BCM 215 DA AN INVESTIGATION INTO WHY LEAGUE OF LEGENDS IS STILL POPULAR AFTER A DECADE.

The aim of this video essay is to provide some insight into the world of league of legends and it’s relatively unchanged gameplay in over a decade. I will be looking at why the game is still massively popular all around the world through research into cognitive behaviours around competitive style gameplay and questions I’ve posed to the community.

I hope that this gives a view into a game community that is still very much alive and thriving in a world with an attention span of a goldfish.

Academic resources used :

ones, S., Bodie, G. and Hughes, S., 2016. The Impact of Mindfulness on Empathy, Active Listening, and Perceived Provisions of Emotional Support. Communication Research, 46(6), pp.838-865.

Kasumovic, M., Blake, K., Dixson, B. and Denson, T., 2015. Why do people play violent video games? Demographic, status-related, and mating-related correlates in men and women. Personality and Individual Differences, 86, pp.204-211.

Mora-Cantallops, M. and Sicilia, M., 2018. Player-centric networks in League of Legends. Social Networks, 55, pp.149-159.

BCM 215 CONTEXTUAL BLOG POST

Throughout my DA, I spent countless League of Legends game constantly ponder why I play the game I have roughly spend 700 hours in game mostly in the classic mode of summoners rift and I started to realise why I have. See for most games I pick up, get bored and then leave them a few months later but games with a ranking system such as Gran Turismo sport, CS:GO and League of Legends I have spent hundreds and in some cases thousands of hours in game with them. This pattern I noticed lead to me to realise that I should explain it to others through the use of research and my own personal experiences.

I based a lot of my argument on journals that show evidence into why people like competition and why we play competitively but I also dove into the reasons why Riot as a company make the game so addictive despite the game being unchanged for so many years. I ended up coming to the conclusion that it was the empathy from the company in giving us as a player base what we want. The difference in League of Legends compared to a game such as Call of Duty is that Call of Duty is this money making machine, they know people will buy their games each year because if you don’t at least a few of your friends will leaving you no one to play with on the other instalments of the series. But if you look at League of Legends this single free to play game has developed over the past decade into a game that is very up to spec in graphics and hugely improved, Riot don’t want the game to die out they want to keep it alive and thriving and they do that by watching the play style of professional players and seeing what they are doing.

Which leads to me what I wish I had time to look into, my DA was very much constrained by time for a game I play so much of. There was a whole other chapter I had to cut out and that was on the player base watching other people play the game, arguing into the fact that lower ranked players tend to copy whatever strategy the higher ranked players are going with, this is why an off-meta strategy tends to become popular and part of the game, like the roaming support I mentioned in my video essay.

Overall I wish I could’ve spoken more on other topics within the game, I wanted to challenge myself through the use of a video essay due to my strong points in my work being elsewhere, while I feel like I may have missed the mark in some spots I tried to apply the feedback that Richard left me on my beta to explain the game a bit better and to shorten it down the amount of things I wanted to talk about. I feel like I have created at least a small understanding on the game for people who can’t wrap their heads around playing the same game for nearly a decade.

BCM 215 Critical Self-Reflection of Comments

Comment one: https://musokagames.wordpress.com/2020/10/12/hunting-102-a-lesson-in-possible-failure-now-we-aussie-it/comment-page-1/

While I was impressed with Mitches research, I didn’t get to see a lot of what he had to offer, the fact that his microphone had broken was a huge shame as it was a project I was looking forward to. While I didn’t have any sort of research to offer him I made a suggestion to take a look at the Far Cry game series if he was to go down the path of acting like Steve Irwin, I know it’s a big thing to ask as he’s already on his way to doing his DA but incorporating other games into it could be something that could work well as I know doing a game like Far Cry could offer some help into getting those Cinematic shots he is after. I tried to engage more with his DA over my comments on previous pitches by offering a set of fresh eyes to his current situation.

“Mitch!

It’s a real shame that your mic decided not to work, i was really looking forward to getting a preview of this project. I really do like the idea of going down the path of Steve Irwin, it really brings it closer to home doesn’t it?

I’m interested to see how you go about editing this as I know doing game cinematic’s can really put a strain on the computer, but even with just the third person view I believe it’ll still turn out great.

