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League of Legends
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In the Dopamine Slot Machine, Andrew (Dad of two) and Brandon (consumer research psychologist) talk about the games your children play, and how these games aim to extract attention and money from your children.
In this week's episode, we discuss League of Legends, a free Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA).
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Transcript
Introduction and Game Focus
00:00:01
Speaker
Good evening and welcome to this week's episode of the Dopamine slot machine. My name is Andrew, I'm a dad of two, I'm a gamer and I'm a technologist.
00:00:10
Speaker
My And I'm Brandon. I'm a specialist consumer researcher at a big tobacco company. We're here to talk about the games your children might be playing and what you need to know about them, from their use of addictive design to how these games make money from your children. Now, this
Understanding League of Legends
00:00:27
Speaker
is our first episode. So I wanted to talk about a game I know is very close to your heart, Brandon, and that is League of Legends. So firstly, can you explain what League of Legends is?
00:00:39
Speaker
I certainly can Andrew, it did define most of my childhood. In a nutshell, League of Legends is a game where you control a character as an individual, but you're with five five other individuals and you kind of come together against another five players.
00:00:55
Speaker
ah ah to basically fight over objectives and basically destroy the other team's base. It's quite a complex game where you have individual play elements of 1v1 or player versus player ah ah individually, but also you have to come together as a team in order to secure objectives in the in the game itself.
00:01:15
Speaker
Oh, interesting. So it's it's a multiplayer game, right? So what you're you're randomly grouped in a team against another randomly grouped team. I know there's a competitive scene as well, but thinking about the average player.
00:01:27
Speaker
Yes, correct. it's It's primarily a multiplayer game. will always be exposed to kind of random other individuals in some form.
Toxic Community Impact
00:01:35
Speaker
as you kind of Regardless of the game state there or the type of League of Legends environment that you're in, you'll always have that element of matchmaking in in your online experience, correct? Okay.
00:01:47
Speaker
so I'm assuming, as well, it's got all all the usual things with games like this, like voice chat and text chat. And and anybody who's been following trends in the UK about, actually worldwide, about social media will know there's been a lot of concern recently about children's and teenagers' usage of social media and smartphones. And one of the ways that worries manifested is, who are our children talking to online? Now, I have heard of League of Legends before.
00:02:17
Speaker
I've even played a couple of games. And one thing that I know that the League of Legends is infamous for is somewhat of a toxic community.
00:02:27
Speaker
So can you expand a little bit on your own experiences with this? Yeah, of course. So I started playing League of Legends, I think even in beta when I was like 12 or 13. And it it quickly became the most dominant force in my life. I think I was in a kind of unique stage because I was moving around a lot. I went to a variety of different high schools. I think I went to three or four.
00:02:50
Speaker
and And what it basically did for me, because I'm a very competitive person in Aitley, I think, is it meant I never i could never really be bored. And I wasn't particularly good socially. So it was kind of a great stopgap for that, because I could be evaluated almost in my ability to be very, very good at this video game that other people were playing. And and and that really took a hold of me very quickly as a young man.
00:03:14
Speaker
i find I found your statement that it meant that you couldn't really be bored, really interesting. So something that's been picked up a lot in the last few months is children's increasing inability to cope with boredom and the importance of boredom in development.
The Competitive Edge
00:03:30
Speaker
I deliberately started by talking about the toxic community element simply because that might be the element that most parents are initially worried about. But the more I look into things,
00:03:41
Speaker
It's more the game design and the addictive elements used in it that concern me more as a parent. When you say you couldn't really be bored with it, is that because of the high skill ceiling involved in this? And it's really attractive, isn't it?
