League of Legends Lecture

Before the millions of players and billions in revenue, before the esports tournaments that top 100 million spectators, League of Legends was more of an idea than a game. Its co-founder Marc Merrill remembers the year leading up to the game's release as one of terror and wild leaps of faith. In a small team, they threw themselves into development, but it was a rush to meet deadlines. As a result, "we weren't focusing on quality," he says.

The result is that the player experience is very fragmented. Players must balance many different factors to succeed on the Summoner's Rift. They must prioritize their primary objectives—like destroying the enemy base—and achieve them while maintaining other critical secondary goals. These can be the difference between winning and losing.

In an effort to understand how these overlapping factors shape the player experience, researchers from Stanford and University of California, Irvine asked more than 18,000 League of Legends players to self-report their motivational regulations on a weekly basis. They validated a typology that categorizes the motives of the typical League of Legends player: The goal-directed player, the completionist player, and the competitive player.

NicoThePico, an ex-LoL LCS coach, will use these three categories to explore the most important aspects of the game from a gameplay perspective. He'll show you how to improve your micro/macro knowledge, role understanding, and KDA through weekly homework assignments.롤대리