Superlatives feature as well as through polishing and incrementally improving our current features.

Superlatives provide League of Legends players with their best and worst performances across distinct categories. As an example, “Signature Champion” shows the top five champions that you win most games with. “See No Evil” makes you aware of the five champions that you placed the least wards with.

This allows our users to see interesting and fun facts about their own play over a longer period of time. They are able to spot key information that helps to determine their strongest champions. Users are also enabled to determine the champions they play often but need to improve on. Superlatives furthermore serve to highlight hidden discrepancies in your play style. A support player might realize that he places less wards on Thresh than with Nami or Morgana and correct this mistake.

We would like to thank our community for the continued support in comments and app ratings:

This always motivates us to push even harder to build and further improve LOLSUMO.

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Sneak Peek: New Item Build Calculation

LOLSUMO is putting the finishing touches on a new sophisticated system to calculate your personal best build for your current match.

Becoming better at League of Legends depends on a lot of factors like discipline, time investment, acquiring new skills and refining existing ones. The same is true for LOLSUMO.

LOLSUMO’s item builds are powered by big data. Every build is calculated specifically towards your current matchup. We are factoring in data like the ranks of everyone in the match, all champions involved, the lanes these champions will be on, and a lot of additional information. This system is right at the heart of LOLSUMO, the engine that powers it all. Engines can be tweaked and tuned, and us being DOJO MADNESS after all, we like to go a step further.

In order to come up with potential item builds, you can gather a lot of data focusing on how often an item ends up winning.

We have been able to put a number on how good an item build actually is. That is understandably a lot more complex, but also a lot more sophisticated than the method mentioned before. We are able to rate item synergies as well as factor in your champion, your lane and your opponent. As an example, we know that for Champion A, “Item 4”  is strong when used with “Item 67” against Champion F. Being able to put a number on this small piece of the puzzle allowed us to rate complete builds.

Once we were able to do that, we unleashed the (data-) kraken and collected a metric ton of information to calculate the best item builds used for a specific champion against a specific opponent on a specific lane.

This does not mean that there may not be better builds around that no one has found yet. The beautiful thing here is that as soon as someone tries them, we will know them, too - and by extension, any of our users who finds himself or herself in the same matchup. We are constantly processing big data and updating our guides accordingly to give you the best one possible.

Why is this better than our previous system? 

One example: 

Suppose there is a true killer build, but the player using it loses his match due to a teammate disconnecting, and he never tries it again. When purely looking into win/loss statistics, you will miss out on this build. Not so with our system. 

And the cherry on top of our cake: We have mathematical proof that our rating system works. We test it blindfolded against reality, and when it says a build is good, reality thinks so, too.

That is all for now, dear readers. 

We are looking forward to arming our users with the new LOLSUMO item builds, and we’ll see you (in more ways than one) on Summoner’s Rift.

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Player comments after Week 1 of EU LCS

Youngbuck - Coach for G2 Esports: “You finished week 1 with 2-0, but did you think at any point that you might lose one of these matches?”

Kikis, Top Laner for G2 Esports: “Who do you think are your biggest rivals at TOP lane?”

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What is going on in our office?

We wonder, sometimes. Then again, we are a company dedicated to supporting eSports and helping gamers master their play. Just a normal day in the office, then!

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The path to victory

MOBA-Games like Dota2 are highly complex constructs of rules and choices. The decision of which skills to spec and when shapes the way the game plays out and may propel you ahead to win, or leave you behind to lose. Our data science department made such a path visible based on the Frankfurt Major.

The image below (click here for a larger view) depicts a tree of skill choices being made with the Winter Wyvern and the amount of times they were chosen (Numbers from 0.01 to 1.00 are percentages from 1% to 100% respectively. The second number depicts the amount of times the choice was made). The most successful build path is marked in red.

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Happy new year!

The DOJO team wishes you a happy and productive new year!

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Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas and a happy new year from the DOJO MADNESS team!

Stay healthy, keep to your new years resolutions, and enjoy the holidays together with your families... just remember to switch on your LOLSUMO when you engage in some merry carnage on Summoner’s Rift!

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LOLSUMO hits another record high with 10.000 daily active users

Berlin, 12/14/2015

Continuous and accelerating growth has led us to new heights with our LOLSUMO App. Only 5 months from our global launch we just surpassed 10,000 Daily Active Users and doubled our November averages. The mobile app is holding steady at 75% Android and 25% iOS users, while user numbers continue to grow on our recently released Web App as well.

We want to thank all our incredible users for their continued support and encouragement, which we see reflected in an average of 4.87 stars over the last 1,000 reviews and ratings in the mobile app stores.

Here is a snapshot of what the community had to say about LOLSUMO:

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LOLSUMO available on world wide web!

Developing a hugely complex app like LOLSUMO is always a challenge. Not only do you have to make sure that all virtual nuts and bolts are in place, you also have to adapt your app to different platforms and systems. Android and iOS are the most prominent, but what about people who are using a different or outdated phone OS or who want to use their second monitor? 

