作者：Keith Burgun

2003年的时候，我还是一名忠实的《魔兽争霸3》的玩家。如果我没记错的话，我用我的Battle.net账号共进行了超过500场的一对一比赛。每天我都会观看游戏回放并自己做些业余的评论。需要注意的是，我最初写下的“网络游戏设计文章”是面向wcreplays.com等网站且有关《魔兽争霸3》的设计/策略 /分析内容。

作为这款游戏的忠实粉丝，我对那个让所有人都为之疯狂的全新模组《DotA》充满怀疑。一部分原因是，这只是由“一些网络上的人”所创造的，他们只是基于现有的游戏并改变了其中的某些内容。除此之外还因为我非常尊敬那时候暴雪的设计师。

而现在当回首那时候，我发现其实暴雪也与那些网络上的人并无两样。因为他们也只是利用现有的内容并对其进行适当的调整。所以最终我开始后悔自己当时并未正视《DotA》了。

在过去几年里我一直在关注并玩《英雄联盟》。在此我并不打算温和地对待这款游戏—-它的确拥有一些大问题，并且我认为有些问题是永远都纠正不过来的。尽管如此今天我还是打算跟你们说说，为何我会认为这是对于那些对竞争性策略游戏感兴趣的人来说最棒的内容。

要点1：《DotA》般的基本元素

我从未使用过“多人在线竞技游戏（MOBA）”这一次词，因为我认为首字母缩写词是最不适合用于构思游戏设计模式的。我可以写下一整篇关于这个词有多糟糕的文章，但是现在我想说的是，像《英雄联盟》，《风暴英雄》和《Dota 2》等游戏都和《Dota》很像，所以我认为“《Dota》般”这样的形容更合适。

如今，大多数电子游戏都是基于一个幼稚的主题，太随便，太过粗俗，并且太过依赖于像《龙与地下城》这种过时的设计转义。《英雄联盟》便具有所有的这些问题。

而进一步推动《英雄联盟》和其它《Dota》般游戏发展，并超越像《街头霸王》，《星际争霸》，《任天堂明星大乱斗》或《反恐精英》等游戏的基本元素便是结构的整合。

《Dota》般游戏中的基本结构便是车道概念。这些游戏主要拥有三条车道，两条长的车道在最后，一条短的在中间，并且还有一波又一波的“minions”彼此推搡着。玩家可以向前或向后推动这些车道，并在此施加“压力”。

这便是这些游戏的核心机制。也许听起来好像不是很多，但在一个其它竞争游戏都像《龙与地下城》的世界中，这却是策略支架般的存在。尽管大多数游戏都像是“会耗尽玩家生命值的竞赛，”但是在《Dota》般游戏的基本关卡中都存在一个策略“轴”。即玩家可以选择推动一条车道而放弃另一条车道或者以一条车道上的高塔去换取另一条车道上的高塔等等。

大规模的地图以及玩家不能“随时出现在任何地方”的设定也是将《英雄联盟》归为策略游戏的另一要点。在团队对抗中，任何事情都将以闪电般的速度发生，所以玩家只能对此作出反应。但当你位于基地中并要选择朝哪条车道前进时，你将有时间去做这样的选择。当你朝着上方车道移动时，你将拥有5至10秒去考虑是否该改变方向并走向“中间”车道。这种决定便是大弧形的策略决定，而游戏会提供给你时间去做出这样的决定。

我认为很少有电子游戏开发者会意识到这点：人类大脑至少需要几秒钟的时间才能做出决定。而《英雄联盟》便留给了玩家这样的时间，尽管有时候它看起来像是一款“快节奏”游戏。

继续要点1：《Dota》般游戏的执行

关于《Dota》般游戏还存在另一个元素，即执行受限。我相信《英雄联盟》能够赶超《星际争霸》并作为一款大受欢迎的数字策略游戏的主要原因是它限制了执行，而后者并未做到这点。在《星际争霸》中，游戏并未限制玩家能够发出多少命令，即如果玩家命令越多便越好。我之前曾经讨论过有关执行的内在问题，但《星际争霸》和其它RTS游戏的确做得很荒谬。因为以前从未有人会让人类做出如此快速的执行。

相反地，《英雄联盟》让玩家只控制一个角色，这个角色拥有4种能力，两种很少使用的“召唤咒语”，以及一个或两个简单的激活道具的能力。虽然我个人还是认为这太过了，但这里的要点在于这款游戏有着非常严格的限制。

