Introduction
League of Legends is more known as a kind of Multiplayer Online Battle Arena(MOBA) games. Perhaps it is also the most popular game in the MOBA category due to its huge amount of active players. MOBA, by definition, is referring to the game in which multi-players are playing at the same time(Rosell, 2017). Meanwhile, each of them is controlling one hero and engages in the battle with other enemy players. The standard LoL games and also many other MOBA games are usually 5 vs 5. the ultimate goal is to destroy the enemy’s structures and bases. So far, there are 128 heroes in the League of Legend(Game Guide, 2014). In a professional lol game, the captain of a team is in charge of the ban and pick process. In other words, he could decide which hero to choose and which hero should be banned after systematically analyzing the enemy’s hero pools and combinations. In this sens, it is indisputable that there are a lot of mental calculations going on in this kind of competitive games. The game design is not solely for leisure but also for the purpose of competitions(Lee&Schoenstedt, 2011).
Thesis
As a matter of act, thousands of professional players of League of Legends are living on this game. They are earning prizes from participating the professional game series such as the S series. In addition, they are often employed by an E-sport club and earning a stable income as traditional athletes. In this research, eSports, especially the League of legends would be comprehensive and systematically analyzed in regards to its professional games, tournaments, players and future development.
Literature Review
E-Sports
E-sports is a term to describe competitive and professional game scene. It could also be defined as a professionalization process of digital and video games. Currently, there are many video games which are qualified to be within the eSports category. Multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA), First person shooter (FPS), Real Time Strategy (RTS), and other racing, speedrunning, fighting and RPG games could now be deemed as e-Sports games(Hamari&Sjöblom, 2017). Originally, people are playing games solely for the purpose of entertainment. However, now they could make a living on these games if they show their talents in these games. Especially in the League Championship Series(LCS), regular seasons would exist with weekly matches between them (Donaldson, 2017). Different continents such as Asia, North America, European and other major geographical regions would have their own respective tournaments. Each year, there would also be a grand event called S-series for LoL. All the tournaments and the international game event is organized by the Riot Games. LoL professional players tend to earn more than other e-Sports games as there are many tournaments each year. They could make considerably high income if they are playing very well through the whole year. In addition, their income is also stable because they would sign contract with e-Sports club. So far, there are many famous e-Sports club such as Liquid, LGD, RNG, and so on. Many of these e-Sports are partnered with other famous sports club. Liquid, for instance, has received sponsorship from the Golden State Warriors, an extremely successful NBA Basketball team(Gu, 2018). LGD, on the other hand, has received investment and sponsorship from Paris Saint-Germain (PSG)(Stubbs, 2018). As such, it is feasible for the professional LGS players to have and high income.
Tournaments and professional players
Traditionally, LoL games are heavily reliant on the tournament model. In other words, third parties would raise money to hold LoL tournaments such as the MSI. The organizers would make money through selling the tickets to audiences or from major sponsors. They could also make a profit by selling the broadcasting rights to other media organizations. The tournaments would not only allow professional players to be motivated to sharpen their skills but also provide audiences with splendid visual feast. In fact, many traditional sports such as Soccer, basketball, baseball and so on, are also having their own tournaments. In this sense, the professional online game players are also very much similar to traditional athletes. Currently, an athlete could be defined as a person who compete in a sport event where he or she could demonstrate his or her physical strength, talents or endurance. For a long period of time, professional players are not deemed as athletes as they have not proven their physical strengths. However, only in 2013, the U.S government took revolutionary measures to categorize lol professional players as athletes. In fact, lol players from other countries would have to apply for visitor visa in order to participate tournaments held in the U.S. It is also considered as a milestone in the e-Sports history.
Development of LoL and other e-sports
Many researchers have pointed out that the professional players of major e-Sports should be regarded as cyber-athletes. In fact, sports should not just be limited to physical activities. It is true that basketball, soccer, baseball and other traditional sports are concentrating on testing physical strengths and talents but there are also many events such as chess which are more focused on mind training. In fact, it would be more justifiable to draw a parallel between e-Sports and chessboard games. Moreover, the speed of e-sports’ development is much faster than many traditional sports often do. The League of legends has only emerged for 6 years but it grows almost 12 times faster than the American Football, currently the most popular physical event in the U.S. For instance, the S4 League of Legends World Championship was held in the South Korea. There were over 40,000 tickets immediately sold just for one single game of the international event. As the prize pool keeps growing, more and more media agencies would take part in these tournaments and broadcast the games to the audiences from all over the world. Each day, the topic of e-Sports have generated millions of threads discussing about topics such as “which Moba game is the best?”,”who is going to beat SKT” and so on, via the online social media channels or forums. It could be easily observed that the Moba and other competitive games are gaining more leverage on the internet communities.
