DISCOURSE COMMUNITY: LEAGUE OF LEGENDS Dominique Nordquist

DISCLAIMER Oh, the lovely League of Legends discourse community. You have been warned. This content includes explicit language, racial slurs (blurred), hate in all forms, violent language, and sexist language. The game might as well be rated M for mature because of the community surrounding the game.

Basic Vocabulary and League Lexis League of Legends – League, or LoL. Climb – To move up divisions to a higher level of competitive play. Top, Jungle, Mid, Adc, Supp – Top Laner, Jungler, Mid Laner, Attack Damage Carry, Support (the five roles). Cs – Creep score: The number of jungle monsters or minions killed for gold by the player. Feeding/Inting (intentionally feeding) – Giving the enemy team kills on purpose. Divisions include: Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, Master, and Challenger. Champions - characters who have different abilities and roles in LoL. AFK – Away From Keyboard

Tyler1 Tyler1 is a famous League of Legends streamer. He acquired his fame through his astonishing level of toxicity during games.

Examples of Toxic Chat Logs

Question Mark Spamming Question marks’ intended use is to signal that enemies are missing. Instead they are used to be rude to teammates. Take note that is person is spam pinging while their character is dead. This is indicated by the gray screen.

Banning and Suspensions Riot Games (the team behind LoL) has implemented a reporting system to aid in reducing player toxicity.

The six Swales Criterion 1. Common goals 2. Intercommunication among members 3. Information and feedback 4. One or more genres to further aims of the community 5. Lexis 6. Threshold level for members

1. Common goals Climbing divisions (Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, Master, and Challenger). Learning new champions (characters who have different abilities and roles in LoL). Learning new roles (Top, Jungle, Mid, Adc, and Supp). Playing with friends.

2. Intercommunication among members Chat logs while in a game. Messaging outside games. Discord is a voice and messaging platform that many gamers use. It allows for real time voice communication during games. League of Legends forums. Streams (twitch.tv). Youtube (youtube.com).

3. Information and Feedback Many members defer to streams and videos to learn the ins and outs of the game. It is quite complex and requires knowledge about items, champions, abilities, roles, and many strategies. Most streamers are on twitch.tv. League is the most popular game with usually over 100,000 viewers. Youtube videos are also a great source of information and feedback. Both of these learning platforms have comments or chat which can be responded to directly by an experienced player (many professional players stream). Forum communication. Websites (Mobafire).

3. Information and Feedback continued https://www.mobafire.com/league-of-legends/build/vaporas-guide-to-hecarim-468808 Here is an example of a guide to playing Hecarim (a jungling champion). These are intended for intermediate to highly skilled players.

4. One or more genres to further aims of the community Players use a range of genres to communicate information with various levels of experts as well as novices. Of the previously discussed methods of getting information and feedback, streams and videos are the most popular and useful means to further skill level. Websites are useful for buying the right items and selecting the correct abilities. Various skill level guides are available to accommodate players.

5. Lexis There is an entire universe dedicated to League. It includes character lore. There is too much to explain in one power point setting. It takes months to understand how to play the game. There are currently 138 released champions. This is just scratching the surface of the league universe. The basic lexis repeated in the next slide aids novices in understanding core concepts of the game.

Basic Vocabulary and League Lexis Review League of Legends – League, or LoL. Climb – To move up divisions to a higher level of competitive play. Top, Jungle, Mid, Adc, Supp – Top Laner, Jungler, Mid Laner, Attack Damage Carry, Support (the five roles). Cs – Creep score: The number of jungle monsters or minions killed for gold by the player. Feeding/Inting (intentionally feeding) – Giving the enemy team kills on purpose. Divisions include: Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, Master, and Challenger. Champions - characters who have different abilities and roles in LoL. AFK – Away From Keyboard

6. Threshold Level for Members There is much scrutiny towards newer members, but in a sense it is involuntarily non-exclusive. If you play the game, you are included. This may be limited to years played previously although there is no standard limit. Any member who plays the game at a novice level is considered unranked, or bronze. Depending on the community member, they may consider a silver player to be skilled. This is only the second rank of seven. It is relative.