还有另一种表达限制的方法：我不能只是毫无问题地按照自己的方式执行。最后一款让我真正沉浸于其中的大型电子游戏是《军团要塞2》。在《军团要塞2》中，我并不想“与团队合作”或“做出一个策略选择”。因为我非常擅于瞄准目标与闪避。所以我并不想管其他团队成员会怎么做。我只想选择Soldier类别或Demoman，并消灭其它团队。如果我因为在错误的时间做出一个糟糕的进攻决定而导致局面变成5比1的话该怎么办？没关系，我将以优秀的执行消灭这剩下的5个人。

但是这种情况在《英雄联盟》中却是不可行的。我的意思是，你当然可以执行，但是在《英雄联盟》中执行的重要性被大大缩减了。假设基于同样的属性/关卡并且所有人都拥有同样的生命值，但是玩家将很少会遇到3比1的情况。甚至连2比1也很少会出现。

实际上，我在《英雄联盟》中遇到的最大问题是我不能只是冲向每一个遇到的人这一奇怪的设定。就是说我必须拒绝一些战斗？！对于我这种在过去30年里已经玩过各种《龙与地下城》般打斗游戏的人来说，这样的概念太奇怪了！但这就是事实。

我并不是在说在《英雄联盟》中执行不是一个大问题。让玩家能够通过完全随机的比赛去、（游戏邦注：即让两个玩家在听到一个声音时同时按压按键，谁先按下便是胜者—-如此的随机程度）去获取男爵/龙真的非常糟糕，特别是在看到《风暴英雄》呈现了一个非常完美的替代选择后。一般看来，那些由团队战斗所决定的游戏就像是过时的《龙与地下城》般的打斗游戏。但是在其它电子游戏中，所有的这些问题显得更加糟糕。

要点2：Riot Games就是另一家暴雪

创造并维护一款优秀的策略游戏是非常昂贵的。过去我很喜欢暴雪的一个原因便是他们开启了在线电子游戏能够获得平衡补丁以及其它更新内容的支持的完整概念。这也是暴雪能够主导这一领域十年的部分原因。

很少有公司有资源或意愿去如此对待自己的游戏。很多具有竞争性的大型游戏都是基于最简单的发行并且只有一两个漏洞补丁，仅此而已。我认为这么做是在浪费时间—-还有什么必要去创造一款注定会夭折的游戏呢？

所以Riot只是处于一个小类别中。除此之外他们还拥有前所未有的资源能够用于《英雄联盟》中，所以这款游戏才会成为那时最受欢迎的游戏。不仅如此，这种情况还发生在参数与数据的时代里。Riot利用了10年前还没人会去利用的用户数据，并且他们也有足够的钱去聘请别人去处理这些数据。

我并不清楚2009年和2013年年间Riot Games到底经历了什么，但是随着《英雄联盟》的发行并取得巨大的成功，Riot聘请了更多员工。根据我收集到的数据，他们聘请了许多年轻人，即大多数20岁和30岁出头且经过高等教育的人。

那时候，我们会觉得这家公司将发生一些转变。即游戏内容开始获得更多“更新”，并且越来越多新角色出现在我们面前。

很快地，Riot便表示正在修改他们的地图（即Summoner’s Rift）。并且他们也这么做了。他们同时也重新修改了HUD，并重新设计了像Poppy，Sion，Fiora等角色，更不用说一些虽小但却很重要的冠军角色。

我们对Riot最终变成了另一家暴雪感到惊讶。他们敢于删除内容。就像对于Sion这个角色，他们这么说道，“我们知道很多人很喜欢这个角色，但是我们希望我们的设计从整体看来会更好，所以如果我们能够删除这个角色的话效果便会更好。”我的意思是，对于我来说，为了继续前进你必须想办法除掉一些人，但却很少有开发者愿意这么做。

下面是另一个例子。

Riot在2013年推出了Team Builder这一功能。当你在使用这一功能时是否觉得有趣？你猜猜结果怎样？Riot直接便删除了这一功能。

这么做是否会惹恼了用户？当然会。但是他们还是这么做了，因为从整体看来，这一功能会影响到游戏的发展。他们本来可以选择保留这一功能并只运行另一个新功能Champion Select。虽然这么做可能很奇怪，但我想大多数开发者都会选择这么做的。

Riot“侥幸”做出了正确选择的一个原因是，他们拥有非常棒的表达能力。当比较暴雪和Riot的补丁时会发现，Riot拥有更清楚的布局，不仅如此，他们还提供了许多详细的解释。我喜欢阅读补丁注释，并且我发现出色的补丁注释总是能快速吸引我的注意。

