4.3 Communicative Practices of League of Legends Gamers
4.3.4 Appraisals of Previous Plays
Appraisals of previous plays are comments about how well certain players perform in earlier engagements or some decisions they make that lead to great repercussions in the game. To put it in a more specific way, this communicative practice may be targeted on a player’s skills at or knowledge about playing particular champions, item builds, the use of abilities, resource
distribution, map awareness, objective priority, warding, laning, etc. Appraisals of previous plays are mostly in the linguistic form of, again, representatives, of someone’s points of view.
They could easily be associated with face work because they are subjective descriptives directed to plays of some target allies. In accordance with the emotions they are tagged along with, there are mainly two kinds of appraisals of the previous plays: positive and negative. I will first deal with positive appraisals in terms of their relationship with LoL gamer identity.
The following are some examples to be considered before we get into deeper discussion.
(39) Game No. 8 (Recorded on August 15, 2015) 1 達瑞斯擊殺飛斯（敵人）完成雙殺！
dareisi jisha feisi wancheng shuangsha
‘Darius has slain Enemy Fizz for a double kill!’
2 達瑞斯擊殺瑟雷西（敵人）完成三連殺！
dareisi jisha seleixi wancheng san liansha
‘Darius has slain Enemy Thresh for a triple kill!’
3 我軍消滅敵隊！
wojun xiaomie didui
‘Ally team has scored an ace!’
4 飛斯 (Support)： 好猛阿 hao meng a
‘You are fierce!’
5 艾克 (Mid)： 太強 tai qiang
‘Too strong.’
After 達瑞斯 achieves three kills in a row and “aces” the enemy team (Lines 2 and 3), his teammates 飛斯 and 艾克 respond to the play by calling it meng and qiang, both of which
denote the quality of being strong and powerful. As a speech act like these meets the addressee’s face goods by improving his/her social image in the community, it should be
considered a positive comment or compliment. It seems that the speakers of such positive appraisals are willing to express their likes and perhaps develop a positive ambience within the group, taking a supportive, encouraging stance toward other participants in the community. In the voice of Bucholtz and Hall (2004, 2005), such positive appraisals provide the addressees with AUTHENTICATION of their gamer identities because their former claims to the identities through the gameplays are now validated or acknowledged by literate others.
Now consider one more example of positive appraisal.
(40) Game No. 21 (recorded on August 23, 2015) 1 蓋倫已經無人能擋！
gailun yijing wurennengdang
‘Garen is unstoppable!’
2 艾克 (Jungle)： nice~~~~~~
3 伊澤瑞爾 (AD Carry)： 蓋倫肥囉 gailun fei luo
‘Garen is very powerful right now.’
4 讚 zan
‘Good.’
There is a common point between Excerpts 39 and 40 with regard to the allies’ responses to particular players’ great plays. In Excerpt 40, 蓋倫’s “unstoppable” (wu ren neng dang)
killing streak arouses compliments from not just one co-player, which is similar to the case in Excerpt 39. The point here to make is that appraisals of previous plays, like expressions of feelings, may be characterized by LoL players’ following each other to engage in the same communicative practice. A possible reason for this is that echoing with each other by repeating similar comments is one of the easiest ways to take a responsive stance during gameplays, given the prevalent, easily-typed slang words that could independently serve as remarks giving opinions, including meng and qiang in Excerpt 39 and zan in Excerpt 40. In many of the undiscussed game chats, gd and shui (水)55 are also lexical items that can be seen as representatives of positive appraisals on their own. Such echoes of compliments establish the identity relation of ADEQUATION among LoL players; they are meant to make sure that everybody is on the same page of what a good play is like. This identity work can be supported by 伊澤瑞爾’s turn in Line 3. Before he praises 蓋倫 for the achievement, he explains why it is worth celebrating – that the top laner 蓋倫 has become strong enough to
55 Shui is a long-standing slang word used to describe something beautiful or awesome. It is a Taiwanese
“carry” the game. This explanation or analysis of the current situation shows that 伊澤瑞爾’s
collaborative invocation of the appraisal is not just for building interpersonal relationship with his teammates but also for ADEQUATING his gamer identity with others. 伊澤瑞爾 attempts to claim that he has similar knowledge of the characteristics of the champion 蓋倫, the role he plays in a team, and thus what will happen if he gets “fat.”
