League of Legends is “the most played PC game” in North America and Europe, apparently—which sounds like a stupid claim, until you hear the really impressive number: As of October of 2013, the number of daily active players is 12 million. 12 MILLION. My goodness.
I’d never played this game (though it was released in 2009), and though I very much doubt I am the target audience, I decided to give it a try just to figure out what, for some people, the world of “videogames” really looks like these days. Perhaps this article, if nothing else, will give you an idea of what the game looks like without you spending the time installing the game and all of its updates.
Step one of League of Legends: pick a hero. The game is free to play, but with a little money there are many, many options of heroes to play. Your options are big, heroic and masculine; tiny, rodent-like and adorable; or boobs. There are also “skins” to choose from that can make your boobs shinier, if you’d like. Woo. (Remember what I said about “not the target audience”?)
- LEAGUE OF LEGENDS This League of Legends wallpaper displays a great asset of the game: shiny pirate boobs.
The free-to-play aspect of League is nice, and it does make the game easy to get into. It also is nice that, from the start, it is easy to catch up, because at the beginning of each game all of the characters start at the same level: unlike a game like World of Warcraft, there’s not a big benefit to spending hours killing wolves in the forest (although, to be honest, I liked that part of WoW). So when I started playing LoL (teehee) this weekend with friends, I didn’t feel completely impotent—I was terrible at the game just because I was terrible at it, not because I hadn’t already put a year of my life into leveling up my character.
To play League of Legends, you and your team of friends go fight against another team of the same size. You need to destroy some big shiny things in their base after destroying other big shiny things in their base, fighting opposing heroes and their little minions. And then at the end of the game you start over again. Hm.
But here’s, other than the boobs, why this game isn’t for me: League of Legends is a sport. I say that not just because there is money in being a professional player, and that there are tournaments in the Staples Center—though that is impressive. League of Legends is the type of game that’s wildly popular, based on carefully honed hand-eye coordination skills, and not the kind of thing my mom would be interested in. Each game has the same framing principles; it’s re-playable but repetitive. It is very important to the people who love this genre of games (MOBAs: Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas), just like the football is very important to football-loving types. But unless there is some heartwarming community-uniting story going on, League‘s reach isn’t far beyond its players and fans. And just like football, League doesn’t really seem to care that it’s endorsing the unrealistically-giant-men and mostly-just-sexual-women gender roles to our young people. (I know, blah blah blah it’s just entertainment, shut up, etc.)
I’m interested in videogames as an art form: they are a wonderful way to tell stories in a way that books, movies, and plays really can’t. Videogames can discuss social issues and change minds, especially these days, and that’s not what League is about. And that’s fine… but I’m looking for hours of entertainment, I’m not going to be looking for boobs, no matter how shiny they are. Fortunately for the people who make League of Legends, they really don’t need my endorsement.
Great job, Angela!
Isn’t this one of those games with a supposedly “toxic” community?
I’d like to add, as an avid league of legends player (over 800 games played). There is more to a champion(hero) than just looks, each champion comes with their own unique kit of abilities, these abilities are what set each champion apart.
What lets league so replayable is the fact that you will almost never play the same game twice, or at least you’d forget the other game first. with 10 champions in a game at once and a total of 117 champions in the entire game, you can imagine how little the chance is of having the same champions in a game as you did last game. Added on top of that each player has a different play style for any champion they play.
Seeing to the claimed toxicity of the community, its like a sick person in a group of perfectly healthy people. Everyone notices the one that different and the one that draws the most attention to itself. If you pick up league and you happen to run into a person like this there in a inbuilt mute button on the in-game score screen, so if they are really bothering you, ignoring is always an option.
League is by no means for everyone, but league is more build towards more competitive people with their ranked system, the people who want to win and get to higher ranks(or just like to brag about being a diamond level player :P), Don’t get to caught up in the game though, it is just a game, if you are getting a little too invested in each game just take a step back.
If you are just looking to have some fun, you can play a normal mode games where nothing is tracked, and you can play really whoever you want(or whoever is on free week at the time) and there are very few toxic people.
I’d hate to turn this into an add but if you really want to get into league, you should look up the “Learn the League” E-book, Its purpose is to help new players to not have to deal with a big learning curve and teach you important things in league such as the slang(ADC, Junger, CS, ect.) or what are the structures that keep killing you are (i really wish i had this when i was starting out XD).
Anyways, I just thought you might want some insight from someone who has played a sizable amount of games(and doesn’t call the inhibitors/nexus big shiny things :P).
-Luke
Nice article! As a relatively new LoL player, and a long-time WoW player, I’d say that LoL is repetitive in the same way that WoW Battlegrounds are repetitive. Yes – the objectives are always the same but the journey to the objectives is quite fluid. There’ s a bit of a learning curve but once you get the hang of things it becomes a nice diversion from the carrot-on-a-stick mentality of MMOs.
The community can be rather toxic (just like any other video game) but you don’t have to fight the internet tough-guys right out of the gate. Play a few bot games (people vs. machines) to hone your skills.
Have fun! =)