不仅如此，Riot还在YouTube上发布了视频去呈现每个补丁中的一段内容以帮助玩家更好地进行理解。同时他们也通过播客去分享了他们这么做的原因。

比起同个领域的其它公司，Riot更有勇气去做出正确的设计决定，并且他们也更加努力去确保我们能够理解他们做出如此设计决定的原因。单从这方面看来他们就值得我竖起大拇指。

竞争

我想到了像打斗游戏，RTS游戏和FPS游戏等竞争对象。我已经讨论过从根本上来看《英雄联盟》比那些只是作为《Dota》般游戏更出色的原因：它拥有策略架构，有限的执行等等。但是我还是想将《英雄联盟》与其它竞争游戏进行比较。

《DOTA 2》—-这可能是第二大受欢迎的《Dota》般游戏。如果没有《英雄联盟》的话，我可能就会选择《DOTA 2》。而我之所以认为《英雄联盟》远超这款游戏是因为前者拥有更强大的设计。Riot似乎拥有更大的野心，同时他们也拥有更“稳定的手”。他们似乎更好地理解了“看起来很酷”并不是一款游戏成功的必要元素。Riot的原理更是推动着我去理解真正的游戏是关于什么。而《DOTA 2》更像是《龙与地下城》般的打斗游戏。

《风暴英雄》—-说到比赛长度，我喜欢《风暴英雄》的一个原因便是游戏中的比赛都很短。在游戏中我并不需要去精通一些没有价值的内容，这点真的很棒。但是虽然如此，《风暴英雄》却缺少足够的策略，反而更倾向于各种打斗。玩家能够在地图上快速移动的能力便表示在这里位置并没有什么重要性。此外，当你拿《英雄联盟》的英雄《风暴英雄》中的英雄进行设计比较时会发现，后者真的比较弱。

《波多黎各》/其它欧洲游戏—-这是一些最佳设计游戏，并拥有非常棒的规则设定。同时它们也都远离了《龙与地下城》般的打斗模式。但是如果来自世界各地的成千万玩家在游戏中相互对抗的话，这些游戏应该会撑不住的。这些游戏并未获得来自开发者的任何支持。即让人遗憾的是桌面游戏设计师从来都不会去修补自己的作品。

《Outwitters》/其它回合制战争游戏—-在我心中《Outwitters》的排名非常靠前，但当提到高水平的游戏时它的地位便会开始下滑。《Outwitters》所获得的开发者支持也很少。

象棋/Go/其它历史悠久的游戏—-我之所以提到这些游戏并不是因为我认为它们“一只都是最佳游戏”，我甚至认为它们离这样的标准还很远。但是这些游戏却没有任何隐藏信息，从本质看来它们只是一些复杂的计算比赛。

结论

总之，《英雄联盟》之所以是最棒的主要归结为两个原因：

1.它包含了《Dota》般游戏的设计模式，即从根本上来看便是现代策略游戏设计最棒且最现代的尝试。

2.Riot Gsmes是由一群年轻，聪明且大胆的开发者所领导的，而他们便是“下一代”游戏设计的代表。

说实话，我认为自己可以创造出比《英雄联盟》更棒的内容。我的意思是《英雄联盟》每一年的飞跃都会让这款游戏变得比之前更棒。

千万不要误解我：进入带有无数道具，比赛和特殊能力的游戏是非常具有压迫性的。设计师David Sirlin说过，游戏应该是能够“自动拒绝的”，因为在你进入“真正的游戏”前你还需要接触许多内容。这是基于一个需要尽快被删除的真正可怕的“精通系统”。简单来说，这样的主题有点像《格斗之王》那种有关暴力，性别歧视等内容。

我还可以继续列出《英雄联盟》所具有的问题，但是“洞察力与勇气是否能够做出正面的设计改变”以及“是否有资源能够执行它们”这两个循环很少会像Riot所做的那样出现重合。

实际上你可以说比起《英雄联盟》本身，本文更倾向于是对Riot的认可。这并没错，我觉得Riot就像是一个年轻的梦想家，就好似他们会想办法去解决美国所出现的水利设施问题一样。

这里的关键在于，他们总是不断在努力做出尝试，而我们也可以见证他们的尝试所带来的结果。看着一款游戏不断发展真的是一件很有趣的事。当然了，我并不是指那种“只是添加更多废物”的发展。我指的是不断变好变棒的发展。我总是期待能看到他们的补丁，并且我真的非常喜欢这款游戏，这是现在很少游戏能够带给我的感受。

（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转发，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Why League of Legends is the World’s Greatest Game

by Keith Burgun

In 2003, I was a very serious WarCraft III player. If I recall correctly, I have over 5,000 one-on-one ladder matches logged on my Battle.net account. I watched replays every day and even did some highly amateurish commentaries myself. It’s interesting to note that some of my first-ever “internet game design articles” were WarCraft III design/strategy analyses for sites like wcreplays.com.

