“Dota Dream Job” by Virtus.pro: announcing the new host!
Virtus.pro, one of the most decorated esports clubs in the world, together with VK run a wide-scale casting for the role of Dota 2 host. Now it’s time to announce the winner who is Karina “Curry” Zabarova.
All the candidates for this ambitious position went through a number of challenges: an open try-out with video-introductions of themselves, where anyone could take part; second stage with competitive videos that were published on Virtus.pro page in VKontakte; and final stage where the best candidates got to work with the Dota 2 roster to make short interactive videos with the star players.
Karina “Curry” Zabarova:
“My first thought when I found out I won was “AAAAAAAAAA!” Did I doubt I was going to win? Of course I did! Publishing my video with the #DotaDreamJob hashtag I didn’t even hope to get this far. I’ve been a fan of VP for several years now, but I only recently started constantly visiting the club’s page on VK with the start of this project. In addition to scrolling through the posts about the club’s rosters I started to look for the news regarding the “DotaDreamJob”, desperately refreshing all the comments. There were a lot of great competitors with years of experience in esports, and I even cheered for some of them! Did I think I had a chance to go all the way? I had a hunch, because it has been my dream for the past 6 years, and now it has finally come true! There’s an exciting journey ahead of us, and I hope that I’d be able to spice things up a bit, or shall I say, add some curry to the serious meal that is esports.”
Maria Vorobyeva, Head of Community Management Department on VK:
“We are glad to have been a part of this big event as we know for how long the VP fans have been waiting for a new host. Thanks to a large number of tools and media services we managed to run a large-scale casting, and helped to find the best of the best. We thank all the contestants and the audience for their participation in this project, and also congratulations to Karina and good luck on her new dream job!”
Nikita Lutov, Head of Media of Virtus.pro:
“You have no idea how hard it was to pick the winner among a huge number of talented people and flashy applications. After 2 difficult, yet productive months we are delighted to welcome Karina to our team! She demonstrated all the qualities that we expected from the contestants, and instantly won over a huge number of people: from club fans to players and employees of various departments of VP. It is especially valuable that, together with the VK team, we made the competition large-scale and diverse. In support of the project, we recorded a cool music video with Elem, filled with the atmosphere of support from the most dedicated fans and confidence in our favorite team, developed bright stickers for club’s fans, and much more, which made it possible to attract maximum interest even among those who were not yet intimately familiar with Virtus .pro. We have ambitious plans and a lot of content ahead of us, which Karina will definitely do a great job with, due to the support of our loyal fans and, of course, a team of colleagues. Welcome to Virtus.pro!”
Karina Zabarova has been a gaming geek since childhood: Dota, CS and other games used to take up her time after school. Her adult life has been devoted to work, which allowed her to gain a lot of experience in television and radio journalism, producing, as well as public speaking and even design. As part of the competition, she acted as a producer and turned the players into freshmen of the music industry in one video, and also won the hearts of the audience and employees of Virtus.pro.
“Dota Dream Job” casting started in the official Virtus.pro page on VKontakte in early August 2022. In support of the project, rap artist Elem recorded the track “GANG” about the players of the Dota 2 roster, which hit the charts of the VK Music site from day one and topped the Fonk genre playlist. The dynamic music video for the track featuring the stars of the team, released in September, has collected more than 4.3 million views. The project also included a new exclusive set of animated VKontakte stickers with the club's mascot Boris the Bear, which were issued in three stages for completing various tasks using a special community chatbot. Since the release, the set has been added more than 200 thousand times. In total, more than 115,000 club fans took part in the voting for the casting contestants.