I know some of the Far Cry games have en element of animal hunting in them, it could be good to even check those out to see if it would be easier to do some filming with that.

Looks and sounds great.”

Comment Two: https://yidiii.wordpress.com/2020/10/15/bcm215-da-beta/comment-page-1

Yidi’s project was one I found quite interesting. I thought she would benefit a lot from an article talking about why animal crossing is so popular, and offered her the suggestion that it creates an escape from the mundane of our own lives. I also made an actionable suggestion to begin a survey across a few platforms for her to talk to an audience of gamers into why they enjoy playing animal crossing over other games. This I believe creates some substance within her DA and a real world look into the lives of other people, saying “This would allow you to tailor your screenshots to your audience on reddit. For example, if someone said they enjoyed gardening, you could respond to their post with a photo of your gardens. The same concept could work with fishing, bug collecting, the museums and the outfit customisation options of the game.” I also suggested that she look into other popular and similar style games on the switch like Stardew valley and etc. Again, through this comment I felt I improved greatly on my suggestions into looking across other games with a similar platform, and I felt that I improved on doing a little more research into people’s DA’s as a whole choosing the ones that I liked the best.

“Hi Yidi,

You’ve made lots of fantastic progress.

I think the links to COVID-19 that you’ve included are really interesting and I wonder whether these trends would extend further than just Animal Crossing.

Another aspect that I think would be really interesting is if you did some research on how Animal Crossing compares to similar games on the same platform (Nintendo Switch). The main one that I can think of is Stardew Valley. I read this article (https://achonaonline.com/entertainment/2020/05/why-is-animal-crossing-so-popular/) that essentially outlined that the reason we enjoy Animal Crossing so much is because of the endless possibilities and the chance to escape the mundane of our own lives. I think it could be a really interesting way to expand your project if you used the interaction that you get on Reddit to survey people as to why they enjoy playing Animal Crossing over other games in the market.This would allow you to tailor your screenshots to your audience on reddit. For example, if someone said they enjoyed gardening, you could respond to their post with a photo of your gardens. The same concept could work with fishing, bug collecting, the museums and the outfit customisation options of the game.

Thanks for a great presentation.”

Comment Three: https://ashlanrose.wordpress.com/2020/10/11/bcm215-marketing-in-the-gaming-industry/comment-page-1

Ashlans beta was super informative for me as it gave a perspective of gaming that I often just brush over, marketing. I gave the suggestion to possibly look into the example of using twitch as a marketing tool for game studio’s and linked a video I watched recently that covered the link between digital marketing and gaming practice. I also suggested that she look at the marketing model of “Raid: Shadow Legends” (said in the voice of course) and the ever-growing link between social media and marketing with “influencers”. I made these suggestions because I can’t think of any time fall guys was actually marketed, I haven’t seen a single advert or trailer for the game out anywhere, it sort of just popped up on my YouTube feed with a lot of influencers playing the game. Doing a little bit of research on material to offer Ashlan, it gave me an understanding of the marketing model that the game industry is going for now and how we are becoming almost blind to it. I learnt a lot more in this round of comments because I had more of a want to research further into these ideas of different marketing strategies.

“Hi Ashlan,

This was really interesting, and your project looks like it’s developing well. While you said you wanted to expand to look into traditional marketing too, I feel like digital marketing and gaming have inherent links that can’t be ignored.

A really interesting example of this is the rise of Twitch streaming and how it acts as a marketing tool for game studios. I watched an interesting video about Fall Guys recently that covers this link between digital marketing and gaming practice (it’s a little bit colloquial, but still makes some good points: https://youtu.be/WyPm6p0GnwY). In this video, its essentially outlined that the Fall Guys marketing strategy was releasing exclusive steam download codes to twitch streamers and their fans, giving fans the opportunity to compete with their favourite online personalities. This amassed such a massive following that even when the game was not released, it was so crowded that it kept crashing.

Another similar idea is looking at sponsorship, particularly on Youtube. I cannot count the amount of times I’ve heard of videos being sponsored by ‘Raid: Shadow Legends’. These links between social media, marketing and gaming would be extremely interesting to explore further.

Thanks again for a great presentation.”

BCM215 Beta

Since my DA pitch, I have been giving my DA a lot of thought before approaching it. What I realised when beginning to write my scripts and do my research is that what I pitched s much larger than the time limit allowed.

