Learning objectives:
By the end of this lesson, you will be able to…
- Explain what is league of legends
- How to play the game
- Explain the development of league of legends behind different industries
- Explain the connection to Esports and future gaming industry
Infographic of Basic LOL
An Introduction to League of Legends
League of Legends is one of the most popular games around the globe that is free-to-play and downloadable through many different computers: Macs, Windows, etc. The game is often abbreviated as LoL. It is a multi-player, team-based strategy game similar to Fire-emblem, Dota, Overwatch, etc. In essence, there are five players on each side.
The uniqueness and charm of LOL is addressed by Evi, a professional league player in Japan. According to his view, “LoL” is a game in which infinite possibilities are sleeping in the factors that determine the game.
“While playing, various technologies and strategies came to the surface and appeared one after another, and when I tried to master them, I really didn’t feel like it. For example, there are currently 143 champions (as of February 25, 2019) that players can operate with “LoL”. After selecting the character to use from there, select the items to have, the skills to use, and the runes (customization elements of abilities). These also have innumerable patterns.
In addition to that combination, there are as many tactics as there are players, and on top of that, everyone is developing new tactics day by day.
One day, suddenly, information such as “If you use this champion and this item in this movement, you will be strong!” You have to think about countermeasures against such tactics, try to imitate them, and continue to adapt as you seek to win. This cycle will continue for a long time, so you won’t get bored. Speaking of which, the opponents who play each time are new contents every time.“
In fact, according to the King of Games, an e-commerce website, LoL gaming user reached a total of 115 million players in 2021. Some say that it is the most played game in the world in the twentieth century.
How the game works
First, the ten players are divided into two groups of five. The victory goes to the team that first destroys the enemy’s home base nexus. There are five roles that players must choose to play: top, jungle, mid, ADC(attack damage carry), and support. Each role has different vital elements. After selecting a position, one must pick a champion to play with. There are currently more than 140 champions available. Before mentioning the basic facts of the five positions, it is significant to discuss what players must do in the whole process of the game. First, players must collect gold in order to enhance the strength of their characters. The most standard way to gain coins is simply to kill the minions.
However, players cannot earn money just by killing it but the last hitting will enable them to do so. It might sound tough, and perhaps it is a deniable fact. One needs a lot of time to practice and discipline, indeed. Besides last hitting the minions, killing an enemy champion will also make one rich. Further explanation is demonstrated in the video in the blog post below.
The importance of each five lanes
Top
Farming (Collecting golds by killing the minions). This lane requires technique as well as a strong mentality. Since the lane is isolated from the rest of the lanes, the top player must be patient until a team fight occurs. Perhaps it is the most nerve-racking; however, a game changer position in a match since one’s teammate cannot help them to combat the opponent, unlike mid or bottom where they are close in distance. If you are a person that likes to operate alone, rely on one’s skill and strength, and 1v1 combat enthusiast, the top lane is your place.
Jungle
If you are more of a strategist type of person and support teammates, the jungle is your role. This role is unique from the other four positions as it requires a high level of macro perspective vision and control. Jungler mainly has three profound moves in a match: collecting objectives, controlling visions, and setting up a gank. There are two major objectives for a jungle to combat, which have a significant impact on determining the victory of a game: dragon and herald. *We are not going deeper dive into this topic due to the limited word counts. Controlling the vision means to set something similar to torch that enables one’s teammates to view the map in a broader perspective. Finally, gank is a term that is often used in gaming, and it means a surprise attack on an enemy champion. If the attack is successful, the team gets an advantage in terms of gold lead and expansion of territory.
Mid
If you like to play a little of everything from supporting your teammates, controlling territory, and dueling your opponent, mid-lane is a perfect role. In other words, the mid-player is a playmaker. This role requires both macro and micro gaming perspectives simply because one is playing in the middle of the map. In a sense, the mid laner is second to only the Jungler in terms of being able to impact the other areas of one’s map. From a micro gaming perspective, mastering this role requires a great sense of wave/minion control because the player wants to stretch one’s gold lead.
