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

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.

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 processes. 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 timestamp.

Games can generally be divided into three ‘‘phases’’—laning, mid-game, and late-game. In the laning phase, players will focus on killing minions and monsters in order to gain gold so as to purchase or upgrade equipment. Top lane and mid lane will usually house one laner each, and bot lane will usually house two. Since champions from opposing teams share the lane while farming, skirmishes can often break out between players, although this depends on how willing they are to engage during this phase. It is common that one player will take on the role of ‚‘jungler’’—this player will not farm minions in lane but rather the monsters in the jungle, emerging into lane in order to kill an enemy laner if they have pushed away from the safety of their own defensive tower.

In the mid-game, champions roam the map and group in an attempt to kill large monsters, destroy towers, and pick off enemy champions who stray too far from safety. If one team is ‘‘snowballing’’ (gaining so much gold from killing enemy champions that they become exponentially effective at killing via the items they are able to afford), it is possible for them to win the game during this phase.

In the late game, most champions will be sufficiently geared and will be looking to kill all or most of the enemy team and subsequently destroy their nexus or, if this is not possible, destroy defensive structures or kill Baron Nashor (a powerful monster whose death confers significant stat boosts for the slayer’s entire team) if it is available. Once the nexus is destroyed, the game is over and players are placed into the postgame lobby where they can chat and view individual and team statistics.

Related Research Approaches

Competitive Gaming

Metagaming