Playing with MOBA affect

Josh JarrettDigital Cultures Research Centre, University of the West of England

@Joshua_Jarrett

MOBAs?• Multiplayer Online Battle Arena• Games genre that was born out of a modding scene in the mid 2000s• Team based game typically involving ten people utilising unique

customisable ‘heroes’ who cooperate with each other to defeat the other team of players• The two most prominent titles are League of Legends (Riot Games,

2009) and Dota 2 (Valve Corporation, 2012)• Now one of the most played online genres in the world • League of Legends alone has over 27 million daily players

Live streaming

E-sports

Free to play

MOBAs ‘fair’ free to play monetisation • A distinction to be made between ‘pay to win’ and ‘fair’ free to play.• Pay to win games typified by social media games. • Pay to win games are sustained by small minority (‘whalers’) that buy in-

game upgrades or power ups to gain a competitive advantage.• Pay to win is typically short lived and does not garner any widespread or

lasting fandom.• MOBAs do not sell any in-game competitive material, instead relying

solely on aesthetical upgrades – hence ‘fair’. • In contrast to pay to win games, these fair free to play games rely utterly

on the affective fandom of their players.

Examples of things League of Legends sells

Examples of things League of Legends sells

Contextualising fair free to play• As a model it is hugely influential. The revenue for League of Legends

alone was over $1 billion last year• An example of ‘affective economies’ (Jenkins, 2006; Arvidsson and

Colleoni, 2012; Bennet et al, 2015) similar to Kickstarter or Early release Steam games that rely upon close relations between developer and player. • The commoditisation of the media form is obscured.

League of Legends affective address• The free to play model itself evokes an affective address.• Riot Games position themselves as gamers themselves in forum,

Reddit and vlog spaces.• Refer to themselves always as ‘Rioters’.• They embrace their past as an indie developer.• They support the e-sports scene in an unprecedented way.

Return of a Gift Economy• Gift economics (Mauss, 1954; Hyde, 1979)• Hyde (1979: 88) describes the importance of a ‘total social

phenomenon’ devoid of law that constrains the ‘emotional and spiritual’ qualities of the gift. • As soon as that social phenomenon of gift giving is lost, reciprocation

of the gift becomes compromised. • Similar to many wider participatory actions that also find themselves

platformed (Schäfer, 2011; Djick, 2013; Jenkins et al, 2013) and affectively valued.

Gaming the Gift• Extracts from Reddit discussions:• “I buy skins simply to support Riot. I play the game quite a bit and want to give back. Plus, the skins allow for a level of

customization. It's win-win.”• “The biggest reason I keep on convincing myself to buy skins, is to support riot devs that keep on making this game unique

and fresh. Without them we won't have a fun game to play and might just ignore league as a whole, and I do hope my money reaches their wallets.”

• “I also enjoy doing it because it supports Riot and allows them to continue making such awesome stuff! Sure I could just not buy skins and stuff, but I just like knowing that me buying Blade Queen Lissandra for example, helps to fund them to create better stuff, and get even bigger :)”

• “It is good to see how much work Riot puts into the entire experience, with updates, new skins and game modes, LCS, etc. and feel really justified in spending money on it. It makes me feel nice to think that I am providing the opportunity to pay someone to work on something they love, rather than get a boring job at some software company.”

• “I have been playing for a long time and have enough disposal income that I don't mind giving £30 to Riot per month to help them improve the game.”

• “I absolutely LOVE League of Legends because it's entirely Free to Play and not Pay to Win. A lot of games could/should learn from that. That being said, I've dropped about ~300 euros in LoL in the past four years. I remember thinking 'what kind of an idiot is going to spend money on a free game?‘”

Gaming the Gift? • • New affective mode of digital monetisation? or• Residue of the grassroots / folk background the MOBA genre was born

into?

• Thank you for your time! • @Joshua_Jarrett