Victory! You have successfully destroyed all of your enemy’s turrets and their nexus! You now feel like the nerdiest, most victorious person on the planet, even though there are millions of people winning the same game all around the world. Such pleasurable success is addictive, especially when it’s so accessible. Software, such as League of Legends, can be freely downloaded with ease, and played anytime of the day thanks to today’s most popular modern technological advancement: computers. With access to the internet, any person can escape into an artificial reality where you become a fictional character armed with unnatural powers and go head to head with other players, fighting to be the first to destroy the opposing team’s nexus (the heart of the enemy base). League of Legends has captured the attention of millions across the continents, encouraging nerds to hide away from the outside world by rewarding addicted, loyal players with cool additional features, creative graphics, and even money if you become good enough to win a tournament.
Why is an online role-playing game so popular? Competitive strategical games have been popular since the dawn of time, because it’s part of human nature to strive to be better than other humans. In order to win, you must first use strategy to create a game plan which allows you to out think your opponent and defeat their own strategy. The military uses the same concepts, because essentially waging a physical war against real human beings is just a competitive strategical game. League of Legends is just an online war between imaginary people, making it an outlet for competitiveness. Football, table tennis, chess, and Chutes and Ladders are popular outlets for this aspect of human nature as well, but if you decided to slice up your opponent for making a touchdown or for landing on the tallest ladder, you would probably go to jail. League of Legends is also an outlet for violence, an aspect of human nature which is very highly frowned upon. Gaming violence, however, is not considered to be as terrible as real physical violence, and thus why role-playing games are so popular, especially with males. League of Legends is different from other “violent” games because champions (fictitious characters created for the purpose of killing other characters) are outfitted with unnatural and supernatural powers, unlike Call of Duty which is based off of the American military. In addition, you do not have to be a rocket scientist to play League of Legends. By your third or fourth game, you have the dynamics of the game down pat, and are on your way to becoming an efficient killing machine who won’t get arrested for murder.
In general, League of Legends is considered to be fun to play. The more you play, the more IP (Influence Points, which are used as in-game currency) you receive; the more IP you receive, the more champions and runes (bonuses for your champions) you can buy. This allows for the game to become more interesting because you have to think strategically when spending your precious IP. If you beef up your champion with the wrong features, you won’t be able to play the champion to the best of it’s ability, leading to the sad, depressing loss of a match. Eventually, when you’ve committed the rest of your heart and soul to League of Legends, you can become an impressively fantastic player, and find that you can play an online role-playing game for the sole purpose of cash profit. In this modern era, having the ability to play games professionally is the new American Dream.
Despite the fact that computers were initially created for the purpose of computing, our culture has decided that the sole purpose of a computer is to avoid reality and forget what sunshine looks like. The internet has opened up the ability to hide inside a fantasy world, destroying other-worldly demons, instead of living in reality and tackling everyday demons such as that essay that you have due today. Instead of going outside and expending energy, it’s much easier to sit inside your bedroom and hang out with your friends by killing minions (foot soldiers who attack before the champions) and chatting online. People of this day and age prefer to virtually know people than to actually get to know them, so they began to use computers to make their agoraphobic lives easier to deal with. You can be social, have the most fun you’ve ever had, and never have to leave the house.
Then again, not everyone likes to pretend to be an alien who kills champions with lunar energy and eats minions in order to get fatter. Even for those that do enjoy online games, League of Legends isn’t considered to be a fun for everyone, because it’s unrealistic, repetitive, and violent. Unlike the
Sims, it isn’t easy to make a connection with because you don’t take on the role of a normal human being, playing for the purpose of being in a virtual reality where your character showers, sleeps, eats, hangs out with friends, have babies, parties like an Ole Miss fraternity brother, etc. Some people are addicted to the internet thanks to social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Some people aren’t addicted to the internet at all, and have actually experienced the foreign concept of exercise.
Human beings are addicted to artificiality. If the internet has the ability to generate the same feelings you would normally feel doing something, why would you go do that something if it involved leaving the comfort of your own home? There is nothing else in the world like going through wifi withdrawals. Steadily, we have become considerably lazier than our ancestors, because most of our population has forgotten how fun it is to play sports, or go swimming, or do just about anything that involves expending any amount of energy what-so-ever. Our culture revolves around its addiction to pleasure and instant gratification, both which are fulfilled by the internet through funny cat memes, videos in which people do stupid things and reap the consequences, and League of Legends matches.
League of Legends is a good example of how our culture tends to use modern technology and why people are so addicted to the internet. It’s a popular piece of software which allows the user to continue to be lazy and fat while still enjoying the presence of other people. You can live the new American Dream victoriously, perched on the couch or in a rolling desk chair, typing and clicking your way through the wall of minions attacking you. No one else knows what the sky looks like outside today either. It is perfectly acceptable to feel accomplished with yourself by winning a match and congratulating yourself by ordering a pizza online.