Methods
Game Development and Studio
The League of Legends was developed and sponsored by the Riot Games, founded by “Ryze” and “Tryndamere”. The real names of Ryze and Tryndamere are Brandon and Marc Merrill. However, before the League of Legends was introduced, the Riot Games was considered as a very small company. The prototype of League of Legends was solely developed by Steve “Guinsoo” Freak and Steve "Pendragon" Mescon. Originally, Guinsoo, Pendragon and Icefrog, whom was lately more known as the father of Dota 2, had crafted Defend of the Ancient, an extremenly popular custom map of the Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne. It is also considered as the earliest MOBA game. However, the Defend of the Ancient was only powered by the Warcraft engines. In other words, there were a lot of limitations in this game. For instance, it was not very feasible for them to develop more heroes, skills or make modifications on the maps. Moreover, as the game was played for free, there were no additional fund for them to continue to modify the games without financial support. Guinsoo and Icefrog decided to ask for supports from the Blizzard Entertainment as the Warcraft was published by this company. But it seems that Blizzard had no interests in investing on MOBA games. Their focus was more on games such as World of Warcraft, Warcraft III, Starcraft and so on. The custom maps to them were rather designed for entertainment. Under such context, Guinsoo and Pendragon decided to leave Dota and try to develop a new game as they had great ambitions on crafting professional and competitive games. Icefrog did not leave dota. He managed to received sponsorship from the Valve, which was more known for its game distribution platform, Steam. Guinsoo and Pendragon collaborated with the Riot Games and jointly produced the league of legends(Riot Games, 2009). From then on, the nature of the video game had fundamentally changed. Many companies and players from different parts of the world became charmed with this competitive game. Tencent Group, arguably the largest digital company in China, had partnered with the Riot Games to promote this competitive game. As a result, the total number of active LOL players had increased up to 300 million.
Game Genre
As the aforementioned, the league of legend belongs to the Multiplayer Online Battle Arena category. Generally speaking, in each game, there would be two teams fighting against each other. Each team is comprised of five members. There are three different lanes and one sub-lane in the map. The first lane is the bot lane. There are usually two players in the bot lane. The mid-lane is often occupied by one player. The hero in the mid-lane is often a mage or an assassin. On the top lane, there is often just one player if a jungler is present. The sub-lane is also known as the jungle. Very often, a jungler supposes to clean the jungle in order to receive enough golds and experiences at the early stage of a game. Each hero has a minimum of four spells including an ultimate spell. The ultimate spell is usually very powerful. The heroes or champions could also be divided into different categories. Assassin is able to generate huge damage within short period of time. However, they usually have low armor and low hp. Tank heroes are those who are able to taking the most damage in a team fight. Bruisers often go around the map to look for opportunities to kill the enemy heroes. They have high agility and mobility. Junglers would secure the jungle area and help others in their lane fights. AD-Carries are mainly in charge of auto-attacking. They are often ranged heroes. Last, support heroes would take the responsibility to install wards in order to make the map clearer for his team members. Instead of buying good equipment, support heroes are most likely to sacrifice his own economy to support the whole teams such as buying wards or offer the lane creeps to the carry heroes. Due to the different combination of skills, heroes and strategies, the LOL is certainly a competitive and strategic game. There are many different kinds of playing strategies and styles but the ultimate goal is to destroy the enemy’s towers and base. As such, the league of legends has gradually turns into a professional game. Even in the recent Asian games, LoL has become an official sports programme under the e-sports category.
Audience
The first professional tournament of the League of Legends took place in Los Angeles with a prize pool of $7000 in 2010. At that time, this is a considerably huge amount of money for pro players. Lately in 2011, the Season 1 Word Championships was held at Dreamhack, Sweden in June 2011. The prize pool is as much as $100,000. The Season 3 took place in North America. The grand final was held in Staples Center on the 4th Oct, 2013. The winner could take a million US dollars away(Lee, An&Lee, 2014). Only last year, the prize pool had grown to $4.95m. There were over 57.6 million online audiences who have watched this grand event through social media platforms such as twitter, YouTube and so on. As compared with other MOBA games, the whole design of the game is rather user friendly. All new players could learn very fast through the instruction commands provided by the LoL’s interface. The target audiences of the lol professional games might be not only limited to lol players. In fact, as the team fights are easily understandable and could be appreciated by a wider community. In fact, not very many people would play soccer when they are free but they would probably gather together with their friends or relatives to watch the world cup this year.
