League of Legends (2009) Review
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played on PC
developed by Riot Games
published by Riot Games
review published on 12/06/2024
League of Legends is a slot machine where your mental health is the credit.
On a normal day sometime in April 2013, I — a fat teenager of sixteen years old discovered a game called League of Legends through a YouTube ad. Before this I had some wit regarding video game ads and was initially sceptical. Then again, I was still an impressionable young person and the promise of League of Legends intrigued me. A game looking this hype, and FREE?! What is the catch? Well, at the time there was no catch, playing the game was as easy as breathing. Install the game, create an account, and PLAY. To this day, League of Legends requires very minimal PC specifications to run, which is nerd talk for saying anyone with anything can play this online game. With a weekly rotating pool of champions, you could taste every character without paying the restaurant. While doing so, you accrued in-game currency to permanently unlock your favourite champions. You can throw real money to buy champions and cosmetic skins, but it is never absolutely necessary. This low committal entry barrier made it very enticing to keep playing. A brilliant concoction to bring in as many players as possible. It worked savagely well.
As I began playing, I realised that League of Legends had huge potential to be THE game for little me. The main gameplay loop is all about Summoner’s Rift, a 5v5 multiplayer match that prioritises strategy with unique teams of champions, easy to understand hard to master gameplay, and countless variety in its multiplayer competitive strategy. You right click and press Q W E R a lot. Depending on how well you click and press, you might be heralded as a pro gamer. It was like a baby’s first RTS, but on hardcore steroids. The amount of champion variance, player skill and team strategy meant that the imaginative mind of teenagers saw this as an infinitely expanding opportunity for competitive spectacle. Even if you get tired of it, you can switch to different game modes like Howling Abyss and Twisted Treeline (now defunct, RIP). This was too exciting of a prospect to keep tight-lipped about. I gushed about League of Legends to the fellow PC game enjoyers in my school year. A week later, without exaggeration, anyone who was anyone became a League of Legends player.
The early years of playing League of Legends with best friends was a pure joy. The after school ritual of logging onto a Skype call to bond over the game, and genuinely having a great time. Favourite champions now gowned with blinged skins purchased with Riot Points (Thanks Mum). Giving Riot Games money was like a heartfelt tip for a kind waiter. Thank you for the good service, now treat yourself to something nice. You deserve it. Ka-ching! We would continue to try out different champions, implementing different off-meta strategies. If we weren’t playing, we were watching the competitive esports scene produced by Riot Games called the League Championship Series. Consuming anything and everything competitive League of Legends was our personality. It became football, rugby, and cricket. This was our sport, and nobody could tell us otherwise. Following player storylines, attaching ourselves to favourite teams, fanboying over the best players, making season predictions, champion wishlists, placing bets. We mimicked how they played, dreaming of going pro gamer. And if we weren’t watching the LCS, we were consuming endless hours of livestreams. There was always someone playing, broadcasting to global monitors. Falling asleep to league streamers at my desk became a habit. League of Legends was a 24/7 extravaganza. Our friendship was slowly becoming League of Legends. We really did hit the jackpot. We were hooked. Some would say we got Death Sentence’d, Thresh’s Q ability for the uninitiated, figuratively and literally. However, with anything good, some bad has to come around and ruin it.
Once in a blue moon, you would experience the unpleasant pleasure of a toxic player harassing you and your team. It came and went like a fart in the wind, never paying too much attention to it. Over the course of a couple of years, the toxicity became an ever growing problem that couldn’t be ignored any longer. No matter what gamemode you played, you will encounter a toxic player in your lobby. Intentionally ruining the game for others, being AFK after one bad teamfight, and intense keyboard flaming are some of the unfortunate experiences you deal with. Tragically, these toxic players were a lot like us. They were, in their own negative way, extremely passionate about League of Legends, maybe we shared the esports dream. However, the quality of play started to diminish. No longer did you have room to express different strategies or utilise niche champions. Competitive meta is king, the god you cannot question. Unless you wanted to be labelled as a troll by your random matchmade teammates, this was not viable as it could jeopardise your team’s mentality even before the game starts. Riot Games would later solidify its own competitive community’s meta (one top, one jungle, one mid, two bot) as the in-game standard to the detriment of the League of Legends creative freeform potential.
