League of Legends, to this date, has been the single most popular game worldwide. Yet it has not attracted much academic attention. LoL belongs to the MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena) game genre, where cooperation and competition are arguably the two most important features of any MOBA. This blog would use LoL as a sample to illustrate the role of competition and cooperation in MOBA games.
Every player of LoL has raged quitted once. This might be an exaggeration, but this statement underlines the frustrating side of cooperation in MOBA games. Cooperation can be rewarding if the game goes well, but since players are usually matched with strangers, discrepancies in skills and experiences often lead to unpleasant results. Players like to complain about why they can’t 1v5, but the game designers have changed the game stats and mechanics so much to the extent that cooperation is not an option anymore; it’s a necessity. AD carries have to cooperate with their supports; the jungle must roam along with mid-laners. Baron Nasher and dragon, two essential jungle objectives, are so strong that they can only be taken down by a group of players in early-to-mid games. The experience and gold-sharing mechanism also encourage players to cooperate. Some champions even produce synergies if played together. The cooperation mechanism of LoL not only made it difficult and fun but also made it popular. Friends can enter the same arena and play— and why not play with a friend who is trustworthy and skillful? In fact, people have called LoL a social game instead of a MOBA game.
Resources are limited. This is an economics principle that every UChicago student ought to know. In fact, game designers have made the resources in LoL limited, so that competition becomes inevitable. Even though every player receives gold from the system, killing enemy and enemy minions, the resources in the jungle are accessible to both teams. Hence, the jungle is where the most competition happens in high-tier games, where lane-kills are rare. The golds and buffs in the jungle can only belong to one team, while they are so indispensable in team fights and gaining map objectives such as turrets. Another mechanic that intensifies competition is lack of vision: a player cannot see through the fog of war and bushes unless he sets up wards. Lack of vision makes the game outcomes uncertain and complex. A good player always needs to guess the location of his/her opponents, gauge their tactics, and make counter-plays. Only with the lack of vision can ambushes, roams, and ganks happen, and avoid the game from becoming three simultaneous street fights.
But so what? Why should anyone care about cooperation and competition in League of Legends? I think there are at least three lesson academics can gain from studying LoL: 1. A decade of operation has provided a huge dataset for scholars to study players’ cooperative behaviors in video games, especially among strangers. 2. League of Legends has undergone more than a hundred patches, so it would be interesting to see how the game environment and mechanics have changed over time. 3. Cooperation and competition has become more and more important in all games, so it is important for designers to produce game mechanics such as War of Fog and Baron Nasher that encourage players to cooperate. LoL is rich in such mechanics.
Cooperation may be a necessity for players who wish to win, but there is also the extra dimension of player intention. Casual players might be fine with staying in their own lane and muting all; trolls might actually play with the intention to discourage cooperation and make their teammates angry. Of course, these player dynamics likely exist across all competitive multiplayer games, but I do think that the distinct roles of League of Legends makes things more complicated, ironically because it pits lane players against each other 1v1/2v2 in the early phases of the game. Usually the competition occurs when you perform well early, but your teammate in a different lane feeds, or vice versa (if all lanes do well on one team, it’s almost an assured victory in my experience).
I found your blog to be so interesting. I agree that League should have more recognition in the academic sphere; it would be a major lie to say LoL didn’t have any sort of impact in the gaming world.