League of Legends Lecture

League of Legends is one of the most popular video games in the world with over 100 million active players and a massive eSports scene with more than 100 million spectators. Despite its popularity, the game is also notoriously difficult to master. This course is designed to help students understand and analyze the game through a variety of lenses including gameplay, eSports, psychology, and video game design. Through weekly homework assignments, students will develop analytical thinking skills and apply them to professionally-level League of Legends matches.

Before the millions of players, before the billions in revenue, and before the eSports tournaments with more than 100 million spectators, League of Legends was just an idea. Co-founder Marc Merrill and a small team at Riot Games threw themselves into developing the project. They created a massive design document, sought funding aggressively, and slapped together a demo for a conference that would be held just four months away.

During those months, they experienced what Merrill calls “super scary” moments. He describes the tension between the need to create a DOTA clone as fast as possible and the desire to build a quality game. As a result, the core team began to fracture and three members left the company. Ultimately, they built a game that was different from the original DOTA and renamed it League of Legends. It was released on Oct. 7, 2008. 롤대리