Final Essay

For my Games and Society university class I choose to do my in-depth review on League of Legends. The reason why I choose to do it on this title was because I have 6 years of experience with the game and have watch it progress to the biggest competitive game in history. Here I will be stating the genre, aesthetics, intended audience, origins, history, culture and impact. Beginning with the genere of the game, League of Legends falls under subcategory of Multiplayer online battle arena or moba for short. The main category is that it is a strategy game with its focus on having careful and skillful gameplay in order to win. Teammates must cooperate and fully understand the basis of the character they are playing and the enemies they are going against. What makes this game pop out the most out of other mobas is that it sparked the interest of the 5v5 teambase game. The History of the game begins in October 27, 2009 prior to that it was under closed beta beginning April 20. This was Riot games first and only game as an indie game developer and was a span of the idea of dota but it soon started to gain attention and take off into the biggest and most played game in the world toping World of warcraft which had more years of being released. A couple of key events are June 18, 2011 where the first competitive event over at Dreamhack Sweden, 2012 where the Korean servers first launched which opened up the korean teams to join and dominate the competitive scene and early 2014 with the launch of the MacOs client. There are many more large events that have happened like the most recent 2017 World championship which was held in Beijing, China and peaking at 80 million unique viewers, but till this date it is still on top with bi-weekly updates. The aesthetics of the game has a beautiful and unique balance between looks, mechanics and sounds. The looks of the game has changed throughout the years with the map moving away from just a forestry type area into a large battleground on top a mountain with attention to detail coming to the largest areas like the river with large tree formations around it to the tiniest things like animals or shrines in the jungle. They have kept up with the champions as well keeping them fresh and interesting as the years go by. The core mechanics of the game are quite simple from champion to champion and only change depending how big the champion is. When you break them down individually each champion has their own kit and playstyle with some being able to phase through walls like Kayn and others having crowd control effects like Alistar the list goes on with each 141 characters having their own mechanic. Lastly, the sound of League of Legends is quite simple with ambient noises to sound effects. There is one champion skin that does have an effect on the sound and that is Sona making it into an edm concert. The cultural influence depend on where you in the servers. Beginning with North American servers treating the game more like a business type with the new competitive teams being bought by famous Nba teams like the Golden State Warriors and the introduction of big companies for the advertisement. While the Korean server almost treats it like sport comparing it to what americans would for football and treating their players like celebrities. What brings the playerbase together is the little events where they show off users drawings for example the Rp for drawing event. Evene at major events not dealing with the game players go as their favorite character and show off their love for the game. Though this game was advertise for teens it has drilled into the hearts of many no matter what age with their constant support to the community. Though this game is really fun to play there are some minor risk that come with it. The first is being addiction to the game because of how each game can come out different as the rest but a way to go against that is to control how much you play. Another is with the popularity with the game comes many players with that there are some undesired players with major toxicity but Riot games has kept a great job to monitor that with 14 day bans to perma bans. Over all this League of Legends has found a way to drill into not just my heart but into millions of players around the world. The fun factor of the game is split into two with the first being the random things a player can do with their friends like Ap Malphite and the second being the seriousness of the ranking system the the strive to being the top player or something in between. What brings the players to continue playing it is the insane replayability with each game being totally different from the past and Riots strive to changing up the meta every patch. I recommend not just to a friend but to everyone to at least give league of legends a try.