00:04:00
Speaker
it's It's such a really great question. I think mainly it's the competitive aspect. So as a young man, you're looking to orientate yourself almost ah ah towards trying to be competent. you know it's It's almost why the kids who act up in class is because they're not particularly good academically. right You've got to prove, you've got to try to crystallize things around stuff that you're actually good at. and Legal Legends is a fantastic landscape for that because there's no doubt on how good or bad you really are and that's because everything's kind of got numbers associated with it and you have a ranking you have they've got an elo system which is almost just imagine like a massive ladder and you know where you stand on the ladder and
00:04:40
Speaker
how many thousands of people are above you, or in my case, all the tens of thousands are below you.
Gaming and Social Life
00:04:47
Speaker
And and that that was very, very enchanting as a young man. And that meant I could never be bought. So I never went home and was like, oh, I need to find something to entertain myself or you know look for something to watch because I could always just play League of Legends. And that was, I'm sure, has its its negatives and positives. And I'm sure we'll go into that in greater detail in in our conversation. But I guess it's where where my expertise around the League of Legends landscape comes from is like thousands and thousands and thousands of hours in that environment well into over a decade. How many hours do you think you've played? That's really tough one because I've used a variety of different accounts in my time. I would fully expect definitely over a year of my life maybe in total, but it wouldn't surprise me in in total.
00:05:37
Speaker
So i I played a very similar game at university called Dota 2. Same stuff. In fact, if if we if we showed most most parents Dota 2 against League of Legends, I don't think they'll be able to pick them apart. And I couldn't tell you anything about it now. I last played it. I've actually pulled up my Steam profile and had a look whilst whilst we're talking.
00:06:00
Speaker
The last time I played it was 2017. I played this across about three years. I've got a total playtime of 400 hours. I don't have a single memory, positive or negative, from that 400 hours. And looking back on that, that seems absolutely wild to
Matchmaking and Engagement
00:06:18
Speaker
me. So what why was I still playing? And I was finding it interesting you were talking about the impact of ranking as ah ah almost an extrinsic reward mechanism.
00:06:31
Speaker
Yeah, correct. is Correct. Can we talk a little bit more about, you know, the matchmaking and how how games generally go and the sort of the sort of flow state from game to game? What what keeps what? How does it keep a player in the zone, the sort of, I suppose, intrinsic reward mechanisms?
00:06:51
Speaker
Well, I'm not sure what you'd call it from an academic perspective, but I think it's quite easy to get get to grips with. So all of these video games, maybe one of the things that they hold in common is that they're purely designed to try to prolong attention. Like the baseline of game design or or even digital products is centered around that like one truth, right? If you're a UX designer, you're a consumer psychologist, this is what you're aiming to achieve.
00:07:17
Speaker
And the the gameplay loop always reflects that. So in League of Legends, there's not a single second that goes by when you can't you you can't be not making a decision. You're kind of forced into decisions all the time, and then there's positives and negative outcomes from those decisions. If you're not particularly good at the game, or you don't understand like the broader game state, for example, or these might be smaller decisions. But the the deeper you go, the more complicated these decisions become, and that's why you can basically spend over a year of your life doing something. And and and paradoxically, it's also why you can spend, let's say, 400 hours like yourself, Andrew, and where you don't remember anything at all. Because these decisions, your your brain hasn't decided that these decisions or gameplay elements were important to you in the long term. So you've lost them all, right? And in essence, that that's why all of these like little gameplay elements are designed in the way that they are.
00:08:12
Speaker
is the the desire to reward positive and negative behaviors otherwise they just wouldn't hold human attention. So in League of Legends the most simplistic example of this is one of the activities that you do is you you kill these little kind of minions and every time you kill a minion you get certain gold you can use that to buy items and every time you kill a minion a little back in the day little 12 gold will pop up above that minion's head.
00:08:37
Speaker
And that, even in the moment, you're like, okay, I did good. If you just started, I've, you know, I got the creep or I got a cannon, minion kills,
Chess and Gaming Parallels
00:08:45
Speaker
for example. And that's part of the reason why it can hold attention in the way that it does. Interesting. quite liked the part where you said that I didn't remember my 400 hours in Dota because I was just rubbish at it. Yeah, but but basically I was, there was a very very, very, very subtle way of, yeah, you were probably pretty bad at it.