ADC
The ADC as known as “Marksman” is a vital role typically in the long run in the game. The champion categorized within ADC tends to be squishy and weak early on; however, it has the potential to gain a dominant power later on in the game. Hence, if you are a person that likes to dominate the fights in the later stage of the game and wants to carry your teammate, ADC is a great role. The ADC lane is played together with support, and thus better support could lead the victory in the micro perspective of the early and late game. Unfortunately, the ADC champion range is the fewest meaning that it has the least number of champions among other positions. This does not indicate that ADC is an unpopular role. There is countless importance when playing this role, and the complexity overwhelms the other roles; however, we will move on to the description of support.
Support
If you are a person that wants to dedicate the entire gaming time to helping your teammates, support is a perfect role. This lane does not require farming, which is to earn golds by last hitting minions; however, requires the most control in the macro perspective of the game. The suppose must control the vision of the map through locating ward controls. If you are a beginner, support is a suitable lane to learn the fundamentals of the league of legends.
Screencasting for LOL tutorial
E-sport, Arcane – Powerpoint
Multimedia Principles used
In our blog, we used 3 different kinds of multimedia learning methods to introduce League of Legends. We first created an infographic to help people understand the basic knowledge about this game. We used some pictures and texts to clarify the game information. We also create screencasting to show people how they can start a game. We made a short PowerPoint introduce new and creative activities the game company holds. And we also used text and different pictures combined together to describe how this game works.
In this lesson, we used several different principles to complete this blog.
- Signaling principle: such as boldness in some text to indicate the game name and different topics. This principle is used in our infographic and powerpoint.
- Coherence principle: basically we reduce most unnecessary information in both blog and multimedia, this can help people focus more on the game itself.
- Segmenting principle: we separate information into small parts, and each part has a clear explanation. We use this principle not only in the text part of our blog but also in the screencasting video.
- Image principle: in our opinion, a speaker’s image is not necessary for our topic, that will not help people to better understand our topic. Therefore, we decided not to use a speaker’s image as a distraction.
Reference
Week 3: Multimedia Design for Learning. EDCI 337 Interactive and Multimedia Learning. (n.d.). Retrieved January 5, 2022, from https://edtechuvic.ca/edci337/2021/09/20/week-3-multimedia-design-for-learning/
Actualizado. (2021). Arcane Season 1. Arcane Season 1: When is episode 4 released on Netflix? photograph. Retrieved December 1, 2021, from https://www.marca.com/en/lifestyle/tv-shows/2021/11/08/61890fe546163faa718b4587.html.
Brian Crecente. (2019). League of Legends (Riot Games). League of Legends is now 10 years old. This is the story of its birth. photograph. Retrieved December 1, 2021, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2019/10/27/league-legends-is-now-years-old-this-is-story-its-birth/.
Esguerra, T. (2021, November 6). Worlds 2021 hits record-breaking 4 million peak viewership during finals between EDG and Dwg Kia. Dot Esports. Retrieved December 4, 2021, from https://dotesports.com/league-of-legends/news/worlds-2021-hits-record-breaking-4-million-peak-viewership-during-finals-between-edg-and-dwg-kia.
J1N1. (2020, February 14). なぜ『リーグ・オブ・レジェンド』は1日に2700万もの人が遊ぶのか。その魅力を日本代表のプロゲーマーが語る──圧倒的な多様さからの「選択」と鮮明な「成長」の連続が鍵【DFM Evi選手インタビュー】. 電ファミニコゲーマー – ゲームの面白い記事読んでみない？. Retrieved December 6, 2021, from https://news.denfaminicogamer.jp/interview/190305.
How to play – league of legends. leagueoflegends.com. (n.d.). Retrieved December 4, 2021, from https://www.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/how-to-play/.
Nosa, D. (2021, November 5). What is arcane about? Netflix Life. Retrieved December 4, 2021, from https://netflixlife.com/2021/11/05/what-is-arcane-about/.
Republic World. (2020, October 28). How many people play league of legends? list of top 5 countries playing lol. Republic World. Retrieved December 4, 2021, from https://www.republicworld.com/technology-news/gaming/how-many-people-play-league-of-legends-list-of-top-5-countries-playing-lol.html.
Spezzy. (2021, November 30). How many people play league of legends? – updated 2021 (December). LeagueFeed. Retrieved December 6, 2021, from https://leaguefeed.net/did-you-know-total-league-of-legends-player-count-updated/.
Group 5 of EDCI 337
Atomu Ito – Learning outcomes, Principles, and Blog write up
Gabrielle Courtorielle – League Powerpoint slide
Johnny Yu – Screencasting
Queenie Yao – Infographic