Why is League of Legends so goddamn toxic ?
I have a bittersweet story with League of Legends. The (sometimes abusive) relationship I have had with it now spans over 7-8 years. When life demands or when my frustrations are too strong, I take a break, but those never last long.
Over the years, I've had my share of "heated gamer moments" as the kids call them. I've traded insults with more people than I can count. I've been angry, sad and dejected because of things that happened in the game. Now that im a little bit older, and somewhat more relaxed about these kinds of things I often marvel at the sheer transformations in personality that people tend to have as soon as they press that damned "accept match" button.
A friend of mine is a good player. I know him as a kind and helpful soul. I've seen him worry himself sick, to the point where he is loosing sleep, when his friends are struggling with something substantial. Calls with him are always a good time - except when we play League of Legends. The moment something goes wrong in the game he might unleash an inner fury that you would never expect of him. He can hurt, denigrate and abuse people in the text-chat more than you could ever guess had you met him in any, and i do mean ANY other context.
This made me wonder: what is it about League of Legends (and competitive games in general) that elicits this behavior in its players ?
My main hypothesis would be that the intersection between the people who play games like this for fun, and the way the game is structured have created an unholy abomination of behaviors that would sell its firstborn child just to be called anything close to "teamplay".
League of Legends is a competitive game at its core. While there are other modes, the main draw is the classic 5v5, especially Ranked Solo/Duo. In this mode, you can queue up alone or with one other person, and teams of five are formed from these individual or duo blocks, balanced to have (in theory) the same average skill level. After each match, players gain or lose ranked points based on their elo (like in chess) and the elo of their opponents. The result? Even though it’s a team game, the competitive structure is built around individual performance and rank progression. This brings us to the first big issue: players with completely different situations and goals being thrown together.
In almost all traditional competitive team sports, all players will warm up together and then get into a match together. In League of Legends, players are matched without regard for where they are in their play session. One player might be on a binge, trying to get a higher rank and is almost there and just needs this very last win, while another might be on his first game of the day, after a long day of work and considers this his "warmup game". These two players will differ hugely in their respective alertness and attentiveness but most importantly in their goals within the game. While the first player might be trying to optimize every second in the game to gain an advantage on the enemy team, the latter might just be warming up his fingers or playing for fun. This mismatch in goals and energy levels is a breeding ground for frustration, especially when the team starts losing.
Also in this Category, but not exactly relating to goals, is the approach each player has to the game. In traditional sports, competition and training are separate activities. In competitive video games they are almost always one and the same. Playing is improving and improving is playing. Most people do not approach the game with an improvement mindset. Many people just want to play, without reflecting on what works and what doesn't, assuming that improvement will come on its own.
As in any human endeavour, most people don't think about specific goals or the way to get there, instead adopting vague goals through mimetic desire. This complete lack of clear definition sometimes causes what is known in the League community as "Autopilot" meaning players playing purely based on acquired habit instead of actual mental attendance to the game. When these players on "Autopilot" encounter a player on the same skill level, but with a higher mental attendance to the game they will loose. Instead of understanding what is happening, they will continue to make the same mistakes thereby adding another layer of friction within the team.
Increasing the layers of friction even more is the fact that there is no correct way to play league of legends. As in any good competitive game, digital or otherwise, the bandwith of strategies that can lead to a win are staggeringly high. Over time, the community has converged on a general understanding of the different stages of the game as well as the strategies and tactics that should be employed in them. But there is absolutely no consensus as to what could constitute "good play". There is no generally agreed upon model of the game that states what constitutes a good play and what doesn't. There is a separation of roles within a team, but different roles have overlapping objectives, making boundaries between them fluid.
Therefore, different players have different priorities in a game concerning what resources to gather, when to gather them and how to employ them. They have differing philosophies on how to engage with the enemy team. They have different approaches on which players on their team to prioritize and play around. The fact that in a team game, five different people can have ten differing views on how to even play that game is insane.
In every football team there will be differing views on how to approach the game and about what constitutes "good play". Successfull teamplay depends on a coherent vision of how a game should be approached. This coherence in views is reached through conflict within a team that arises when two viewpoints cannot coexist. When done well, this can be beneficial to everyone involved. Conflict forces players to clarify their views to make them expressible. But if this process happens, it will happen mostly outside of the game, during analysis. There is no fucking way it could ever happen inside of a game, especially a game that has no voice chat, only allowing players to express themselves through text. To call this "adding another layer of friction" as i have done so far would be a massive understatement. This is less a layer of friction and more a layer of hell.
But when, let's call them "philosophical differences" cannot be resolved ingame and there is no clear consensus on what even constitutes good play apart from winning the game, how are these issues resolved ? Well, in League of Legends they are mostly resolved through rank. And by the way, that is the correct way. Competitive games are always a form of debate between the teams of which strategy is better. Winning shows that your view of the game was clearer than the opponents view. Winning shows that your understanding of the game was better. Players that win will climb in rank. Players that loose will decline in rank. But when players disagree about what constitutes good play in a game, the only thing they can refer to, to show that their point of view is more accurate than their counterparts is by pointing to rank as a measure of skill. Players can see the respective ranks of other players while in the game. Rank is an important part of a league players personality. Players with a high ranking are admired and often looked at as something to be imitated. Inside the community, there is a clear cultural value of a high rank.
