Leagues of legend LOL china

LOL(League of Legends) gamers in China

Blog
Shuang Mao
11/01/2018

In this small article, I want to analyze norms, polycentricity, layeredness, transnational, and career of LOL (League of Legends) gamers in China.

In the past two decades, with the high-speed development of computer science and the Internet, computer games diffused to all over the world. Large quantities of games created by game companies every year. Playing computer games become an entertainment trend in people’s leisure time. There are millions of games in the world, and almost all the people play games on their computer, PSP, or even on smartphones. But here, to be more specific, I want to analyze LOL gamers in China.

Social group has been defined by Howard Becker, “society has many groups, each with its own set of rules, and people belong to many groups simultaneously. ” According to Maly and Varis (2015), micro-population possesses the characteristics of polycentricity, layeredness, transnational. LOL gamers in China are typically a small social group and micro-population. This group rely on Internet, they make social relationship through this computer game.

Digital Ethnography
In this paper, I want to use digital ethnography, which is introduced by Maly, as the way to research this article. I will analyze how people teach the norms of this community and how gamers communicate with each other? I am one of the LOL gamers in China, so I can use my LOL and forum account to reseach and collect data.

The norm of LOL:

According to Wikipedia, LOL is a multiplayer online battle arena video game developed and published by Riot Games for Microsoft Windows and macOS. Game rules of LOL are very simple, this is a 5 people vs 5 people game, every gamer, which is so-called ‘summoner’ should choose one unique ‘chimpion’ with unique abilities to battle against the opposite team. The purpose of LOL is to defend the ‘nexus’ of the opposing team. (The nexus is the primary objective for each map, the purpose of LOL is that a team has to destroy the opposing team’s Nexus). But cause LOL has 139 ‘champions’, and lots of equipment, every champion and equipment has its unique skill and function, so actually this is complicated and unpredictable game.

 

Figure 1: The map of LOL and the position of Nexus.

Every player must obey the rules, if someone has negative behavior or they refused to obey the rules, they will be punished by LOL system. And this video game uses free-to-play form, every player can play for free, it only charges for some purely cosmetic, that is so-called ‘skin’ in this game. Because of LOL provide an environment of fair competition, so it appears lots of fans and gamers.

LOL gamers can easily find quantity resources on the Internet, the most intuitive way is studying from the video, you can find it on Youtube or other platforms. 

 

Figure 2. Screenshot of beginner's guide on YouTube

And also, LOL has its own app on a mobile phone, if you download the app, you can find everything you want to know about LOL. For example, if you want to know how to play Leona, a ‘champion‘ of LOL. Just download this app and to check strategy and tricks of this ‘champion‘ on a mobile phone.    

 

Figure 3. Use app of smartphone to search strategy 

LOL gamers is a community, but how do they communicate with each other?

When you playing this game, you will find it has an opening chat system, gamers can communicate with your team members through typing on chat console or talking by built-in voice with your mic. If people cannot understand each other by language, it also has a  Summoner's Code, when an exclamation mark appears on the map, it must be the sign for the enemy will arrive that place. And question mark means that the enemy is disappeared. Flag mark means please help me or let’s fight together.

Figure 4. "Summoner's" Code

There are also some slangs, like AD carry, it means attack damage carry. And gank means you need to make a conflict between your team and your enemy. In Outsiders (1997: 79), Becker discusses the deviant group of dance musicians who are  “labeled as outsiders by more conventional members of the community.” And somehow, when LOL gamers talk about this game with slangs, other people seem as “outsiders”, they cannot participate in a conversation.

There are also some slangs, like AD carry, it means attack damage carry. And gank means you need to make a conflict between your team and your enemy. In Outsiders (1997: 79), Becker discusses the deviant group of dance musicians who are  “labeled as outsiders by more conventional members of the community.” And somehow, when LOL gamers talk about this game with slangs, other people seem as “outsiders”, they cannot participate in a conversation.