As a huge fan of that game, I was actually pretty skeptical of this new mod that came out called DotA that everyone was crazy about. Partly, this was because it was designed by just “some guy on the internet” who took an existing game and swapped some stuff around (as opposed to building something new from the ground up). Also, it was because I had huge respect for the designers at Blizzard at the time. Overall, I think it was coming from a good place: I always believed in design, and being a young early-20s dude (who had never encountered designer board games), it made some sense that I would believe that the Blizzard people were the best game designers in the world and kind of idolize them.

Now, looking back, I kinda think Blizzard was really not all that unlike the “some guy on the internet”. They, too, were just taking existing stuff and molding it around into something that seemed to kind of work for some reason. So ultimately, I think I was mistaken for not giving DotA more of a serious look at the time.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve been playing and closely following League of Legends. I won’t go easy on the game – it certainly has huge problems, many of which I expect never to get solved. But with that said, today I’d like to tell you about why I think that it’s the best thing that exists for people interested in competitive strategy games.

Point 1: Fundamentals of DotA-likes

A quick aside – I do not, have not, and never will use the term “MOBA” (“Multiplayer Online Battle Arena”) to refer to these as I find that acronym to be maybe the worst term ever conceived of for a game design pattern. I could write a whole article about how bad that term is, but for now it should suffice to say that these games – things like League, Heroes of the Storm and Dota 2 are “like DotA”, and so I think the term “DotA-like” is a lot more appropriate.

Now, most videogames have a distasteful, childish theme, are too random, have too much stuff, are inelegant, and rely far too much on vestigial Dungeons and Dragons design tropes. League of Legends has all of these problems, but unlike most games, that isn’t all there is to it.

The basic thing that makes League and other DotA-likes better, on a fundamental level, than things like Street Fighter, StarCraft, Super Smash Bros or Counter-Strike is the embracing of structure.

The fundamental bit of structure in DotA-likes is the lane concept. These games have three lanes, two long ones on the ends and one short one in the middle, and waves of “minions” are pushing up against each other. Players can come and push these lanes forward and backward manually, applying “pressure” to that lane.

lanes

This is kind of the core mechanism to these games. It might not sound like a whole lot, but… it’s something of a scaffolding for strategy, in a world where it’s only a minor over-statement to say that every other competitive videogame can be boiled down to “Dungeons and Dragons Boxing”. While most games are a “deplete the hit point bar contest”, in DotA-likes there is strategic “axis” that exists on the fundamental level. Choosing to push one lane over another allows for “sacrifice” plays; trading a tower in one lane for a tower in another, and so on.

text1

The large scale of the map and the fact that players can’t just “be anywhere at any time” is another quality that makes League, despite being real time, into something of a strategy game. It’s true that in a team-fight, things happen at lightning speed and so players can only react. But when you’re at the base and choosing which lane to move to, you have time. As you’re moving to the top lane, you have a good, solid five to ten seconds to consider whether changing course and going to “mid” lane. These kinds of decisions are large-arc strategy decisions and the game gives you time to make them.

That’s something I think very few competitive strategy videogame developers realize: the human brain requires at least a couple of seconds to make decisions. League allows for that, despite seeming like, and sometimes being, a “fast paced” game.

Point 1 Continued: Execution In DotA-likes

Another element to the DotA-likes: execution is limited. I believe the major reason that League completely overtook StarCraft as the popular digital strategy game is the fact that it limits execution, and StarCraft does not. In StarCraft, there’s kind of no limit to how many commands you can issue, and the more you do, the better. If you can micro each little marine independently away from a swarm of banelings, then you should. That’s something you can drill, so you should. I’ve talked before about the inherent problems with execution, but StarCraft and other RTS games are truly ridiculous. Never before or since have human beings been asked to execute so much so quickly.

