An image of Dota 2 player Topson in the outdoors.
© Red Bull
esports

Meet the real Topson in the latest episode of Esports Unfold

From Twitch streamer to two-time International winner, the Finnish OG star has done it all already. But as he tells us, he’s just getting started.
Written by Ben Sillis
10 min readPublished on
Few places on earth are more conducive to playing Valve’s massively popular team strategy game Dota 2 than Oulu, one of Finland’s northernmost cities.
As OG’s superstar midlaner Topias Miikka ‘Topson’ Taavitsaine told our camera crew when we visited him at his home recently: “It’s the winter, I don’t really go out. It’s too cold. I just stay inside, play Dota – that’s pretty much it.”
Time well spent? We’d say so. That focus and dedication has taken him, at the age of just 21, all the way to the biggest stage in all of esports, Valve’s The International. He and his team-mates on OG have won the mega-money Dota 2 tournament two years on the trot, making them the five most successful pro gamers of all time by prize money.
It wasn’t just being snowed in that led Topson to discover serious multiplayer gaming online, however. As he remembers in the latest episode of Esports Unfold, which you can see below, a crowded upbringing brought out his competitive streak early on.

10 min

Topias 'Topson' Taavitsainen

He's a renowned ability to carry games with unconventional heroes: meet Dota 2 legend Topson.

English +10

“I’m from a really big family. I’m one of the middle children. I have seven brothers and four sisters,” he says. “It made my fighting spirit, growing up, because you always had to compete. Mostly we would compete over games, and then we had one or two PCs max, so we’d compete for who gets to play. Always, you had to fight for things you wanted.”
Two of his older brothers, one of whom he still lives with, first introduced Topson to Dota back when it was still Defense of the Ancients, a muddled Warcraft 3 mod that added in team multiplayer based around a cavalcade of heroes, characters with their own individual powers that scaled over the course of a match. It was fun, but it was also hard to actually play.
“It was two of my older brothers. They were pretty good at Dota back then. At first, I wasn’t as good, but it made me want to get better,” recalls Topson. “The first time I played, I was eight years old. Back then, I could play one, two games a day, max.”
Something about Dota struck a chord with Topson. A team game, one that with an internet connection, you could play all-year round even in Finnish winter. One whose single map and array of colourful heroes masked an incredibly high skill ceiling.
Dota is, at the highest level, a big mind game. You try to get inside your opponent’s head.”
Topson
An image of Topson with his family.

Topson is one of twelve siblings

© Red Bull

Not for nothing is Topson known by fans for his “200 IQ” plays. “I guess my approach is a bit different from other midplayers,” he says. “I try to disrupt the enemy more and not focus on my own play too much. It’s a much more fun way to play. That’s why you always have an edge, because they always have to be the one reacting to your play.”
Cooking up a new career
Dota was little more than a hobby for Topson when he was younger. He was a gamer first, Dota fan second. Then Valve released Dota 2 in 2011, and everything changed. Here was a polished sequel, free to play, no patches or mods or mucking about in IRC trying to set up games.
“After that, it got a bit more serious,” says Topson. “It was the main game I played. I wanted to get better, but I didn’t expect anything.”
Growing up, Topson never considered a career as a pro gamer; instead, he thought he might be a chef. “I liked cooking, so I was like why not? It’s a useful skill to have. Can’t go wrong with that,” he reasoned.
He spent two years at culinary school, streaming in his spare time. He continued to climb the ladder until he was one of the highest ranked Dota 2 players in all of Europe. With his viewer count climbing, and his reputation building online, Topson decided to give pro Dota a chance.
“I had one year left, but during the summer break, that’s when I left,” he says. “Summer 2017 I decided to give it a shot, try to compete. I moved to my brother’s place here, I gave myself one year to get good enough, get in a team. My parents weren’t happy, obviously. They didn’t know much about Dota. They didn’t think it was a viable career choice. But my brothers and my friends who played were very supportive. They knew I had the skill to make it to the top, so they were there for me when I needed them.”
An image of Dota 2 player Topson.