While I have begun working on my video essays, I have had to begin thinking about how I’m going to overhaul the entire project to help it be more suitable to the time limit required. I have come to the conclusion that one big video essay about the development of the lane in League of Legends called jungle and how it is becoming less frustrating to play the jungle but still a challenge.

I suppose one of the best things about my project currently is the fact that I have so many in-depth patch notes I can go through with league of legends. The game is constantly developing in ways to become more enjoyable but remain quite the same at its core. One of the main websites I have also been using is the League of Legends Wiki, which has so much information on all versions of the game to help me show an accurate information in large amounts.

While I understand the whole “history of the jungle in League of Legends” has been done over and over again, I was more looking to describe the way it has remained a pinnacle of the game and how it became the normal for this type of game. I will be looking to gain an understanding through social media and gaining players opinions on how riot has developed the game through interviews.

One of the biggest issues I have hit with my project is the fact that I am doing this entire project on a Macbook Air that is struggling heavily to record gameplay, hence the extremely low frame rate. Though I may be able to use someone else’s gaming setup to record.

Other than that the foundation is there, I just need to build the framework.

BCM215 Comment Reflection

Reading through people’s DA pitches, it’s difficult to find a favourite. I picked a league of legends blog post as it was similar to mine, as well as two others that I would not have thought about doing as my own idea, so it was great to get some new info.

Comment link: https://toriswagyblogs.wordpress.com/2020/09/08/pitch-2/

Victoria’s DA is about the game League of Legends and how it run’s off microtransactions. League of Legends is a game I have played for just about six years and I am a huge fan of buying new skins, as a I enjoy supporting the developers of free to play games. She mentions that spending money on the game makes you no better at it, but I believe it should’ve been mentioned that new champions cost in game currency. While you can buy the champions with earnt currency, its actually quite hard to save up for a recently released one

Comment Link: https://dechlansblog.home.blog/bcm-215-da-pitch/

I was intrigued by Declan’s DA pitch, he was looking to focus on the story line of video games, talking about how a lot have gone online now. This interested me as I believe too that video games have moved away from this idea of developing stories, games like call of duty which are known for their online play, the campaign mode is rarely ever looked at. I suggested that he spoke about how some games you can’t even play offline now, consoles like the Xbox One often rely upon the internet to run. I know of a few people who don’t have internet connected in their house as they can’t afford the monthly payments, but they still enjoy playing video games, so often their new consoles will sit unused while they play older gen games. I suggested that he check out a polygon I linked on how to become a video game writer for some insight into the development of the story line.

Comment Link: https://chelsealeeblog.home.blog/2020/09/07/breathing-in-the-wild-zelda/

Chelsea’s DA will be looking into video game design, specifically Zelda: Breath of the Wild. As someone who doesn’t play the Zelda series, but keeps up with the culture of it I was surprised by how far the game had come design wise from the older instalments. A console like the Nintendo Switch is a bit graphically challenged, so the way that the designers managed to get the most out of it was amazing. Since I know nothing about breath of the wild, I did some more research into how they designed the game and found some great articles where they broke down the games design as a whole. I think something like Chelsea’s DA would help gamers appreciate the enormous amount of work that goes into designing a game.

BCM215 DA Pitch

My plan is to Look at the popular fighting video game League of Legends and see why people are still so obsessive with a game with mechanics that haven’t changed over the course of a decade.

With use of video essays, I will be analysing the subtle changes to gameplay that Riot Games have made to keep the game balanced and fun, as well as explaining how each match is different to the last.

Running through each of the ten seasons of league of legends, I will show how the map changed through the years and talk about how pro players adapt to these changes and use them to their advantage. I will be speaking with high ranking player to gain audio interviews to solidify my points as well as bring up new ones.

I will be diving into the fact that even when you aren’t playing the game, researching about strategies’ will greatly help your next match “One of the most important steps in LoL is the selection of the champions who will be used in the match, since this involves many factors and variables that are important to the match such as attributes and abilities of each character.” (Costa, Souza, Souza, 2019)

There are multiple websites dedicated to teaching people how to play certain LoL champions.

The goal is to create an understanding for non-League of Legends players on why people love the game so much and why it doesn’t need a sequel to stay a popular and interesting game.

