The end of the main event of the Dota 2 International 2015 tournament in Seattle on Saturday saw five gamers, a group that included a 16-year-old, go home as millionaires.

As reported by Reuters, teams of video gamers playing characters ranging from wizards to monsters, battled for close to a week, trading digital punches, fireballs, and lightning strikes over the course of the popular online game tournament.

The Dota 2 International tournament is now in its fifth year. It has grown in magnitude every year, with popularity and possible winnings increasing with every edition. Back in 2011, the organizers had a grand prize of $1 million up for grabs. This year, the prize pool has climbed to $18 million, with the main event witnessed by a sold-out crowd in the 17,000-seat Key Arena in Seattle.

As noted by the report, Syed Sumail Hassan, the 16-year-old who moved from Pakistan to Illinois to chase his dreams of becoming a professional gamer, is most known for playing a powerful electricity-based champion for the team.

"It just means everything to me," he said succinctly.

Players and teams came from all over the world, with participants hailing from the United States, China, South Korea, Ukraine Russia, among other nations to compete for a share of the pool prize. Roughly $6.6 of the $18 million pool prize went to the winning five-player squad.

The Reuters report notes that Ben Musset, 24, drove two days from his native Ohio jammed in a car packed with friends. Musset told Reuters that he found watching video games, referred to by his ilk as "eSports," "more appealing than traditional spectator sports."

"Traditional sports are kind of boring," he said. "eSports are the future."

According to Dota 2's publisher, Valve, about 11.5 million users log on monthly to play the game, in which the object of the game is to destroy each other's bases in an online arena.