League Morals

At first glance, League of Legends–a competitive online game that pits players against each other in team deathmatches–appears to be a game designed specifically to cater to the killer player type. You are rewarded with gold for killing players and destroying enemy fortifications and minions. Your overall success rate is translated into your ranking, which is then displayed to other players, who will fear and respect you accordingly. However, as you move into more advanced gameplay, the greatest rewards are given not to the killers, but to the social players. As a team game, only the teams with the best coordination and communication succeed. Players whose styles mesh particularly well tend to group up into permant teams–an act which facilitates simple socializing in addition to competitive games. Thus while many ‘killers’ can be found in the game, it is the cooperative or social

As the game has developed over the last two years, the developers have become increasingly supportive of the social playerbase. During this transition, the 5 moral elements become increasingly evident. Fairness is a huge issue in the game, as players are forced to play premade characters. The developers go to great lengths to ensure that the options are available are all balanced, so that players aren’t frustrated by unfair chances.

Loyalty is an incredibly important factor of the game, to the point where victory hinges on your ability to form a coordinated team. Often, certain players are designated as ‘support’ and encouraged to sacrifice for the more offense members of the team. Even out of game, this loyalty is encouraged through an extensive friend’s list and chat features.

The game offers little form of authoritative structure to players, allowing them to form their own hierarchies. While everyone is expected to be a respectful players, there is little way for the company to actively enforce this aside from the typical multiplayer “report” option. Tempers often flare, or independent players may bicker among themselves over matters of personal pride. Due to the high concentration of killer-type players and the high stress, competitive environment, respect is a notoriously difficult thing to find in the game–to the point where the company has implemented honor as a secondary currency, both adding goals for achievement oriented players and rewarding the relatively small population of respectful players.

While respect in League of Legends is rare, sanctity is almost nonexistent. While every player eventually finds characters they favor, the developers regularly release new content. Consequently, every two weeks marks the release of a new game patch, which buffs (strengthens) certain aspects of the game and nerfs (weakens) others for the sake of balance. As such, no aspect of the game is considered safe, and the players’ perception of the game and style of play is constantly in flux.

Considering the aggressive, black and white nature of the game, it’s surprising that so many of the morals are even present at all. It is possible that even in game scenarios, regardless of what behavior is encouraged and rewarded by the game developers, a certain level of real world morals carry over into the game. Alternatively, these morals could be a result of the killer behavior. As players who specialize in hunting other players, it is likely that a worthy rival would merit a certain level of respect and admiration, resulting in killers working together to teach each other, hone their skills, and develop their own codes of honor translating to the morals we see in game.