@glennfather

#duet with @lbv_4 stranger going by #xyzbca #duet #commentifyouseethisonfyp

♬ Questions for British people – lbv_4

References.

L. M. Costa, A. C. C. Souza and F. C. M. Souza, “An Approach for Team Composition in League of Legends using Genetic Algorithm,” 2019 18th Brazilian Symposium on Computer Games and Digital Entertainment (SBGames), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2019, pp. 52-61, doi: 10.1109/SBGames.2019.00018.

PRIVACY AND THE PAPARAZZI – WHO DRAWS THE LINE?

PRIVACY AND THE PAPARAZZI – WHO DRAWS THE LINE?

Imagine yourself being famous. Don’t pretend that you haven’t done it at least once.

All the fans and photographers snapping your pictures, red carpet premieres, and let’s not even start with the big-ticket paychecks. However, life in the limelight comes at a price, and if you’ve read any tabloid news article within the last 20 years, you’d know that that price is privacy.

Paparazzi photojournalism is an ethically polarizing issue within our media sphere. For some it may be an ego boost, and a part of being famous, but for others it becomes frustrating, and even dangerous. This raises a series of ethical questions, with the main one being: who holds the power to draw the line, the paparazzi or the celebrity?

We saw an example of this ethical grey area in recent tabloid news, where popular singer, Ariana Grande, posted this image on her Instagram:

 

Innocent enough, right? Apparently not (Estera, 2019).

The photographer of this image, a New York paparazzo named Robert Barbera, has sued Grande for “US$25,000 worth of damages for each image used, or any profits Grande earned from the post” (Estera, 2019).

SO, WHO’S AT FAULT?

Legally, Grande is at fault, but ethically- this becomes a grey area.

To put this situation in perspective and relate it to the Australian legal system, let’s imagine that this image was taken in Australia, by an Australian photographer, of an Australian celebrity. Pearson and Polden outline that copyright is the “legal protection of the form of expression of a work such as an article or an image” (Pearson, Polden, 2015). So, there is no doubt that the photographer clearly has legal possession of copyright.

However, what if the image was taken without the celebrity’s consent? Would this evade privacy laws? Legally, the celebrity would still be at fault. Pearson and Polden further outline that as long as the image was taken on public property and does not reveal any confidential information about the subject, that it is the property of its creator. This law has become even more ethically skewed under Australian Law as the Australian legal system has refused injunctions for a breach of confidentiality previously (Pearson, Polden, 2015).

Even though the photographer is legally at fault- ethically, the photographer is still snapping a nonconsensual photo, and making money on the artists image. This raises questions on the ethical side of this situation.

WHO GOVERNS THE MEDIA?

The MEAA or “Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance” Is a trade union exclusively for the media (MEAA, 1999). Their “MEAA Code of Ethics” was written to encourage ethical journalism and reporting, as well as ethical media consumption as a whole.

When addressing privacy, the MEAA, as well as stating that a journalist must “commit themselves to honesty, fairness, independence and respect for the rights of others”, declares that journalists must “Respect private grief and personal privacy”, and furthers this through the statement that “Journalists have the right to resist compulsion to intrude” (MEAA, 1999).

These statements pose three ethical questions.

1. Are the paparazzi considered journalists and therefore are they bound to abiding by the code of ethics?
2. Was the photographer intruding when taking the photo?
3. By taking a photo without consent, is that fair? Does it respect the rights of the subject of the photo?

 

1.PHOTOJOURNALIST OR PAPARAZZI?

By definition, photojournalism is “The practice of communicating news by photographs, especially in magazines” (Oxford Dictionary). Following this definition, this would mean that paparazzi would fall under the category of journalists, even more-so than photo-journalists for newspapers or online publications.

 

This infographic outlines the salary and practice of a paparazzi photographer.

With all this considered, there is no reason why paparazzi photographers would be able to evade ethical guidelines, and therefore breaches of privacy by paparazzi must be considered as ethically wrong.

 

2. WHAT IS INTRUSION? 

Now that we have confirmed that paparazzi must abide by these ethical standards, we must assess whether the photo taken of Grande was “intrusion” or was denying her “rights to privacy” (MEAA, 2019).

