Within the design of a MOBA video game, LoL gamers are not consistently represented by the same avatars in a persistent world. Rather, they have to re-select their characters (or champions) for consecutive matches of the game. Any progression from before, accumulation of experience points, money, and equipment, is not carried to the present. This deviation from an ideal virtual society characterizing MMORPGs seems to undermine the value of a community-based research on LoL. The present study, however, suggests that there are indeed pieces of evidence showing that LoL gamers interact with each other as if they were members of a community. Importantly, while LoL gaming, they act in obedience to some norms of conduct that are closely tied to prior gameplay experience of those high-ranked or veteran players. These players often show up as users with high reputation power in game forums, streamers,10 e-Sports professionals and hosts, or simply as team members whom the gamers encounter in random games. According to what I observed from the informer players, there
could be two kinds of norms of practice: One is shared across all LoL players, and the other is specific to particular champions or “positions” within a team.
A set of norms taken for granted by every LoL player is defined by the game company – the designed gameplay. Players could use whatever commands available on the interface to perform tasks in the bodies of the avatars, such as aimlessly wandering on the map or
10 “Streamers” are people who stream video games live for entertainment or living. They make money mainly
committing suicide by getting hit by enemy turrets. Nevertheless, those who know how to play the game would command their champions to kill computer-controlled minions and
monsters, slay or assist in slaying enemy champions, and destroy enemy structures as quickly as possible, in order to gain advantage over the opposing team in terms of their champions’
abilities and thereby win the match. Such officially enforced gaming practices are only part of the social norms here; besides them, LoL players tacitly acknowledge an additional set of expectations of acts and interactional patterns during gaming. These additional norms of behavior have nothing to do with the official rules of the game but are suggested by former
players who have achieved much success out of that gameplay. It is believed that a game on Summoner’s Rift has three distinct phases that transition along the leveling of champions and
progress of destruction of structures: early game, mid game, and late game. Each phase could be bound up with particular skills in stacking up experience points and gold that help the team progress toward victory. Early game, also called “laning phase,” is when players focus on farming11 in the three lanes of Summoner’s Rift. At this stage, players also try to zone the opponents out12 from minion kills so as to prevent them from getting gold and experience. It is better that the opposing laners are forced to go back to base so that they would miss last hits on minions and be unable to protect their outer turrets from being destroyed.
Subsequently, mid game is when players start roaming from their lanes and grouping to take
11 The term “farm” here is used metaphorically by LoL players to refer to getting last hits on enemy minions to get gold, just like farmers harvest to get crops.
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down intermediate objectives such as Dragon13 and the remaining turrets. At this point, vision control14 grows to be more important for detecting ambushes and spying on the movements of the enemy team. When champions are reaching level 18 and have their core items15 bought, late game is coming. During this period, the goal is to give pressure to the enemy Nexus16 by tearing down inner structures and getting buffs that increase the minions’
siege ability from powerful neutral monsters such as Baron Nashor.17 Team fights are now common and crucial to victory as champions’ respawn timers18 are extremely long, and
survivors of the fights could easily turn over the game.
Given the design of the virtual environment of Summoner’s Rift, that there are three
lanes and jungle quadrants where minions and monsters are present, players have to negotiate
with their teammates beforehand to figure out a way to evenly distribute these sources of experience and gold so that each player could develop their champion for the team’s good.
13 “Dragon” is the second powerful monster on Rift, resting in the river pit near the bottom lane. It has four
“species:” Mountain, Infernal, Cloud, and Ocean. Each species, when slain, gives a unique bonus to the champions of the team. Dragon respawns every six minutes.
14 “Vision control” refers to the practice of placing and protecting wards that enable the team to take control over the nearby fogs of war, which means that the enemies’ whereabouts will be revealed when they pass through those areas. Good vision control would help the team escape flanks and potential ambushes. It could also serve offensive purposes such as spotting isolated targets and exposing enemy champions in vulnerable positions.
15 “Core items” are the ethnographically suggested “completed items” (or “advanced items,” i.e. items that have specified recipes requiring the composition of basic items) for LoL champions. According to the champions’
stats and roles in the game, they are recommended to purchase different sets of six core items as early as possible.
