Things One can Learn From Games: Lessons in League of Legends

Since the 1980s, along with rapid development of personal computers, consoles and faster internet, online games started gaining both children’s and adults’ attention. As different types of games such as First Person Shooters (FPS) games, Role Playing Games (RPG), Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) games and many other types of games started being introduced to the world, the game industry has gotten bigger along with it. Different game developers such as Riot, Blizzard and Nexon, world game tournaments such as the PUBG Global Championship and game broadcast channels such as OGN and Esports seem to prove that video games have now become a part of the global entertainment culture. The doubts and critics against video games are inevitable, but it is important to notice that some games like League of Legends allow people to improve teamwork, leadership and problem solving skills.

League of Legends (LOL) is a team based competitive online game made by Riot Games. Released in 2009, it is still considered one of the best video games of the year with more than 100 million active players and between 7 and 8 million concurrent players (Film Daily). Categorized in the Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) genre, LOL requires social interaction skills, also known as teamwork abilities, for every single player. The National Council for Voluntary Organisations defines that having good teamwork signifies how “people are working towards a shared purpose and common goals and in so doing they are sharing their varied skills in complementary roles and in cooperation with each other” (NCVO). In other words, people share and contribute their own talents and skills to achieve a common goal. In LOL, people are teamed up as a group of 5, and each are assigned an own and unique role among the team in order to destroy the enemy territory. Thus, to win a game, every player is put into different roles in order to achieve a common goal, which in the case of LOL is destroying the enemy territory. This teamwork ability that one may improve from LOL will help improve group works and projects in the future.

LOL can improve not only the teamwork ability but also the leadership. Most people might have experienced how a classmate or a member of their team is getting behind or so lost that the member might just give up. The same situation occurs frequently in LOL; members of a player’s team might not be doing well and may feel like giving up the game. When these kinds of situations occur, another player can encourage, help and talk with the member to keep trying and work together with the team to win the game. Repeated encouragements, leaderships the player will foster into the player’s unique skills at leading and encouraging others not just in the game but in the real world. In this way, a LOL player can improve his or her teamwork and learn additional leadership, which might be hard to learn outside such as in schools and jobs.

It is important to notice that these good teamworks and leaderships are not the only factors that lead the game to victory. Teamwork and leadership without problem solving abilities and strategies will just make the player a kind and nice player with a favorable impression who hardly ever wins a game. Therefore, strategies and tactics are required to obtain victory in LOL. The first step to make a good strategy is to gather the facts (Mcdonald, Jamie). Periodically, LOL goes through an update called “patch” in order to balance the roles so that the game can be as fair as it can be. However, loopholes always exist, and overbalanced roles, strategies always tend to exist in the game. Thus, in order to take advantage of both hidden and well known overbalanced roles and tactics, players should have these “patches” in mind, which is the gathering-fact-stage. After gathering the facts, players may make a plan for future tactics and practice roles the player might take advantage of certain loopholes that tend to exist on every “patch.” These steps that a player might take in order to win games will help the player to improve his or her problem solving strategies. These improved problem solving skills may help in future jobs such as businesses and marketing.

In conclusion, LOL can teach teamwork, leadership and problem solving abilities to the players. It is important to notice that these abilities are not something one can easily learn from schools or jobs because certain factors, like popularity and intelligence always tend to interfere when it comes to teamwork, leadership and problem solving ability required works. Therefore people with just negative view against LOL should admit that LOL not only has negative effects but also positive effects.