On the surface, the answer to this would be yes. If we think realistically, any form of interruption, especially non-consensual photography without any motive or purpose is a violation of journalistic ethics, particularly with the intention to make money out of an artist or celebrity’s image.

In the image, Grande is simply walking, exiting a building and not doing anything particularly newsworthy. This denies Grande of her rights to simply exist without media interference. If this was the end of this, then yes- the photojournalist would ethically be at fault.

However, through uploading the images to her Instagram, Grande facilitates this photography, and even furthered this through using the image to promote her upcoming album “sweetener”. This completely alters the ethical circumstances of this situation. Although the images are of Grande, legally she doesn’t own the images, and was using someone else’s artistic work without compensation to promote her own merchandising and income. This is an unethical approach to advertisement which even breaks the MEAA Code of Ethics, the code states, “Use fair, responsible and honest means to obtain material” and “Aim to attribute information to its source”. (MEAA, 1999).

This makes this situation even more ethically complex, as both sides are irresponsibly and unethically undergoing media creation. This makes it difficult to say that the photographer was unethically intruding, as Grande facilitated the action through reposting the photo for her own financial gain.

3. THE FAIRNESS AND RESPECT OF CONSENT

Technically, the photo is the photographers and paparazzi are legally allowed to take photos in public places without the consent of the subject, however, just because they are legally allowed to, this does not make it ethically just.

The MEAA code of ethics explains that when obtaining journalistic material, journalists must “Use fair, responsible and honest means to obtain material. Identify yourself and your employer before obtaining any interview for publication or broadcast” (MEAA, 2019). The photographer of this image did break this guideline, as the photo was taken without consent, and without a formal introduction between both parties.

IN CONCLUSION…

Both the paparazzi and Ariana Grande were both ethically at fault but photo journalism should be included under the classification of a code of ethics so that it is restricted on what you can and can’t do to save any further confusion as to who can actually do what with photos of themselves, and the photos a paparazzi may take.

REFERENCE LIST

 

Estera, C. (2019). Ariana Grande sued for posting paparazzi photos on her Instagram account. [online] Celebrity.nine.com.au. Available at: https://celebrity.nine.com.au/latest/ariana-grande-sued-by-paparazzi-instagram-photos/515c50d8-37d9-4165-a6ac-ec1d55ae2a3f [Accessed 24 May 2019].

 

MEAA. (1999). MEAA Journalist Code of Ethics. https://www.meaa.org/meaa-media/code-of-ethics/ [Accessed 24 May 2019].

 

O’Connell, C. (2019). Interesting facts about the world of the Paparazzi. [online] Carl O’Connell Photography – wedding photography services for Brighton, Hove, East Sussex, West Sussex, Surrey, London and the UK. Available at: http://www.carloconnell.co.uk/interesting-facts-about-paparazzi/ [Accessed 24 May 2019].

 

Oxford Dictionaries | English. (2019). photojournalism | Definition of photojournalism in English by Oxford Dictionaries. [online] Available at: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/photojournalism [Accessed 24 May 2019].

 

Pearson, M. and Polden, M. (2015). The Journalist’s Guide to Media Law. Crow’s Nest, N.S.W. Allen & Unwin.

 

 

Could Facebook be a trusted News source?

As an avid Facebook addict, I probably spend more time on Facebook than I do watching tv, listening to music and doing my assignments. The fact is that it’s something that comes with me everywhere I go, no matter what country I’m in or possibly what planet I’m on, I’ll still be checking my notifications to see who has liked all my memes that I’m constantly sharing. With something that isn’t a seriously credible source of information that anyone can post on, who’s to say that I’m not just getting constant fake news?

 

Facebook is owned by Mark Zuckerberg, who has built his online empire through gaining millions of users on his social network which has seen significant developments since its creation in 2004, a big development was its use as a tool for news publications to get its news out to the population of Facebook addicts like myself, who are going to see it way before they turn the TV on or read a newspaper. But the fact that anyone can post a “news article” even if they don’t have any credibility can be damaging to a person’s perception on what’s actually happening in the world. But in my opinion, Mark Zuckerberg would have to have a reasonably centred view to actually control what news gets posted on his site, he can’t just decide to filter out certain opinions that he doesn’t actually agree with, but at the same time he has to maintain that there isn’t hate speech or violent news articles posted on his site, so it is important that he maintains that centrist view. Facebook has adapted a new approach to filter violent content from its site now.