Of course we at DOJO MADNESS want to include all of them as well!

This is where our new LOLSUMO web app for PC and MAC comes in. 

With our app now being available on the web, we can welcome virtually any League of Legends player into our LOLSUMO community and give the player full control on how he or she wants the LOLSUMO experience to be like. Our web app is currently in Beta as we keep adding new features to bring it up on par with our mobile apps. 

Head over to http://app.lolsumo.com and give it a test run!

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Key Performance Indicators for League of Legends Gamers

The title above may seem a bit odd: Who would think about attributing corporate terms to gaming, a culture about as far away from serious business as possible? More people than you might think, as a significant increase in our player retention shows.

With a game as complex as LOL, it can be quite hard to understand where you are in terms of experience and personal game skill. Riot Games employs an Elo-based matchmaking system and various leagues, going from Bronze, Silver and Gold to Platinum, Diamond, Master and finally Challenger tier levels. Each of these levels denotes a higher experience and skill level as well as deeper knowledge of the game. Statistics are already available ingame as well as on various websites, but it is the interpretation of stats that is the really valuable piece of information here. Taking an in-depth look at all the important stats within the game, and then comparing those to other people in your skill range, to finally see your own personal skill develop. As a player, these stats are your KPIs that you need to be aware of and track to see performance improve. They tell you how well you did in relation to the league you are in.

Let’s have a look at the example below from a Gold level player:

We see that this Jarvan IV player on Jungle did quite well. Wards placed and KDA (Kill/Death/Assist) Ratio are both on Gold level, which is what we would expect from a player in that ranked group. Creep score is above average. Gold per Minute is looking even better, and Damage done to Champions is way above what you would expect from a player in this league and match position. If you are that player, you can have a look at these stats and be content that you played very well in this match - you carried the team to victory. In the next matches, you would probably try to do the same as in this match, with a little more focus on placing more wards, or avoiding a too risky play that may result in your death and hence lower your KDA.

All in all, LOLSUMO ranks this performance as Platinum Perfomance in total, meaning that if you continued to perform like that, the chances of you reaching at least Platinum rank are very good. The app allows you to get a pretty clear idea of where your efforts ingame are going and where you can improve - on one screen, with easy to understand information and iconic graphics. On the other hand, LOLSUMO also shows your performance in context. Losing a match can be upsetting to a lot of players, but if you did well (and LOLSUMO actually proves that it was so), then you have a silver lining in that loss. It can be very comforting to know that losing the game was literally not your fault, but even then you can use the information displayed to increase your win chances in your next match. And, let’s not forget, since we’re all gamers - this is a nice topic of conversation the next time you talk to your friends.

All in all, being able to interpret and track performance correctly is a long step in the right direction of understanding that the rating system in LOL is not an absolute measure of skill, but rather a measure of progress - a progress that LOLSUMO makes measureable, visible, trackable, and actionable. Understanding this key fact is key to winning and enjoying the game more.

So, are you tracking your Gaming KPIs yet? If not, head over to the app store of your choice and download LOLSUMO!

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5 questions with... Maciej Strömich!

From Darina: Maciej - where do you get your t-shirts and how many do you own?

In most cases those are 1 day releases from different sites. If you dig deep enough you will find tons of them. How many I already own? Not sure ;-) Considering the size of my t-shirt shelf and the space left on it I would assume over 100. Sometimes I feel like a treasure hunter when digging through the pile I find tees that I forgot I had.

Tell us what you do at DOJO MADNESS!

I’m doing widely understood System Administration. Currently my main focus is around cloud infrastructure and delivering services which are not provided by AWS itself (like RabbitMQ or ElasticSearch clusters) in a highly available, redundant and self healing manner. I’m an Netflix way of doing stuff evangelist and a AWS fanatic.

What do you like to do outside the office?

I’ve few hobbies and I try to be as active as possible. If weather conditions allows it I fly RC heli’s, I love photography, I bike all year long (there’s no bad weather only wrong clothes) and I travel a lot. Recently I also started to run as I applied for 5k run in Portland, OR which will take place during PyCon US in May 2016.

What are your favorite video games or video game heroes?

I play mostly board and card games but because question is about computer ones I choose to play toilette-kind of games, because my attention span lasts no longer than 5-10mins ;-). In the past I played Fallout, Fallout 2 and Heroes of Might & Magic 3 a lot and my fave hero was Gelu from Shadows of Death expansion set who could transform archers into sharpshooters which did’t have distance penalty while attacking. From newer games I liked first 3 Assassin’s Creed and Uncharted Saga.

Mind sharing a fun fact about yourself that people might not expect?

42

Nominate the next person from the staff to do this little interview, and ask him/her a random question!

Lukas - how much time do you need to solve 3x3 Rubick’s Cube.