Analysis
eSports
Even though the future of eSports is rather optimistic, at the current stage, the whole system is still not very matured. The major reason is that major eSports events could not earn social recognition. Very often, video games such as League of legends are more associated with negative media exposure such as the problem of game addition. Due to the knowledge divide, it is rather difficult for the older generation to appreciate the strategies and performances of the eSports(Kow&Young, 2013). However, there is no difficulty for the younger generation to learn about the beauty and attractiveness of the traditional sports. In other words, the market for traditional sports is more stable and larger than eSports. Moreover, even though the Moba games such as LOL are trying to copy successful sports model such as the NBA model, there is still no work unions which would protect the players’ rights. Very often, the players’ right would be exploited by various e-Sports club(MacMillan, 2017). For instance, they could easily replace a professional player with another one if the player is considered as “underperformed”. It is also the cruelest part of the most of the LoL clubs. Even though the player would be given with a minimum amount of salary, he could only work as a bench player. It is also less likely for an e-Sports club to release him to other teams as the liquidated damages compensation is usually very costly. So far, the rules and regulations in regards to the eSports are still not very accomplished(Hollist, 2015). Usually the contract signed by a professional player with an eSport club is not an equal agreement.
Moreover, unlike traditional sports, the strange part is that LoL game would have to keep releasing new patches. On one hand, if the game is not being updated with new elements, the loyal users might lose their interests in playing this game. The game is also designed in a way to attract new players. As a result, the level of the difficulty of the game on the whole is very much compromised. It is hardly imaginable that the playing styles of a traditional sport such as basketball could be modified simply because the number of new players is decreasing. The Riot games have to strike a balance between professional games and public interests. The most controversial part is that if the game is too difficult for new players, the market would also be shrank at the same time. If less and less people are supporting the game, the media exposure would decrease as well. Therefore, it seems that the fundamental thing for the Riot Games to do is to attract more active users and meanwhile maintain the competitive nature of the Moba game.
Tournaments and Professional Players
Moreover, at the current stage, it is also rather questionable about whether LoL professional games should still rely on the tournament model. Unlike other online video games, the game developers of lol are quite ambitious to turn this MOBA game to be very similar to other sports event. However, without too many supports from local governments or authoritative organizations, the professional game organizers would only seek the assistance from a third party. Without accomplished legal framework to regulate the game events, many problems might occur. For instance, the underground gambling companies might be involved and manipulating the game results. Even the professional plays might either bet on themselves or their opponents during a professional game. Currently, there is $30,000 fine which would be imposed on professional game cheaters(Ferrari, 2013). However, the problem is that the professional players could earn more than this amount. In addition, as the aforementioned, there is still no official laws covering the players’ right. Very often, players have to surrender parts of their earning from the prizes in major tournaments to an eSport club in exchange for a stable employment contract. It only happens in eSports but certainly not in other sports event. Last, the process of selecting professional players is not strictly regulated. Players who perform well in the pub games would be recruited by major eSports clubs(Funk, Pizzo&Baker, 2017). However, in traditional sports institution, players are trained to be professional athletes when they were very young. For instance, young children aged from 6 to 12 years old are often sent by their parents to a professional soccer schools to learn necessary skills. But in the realm of eSports, the players are not undergone systematic training. It is highly possible for the players to spend most of their time in a net surfing bar or their own homes by playing the Moba games. Very often, they are not even certain about whether they should start their career as a Pro player. If they fail to be a professional eSport athlete, it is very difficult for them to make a living on this industry.
Development of LoL and other e-sports
Currently, there are two development models which e-Sports clubs wish to employ, namely the NBA model and the Tennis Model. Most of the LoL clubs including the game developers of LoL is more in favor of the NBA model(Chao, 2017). Lpl, for instance, is World’s largest region for LoL professional game. Lpl stands for Tencent League of legends Professional League. It is also so far the best LoL league in China. All the lol teams are accepting a Home and Away system, very similar to the NBA’s, in the domestic league matches. For instance, the LGD gaming would fight against other Lpl teams in its own base for Home matches. On the other hand, it would also visit other team’s base for away matches. However, other Moba games such as Dota2 is more in favor of the Tennis tournament model(Zuo, Xiong&Iida,2017). So far, it has both the Major-system and the International (Ti). Teams which earn sufficient points from the “Major” professional games could get a direct invitation to Ti, the largest annual professional event. But the problem is that no body would actually know about which model would be more suitable to MOBA games.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it is highly predictable that the League of Legends and many other Moba games have very huge market potential. In fact, each year, there would millions of fans who would choose to watch the S-series and other professional games of LoL. Under this context, it is also indisputable that the the professionalization of MOBA is a foreseeable trend. In this new era, more and more people start to accept the eSports as an emerging industry, or perhaps a new branch of traditional sports. It could generate huge commercial benefits for media groups, sponsors, eSport clubs, professional players and so on. More importantly, it would also create jobs such as games commentators, coaches, game news reporters, and so on. Generally speaking, the impact of eSports industry is very positive. However, this industry is still very young. In my opinion, the legal framework should be designed accordingly in order to govern the behaviors and activities of this new industry. The players’ rights should also be protected at the same time.
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