League, on the other hand, has you controlling just one avatar, who has four abilities, two rare-use “Summoner Spells”, and maybe a simple active item ability or two. I personally still think this is too much, but whatever – the point is, it’s capped pretty harshly.

Another way to express the capped-ness: I can’t just “kick ass execution” my way out of every problem. One of the last big videogames I got really into was Team Fortress 2. In TF2, I don’t really have to “work with the team” or “make good strategic choices”. That’s because I was really, really good at aiming and dodging. I was so good at aiming and dodging that I really didn’t give a crap what the rest of my team was doing. I would just pick Soldier class, or Demoman, or Heavy even, and just… kill the entire other team. Made a horrible strategic decision to invade at the wrong time, and now it’s 5v1? No problem, I’ll just kill all five of them with crazy good execution.

That shit really doesn’t fly in League. I mean, you can out-execute, for sure, but the degree to which execution matters in League is way less. Assuming similar stats/levels and everyone has full health/mana, it’s extremely rare for one player to just “out-execute” himself out of a 3 on 1. Even taking a 2 on 1 is like a comical event when it happens in League.

In fact, one of the biggest things that I’ve struggled with in League is this weird concept that I can’t just rush into every encounter. I have to turn some fights down!? That concept is so alien to me after playing various D&D Boxing variants for the last 30 years. But it’s true!

Now I’m not saying that execution isn’t a huge problem in League. It is. Last-hitting is… it’s just mind-boggling to me that that’s still in the game. Allowing players to “steal” Baron/Dragon with a completely random smite-war (basically have two players hit a button when they hear a sound, whoever does it first wins – that level of random) is really bad, especially after Heroes of the Storm showed a perfectly good alternative. And generally, games kinda do get decided somewhat by team-fights, which are… well, some good old fashioned D&D Boxing. But all of these problems are worse – far worse – in basically every other videogame.

Point 2: Riot Games is Blizzard 2.0

Producing and maintaining good strategy games is extremely costly. One of the reasons I was really into Blizzard back in the day is that they kind of started the whole concept of an online videogame that was going to get real, serious support in the form of balance patches and other updates. That’s part of why Blizzard dominated that sphere for a decade.

There’s not a huge list of companies who have the resources and the will to treat games this way. Many big competitive games just get launched and maybe a bug fix patch or two and that’s it. I think that’s a complete waste of time – why bother going to all the trouble of making a game just to leave it to die on the vine?

So Riot already is in this small category. Not only are they in that category, though, but they have an unprecedented amount of resources, with League becoming the most popular game of all time. Not only that, but this is happening in the era of metrics and data. Riot has access to an insane amount of user data that no one had access to ten years ago, and they have the money to hire the people needed to process it.

I’m not acutely aware of what happened with Riot Games between the years of 2009 and 2013 or so, but as League took off and became mega-successful, Riot definitely did a whole lot of hiring. It seems like, from what I can gather, they hired a lot of young people – mostly super well-educated people in their 20s and early 30s.

Around that time, it seems like there were some changes. Stuff started getting “updated” more, and the new character release schedule cooled off a lot.

Soon Riot was talking about completely overhauling their map (Summoner’s Rift). They’ve since done so. They also completely redid their HUD. They also completely redesigned characters like Poppy, Sion, Fiora, not to mention numerous more-minor-but-still-significant champion redesigns.

And that’s the really amazing thing about Riot that makes them basically Blizzard 2.0. They aren’t afraid to delete stuff. They took the old Sion, as an example, and said “you know, we know there are people who are fans of this thing as it is now, but we are making the design call to say that overall, it would be better if we changed it, despite that fact.” I mean, to me it’s obvious that in order to make progress, you have to piss some people off, but very few developers are willing to actually do it.

Here’s another example. Watch this video and “Get Hype”:

That’s Riot’s much-hyped Team Builder feature which they launched in 2013. Are you excited about using it? Well guess what – Riot just outright deleted that feature.

Did that anger people? Yes, big time. But they did it anyway, because overall, the game was better without it. They could have kept it in and just had their new updated Champion Select (which is fantastic, by the way) and kept Team Builder. It would have been redundant and strange, but I also think most developers would have taken that route anyway.

One reason that Riot “gets away with” doing the right thing, even when it often means deleting features that players like (Gasp!), is that they are fantastic at communication. Here’s what Blizzard patch notes look like. Here’s what Riot’s patch notes look like, for comparison. Way more clearly laid out, and not only that, but there’s lots of explanation throughout. I love reading patch notes, and seeing their world-class patch notes was one of the things that really converted me in the first place.