00:09:08
Speaker
it It does lead me into into another interesting thing. And actually, there is a competitive League of Legends community. And I think a lot of people would be shocked at how much money there is in this. you're You're talking, I mean, I don't have figures to hand, you know, if we just Google highest paid League of Legends player. People do that. Well, people people I've coached have been on like multimillion dollar based salaries.
00:09:33
Speaker
Like, it's it's it's very common for these individuals to, you know, they're basically 16, 17 years old. They're playing in their bedroom. Someone I used to work with was working as a painter, if I remember correctly. And then three years later on, they're they're in the middle of Madison Square Garden. Like, that's that's not a... Obviously, it's incredibly unusual. Like, you're youre you're you're probably not LeBron James. I found out I was not LeBron James, right? But every now and again, there's LeBron James.
00:10:01
Speaker
and And that's where you get these leaps in salary. So there's definitely yeah obviously there's definitely an element of mastery in this, and that's broadly considered a positive thing. So so to contrast with a game which I doubt many parents would have an issue with their child getting very into, and actually one that I was very into as a child and also discovered that I was not LeBron James, or perhaps
Parental Perspectives on Gaming
00:10:24
Speaker
a better comparison would be Gary Kasparov, is chess.
00:10:28
Speaker
So chess, there is matchmaking. And i I would love to go back and cover a little bit more about the ways matchmaking can, particularly with a team as well, can cause compulsion-forming habits. There's matchmaking. you know You're playing sort of fixed timed rounds about half an hour. So across a chess tournament, you might play nine games, for instance. There's intense study involved. And the vast majority of people who play chess You don't have to get that into chess to beat pretty much everyone you know, yet still be the worst player at your chess club.
00:11:05
Speaker
Yeah, and there's there's there's a whole lot of growth in chess. And that's why, funnily enough, it that even the the ranking system in chess, the ELO system, is what's implemented in a vast majority of these very, very competitive video games. so And the reason why it's such a special game, and you mentioned the word study, is because there's all this room for growth.
00:11:26
Speaker
And that growth learning to grow is a mechanism. So it's something you have to learn to do, and you can actively improve that. And that's why when we look at video games, a lot of the time we take it in a a different vein when it comes to growth than, let's say, chess, which obviously is very well established, just how deep into the world of chess you can go. It can be considered like almost like a high art of getting good at chess.
00:11:51
Speaker
And there there are elements to other video games that mimic that. League of Legends is one of them, and which is like you almost play chess against an individual and as a team as five people. And that's a good way of putting it. And then you raise up an ELO ladder. And I think that's like a key, key standout for League of Legends as a game when evaluating it is that there is this element of growth. You you have to learn to grow to get good at League of Legends. and and And there's a variety of like cognitive benefits that come to that.
00:12:20
Speaker
That said, I think perhaps a few few more skeptical parents would appreciate a Paul Morphy, Grandmaster, his famous quote, that the ability to play chess well is the sign of a wasted life.
00:12:33
Speaker
Yeah, there is there is an example. Well, that's that's that's the the horrible thing with with video games, right? is it It's always like literature. So it's it's never a clear, like a linear yes or no rule in, rule out. It's all about engagement. So if you put all literature together and you evaluate it, let's say Playboy with the works of Dostoevsky or like Shakespeare, you'd be throwing the baby out with the bathwater and video games are the exact same thing.
00:13:01
Speaker
where the the the The way in which you engage with them really does determine like if there is growth, are you accessing it, and how you manage the real negatives of it. You'll be very happy if your son or daughter was reading a lot of Shakespeare. You'd be very nervous if they were obsessed with Shakespeare, didn't have any friends, and only and did that for 12 hours a day for the entirety of their teenage years.