Let’s now turn to negative appraisals. The negative appraisals under my collection are a
way of expressing displeasure as a result of a player’s bad move. The following lists several examples of the type of communicative practices in my conversational data, each of which has something to say about the negotiation of LoL gamer identity.
(41) Game No. 52 (recorded on September 20, 2015)
1 達瑞斯 (Top)： 這節奏是要下水餃的意思…
zhe jiezou shi yao xiashuijiao de yisi
‘Are we all going to get killed separately?’
2 納帝魯斯 (Support)： 對= = dui
‘Yes.’
3 我前面沒打好 sorry
wo qianmian mei da hao sorry
‘I did not play well before. Sorry.’
4 達瑞斯 (Top)： 我覺得是 AD 的問題 wo juede shi AD de wenti
‘I think the problem is on our AD Carry.’
5 他的裝備就有問題了= =
ta de zhuangbei jiu you wenti le
‘There is obviously a problem with her build.’
6 納帝魯斯 (Support)： 他是滿有問題的 ta shi man you wenti de
‘It is true that she is quite a problem.’
7 雷珂煞 (Jungle)： 中路也不差壓 zhonglu ye bu cha ya
‘Our mid laner did not play well either.’
The interaction starts with 達 瑞 斯 ’s negative appraisal about his teammates’ earlier behavior – taking turns dying to the enemy champions with no clear thoughts of how to fight as a team (xia shuijiao). In Line 4, 達瑞斯 further calls out the player (AD), who he thinks is
the troublemaker. These expressions of annoyance or complaint are clearly acts of impoliteness that threaten the addressees’ face wants to be desirable in front of others. With
regard to the degrees of impoliteness, the representatives in Lines 4 and 5 seem to be more threatening than Line 1 since they not only indicate that something is going wrong but also hold someone responsible for the team’s downfall. During his venting, 達瑞斯 has been taking an arrogatory and condescending stance toward other members in the team. In the
terms of the tactics of intersubjectivity, he resorts to the tactic of DEAUTHENTICATION by directing it to the addressees’ gamer identities or membership roles in the community. That is to say, the addressees’ believed to be authentic gamer identities, which are based on their
participation in other rudimentary LoL practices such as distribution of team positions and early game laning, are now challenged and DEAUTHENTICATED. Now focus on others’
uptakes of 達瑞斯’s negative appraisals in Excerpt 41. In reaction to the first complaint in Line 1, 納帝魯斯 uses the agreement particle dui to display his shared stance with 達瑞斯
(Line 2). In Line 6, he once again responds to 達瑞斯’s criticism with agreement, but this time making a similar comment with a full sentence (ta shi man you wenti de). By these utterances, 納帝魯斯 deploys the identity relation of ADEQUATION to socio-psychologically form a clique with 達瑞斯. Another team member, 雷珂煞, also enacts ADEQUATION
through engaging in the same practice of negative appraisals to call out another problem
maker (i.e. zhonglu). The collaborative invocation of one particular communicative practice, again, is a way to manifest the participants’ collective gamer identity; these negative appraisal
makers proactively show their shared knowledge about what constitutes bad plays in the LoL game world. The joint activity of seeking out a scapegoat has become part of the culture of the LoL gamer community, typically called jiu zhanfan (揪戰犯). One more thing to note in here is the act of apology performed by 納帝魯斯 in Line 3, which in this match of game serves as a response to 達瑞斯’s negative appraisal in Line 1 and also initiates the following group complaint. Such an expressive of apology is self-effacing because the speaker damages his/her own face by admitting that he/she should not have done something bad. In this case, 納 帝 魯 斯 employs the apology indicating device sorry to acknowledge his part of responsibility for the bad in-game situation. With the apology, 納帝魯斯 tacitly agrees with the former accusation that the team has become out of sync, and he might be the cause of it.
This self-blaming stance alludes to the tactic of DEAUTHENTICATION against 納帝魯斯 himself in that his formerly authentic gamer identity, as constructed through previous
practices according to the community’s code of conduct, is put into question.