It doesn’t end there, though. Riot releases a video discussion YouTube talk show episode for every patch to help explain it. Not only that, but they also have a podcast where they talk even more about why they’re doing what they’re doing.

Riot, more often than any other company in a similar position, has the courage to make the right design calls, and they take a completely unprecedented level of care to make sure that you understand why they are the right design calls. For that, they get my thumbs-up.

The Competition

I consider the competition to be stuff like fighting games, RTSes and FPSes. I think I’ve already talked a bit about how League is fundamentally better than those just by being a DotA-like: has a bit of a strategic spine, capped execution, etc. I would like to take a moment to compare League to some of the “runner-ups”, however.

DOTA 2 – This is probably the second most popular of the DotA-likes. If League didn’t exist, I would probably be playing DOTA 2. However, I rank League far ahead of DOTA 2 because League seems more designed. Riot seems to have both more ambition (it is much more different from the original DotA), yet also seems to have more of a steady hand. They seem to better-understand that what “seems awesome” wouldn’t necessarily be a good thing to have in the game. Riot’s philosophy just strikes me as more well-grounded in understanding what the game is really about. DOTA 2 just seems like a few steps toward D&D Boxing. (Also, matches are longer, and I already think League matches are too long!)

Heroes of the Storm – Speaking of match length, the one thing I like about Heroes of the Storm is that matches are shorter. Heroes also gets rid of a lot of the ugly “masteries” chaff, which is nice. With that said, though, Heroes is much, much less of a strategy and more of a big brawl. The ability to move quickly around the map plus smaller maps overall means that position just really doesn’t mean as much. Further, the hero design in Heroes strikes me as weak in comparison to those in League.

Puerto Rico / Other Euro-Games – These are some of the best games that have ever been designed, rules-wise. They are also some of the most-designed, in that they stray furthest from D&D Boxing. However, I don’t think any of these games – at least, as they exist now – could stand up to the kind of pressure they would receive if played by hundreds of thousands of people competitively across the globe. They’re just too solvable, and as it is, they get exactly ZERO in support from the developers. Sadly, board game designers almost never patch their work.

Outwitters / Other Turn-Based War Games – Outwitters in particular ranks very high for me overall, but it similarly starts to break down with high level play. The level of support for Outwitters is also sadly pretty low.

Chess/Go/Other ancient abstracts – I mention these not because I think they’re contenders for “best games of all time” – I actually think they don’t even come close. The short answer is that these games have no hidden information and are essentially just hard calculation contests, but read more about my views on them here.

Conclusion

In conclusion, League of Legends is the best for two simple reasons:

1.It embraces the DotA-like design pattern, which on a fundamental level is (I would add “sadly”) the best, most modern attempt at modern strategy game design

2.Riot Games is seemingly run by a bunch of young, intelligent, and courageous developers who represent the “next generation” in game design

To be clear, I think we can and will do a lot better than League of Legends. I mean, hell – League itself is getting “better than League” by big leaps every year.

Please don’t get me wrong: the game is horribly oppressive to get into, with hundreds of items, champions and special abilities do (I’ve been playing for almost 3 years and I still don’t know what all of these God-damn items are). Designer David Sirlin says that the game should be “auto-rejected” because of the fact that you have to play a bunch before you gain access to the “real game”. This is based on a really terrible “runes and masteries system” that needs to be removed as soon as possible. The theme is kinda along the lines of something like that of Mortal Kombat – violence-glorifying, sexist and immature, to put it lightly.

I could go on about the problems with League. But the two circles – “has the insight and bravery to make positive design changes” and “has the resources to implement them” rarely overlap as much as they do with Riot.

In fact, you could say that this article is more of an endorsement of Riot than it is of League itself. Indeed, I feel like Riot is kind of like some young visionary who got saddled with fixing, I don’t know, the water infrastructure of the United States or something. I feel like they’re digging themselves out of a huge hole. Indeed, on their forums and even in blog posts, the programmers talk sometimes about the game’s old “spaghetti code”. I think there’s a lot of “spaghetti design” still floating around as well.

But the point is, they’re trying, and they’re trying really hard, and you can witness the results of their attempts. It’s really exciting to watch this game grow – and by grow, I don’t mean just “add more crap” (although that is also happening). I mean grow as in get better. I look forward to their patch notes, and, ultimately… I also just really enjoy the game, which is something that I can’t say for very many games these days.(source:gamasutra)