16 “Nexus” is the main structure on Rift deepest inside a team’s base. It is guarded by two inner turrets and should be the final target for destruction. The team who destroys the enemy Nexus wins the game.
17 “Baron Nashor,” commonly known as “Baron,” is the most powerful monster on the Rift. It resides in the river pit nearby the top lane, first spawning 20 minutes after the game starts. It grants not only a great amount of gold and experience but also an aura that empowers the team’s champions’ nearby minions, that is, a buff good for pushing the lanes.
18 “Respawn timer,” or “death timer,” is the counting down of time displayed over the champions’ image when
Which location a player is responsible for determines which “position” he/she plays within the team, and his/her “position” could further determine what champion role he/she should
choose for the match. Below listed is the stereotypical matching of areas of deployment to the
“position” categories and champion roles.
Table 1
The stereotypical matching of locations in charge to team positions and champion roles
Locations in Charge Team Positions Champion RolesTop lane
In Table 1, the team positions are named in italics because they are suggested by LoL players but not defined by the officials. Each key location in the virtual environment of Summoner’s
Rift is assigned to one team member except for the bottom lane, which is typically taken in charge by two players. What Table 1 presents is a conventional arrangement of forces in LoL Taiwan server and cannot be generalized too much to future play, as updates of the game could urge players to figure out more and different effective gameplays. Regarding champion
19 “Gank” is a frequently used jargon word in LoL, short for “gangbangkill.” It can be used as a noun to refer to a surprise attack from the enemy jungler or champion from another lane. It creates an unfair fight between different numbers of champions of the two teams. Here the term is used as a verb to describe the act of making this play.
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roles, players have long come up with a gameplay philosophy about how the spots are filled by the defaultly defined champion roles, that is, the roles assigned to the champions based on their individual stats. Few LoL players would question such “rules” of the game, with the belief that this kind of arrangement is in most favor of their teams. The reasons why they incline to play this way may be traced to the play of professionals or players of previously popular DotA types of games. For example, the duo lane (a marksman and a controller) goes to bottom maybe because the bottom lane locates nearest to Dragon, which makes Dragon less contestable for the enemy team in early game. Mages and slayers usually play solo in the middle lane possibly due to the fact that the central location offers greater opportunities for roaming for assist attacks, which matches the nature of such champions. What is worthy of discussion at this point is that there are sets of norms of practice tagged along with different
team positions and, even more specifically, individual champions. This finding is when the society’s norms of conduct are specific to certain participant categories. Table 2 organizes the dos and don’ts expected for the team positions:
Table 2
The norms of practice expected for the five team positions
21 “Summoner spell” is an ability possessed by the summoner (i.e. the player) rather than a particular champion, which means that no matter which champion a player chooses to play, he/she could use the spell if it is carried to the game. Normally, during Champion Select before a match, a player is allowed to choose two summoner spells to use in the game. Available summoner spells in the latest patch include Barrier, Cleanse, Exhaust, Flash, Ghost, Heal, Ignite, Smite, and Teleport.
22 “Teleport” is a summoner spell that enables the player’s champion to be teleported to an allied structure, minion, or ward.
23 “Splitpush” refers to a strategic play where one member of a team pushes a lane (i.e. to advance the team’s minions to a point closer to the enemy base, including quickly clearing up the enemy minions and taking down the enemy turrets) while the rest push another lane. The strategy is employed to distract the enemy team from focusing their defense effort on one structure.
24 “Flank” is a term used to describe a champion’s positioning him/herself in order to attack the enemy from the side or behind.
25 “Peel” is used metaphorically to mean to rid an ally of the threat posed by the enemy champions, mostly by
Team Positions Norms of practice
Mid, AP Carry (AP)
1. Pick up offensive items to build up damage output.2. If possible, look for isolated targets to assassinate.
3. Poke26 and harass the opposing laner back to base and roam to help the allies.
4. During team fights, focus damage outburst on squishy champions, especially the enemy carries. While doing that, Mages should keep a safe distance from the targets;
Slayers should sneakily approach the targets and quickly get out of the fights.
27 “Heal” is a summoner spell that restores an amount of health to nearby allied champions, including the caster him/herself.
