Location via proxy:   [ UP ]  
[Report a bug]   [Manage cookies]                
skip to main content
10.1145/2967934.2968078acmconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication Pageschi-playConference Proceedingsconference-collections
research-article

Ranking Practices and Distinction in League of Legends

Published: 15 October 2016 Publication History

Abstract

Player ranking is a common feature of competitive online games, but little research work has closely examined the ways it mediates player practices within this game genre. In this paper, we present a qualitative study of player practices around ranking in League of Legends (LoL), published by Riot Games and currently one of the most popular eSports games. We found that ranking is a cornerstone of LoL's competitive gaming practices, shaping the ways players distinguished and narrated their game experiences, thus engendering a culture of collaboration and competition through distinction.

References

[1]
Jeffrey Bardzell, Jeffrey Nichols, Tyler Pace, and Shaowen Bardzell. 2012. Come meet me at Ulduar: progression raiding in world of warcraft. Proceedings of the ACM 2012 conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work CSCW '12, ACM Press, 603--612. http://doi.org/10.1145/2145204.2145296
[2]
Shaowen Bardzell, Jeffrey Bardzell, Tyler Pace, and Kayce Reed. 2008. Blissfully productive: grouping and cooperation in world of warcraft instance runs. Proceedings of the ACM 2008 conference on Computer supported cooperative work CSCW '08, ACM Press, 357--360. http://doi.org/10.1145/1460563.1460621
[3]
Max V. Birk, Regan L. Mandryk, Matthew K. Miller, and Kathrin M. Gerling. 2015. How Self-Esteem Shapes our Interactions with Play Technologies. Proceedings of the 2015 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play CHI PLAY '15, ACM Press, 35--45. http://doi.org/10.1145/2793107.2793111
[4]
Jeremy Blackburn and Haewoon Kwak. 2014. STFU NOOB!: predicting crowdsourced decisions on toxic behavior in online games. Proceedings of the 23rd international conference on World wide web - WWW '14, ACM Press, 877--888. http://doi.org/10.1145/2566486.2567987
[5]
Pierre Bourdieu. 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Routledge & Kegan Paul.
[6]
Dongseong Choi and Jinwoo Kim. 2004. Why People Continue to Play Online Games: In Search of Critical Design Factors to Increase Customer Loyalty to Online Contents. CyberPsychology & Behavior 7, 1: 11--24.
[7]
Mia Consalvo. 2007. Cheating: gaining advantage in videogames. MIT Press.
[8]
Thomas Debeauvais, Bonnie Nardi, Diane J. Schiano, Nicolas Ducheneaut, and Nicholas Yee. 2011. If you build it they might stay: retention mechanisms in World of Warcraft. Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Foundations of Digital Games - FDG '11, ACM Press, 180--187. http://doi.org/10.1145/2159365.2159390
[9]
Alena Denisova and Paul Cairns. 2015. Adaptation in Digital Games: The Effect of Challenge Adjustment on Player Performance and Experience. Proceedings of the 2015 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play CHI PLAY '15, ACM Press, 97--101. http://doi.org/10.1145/2793107.2793141
[10]
Sebastian Deterding, Miguel Sicart, Lennart Nacke, Kenton O'Hara, and Dan Dixon. 2011. Gamification: using game-design elements in non-gaming contexts. Proceedings of the 2011 annual conference extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems CHI EA '11, ACM Press, 2425--2428. http://doi.org/10.1145/1979742.1979575
[11]
Scott Donaldson. 2015. Mechanics and Metagame: Exploring Binary Expertise in League of Legends. Games and Culture: 1--19. http://doi.org/10.1177/1555412015590063
[12]
Lina Eklund and Magnus Johansson. 2010. Social Play? A study of social interaction in temporary group formation (PUG) in World of Warcraft. DiGRA Nordic.
[13]
Erich Fromm. 2000. The Art of Loving: The Centennial Edition. A&C Black.
[14]
Maria Frostling-Henningsson. 2009. First-Person Shooter Games as a Way of Connecting to People: "Brothers in Blood." CyberPsychology & Behavior 12, 5: 557--562.
[15]
Alex Golub. 2010. Being in the World (of Warcraft): Raiding, Realism, and Knowledge Production in a Massively Multiplayer Online Game. Anthropological Quarterly 83, 1: 17--45. http://doi.org/10.1353/anq.0.0110
[16]
Thore Graepel and Ralf Herbrich. 2006. Ranking and Matchmaking: How to rate players' skills for fun and competitive gaming. Game Developer Magazine.
[17]
Juho Hamari, Jonna Koivisto, and Harri Sarsa. 2014. Does Gamification Work? -- A Literature Review of Empirical Studies on Gamification. 47th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 3025--3034.