In the following excerpts, I will present three other examples from my conversational data, all of which involve typical components of negative appraisals and co-participants’
evaluations of their social meaning. They exemplify some important ways of negotiation of
LoL gamer identity among the players.
jiyinkesi fa chu xunhao gaozhi duiyou zheng zailushang
‘Jinx is on the way.’
Similar to Excerpt 41, the interaction shown here is triggered by some unpleasant gaming experience. In Line 1, 菲歐拉 uses the sentence structure governed by hai zai to express her dissatisfaction with 吉茵珂絲’s behavior just now – 吉茵珂絲 is not helping the rest to fight for the group’s collective profit, the Baron buff; instead, she has been busy killing jungle
monsters (chi ye, 吃野, mistyped as 吃也) for her own earnings. This first utterance
establishes the context for the upcoming offensive speech, curse words made (mistyped as 馬的) and an insulting name naocan. They together form a set of face-threatening acts that
play out the tactic of DEAUTHENTICATION as the negative appraisals do in Excerpt 41. In Line 5, 吉茵珂絲 finally takes over the floor to make response to 菲歐拉’s attack. However, in her haste to reply to 菲歐拉, 吉茵珂絲 forgets to switch the keyboard to Chinese and types out a sequence of nonsense (ao65j4u42l4). She resends the message in Line 6, providing a reason why she was late for the fight – because she did not notice that the fight was going off. By saying so, 吉茵珂絲 is trying to redress her face need, and more importantly, take a defensive stance to maintain her social position in the community. In Line 7, 吉茵珂絲 repeats the negative assessment 菲歐拉 has made of her as a naocan, which is, again, an act of DEAUTHENTICATION against herself like an act of apology, only with a self-face threatening effect achieving even a greater level.
Excerpt 43 below involves still another instance of negative appraisal.
(43) Game No. 41 (recorded on September 6, 2015) 1 雷玟發出訊號告知所有人敵人消失
leiwen fa chu xunhao gaozhi suoyouren diren xiaoshi
‘Riven signals that enemies are missing.’
2 雷玟發出訊號告知所有人敵人消失
leiwen fa chu xunhao gaozhi suoyouren diren xiaoshi
‘Riven signals that enemies are missing.’
3 雷玟發出訊號告知所有人敵人消失
leiwen fa chu xunhao gaozhi suoyouren diren xiaoshi
‘Riven signals that enemies are missing.’
‘So far he has not engaged in any kills for our team and been killed for four times himself.’
‘I have never seen a top laner playing this bad.’
The setting for this conversation is a team fight that happened at mid game, where the jungler
conveys her annoyance at 雷珂煞’s passiveness through three alert pings. Although the default function for the smart ping is to signal enemies missing, it is frequently used by players to call into question what particular allies did in previous play, as its emission accompanies sharp noises and flashing question marks on the minimap.56 In Lines 4-9, 雷玟 follows with a series of negative comments, including the accusations that 雷珂煞 stood there and did nothing (kanxi) during the team fight and that he has not played the jungler position well throughout the whole game. 雷玟 gives two pieces of evidence to show 雷珂 煞’s incapability as a LoL player, his kill/death/assist score till the moment of the game (0/4/0)
and how many times he has ganked for his teammates (0Gank). These face-threatening acts are intermingled with an analysis of the current situation – suggestion of surrender (keyi
tou[xiang] le) – and the practice of name calling (lese), all of which contribute to the sense of
DEAUTHENTICATION directed against 雷珂煞’s gamer identity. In reply to 雷玟’s reproach, 雷珂煞 first excuses himself for his imprudence (zhen bu hao yisi), which appears to be a self-derogatory act and an expression of politeness. However, 雷 珂 煞 ’s follow-up counterattack (Line 11) proves this interpretation wrong. His ostensible apology act is
56 Below is a minimap that shows the question mark popping up when the Enemy Missing ping is used:
actually “a trace of irony” that goes with the next line TOP neng wan cheng zheyang, also a
representative intended for negative appraisal. Irony such a mock politeness act (Culpeper,
1996) is actually an enactment of DENATURALIZATION owing to the fact that it creates dissonance within the speaker’s self-presentation in terms of the ambivalent stances he/she
takes toward particular subjects. In this case, the dissonance is found between 雷珂煞’s self-effacing and accusatory stances about the previous play. With both of the off-record impoliteness act irony and bald-on-record accusation, 雷珂煞 aims to damage 雷玟’s face wants of not being disagreed and discredited. In other words, he takes an accusatory stance to redirect the responsibility for the lost team fight onto 雷玟, DE-AUTHENTICATING 雷玟’s gamer identity formerly suggested by her negative appraisal against 雷珂煞. Moreover, the identity relation of DISTINCTION naturally emerges from 雷玟 and 雷珂煞’s opposing stances over the dispute. The two players both try to construct a social difference from each other with regard to the centrality of membership; to be more specific, they make efforts to
push one another to a peripheral position in the LoL gamer community.