28 “Barrier” is a summoner spell that shields the caster champion for two seconds, helping him/her block out an amount of damage.
29 “Crowd control,” often abbreviated as “CC,” is a type of effects that champion abilities have. The forms of crowd control such as airborne, stun, and slow are intended for reducing the fighting ability of enemy units.
They interfere with the target players’ control of their champions.
30 “Exhaust” is a summoner spell that reduces a target enemy’s movement speed, attack speed, armor and magic resist, and their damage output.
31 “Ward,” translated in Chinese as “eye” (眼), is an object that reveals an area of the map around where it is placed.
32 “Snowball” is a term used metaphorically to mean to expand a team’s lead by the advantage that it has gained
AD Carry (AD)
1. Take at least one summoner spell that is only intended for defensive purposes, such as Heal27 and Barrier.282. Pick up offensive items that enhance attack damage, attack speed, armor penetration, life steal, or critical strike chance.
3. During team fights, hide at the backline while shooting the enemy champions, for fear being taken by the opponent Slayers. Be careful of crowd control abilities.29
Support (sup)
1. Take the summoner spell Exhaust30 or Heal to protect AD Carry from fatal attacks. the enemy from snowballing32 by invading.4. At laning phase, try the best to protect AD Carry from being attacked. Interrupt skill shots that would otherwise hit AD Carry or use heals and shields to sustain his/her durability. If necessary, sacrifice life for AD Carry’s safety.
5. Do not steal AD Carry’s last hits on the minions.
What Table 2 suggests is a general observation of in-game decisions made by the five positions distributed among a team of LoL players. Although this metagame36 is constantly shifting following the updates of the game mechanics such as imbalanced items and champions, the foundation is always the same – to gain optimal amounts of experience and
33 “Smite” is a summoner spell that deals an amount of true damage (i.e. a type of damage that ignores armor and magic resistance) on a target, usually a neutral monster.
34 “Respawn time” is an amount of time one has to wait for a monster to respawn after it is killed.
35 Here the “position” refers to where a champion is on the map of the Rift.
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Jungle (jg)
1. Take the summoner spell Smite33 to secure last hits on important secondary objectives like Dragon and Baron and clean up jungle monsters more quickly.2. Gank the lanes where the enemies are pushing too hard or low in health.
3. Farm the jungle monsters to earn experience and gold.
4. Start the game with the item Hunter’s Talisman or Hunter’s Machete, which gives the player bonus stats and abilities while jungling. cooldown regeneration, and extra damage. In mid-late game, consider giving the Red buff (from killing Red Brambleback) to AD Carry so that his/her basic attacks could slow the target enemies while eating up their health over time.
9. At late game, initiate possible team fights and take as many crowd control skillshots from the enemies as possible.
gold. Now narrow the scope to individual champions. Even though the above norms of conducts pretty much define what roles particular champions should play in the game, there are variations and exceptions pertaining to the champions’ idiosyncratic abilities that give rise to specific player decisions. For example, Malphite, as a tank or fighter champion, has an ultimate ability of crowd control; when it is triggered, Malphite dashes to a target location and knocks nearby enemies up for seconds. This ability makes Malphite a perfect candidate
for initiating a team fight; with a dash, Malphite could easily make his way to the enemy team’s back line to mess with their damage dealers. Another example is Shaco, whose
officially defined champion role is slayer. However, uniquely, Shaco has the ability to
become invisible and teleport to a target position, which makes him a great jungler, as one of junglers’ job is to gank enemy champions without their knowledge. As Shaco has the base
statistics of a slayer, he is too squishy to peel for the team’s carries; instead, selecting Shaco calls for another style of cooperative gameplay where his role is to splitpush and come in a team fight later to clean up the remaining targets.
These unwritten rules have bound every player of LoL in a way that they expect not only each other but also themselves to behave like professionals who know vividly how to obtain optimal sources for winning the game in the least time. Through a lens like this LoL players could be seen as a virtual community of practice (i.e. LoL gaming) who establish norms for inspecting membership. The organized strategies with five positions demonstrate the actual
collaborative relationships that a previously studied community of practice should feature.
The next section is going to show that, in addition to the mutual engagement in gaming, language is part of the shared practice that traces the presence of the community.