Professional players of LOL play for a different country is a universal phenomenon. Below chart is the ranking of top 20 LOL players in the world.

LOL Top 20 Players in 2017

It is obvious, first 20 players LOL are most Asian, and 60% are Korea players. But 5 of them working in China, this the evidence to prove the development potential of China eSport market.

Polycentric:   

Howard Becher described in his book, “Wherever some group of people have a bit of common life with a modicum of isolation from other people, a common corner in society, common problems and perhaps a couple of common enemies, their culture grows” (Becker, 1997: 80). It means that different social group has the different center but share the same purpose and rules. Even though LOL have lots of servers in the world and every country conduct its own tournament, but the rule of this game never changed.

For example, LPL is the competition which is the highest level of League of Legends play in China. And Korea has its own competition, it is named LCK. 

multi-layered:

Gamers of LOL in China are obviously multi-layered, it can be simply divided into 3 classes. That is Professional players, micro-celebrities and ordinary gamers. This is a typical pyramid structure.

 

Figure 5. multiple-layers of LOL gamers in China

LOL gamers in China is a big community, most of them are ordinary gamers who play the game in leisure time. Elite players or some retired professional players through media platforms become micro-celebrities. Very few people as professional players, who are fighting for a famous league.

LOL fans use media platforms to follow the so-called micro-celebrities. There are lots of live streaming video platforms in China. With media platforms, fans can chat with and send gifts (which is actually money) to micro-celebrities. I choose Panda TV app on a mobile phone to analyze how they teach norms and communicate with each other.

This live video is made by Xue Qi Lu, a famous micro-celebrity in LOL, she has more than 5 million subscribers and online playing this game over 10 hours every day. She is that kind of micro-celebrities who possess technique and also a beautiful girl. When she starts live show for playing this game, she always chats with people who typing on the screen and teach technique how to use this champion and to win the game. She constantly talks with her fans about her daily life and how to use the ‘champion’ to battle with the enemy. And fans can also talk with each other on the screen.

Figure 6. Screenshot of live video

Ordinary people, like me, usually use LOL app to chat and invite my friends to play together, and this app has the function to show gamers who are close to you, his/her winning percentage, which champion he/she is good at, and so on. You can add them as your LOL friends and play together.

Career: 

In the 2017 Season World Championship of LOL, Final Prize pool is $ 4,946,970 USD, approximately € 4,177,196 EUR. It has shocked the world with more than 80 million viewers watch this competition. ESports players and micro-celebrities of LOL become one of the most lucrative industry today. Top players have a big bonus for competition, and both professional players and micro-celebrities have advertisement revenue. With the high-speed development of the eSport market, annual income of some professional players more than famous film stars.

How can ordinary people become a professional player or a micro-celebrities?

To become a professional player, firstly, you need excellent technique, skilled with all the ‘champions’ and equipment. It means that you need practice a lot on this game. Second, the age of professional players should not over 20 years old. The micro-celebrity do not have the restriction of age, but it also needs quite good technique, good at lots of ‘champions’, with a good personality or good-looking. We can see that there are lots of restriction to be a professional player, but actually eSports just like sports players, is a young person’s profession, meanwhile, you should possess talent and creativity. But the eSport industry is always changing, nowadays turnover of LOL gamers in China increased, because of new games appear, and lots of mobile games replace PC games. Now there is a mobile game which is called glory of the king is the most popular game in China, possesses over 100 million gamers, and it is much similar to LOL. Instead of bringing PC, people can play mobile game everywhere and anytime. So micro-celebrities need to seize the trend and play the popular game. but most of us are leisure gamers, we do not treat playing games as a job.

References:

Becker, H. S. (1997). Outsiders: studies in the sociology of deviance. New York, NY: Free Press.

Maly, I & Varis, P. (2015). The 21st-century hipster: on micro-populations in times of super-diversity. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 1-17. doi: 10.1177/1367549415597920