XYZ with Q 6: Pudge Wars with Caio Brighenti ’20

Caio’s Pudge Wars is a mod of Dota 2 created by Valve Company. A mod is a custom game where new features, monsters, levels can be added to existing game. For example, Dota 2 is a recreation of DoTa by Valve, while DoTa is a mod of the popular Warcraft 3 by Blizzard Entertainment.

During our interview at Caio’s dorm, Caio and I each controlled a team of 5 players on his dual-monitored computer. The two teams are separated by an uncrossable river, and the one who get 50 kills first wins.

In Caio’s game world, Pudges, which are pudgy monsters, fight wars and throw bloody “meat hooks” to the other side of the river and grab enemies to their side. The meat hook, which is the only spell in his game, can also be upgraded in terms of its damage, radius, distance, and speed. Oh, and with a grand slam of totem, the whole earth can be fissured. Isn’t that cool?

But what blew my mind more is that all these designs, interactions, and functions are developed from scratch by non-professional game developers during their free time; and this first-year guy beside me is the core member of those masterminds.

“We didn’t start off thinking that it would be a big project. I love Dota 2, so I wanted to make its mod so that I can play it and other people can play it,” Caio said.

When Caio was little, he always enjoyed playing video games. At 12, he started messing around with his sister’s game by adding different clothes and got really interested in programming.

So when, in December 2013, Caio received a message from another player asking him to join an internet chat group for a potential mod of Dota 2, he didn’t hesitate.

At that time, Dota 2 had not released any mod yet. Players were anxiously waiting, and some started to poke around in programming files. They found some rudimentary source code created by Valve, and ideas about a mod made from scratch soon ran amok. Caio decided to work with a likeminded gamer; and the duo later worked as team for thousands of hours to develop the new game.

As ideas collided and developed, the team also grew. Caio and his partner were project heads, but they had members from all around the world, including countries like Germany and Poland.

“It is all out of passion for the game and the power of community,” Caio said, “everyone was doing it for free using their own time. For example, the icons were custom made by a professional artist. All our source code is also available on the internet.”

Caio did about 40% of the coding for the game. He also handled outreach, like writing blogs, contacting people, and managing project teams. But to develop a game with the scale of Dota 2, there were definitely difficult times. “We started from basically nothing. We just first changed this and that to understand how everything works. Sometimes I would stay up till 5 am to work with the New Zealand guy because of all the different time zones, then sleep till 7 am and go to school,” Caio recalled.

“Many people get frustrated very easily, but I don’t look at difficulties as frustrations. Just motivational challenges,” Caio said.

His efforts paid off. After a year and a half, Pudge Wars was released to players. Caio can still recall the day Valve released its official Dota 2 mod trailer in 2015. “I started screaming when I saw the video because our game was featured,” he said. “It started off as a little fun thing, but got big enough for Valve, a billion dollar company, to make a teaser video about it!”

Today, Pudge Wars is an official mod game on Valve’s website and the most well-known mod. Best of all, it’s free of charge. “Making money, that’s not the whole point of it,” Caio said.

Perhaps Caio’s incredible adaptability and maturity have something to do with his globe-crossing childhood. Originally born in São Paulo, Brazil, he moved to Michigan at age seven. Then it was back to to Santos, Brazil and Buenos Aires, Argentina—before he came to Colgate.

“I’ve been through so many moves, so many goodbyes, so I am not worried about going to new places any more. Because I have done it so many times, I thought new challenges as adventures,” Caio said.

As our mouses clicked fast and keyboards knocked furiously, a new game awaits.