Done Differently

There are a lot of people who think that there’s one way to succeed. It’s advice you’ll get from every teacher, TED Talk, and mystical oracle you’ll ever come across, and it’s easy advice to follow. Look at who’s winning right now, note down everything they do, and copy it to the letter. But at Tundra, we do things differently. An esports organization isn’t an IKEA cabinet (although the best ones do  come from Europe). If you look at another organization and try to copy their notes on how to brand yourself and how to play your games, you’ll just end up with a worse version of them. That’s why Tundra, from the lobby to the timeline, have been charting our own path. 

When our Dota 2 team won ESL One Fall 2021, it wasn’t by playing the meta. When going up against top-tier squads like T1 and OG, we didn’t try to beat them at their own game or follow a standard game plan. Instead, we defined the meta. Leon “Nine” Kirilin taking Winter Wyvern mid? Sure. Neta “33” Shapira rushing Helm of the Dominator? Watch him crush lane with it. Nine taking Keeper of Light mid? Yeah, why not. “I don’t think about playing off-meta heroes specifically,” Nine told Win.GG, “sometimes I just see a hero and think that it has something very powerful as mid.”

That’s the Tundra attitude. Is it conventional? Has it been done? We don’t care. The Tundra tribe know our own talents and we play to our strengths, everyone else be dammed. It’s not just in the game lobby—our social media team have been pushing the line on trash talk with an anarchic, playful attitude you won’t get anywhere else. Just look at our project of giving the teams we play a rebrand on the house:

OG? More like Throw GG. 

Fnatic? Yeah, that’s Tragic. 

Team Spirit? Not anymore. 

Plus, we’re not afraid to poke some fun at ourselves too. (We’re not still mad. Honest. Please believe us. Not even a little.) 

So that’s Tundra. We’re not just another org. We’re esports done differently.