This leads to players of even marginally higher rank asserting that everyone else on their team has no clue what they are doing, when seeing someone approach the problem of winning in a way that is not coherent with their idea about how the game should be played. But remember, there is a variety of approaches to League of Legends and there is also a variety of different skillsets that players employ to do express these approaches. A variety of different skillsets also means that players of equal rank can have completely different ways of winning. In competitive gaming there is often a general distinction made between "macro" meaning strategy and "micro" or "mechanics" meaning the actual piloting of the in-game character. Two players can have an equivalent rank while also being completely different in what they are good at. This is a strength of the game, as it shows that there is great diversity in how you can express yourself as a player. But this also means that a player who is good at mechanical play can look at a player who has good macro play and conclude that "this guy has no hands" while the macro player concludes "this guy has no fucking idea what hes doing".
Now let's get into some very basic psychology. The famous "Fundamental Attribution Error" also has a role in this comical drama. The basic idea is that when we do something that hurts people, e.g. cutting them off in traffic, we attribute this to some external circumstance like "oh, i didn't see that because i didn't have my coffee this morning". When we see the exact same behavior in other people, we assume that it is an unchangeable expression of their character. "That guy cut me off because he is a jerk, that was never loved by his parents..."
This same bias is alive and kicking in League of Legends, amplifying team tensions. When players themselves make mistakes they are more likely to attribute them to outside influence. When they see teammates make mistakes, especially mistakes that cost them something, they see it as coming directly from their malformed character, their lower-than-average intelligence and the fact that they were never loved by their parents. This adds another layer of friction.
So what do they do then? After such a mistake has occured and the enemy has gained resources as a consequence ? Well, bringing all of the factors above together they start typing in the game chat.
As stated, rank is something culturally important in league of legends. Whether someone is good or bad at the game can be seen in a single glance at their rank. Due to the significant time investment and other factors, people identify themselves with their rank. People mainly construct their egos in a way that explains why they are where they are and why this shows that they are valuable and good people. When faced with direct evidence that they are not as good as they think they are, they search for alternative explanations. Due to human tendencies like the fundamental attribution error, these explanations are probably found in the deficiency of their teammates.
But to really understand why rank matters so much, and why tempers flare so easily, we need to look at who plays these games and what needs they fulfill. There is a wide spectrum of games. There is a wide range of desires and needs fulfilled with different types of games. According to the Self Determination Theory by Ryan and Deci, psychological needs can be categorized into Autonomy, Competence and Togetherness. Competitive games can offer all three. I think a large part of the playerbase of these games fulfills basic psychological needs through them. I think that these games offer something that is often missing in young mens lives, namely a structured way to measure themselves against other, based on clear metrics with short feedback loops. (Competence), community (togetherness) and a way to approach problems (winning the game) with a variety of tools as well as the ability to choose strategies based on their character and preference (Autonomy).
And I feel that I have to make an important distinction here to be fair to all parties involved. Some players of competitive video games play them because they enjoy them vastly more than other comparable alternatives. They enjoy this specific type of competition more than they do others, be it just because of their personal preferences or because they are somehow restricted from the alternatives due to any number of factors (e.g. physical disability, restrictions based on location etc.). Other players meanwhile play them because these games are just the easiest way to satisfy these emotional needs. This distinction is relevant, because for the second type of player, these games are like junk-food. Easily accessible, satisfying in the short term and highly problematic when they are the only form of sustenance.
These are people that are deeply unsatisfied by their lives. They retreat into video games to numb their emotions. As an aside, a common phrasing of young mens retreat into video games used by people who have no clue what they are talking about is "retreating into the fantasy world of video games". That's completely missing the point. It is not a retreat into a fantasy. It’s a retreat from daily life, but not into fantasy. Fantasy implies escapism into dreamscapes, escapes into stories. That is not what is happening here. The world they are retreating into is no less real than ours. Competitive video games do not offer stories, where you can finally be the hero, where you can play pretend and make up stories like children when playing with action-figures. Competitive video games offer (i know this is shocking) competition. They offer everything i have described above. They offer something that can sometimes be really hard to get in the world we live in. They offer a clearly defined path to acclaim, to achievement. They offer, if you will, a script to follow.
If a young person came up to you and asked you: "what do i need to do in life to be successfull ?" what answer would you give ? I imagine it would be a very general statement about values and work ethic. For many young people, the lack of clear guidance leaves them searching for structure elsewhere. Contrast this with years long past now, where there were multiple clearly defined and societally accepted paths to success. That is something not prevalent in todays society anymore. That is what they are escaping to, not fucking narnia.
And let me tell you, this second type of player will get quite toxic. For them it isn't something they are just passionate about, the game is literally their (sometimes only) way to meet psychological needs. It is their only way to express ambition and skill. It is their way to get respect and even admiration. They need this game. They need to win. But due to them needing it, it becomes like junk food. In team sports, players will lean on each other to adjust their mood and the way they are feeling. They will motivate players who are struggling and will reign in players who are pushing too hard.
But remember, im League of Legends, the structure of competition is between single players and pairs of players, even though it is a team game. The type of people that solely rely on League of Legends as their mental support structure will probably not have the agency to choose and find a team to play with, which is the much less toxic domain of the first category. Therefore they will play with a friend, or much more likely alone. Playing solo, they either develop their emotional resilience and self reflection ability enough to climb the ranks or they fall into autopilot, stuck in a cycle of unmet needs.
And that's my explanation of why League of Legends is so goddamn toxic. Of course there are design decisions that impact the general level of kindness in the ingame chat, but i think that these are actually a somewhat minor problem. I think, that a large part of why League of Legends is so toxic is because it attracts a type of person that will make the player experience worse for everyone involved.
P.S.: I am aware that there are different factors impacting the rate of toxicity like community culture, game design and game balancing as well as the quality with which the game incentivises or disincentivises toxic behavior. I mostly stayed clear of these topics because they are well covered. Im also aware that there are other games with similar levels of toxicity, but i chose to focus on what i know.