 

I have a fair bit of distrust in the way I get news on Facebook, the fact that I can choose what news sources I see on my feed is important to me, I’ve gained trust in certain publications to give me real news, so I choose only those to come up on my feed, I have more choice than the six or seven news channels on free to air TV. But I understand to always go through multiple sources online to find the real  story, I guess the general population are worried about the fact that these Facebook news sources don’t have the same punishment as other news sources when they spread fake facts, but honestly If you look through different sources to find the right story then you’ll be using Facebook as a news source to the fullest.

UNHATE AND THE COMPLEX IMAGE

The UNHATE campaign, endorsed by clothing company, Benneton (UNHATE, 2011) was polarising to say the least. While the controversial advertising campaign received a series of awards at both One Show and the Cannes Ad Festival (Huffpost, 2012), This particular image from the series caused an uproar, prompting immediate action from the Vatican, with Rev. Frederico Lombardi stating that the image was ‘unacceptable’ and that it ‘show(ed) a serious lack of respect’ (Daily Mail, 2018).

 

Using this as an example of a complex image is great since it can be analysed through the use of semiotics. Semiotics are the science of signs, this explains how we interpret media and our reactions to it based on our own ethics and emotions. An individual’s ideology is a system of beliefs and personal morals that impacts the way that they see and perceive media. Media, and its physical description can be described as its denotation (Middlemost, 2019). Using Stuart Hall’s encoding/decoding model, an individual’s interpretation and what they bring to it can be described as the connotation (Hall, 1980). Through semiotics, media practitioners can gain qualitative research on media consumption based on an individual’s ideology and connotations.

 

The meaning of this picture is pretty straight forward, it is an image of two men kissing, both are wearing religious clothing but from differing religions. The connotation however, is entirely different because, as responders, we have shared connotations about the relationship between religion and homosexuality. Due to this, this image can be read in multiple ways.

 

The intended reading, as outlined in UNHATE’s campaign statement aims ‘to reach out to all the citizens of the world, for an open, active democracy without physical, social, political or ideological borders’ (UNHATE, 2011). In this reading, this image can be seen as a peaceful protest and political statement, promoting global unity. The opposing reading, which stirred controversy within the Vatican, is that this image implies that The Pope and Ahmed el-Tayeb are either homosexual or promote homosexual ideas. We are able to get to these readings through assessing shared connotations and our own ideologies.

 

Ultimately, through looking at this image through a semiotic lens, we are able to understand how different individuals can have different readings of situations and images due to their ideologies and shared connotations.

 

A Sea Of Adverts

It feels like I keep running into things to waste my time on every single time I log onto Instagram or Facebook I guess I never really viewed it as being an audience member whilst reading the twentieth clickbait title I’ve clicked on in the past hour, they really capture the audience, yet you still just feel like you’ve been tricked into reading some absolute garbage. But this is the way mainstream social media news outlets can make their money to continue running, its always going to be much more of a struggle to continue running in comparison to a TV show that continually sells ads. Yet I find myself slightly offended when I get told I need to buy a subscription for a News app or Website.

 

So I guess that’s the world we live in today, we expect content for free and without adverts. I couldn’t think of a single time I sat through an advert that I had an opportunity to skip on YouTube. But surely there should be some kind of guideline on videos, there are videos on YouTube and Facebook that are less than one minute long that have 40 seconds of advert, most of the time ill just quit out of the video and watch someone else’s rather than sit through an advert, which loses valuable monetization for the content creator. But for some reason, I just feel personally victimised by adverts on YouTube and Facebook videos, maybe I’ve only had it too good without adverts for so long.

 

Which is why I feel as if putting adverts on Instagram videos could see the death of the social media platform, as the videos on Instagram are only limited to 1 minute at a time and keep us social media addicts happy, there’s just something so anaesthetic about seeing an ad pop up whilst using a well-structured app or website such as Instagram, which is a relatively clean and straightforward design. Just let me focus on someone doing something stupid on a push bike or a car without some eardrum blasting advert telling me I can get a bucket of chicken from KFC for $20 or how I still have that new Toyota feeling. I guess we just live in a sea of adverts.