Search Results for:

league of legends

Abstract image evoking bird silhouette

May 24th

…demographic term to explore the insidious nature of “nerd” as a false identity in the present culture.

Holly Nielsen, at The Guardian, explains that the game industry does indeed have a dress code despite the more free wheeling image it likes to present and the pressure that invites to anyone outside of narrow ideas of masculine dress.

G. Christopher Williams at PopMatters says that what is missing in competitive video games in an inherent behavior of sportsmanship: “In a sense, League of Legends players lack good coaches, who step in to define the boundaries and etiquette of competition,…

June 21st

…the simple-yet-effective systems in place in Nintendo’s Splatoon.

Meanwhile, at Psychology of Games, Jamie Madigan has a brand new, fantastic interview with Riot Player Behavior Team leader Dr. Jeffrey Lin (podcast). If you haven’t heard Lin speak on some of the strategies Riot Games has experimented with over the last few years to reduce toxic player interactions in League of Legends, this is a highly recommended listen.

Inversions

At First Person Scholar, Mark R. Johnson has this fantastic long-form article on danmaku (bullet hell shooters), the player culture surrounding them, and the particular ways in which the…

September 20th

…us with the third part in his ongoing series demystifying the MOBA genre, going into the basic team positions common across games such as DOTA2, League of Legends and Heroes of the Storm.

Lastly, Brendan Vance just had to go and bring Slavoj Zizek into things, suggesting that the surfeit of objects in open world games really add up to a paucity of experience:

The ‘open world’ is a mirror through which we can view, indirectly, the abject emptiness lying beyond our realm of experience. Within its reams upon reams of collectible things, we recognize and find

…

October 4th

…MOBAs, this week analyzing the play maps and tactics in the ‘big three’ of the genre: DotA 2, League of Legends and Heroes of the Storm.

Breathe In, Breathe Out

There were quite a few pieces this week on The Beginner’s Guide, the new title by The Stanley Parable creator Davey Wreden, but I am holding onto them until I play through it myself. I don’t usually do this — I’ve just come to accept spoilers go with the territory in this job — but I’ve tried my darnedest to follow the essays without knowing the content of…

This Year In Videogame Blogging: 2015

…however unintentional.

Over at Memory Insufficient, John Brindle looked at the nature of consent in a community of roleplayers in World of Warcraft who dictate property rights. Elsewhere, Adarel explored the politics of City: Skylines with regards to its education system and how pumping money into it fixes all of a city’s problems.

In the last few months, Videogame Tourism ran an 8-part series “Demystifying MOBAs” by Eron Rauch, examining in close detail the game design of several of the big games in the genre: League of Legends, DOTA2, and Heroes of the Storm.

Kate Cox examined…

February 28th

…

  • Morality in the Mechanics | Game Maker’s Toolkit (Content warning: mental illness and abuse) How games can portray morality without karma points
  • Meremanoid | Something in the Direction of Exhibition Mermen and narrative coherence in RPG design

Authority

I’ve been thrilled this week to see examinations of who has power in the social and cultural spaces around games and how power is portrayed in design.

  • Policing Behavior in eSports and ‘League of Legends‘ | PopMatters Jorge Albor examines community management, professionalisation and the complex power dynamics of esports

…

Abstract image evoking bird silhouette

April Roundup: ‘Food’

…chicken, sugar cane, wheat- these things aren’t food, they are elements emergent from the world. It is only through the application of human ingenuity that these things become truly useful to us. Where paintings show us the story of a moment, and films highlight the process, games put us in a position to both value the scarcity of the materials as well as wonder at the strange improbability of a cake’s existence.

Over at One More Continue, Peterz describes the social ritual he and his friends go through when they get together for nights of League of Legends,…

January 15th

…ignored.

  • The difficulty in banning the ‘most toxic League of Legends player in North America’ – Polygon Daniel Friedman uncovers an interesting case study in what happens when toxicity and technical skill intersect
  • We asked a transit planner how to up our Mini Metro game – Waypoint Robert Rath talks strategy with a professional, and in the process teaches us a great deal about the real-world design of transit networks.

    • “‘Mini Metro has proven one very important thing,’ said Walker in an email interview with Waypoint. ‘Until it came along, the assumption was that transportation…

    September 10th

    …scenes | Kotaku Maddy Myers gives a vivid description of the contrasting scenes that surround Super Smash Bros. and League of Legends.

  • Making Games in Tehran: A massive market, disconnected | GamesIndustry.biz Brie Code sheds light on the significant barriers that prevent game developers in Iran from receiving resources from abroad, releasing games internationally, or travelling to major events.
  • How ‘The Secret World’ Role-Playing Community Became Too Real – Waypoint Cass Marshall shares personal experience in a little-understood yet crucial role as unofficial content creator for an MMO.
  • The Cam Girls Who Also Stream on Twitch |…

    • October 18th

    …and truly loves me back.”

    Horror and Hope in the Industry

    Four pieces this week look broadly at various issues in the industry as well as positive interventions, with specific foci on crunch, marketing, accessibility, and diverse representation.

    • Hey, Games Industry, We Need to Have Some Accountability | Paste Jessica Howard charactizes industry crunch as a systemic issue rather than something that can be attributed to individual “bad” studios.
    • League of Legends’ Fake Anime Pop Star Is Sad Tweeting About Genocide | VICE Gita Jackson gets at the heart of what’s scummy about Riot’s…