[18]
Gwo-Jen Hwang, Po-Han Wu, and Chi-Chang Chen. 2012. An online game approach for improving students' learning performance in web-based problem solving activities. Computers & Education 59, 4: 1246--1256. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2012.05.009
[19]
Magnus Johansson, Harko Verhagen, and Yubo Kou. 2015. I Am Being Watched By The Tribunal-Trust and Control in Multiplayer Online Battle Arena Games. Foundations of Digital Games.
[20]
Kirsi Pauliina Kallio, Frans Mäyrä, and Kirsikka Kaipainen. 2011. At Least Nine Ways to Play: Approaching Gamer Mentalities. Games and Culture 6, 4: 327--353. http://doi.org/10.1177/1555412010391089
[21]
Daniel King, Paul Delfabbro, and Mark Griffiths. 2009. Video Game Structural Characteristics: A New Psychological Taxonomy. International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction 8, 1: 90--106. http://doi.org/10.1007/s11469-009-9206-4
[22]
Yubo Kou and Xinning Gui. 2014. Playing with strangers: understanding temporary teams in League of Legends. Proceedings of the first ACM SIGCHI annual symposium on Computer-human interaction in play CHI PLAY '14, ACM Press, 161--169. http://doi.org/10.1145/2658537.2658538
[23]
Yubo Kou and Bonnie Nardi. 2013. Regulating Anti-Social Behavior on the Internet: The Example of League of Legends. iConference 2013 Proceedings: 616--622. http://doi.org/10.9776/13289
[24]
Yubo Kou and Bonnie Nardi. 2014. Governance in League of Legends: A Hybrid System. Foundations of Digital Games.
[25]
Yong Ming Kow and Timothy Young. 2013. Media technologies and learning in the starcraft esport community. ACM, 387--398. http://doi.org/10.1145/2441776.2441821
[26]
Elizabeth Losh. 2008. In polite company: rules of play in five Facebook games. Proceedings of the 2008 International Conference in Advances on Computer Entertainment Technology - ACE '08, ACM Press, 345--351. http://doi.org/10.1145/1501750.1501832
[27]
Li Lu, Cuihua Shen, and Dmitri Williams. 2014. Friending your way up the ladder: Connecting massive multiplayer online game behaviors with offline leadership. Computers in Human Behavior 35: 54--60. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2014.02.013
[28]
Ben Medler. 2011. Player Dossiers: Analyzing Gameplay Data as a Reward. the international journal of computer game research 11, 1.
[29]
Riot Games. 2008. League of Legends. Retrieved from http://na.leagueoflegends.com/
[30]
Riot Games. 2016. RANKED PLAY FAQ. Retrieved from https://support.riotgames.com/hc/enus/articles/204010760-Ranked-Play-FAQ#h8
[31]
Riot Games. 2016. Riot Games API. Retrieved from https://developer.riotgames.com/
[32]
John C. Scott and Barney G. Glaser. 1971. The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research. American Sociological Review 36, 335. http://doi.org/10.2307/2094063
[33]
Sepandar Sepehr and Milena Head. 2013. Competition as an element of gamification for learning: an exploratory longitudinal investigation. Proceedings of the First International Conference on Gameful Design, Research, and Applications - Gamification '13, ACM Press, 2--9. http://doi.org/10.1145/2583008.2583009
[34]
Kenneth B. Shores, Yilin He, Kristina L. Swanenburg, Robert Kraut, and John Riedl. 2014. The identification of deviance and its impact on retention in a multiplayer game. Proceedings of the 17th ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work & social computing CSCW '14, ACM Press, 1356--1365. http://doi.org/10.1145/2531602.2531724
[35]
Paul Tassi. 2014. Riot's "League of Legends" Reveals Astonishing 27 Million Daily Players, 67 Million Monthly. Forbes. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2014/01/27/riot s-league-of-legends-reveals-astonishing-27-milliondaily-players-67-million-monthly/#e24f30d35111
[36]
T.L. Taylor. 2003. Power gamers just want to have fun. Instrumental play in a MMOG.
[37]
D. Williams, Nicolas Ducheneaut, Li Xiong, Yuanyuan Zhang, Nick Yee, and Eric Nickell. 2006. From Tree House to Barracks: The Social Life of Guilds in World of Warcraft. Games and Culture 1, 4: 338--361. http://doi.org/10.1177/1555412006292616
[38]
Jeff Yan and Brian Randell. 2005. A systematic classification of cheating in online games. Proceedings of 4th ACM SIGCOMM workshop on Network and system support for games - NetGames '05, ACM Press, 1--9. http://doi.org/10.1145/1103599.1103606
[39]
Nick Yee. 2006. Motivations for Play in Online Games. CyberPsychology & Behavior 9: 772--775. http://doi.org/10.1089/cpb.2006.9.772