Let’s consider one more example of negative appraisals in LoL game chat.
(44) Game No. 58 (recorded on September 25, 2015)
1 犽宿 (Mid)： 你白癡嗎 ni baichi ma
‘Are you an idiot,’
2 JG
‘Jungle?’
3 你這樣開大的 ****
ni zheyang kaida de
‘You use your ultimate ability like this.’
4 阿姆姆 (Jungle)： = =失誤一次需要罵人嗎 shiwu yi ci xuyao maren ma
‘Do you really have to blame me for making a single mistake?’
5 你沒失誤過?
‘Yasuo, don’t be this personal in your remarks.’
9 別
The blasting fuse for the argument in Excerpt 44 is a mid-game team fight where a teammate failed to use his ultimate ability (da, short for dajuezhao, 大絕招) properly. 犽宿 initiates his negative appraisal with a rhetoric question intended for calling a ratified hearer an idiot.
He then indicates the addressed person (i.e. JG) and the source of his annoyance in the
support 犽宿’s accusatory stance. Just like the commenters in the above exemplars, 犽宿 intimates the identity relation of DEAUTHENTICATION against the addressee. Interestingly, in return to 犽宿’s complaint, the jungler 阿姆姆 does not excuse or defend himself to make a big deal out of his failed play; rather, he challenges 犽宿’s negative appraisal as if it is an illegitimate communicative practice in the game, suggesting that it is unnecessary to insult a player who has only made one mistake (Line 4). 阿姆姆 further questions 犽宿 if his play has always been impeccable (Line 5). The two lines of retort function in tandem to create the identity relation of DISTINCTION between the social positions of 犽宿 and 阿姆姆 in terms of their respective gameplay philosophies, particularly about degrees of toleration for failed plays. That is, 犽宿 and 阿姆姆 deny each other’s identity as a core member in the community. What is also worth mentioning is that the communicative practice of negative appraisal here provokes responses from more than one co-player. 飛斯’s turn from Line 6 still concerns the topic raised by 犽宿. With his self-experience sharing, that he just made a mistake when playing his champion (Line 6), warning against making personal attacks while playing the game (Line 8), and statement of the obvious that they all are engaging in a leisure activity of gaming (Lines 10-11, youxi eryi), 飛斯 displays an endorsement of 阿姆姆’s stance; or say, he deploys the intersubjective tactic of ADEQUATION to build a harmonious interpersonal relationship with 阿姆姆. On some level, 飛斯’s metacognitive identification of people’s opinions about what a game is supposed to be – that it is nothing serious – is a
deployment of ILLEGITIMATION in that it provides 飛斯 with the ideological power to
ILLEGITIMATE 犽宿’s identity as a player who tends to blame teammates for playing the game wrong.
To sum up, negative appraisals post in the LoL chat window can be made through plenty of linguistic strategies, or, to put it another way, they may have different components. The most frequently used strategies or components are indicators of problems or justifications for criticisms (e.g. xia shuijiao, ta de zhuangbei jiu you wenti le, hai zai chiye, shen kanxi, 0/4/0,
0Gank, ni zheyang kai da de), cursing (e.g. made), and name-calling (e.g. naocan, lese,
baichi). As for the uptakes of this communicative practice, it is possible that the addressees
excuse themselves for doing something wrong, try to reason for the misconduct, or talk back.