Topson is eyeing a third TI in a row

© Red Bull

He streamed and solo-queued, streamed and solo-queued, ten hours a day, sometimes 12, dominating EU servers. “I watched every TI. I used to look up the pros. I felt like I could possibly be on that level, too. It made me push forward.”
But a year went by, and still he saw no interest from teams. Breaking into professional esports is still a chicken and egg situation. There are many top tier pubs players, but teams want players with LAN experience – and you need to be on a team to go to one. How to catch that big break?
As it turned out, OG’s crumbling roster in 2018 would be the stroke of luck Topson needed. Player departures led the team’s coach, Sébastien ‘Ceb’ Debs, to step in as a player, but they still needed one more signing in order to mount a last-ditch qualification bid for The International 2018.
“I was streaming back then. I had no hopes for anything for the rest of the season,” remembers Topson. That is, until a certain OG player came sliding into his DMs with a ticket to the big time. “Then I got a DM from Jesse [‘JerAx’ Vainikka] asking, ‘Yo, we’re kind of interested in you. If we decide to go are you down for it?’ So that’s how it began.”
Sure, OG were the only team asking. But OG weren’t just any team: they were four-time Major winners. And something about the squad resonated with Topson.
“They’re a different kind of team. They’re more like a family, a bunch of friends playing together,” Topson explains. When pushed to explain what separates OG, he thinks for a moment.
“OG try to work mostly on the mental side. They try to make that work. They try to make everybody comfortable, make everybody enjoy the time they have there. That was very special.”
Despite being a shot in the dark for OG, Topson slotted in straight away. “Stepping in was kind of easy for me,” he says. “At first I was nervous and stressed, but once I got to meet the guys, they’re really chill. They were very welcoming, just looking forward to playing the TI qualifiers.”
OG’s poor performance in 2018 meant that Valve did not extend a direct invite to the team. They would have to make a run through the qualifiers along with almost every other Dota team on the planet. But for Topson, there was no pressure. This was a chance to shine.
“I had nothing to lose and everything to gain,” he says. “I was nobody. There were no expectations of me. I’m a new player. Everything I do is a bonus. I was just looking forward to playing.”
Canada calling
Somehow, OG qualified for the group stages of TI8 in Vancouver, which are played in hotel rooms rather than an arena, but when the team qualified for the main event in the second week, Topson knew he had found his calling.
“I love being on stage,” Topson admits. “It gives me adrenaline, gets me pumping, it makes me hyped. All the things you worked on with your team during your bootcamp, you can show off your strategies, how far you’ve come. It’s the best feeling.”
Despite only narrowly qualifying from their group, OG then went on a remarkable run through the upper bracket, knocking out arch-rivals and former TI champions Evil Geniuses along the way. Topson attributes that to one aspect of OG’s game above all else.
“Playing with OG has made me understand how much of a team game Dota really is, and how little your individual skill actually matters when you’re at the top,” he says. “All that matters is how you play as a team, how you treat your team-mates, how can you make them play their A game on the stage. That’s what matters.”
Nowhere was that more obvious than in the TI8 grand finals. In the last game of a best of five against favourites PSG.LGD, OG went with a crazy draft of their favourite hero picks, almost as if they were playing for fun. It worked: OG took the Aegis of Champions, and more than $11 million in prize money for their troubles.
“It was a big shock. I didn’t really understand it,” Topson remembers. “It was my first big tournament and I won it. I couldn’t really understand it.” Nevertheless, “it gave me a lot of motivation to just keep going. My first thought was to just go back home and play more Dota. I didn’t really think about it.”
Nor did any fans or pundits consider the idea that OG might win again – after all, until 2019 no single team or player had ever won The International twice before. But OG did, eliminating PSG.LGD once more and then Team Liquid in the grand finals, and with the exact same roster of players as the year before. Topson attributes that second incredible run to the fact that once more, he and OG had no expectations placed upon them. They could just turn up and play.
“My second TI was a different experience. It was like going back home, going on the stage. I didn’t really have any extra pressure from the year before. We just went there to play some Dota, have fun.”
What next for Topson?
Now that OG have upset Dota convention with their record breaking wins, all eyes are looking ahead to The International 10 in Sweden this summer. This time, however, it’s fair to say that expectations really will be on OG. Can they make it a hat-trick? It’s not clear yet that the team are ready to answer that, but the question is clearly on the boys’ minds, and for now, Topson’s returned home to look ahead. What will he do next?
“My life has changed,” he readily admits. “Obviously I’m still doing the same thing, still staying in the same house. I still focus on Dota. But it has made me think more about the future, what do I want from life in the future? Other than that, not much. I’m playing with Dota, I’m still staying in the same house, still the same.”
“After TI9 I was like, really demotivated. I was, first month, sitting back at my parents’ home and I was really unsure if i wanted to continue or move on, or do other things with my life. But time moved on and I started missing Dota a bit. I was like, ah, I probably shouldn’t quit yet.”
The same can’t be said of all of his team-mates. A few weeks after we spoke, OG announced the departure of three players, Ceb, JerAx and Anathan ‘ana’ Pham, as well as new signings; TI winner Syed Sumail ‘SumaiL’ Hassan, Malaysian star Yeik ‘MidOne’ Nai Zheng and former Ninjas in Pyjamas support Martin ‘Saksa’ Sazdov.
Topson didn’t elaborate on this at the time, but did predict that OG would return once more to go the hat-trick. “I think we’re gonna come back for the next TI for sure. People think we might not win a third time, but we’re gonna show them.”
A new OG, a new TI, but the same old Topson intensity. The man who has never been eliminated from The International. Who are we to argue with him?

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Esports Unfold

Take an in-depth look at the lives and careers of some of gaming's most talented players.

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