League of Legends

About the Game

League of Legends is a Free-To-Play MOBA-type game available for PC. Published on 27 October 2009, the game of the american developer studio Riot Games has gained "a level of academic attention appropriate for its significance on both the eSports industry and the contemporary game culture." According to PC GAMER in a press release to the 10th anniversary in October 2019, League of legends reaches about 8 million player logins everyday and is therefore one of the most popular and relevant games throughout the gaming culture these days.

Core Game Mechanics

Summoner´s Rift

Standart Game on ‚Summoner´s Rift‘

In a standard game, which usually lasts between 15 minutes and one hour, two teams composed of 5 players clash on the battle arena called ‚summoner's rift‘, each of them controlling one of 148 currently available champions (January, 2019). The Rift is a square area with a diagonal riverbed dividing the pitch into two halves. Those separated sections are in control of each team: In the bottom left corner lies the base with the so called ‚spawn point‘ (starting point of the player´s champions) and the ‚Nexus‘ of the ‚blue‘ team. The upper right corner is the base location of the opposing team ‚red‘. As shown in the picture on the right, there are also the three lanes 'Top', 'Middle' and 'Bottom', which connect the team bases and by intersecting with the riverbed frame the four remaining zones: known as the 'jungle'.

Nexus, Turrets, Minions and Monsters

To win the game, the opponents ‚nexus‘ must be destroyed. Deep in the center of a base it is protected by two heavy turrets, which have to be demolished first. The way to get there along the lanes is fortified with further turrets, three of which reinforce the entrances to a base and two more are positioned on each lane, to control a certain area and provide visibility and protection for the player´s champions. Once the first minute mark has passed, the actual game begins with the spawning of ‚minions‘ and ‚monsters‘. These NPCs are mainly intended to generate gold for the players if killed by them. While monsters are placed in their fixed positions in the jungle and only engage in the game when being attacked, the minions spawn in waves of 30 seconds in the bases of both teams and march in groups along each lane towards each other to meet in the middle of the field. They attack enemy minions, turrets and champions in their way and, as the game progresses, slowly make their way towards the enemy nexus.

Research-Relevant Topics of the Game

Playing the Meta - Competitive Gaming in League of Legends

This section connects to the research approach Metagaming

See also: Competitive Gaming

The following serves to elaborate the scientific analysis of metagaming in League of Legends. Further understood as a metagame expertise in a binary relation to mechanical expertise, the following refers mainly to the work of Scott Donaldson: Mechanics and Metagame: a binary expertise in League of Legends (2009) and thereby related work. While he defines mechanical expertise as related "to in-game elements such as interface navigation and avatar control", his definition of metagame expertise is "the awareness of and ability to negotiate the game around the game: it could be the formulation of new strategies after a patch, the use of mathematical techniques to determine the effectiveness of a particular item or ability combination, or the analysis of data sets for the purposes of improving one's in-game effectiveness."

Mechanical Expertise

Like other MOBAs or RTS games, League of Legends comes with a high state of complexity in terms of game mechanics, knowledge and the strategic decision making building upon. Once reaching the maximum level of 30 and owning at least 20 champions, players are unlocked for the ‚ranked‘ mode and the league system. Until this stage a player has to master a certain basic mechanical skillset and gain some fundamental knowledge about the various game components. Therefore the game offers a brief tutorial to new players about how the game works by simulating isolated in-game situations against an AI and after that unlocks the ‚normal‘ mode - the unpunished free playground to experience the game. Like Donaldson (2009) states, this "inbuilt mechanisms for learning are not extensive enough to give players anything beyond a basic understanding of gameplay. New players receive only limited assistance from the game system in developing mechanical expertise."

Basic and more complex Concepts of the Game: The three Game Phases

This wide gab between the basics taught in the tutorial and the actual utilization of this knowledge in a real in-game scenario becomes apparent by taking a closer look to the general progress of the game - the three game phases ‚laning‘,‚mid-game‘ and ‚late-game‘. During the ‚laning‘ phase, the main focus of the players is on efficiently farming gold by killing minions and monsters in order to gain important items. As an example for higher mechanical complexity the difficulty here to is not to let your minions advance too far into the enemy territory, respectively to attack the enemy turret with them at the right moments and not overextend in the danger zone. Getting killed by an opposing champion in this early stage leads to a huge disadvantage which can ‚snowball‘ as the game progresses. After the first turret falls the game transitions into the ‚mid-game‘ phase.

As implicated, the game phases are more fluid and not coupled to a fixed time stance. The loss of a turret gives the game a new dynamic: In the ‚mid-game‘ champions who previously had fixed positions on the affected lane start to move across the map and increase the pressure on other lanes, group up with teammates to kill larger monsters (which provides buffs) and destroy other turrets or enemy champions in skirmishes. If a team's advantage increases significantly up to this stage of the game, an inferior team may surrender due to lack of comeback chances and winning conditions. The ‚late-game‘ is characterized by nearly and fully equipped champions who gather in their teams and try to take out the entire opposing team in complex team fights, destroy their Nexus or kill Baron Nashor, the most powerful monster on Summoner's Rift, which provides a strong buff for the players and can decide the match. Both, ‚mid-game‘ and ‚late-game‘ scenarios require a high degree of communication and strategic decision-making combined with timing. This sets the link to the metagame - how the game is played.

The Metagame of League of Legends

Champion´s Abilities, Item Build and Runes

"Each champion also comes with a ‘‘recommended’’ item build, although players must often deviate from this in order to compete effectively against certain enemy team compositions." (431)

"Where new players might use abilities slowly and independent of one another and struggle landing skill shots, more experienced players with stronger mechanical expertise over their champion will be able to utilize the full kit in order to defeat even enemies who have higher stats and better equipment." (433)

Related Research Approaches

Competitive Gaming

Metagaming