MOBA and Lol

From Generative to Conventional
Play: MOBA and League of Legends
Simon Ferrari
Georgia Institute of Technology
85 Fifth Street NW
Atlanta, GA 30309
678-231-7130
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ABSTRACT
Despite its vast enthusiast community and influence on contemporary game designers, the MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena) remains under-explored by academics. This paper considers many meanings of “well played” reflected in the design, community, and aesthetics of the genre's most popular member, League of Legends.
Originating as modifications of commercial RTS (real-time strategy) games, MOBAs present a rare study of the “rhetoric of the imaginary” in play theory applied to popular game design. The genre's reification in commercial forms such as League show how the attitudes of distributed design projects manifest themselves as values of play.
A close reading of the phases in a match of League of Legends exposes one possible aesthetic framework for the consideration of eSports. Greg Costikyan's theory of uncertainty in play serves here as a backbone for the study of conventions, tension, strategy, and tactics in a team-based competitive videogame.

Keywords
League of Legends, eSports, aesthetics, well-played, play theory, rhetoric, community

INTRODUCTION
League of Legends is a team-based, competitive eSport played in teams of five. Its genre characteristics are a mix of real-time strategy, tower defense, and computer roleplaying game (Walbridge 2008). NPC armies march down three lanes from one enemy base to another, and the ten human players must “push” these army lines forward through opponents and their defensive towers. Players—who are grouped together from a pool of many millions—must coordinate strategies, tactical maneuvers, reconnaissance missions, itemization synergies, and resource sharing amongst each other. Matches typically last over 40 minutes, but a game that is going poorly for one team at the 20 minute mark may

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