Cited By

View all
  • (2025)Dichotomy of Game Design and Gaming Practice: Examining Gaming Toxicity and Online Gaming Communities in IndiaHuman-Computer Interaction. Design and Research10.1007/978-3-031-80832-6_1(3-22)Online publication date: 14-Feb-2025
  • (2024)Structures that tilt: Understanding “toxic” behaviors in online gamingNew Media & Society10.1177/14614448241270446Online publication date: 19-Aug-2024
  • (2024)Casual Competition by Design: A Study of the All Random All Mid (ARAM) Mode in League of LegendsProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36869928:CSCW2(1-28)Online publication date: 8-Nov-2024
  • Show More Cited By

Index Terms

  1. Ranking Practices and Distinction in League of Legends

    Recommendations

    Comments

    Information & Contributors

    Information

    Published In

    cover image ACM Conferences
    CHI PLAY '16: Proceedings of the 2016 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play
    October 2016
    424 pages
    ISBN:9781450344562
    DOI:10.1145/2967934
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

    Sponsors

    Publisher

    Association for Computing Machinery

    New York, NY, United States

    Publication History

    Published: 15 October 2016

    Permissions

    Request permissions for this article.

    Check for updates

    Author Tags

    1. league of legends
    2. moba
    3. multiplayer online battle arena
    4. player experience
    5. ranking

    Qualifiers

    • Research-article

    Conference

    CHI PLAY '16
    Sponsor:

    Acceptance Rates

    CHI PLAY '16 Paper Acceptance Rate 36 of 124 submissions, 29%;
    Overall Acceptance Rate 421 of 1,386 submissions, 30%

    Contributors

    Other Metrics

    Bibliometrics & Citations

    Bibliometrics

    Article Metrics

    • Downloads (Last 12 months)63
    • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)4
    Reflects downloads up to 01 Mar 2025

    Other Metrics

    Citations

    Cited By

    View all
    • (2025)Dichotomy of Game Design and Gaming Practice: Examining Gaming Toxicity and Online Gaming Communities in IndiaHuman-Computer Interaction. Design and Research10.1007/978-3-031-80832-6_1(3-22)Online publication date: 14-Feb-2025
    • (2024)Structures that tilt: Understanding “toxic” behaviors in online gamingNew Media & Society10.1177/14614448241270446Online publication date: 19-Aug-2024
    • (2024)Casual Competition by Design: A Study of the All Random All Mid (ARAM) Mode in League of LegendsProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36869928:CSCW2(1-28)Online publication date: 8-Nov-2024
    • (2024)MJ-DLVAT: A Deep Learning Value Assessment Technique for Mahjong2024 IEEE Conference on Games (CoG)10.1109/CoG60054.2024.10645601(1-8)Online publication date: 5-Aug-2024
    • (2024)Players’ continuous willingness to play in MOBA game ranking mode: through the lens of self-determination theory and social comparison theoryHumanities and Social Sciences Communications10.1057/s41599-024-03934-111:1Online publication date: 22-Oct-2024
    • (2023)Self-regulation, stress appraisal, and esport action performanceFrontiers in Psychology10.3389/fpsyg.2023.126577814Online publication date: 10-Oct-2023
    • (2022)Independent Validation of the Video Game Dispositional Flow Scale With League of Legends PlayersExtended Abstracts of the 2022 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play10.1145/3505270.3558351(44-50)Online publication date: 2-Nov-2022
    • (2022)Towards a Community-Based Ranking System of Overwatch PlayersEntertainment Computing – ICEC 202210.1007/978-3-031-20212-4_25(309-319)Online publication date: 1-Nov-2022
    • (2022)Statistical Models for Predicting Results in Professional League of LegendsArtsIT, Interactivity and Game Creation10.1007/978-3-030-95531-1_10(138-152)Online publication date: 10-Feb-2022
    • (2021)Punishment and Its Discontents: An Analysis of Permanent Ban in an Online Game CommunityProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/34760755:CSCW2(1-21)Online publication date: 18-Oct-2021
    • Show More Cited By

    View Options

    Login options

    View options

    PDF

    View or Download as a PDF file.

    PDF

    eReader

    View online with eReader.

    eReader

    Figures

    Tables

    Media

    Share

    Share

    Share this Publication link

    Share on social media