Some people from my high school became noticeably more toxic inside and outside the game. They were mutating into angry video game internet brains before my eyes. Sometimes I wished I never clicked on that stupid ad. No longer can people get along. A heightened paranoia plagued the game space, and no one was safe. You never knew when something horrible would happen. It got so bad that rationalising this bad behaviour added pressure to perform well to prevent the possibility of bad behaviour from friends and other teammates. Players would say this is Ranked Anxiety. No, it is real anxiety and fear permeating through the game world. This was toxic to the core. No more fun, only riches or suffering. If you don’t play well, you will be griefed and insulted.
Due to the nature of League of Legends being a team game, having low morale cursed your performance. Subjugating players to play in nonoptimal playing conditions affects their way of seeing the game in future play instances. A victim of toxicity may become toxic as a coping mechanism. Those who have not yet turned, the nice players, became a rare diamond, and the once nice now insanely toxic player ruled the roost. Loudness always fills the room with a bad smell. The people you frequently played with are now insufferable. I can’t blame them, they were only acting in accordance with past game experiences. Preemptive flame, readily aimed well rehearsed insults to anyone looking at them weird, negative nancies spilling their defeating attitude on our heads and refusing to play making a winnable match into a losing one. It became a vicious cycle that was eating itself. The game that I spent years playing, returning like a daily ritual, an escape from a boring school life, became a knife wielding slot machine. Some days the machine is gracious — you win big and eat a slice of cake, and some days you lose everything while your mind is pummelled by toxic fists telling you that you deserve the worst, and get stabbed. I started to feel bad about myself. This literal video game was making me feel awful. After making this realisation, I quietly distanced myself from the game, all the while my friends continued to rinse the same dirty dishes everyday, and as my friends moved away for university, so too did they distance themselves from me, because I stopped playing the League of Legends game. Our last thread of maintaining any semblance of communication or friendship building is gone. They doubledowned, while I left the cult. Faults on both parties, a sad state of affairs.
Years passed, after a hard point in my life, I returned to League of Legends. Out of a sick fascination and twisted masochism I reinstalled the game, logged back in, and played solo. Initially it was lonely, but it was nice to relearn the game and adjust to the 8+ years worth of changes. Playing felt like a trip down memory lane. Blaring HARD music, casually playing, a momentary bliss. Maybe Riot Games changed their recipe. Instead of a poisonous apple, League of Legends would be an apple crumble. Things were going well. After a couple of games, the same toxicity reared its ugly head. Really? After all this time, League of Legends still has this crushing toxicity plague. I tried to move past it, but it invaded my mental space. I am no longer having fun — again. I became the thing I hated and vomited out of kilter rage thumps onto my desk, provoking an unfortunate event. Things changed that night. The damage was already done. I stopped immediately, uninstalled, and swore I would never play League of Legends again.
I can only anecdotally assume that a lot of people share the same positives and negatives about the enigma that is League of Legends. Maybe even the origin of play. Did you click on that same ad? Was there another fat teenager in your highschool telling you to play League of Legends? It would be wrong to think that League of Legends is entirely bad. By design, it had the potential to be THE game. A game where no other game can match it. THE only game you need to play ever. Your forever game. For some, it is THE game. You only need to look at the game’s Twitch.tv page to see the same players still streaming the game. In saying that, maybe it's not for the best of reasons. It is now their life whether they like it or not, and League of Legends dug its claws so deep that you cannot escape. I can only imagine how difficult it would be for players who have played for over a decade to decide to quit. Would they feel bad if they stopped? How much invested money and time are they willing to let go? Do they now feel obligated to keep playing? Is this a sunk-cost fallacy? Maybe they want to keep playing, or maybe they don’t.
The reality is that League of Legends got hijacked. Being spat on became normalised, produced and reinforced by a toxic online community. Second-hand exposure to this further produced an awful, very sad totem pole of game experiences, never knowing if you will have an enjoyable toxic free match. We can only blame Riot Games for the loss of a potentially positive video game. League of Legends benefits from bad behaviour because their players give good money. To go against their most active players would mean loss of profit. Riot Games sold out, complicit in bad behaviour and reaping the benefits. The corporation continues to hit the jackpot. At some point, you need to recognise what made you happy once now only brings pain. Chasing the never ending thrill of a good time sometimes is a gamble I will never take again. I am happy without it.
