Lessons I Learned From 15 Years of League of Legends

Sid Su |

Recently, I have been reflecting on my time playing League of Legends, or League for short, or LoL—if you’re an old-timer. I have been mainly reflecting on how it has shaped me as a person, and the way I manage conflict.

My motivation was a conversation that I had with two different friends on a few fairly common topics.

(1) How do you deal with people flaking on your events?
(2) How do you deal with someone who is clearly trying to beef with you?
(3) How do you deal with someone who doesn’t do the chores assigned to them on the chore chart?

My suggestion to all of these is to act indirectly, or reframe what the problem in a positive way. For (1), reach out to people individually next time instead of sending a text that you’re hurt they didn’t show up. For (2), kill them with kindness and act oblivious to the beefing. Instead of stirring the pot, reframe what they say positively. For (3), don’t think of chores as a collective punishment that everyone has to do, but rather as a team effort to victory—a clean house. In all of these cases, I can definitely see the counter-arguments, but I still think that my ideas are compelling.

Why Flaming Doesn’t Work

For (1), (2) and (3) the most common reaction is to flame the offending person. From my experience both on the Rift and IRL, flaming doesn’t ever result in a good outcome. In game, all flaming does is cause your teammate to play worse, or even worse convince them to start sabatoging your efforts. Ego is a fickle thing, and it’s important to not hurt egos if you want to get your way.

People are trying their best—they are your teammates, not your enemies. It’s better to enable your teammates to play better rather than telling them that they messed up after-the-fact.1 In game, this looks like spam pinging 30-60 seconds before the dragon spawns, and telling everyone to come—rather than getting mad at Top for splitting after everyone else is dead, instead of showing up to the fight. In real life, you need to act in the planning phase of the party to get everyone to show up. What I have found that works best is to work with people on an individual level, by texting them directly. This way, there’s more of a reason to show up than the distantness of a group text.

Conflict Resolution

Similarly for (2), if you play tit for tat, you should expect the bridge to further burn. Instead, you should stand up for yourself, but you should seek to lower the temperature. If they’re talking !@#$, directly confront them in person and try to resolve the misunderstanding. Most of the time, conflicts are not based in any epistemic disagreement1, but rather divergent understandings of the underlying facts. The key here is that you should charitably and genuinely try to resolve the misunderstanding assuming it is just a misunderstanding2. Does that mean that you should roll over have your name relentlessly impugned? Absolutely not, if things keep coming up, and they refuse to talk, then absolutely go tit for tat. However, even in the original strategy, you start with cooperation.

You Have Agency

For (3), I think that framing chores as a collective punishment that we all must endure leads to bad outcomes. That if someone doesn’t do their chores, they are transferring the punishment onto the other members of the house.

I think that this framing misses the point. Everyone wants the house to be clean, that is how you win living in a house. Just like how in game you may need to carry by winning all the fights and leading your team to victory, the same applies with chores. If that means that you personally do more chores, yes it may suck, but it’s better to just pick up the slack and carry rather than hoping for everything to be perfect. That’s not to say that you don’t try to get your housemates to do the chores at all, but you need to lead by example. While housemates are around, start cleaning the kitchen and either implicitly or explicitly ask for help in cleaning. Give status reports, and specific things that can be done. If you have just wiped the countertops, directly ask for another to vaccum the floor. You may be doing more chores, but you will have also won the game and collected 20LP, so does it really matter?

What I want to stress is that my strategy is not avoiding confrontation or being afraid of it, but rather picking and choosing what confrontation you do in order to maximize outcomes for yourself. Framing is everything. Just like how in-game if you say I think that… you will likely get told to Stop thinking, noob. You need to frame what you say positively to achieve your outcomes.

Conclusion

My last game of League of Legends was on , and while it was a good time, I am currently trying to play other games more often. That’s not to say League of Legends doesn’t have a special place in my heart. Whether is was the 3000+ hours that’s causing Stockholm syndrome, or a genuine love, I don’t regret my time. It’s shaped me to who I am. How to deal with loss and conflict. How to realize that what it might not be obvious sometimes, I do have agency.1

As always, Teemo jungle forever <3. Play to improve.