League of Legends is considered one of the most popular MOBA, or multiplayer online battle arena, games available. Many parts of this game are characteristic to traditional MOBA games, such as its focus on destroying the enemy base, third person control of a character, dependence on teamwork to win, the use of sidelanes and a jungle, and the respawn mechanic. League of Legends is often compared to many other relevant MOBA games, such as DOTA 2, Heroes of the Storm, or Smite. League of Legends is by far the most popular of these listed MOBAs, most likely due to its uncomplicated playstyle and high skill cap.
League of Legends has been around for 9 years since its release by Riot Games in 2009, and has since become a popular eSports title, having hosted multiple annual competitions with multi-million viewers worldwide. Since its release, League of Legends has released over 120 new champions to its original 17 upon release. Today, League of Legends has become well known as the most popular MOBA game, and is consistently in the top 10 most popular games in the world. Surprisingly, although League of Legends is the most popular MOBA game, it is not the first MOBA game released, with DOTA, or Defense Of The Ancients, being widely accepted as the first MOBA game ever. League of Legends and DOTA have a very clear difference in mechanics, however. The most blatant would be DOTA’s allowing of friendly fire, or attacking ally units. This is likely the key difference that simplifies League of Legends gameplay compared to DOTA gameplay, making League of Legends a more popular game for unexperienced MOBA players.
There are a massive list rules that govern how League of Legends is played and won, but the main ones are: stay within map boundaries, no friendly-fire, or attacking allied units, abilities are only able to be used after cooldowns are over, and players may only control their chosen champion. Despite these rules being very basic in principle, together they form very complex strategic tools that dictate how a team may win the game. Like many other games, League of Legends relies on this principle, called emergence, to create a more complex playstyle that allows for League of Legends to be the strategic MOBA that it has become today.
League of Legends has a interesting culture associated with it. The League of Legends player base is often seen to consist mostly of Asian players, such as Chinese or Korean players. In fact, the Korean server alone takes up an entire quarter of the League of Legends player base. Despite this, European and North American servers make up 50% of all players of League of Legends, showing that the game is not, in fact, majority Asian. On top of this preconceived notion that League of Legends is played mostly by Asians, there is also a notion that League of Legends players are very “toxic” or rude to other players. Although there is no hard evidence of such notions, it can not be denied that Riot Games saw that the current player conduct enforcement system was inadequate, as can be seen by their rework of the honor system.
League of Legends’ popularity can also be partially attributed to its incorporation of lore and narratives to give its champions special personalities. In game, these personalities are incorporated through champion voices and special interactions with other champions. Though League of Legends is definitely played more for its game aspect rather than its narrative aspect, it can not be denied that the addition of a story behind this game adds to the game appeal and content. The story behind the Noxian and Demacian forces allows for the game to create interesting rivalries and stories that enhance gameplay, making that much more than “just a game.”
League of Legends has potential to be a more “serious” game than it appears to be. The game itself is based upon much math and calculation. Although most of this is currently done by the game itself, it is possible to transfer some of this calculation to the players themselves, make this game a more mentally demanding and educating game than it currently is. Furthermore, due to the game’s popularity, it has potential for advertainment and to allow for Riot Games to use League of Legends as a brand to advertise.
Of course, as with many things, along with League of Legends also comes with some risks. There is always the risk of becoming addicted to playing League of Legends and wasting too much time on it, sacrificing sleep and productivity for playing this game, as well as eventually sacrificing one’s well being to play a video game. However, these findings are mostly due to the Active Media perspective of research, which is conducted by researchers who don’t have experience with video games. Although limited, research done by another perspective, the Active User perspective, actually shows much more positive results.