00:13:25
Speaker
i think that's I think that's a fantastic comparison. And this is something that a lot of people, it was what actually inspired me to yeah reach out to you and say, hey, we should we should record some conversations on this. Because I actually asked my parents. And my parents are technologically fairly savvy. And they're interested in smartphone-free childhood. their interest they They follow a lot of the movements that are going
Real Concerns in Gaming
00:13:48
Speaker
on. My sister is a schoolteacher. And my mother used to be in education herself.
00:13:54
Speaker
and they'll be having these conversations and I sat down with them the other day and I asked them if they could tell me the difference. in game design and why I approve of Pokémon, but not Fortnite as an example. And I'd love to cover Fortnite on this. I think it would be really interesting to compare some of the game mechanics and the design to League of Legends, but we'll save that for another day. And they didn't have a clue. Now, listeners, spoiler warning, I think very negatively of Fortnite and think
00:14:27
Speaker
rather positively with caveats of Pokémon. Yet, to most parents, it's you know very similar cartoon graphics. Fortnite might be a bit more violent in one way, but then Pokémon is just digital cockfighting. If you were to try and do what they do in Pokémon in real life, you would get arrested very quickly.
00:14:47
Speaker
And I said, I couldn't agree more. so And I just want to cut you off real quick, Andrew, because I'm really passionate about this point. The the key distinction, like I feel like violence is almost like in the same way. I always imagine it like footloose.
00:15:01
Speaker
at least But they're worried about dancing and it's like, it's just dancing. Can you guys calm down? And I feel like violence in video games is almost on the almost the same level is we we haven't really seen any like key indicators that it produces really, really negative outcomes. And, you know, it's always centered around things like isolation and ah ah yeah Isolation just always sticks in my head as as the main variables. Isolation, mental health, the youthful suspects have some disputes. And with video games as a parent, the two paint key elements is not the violence you need to be worried about. It's whether or not it grows. your Your experience of the world in some way is one. And if the answer is not clearly yes, and you can justify that, it's probably not worth spending thousands of hours on. And then two,
00:15:49
Speaker
Is it maliciously designed to hold your attention in some way? Is it is it is it equivalent, like the name of this podcast, to to a slot machine? Does it offer no real value and it's just designed to kind of manipulate these reward networks that we all have and we can't escape from and in malicious ways? And unfortunately, a huge portion of the video game industry fails in both of these aspects.
00:16:15
Speaker
And it's it's a problem that's been visibly getting worse in the last 10 to 15 years as people just simply aren't clued in on.
Microtransactions Explained
00:16:22
Speaker
I can give you a really good example using a name that you would have heard, which is Call of Duty, which is in essence the shooting game that you can imagine. You run around a map and you try to shoot people.
00:16:33
Speaker
back in Call of Duty 2, so way, way back in the day when I was a kid, if you killed someone, and that's what you're doing in this game, you could get a kill or you can get an assist. And at the end of the game, you'd have a leaderboard with killed your kill to death ratio, and you could see very, very clearly how you performed against other people in your team and the enemy team.
00:16:54
Speaker
Whereas nowadays, if you're if you breathe in the vicinity of someone that dies, you have like emblems flashing up on your screen. Everyone feels like a rock star playing Call of Duty nowadays. And the reason why they do that is so that they can produce deeper engagement from the average player. The average player thinks they're a rock star at Call of Duty.
00:17:15
Speaker
And that's a really negative experience because you rob you basically rob the opportunity for growth in the pursuit of attention, making people just feel good and hold their attention. And that's what produces but really negative outcomes. ah ah in in you know From all I've read in my my years of being a research psychologist and my experience in consumer psychology, these are the two things that I'm personally very, very worried about. I don't have kids.
00:17:41
Speaker
Yet I'm working on it. and But these are the two things that I will evaluate when I think about having letting my child access a video game. is is could i Could I use the argument where this video game will one day help my kid get a job or perform well socially?
00:17:59
Speaker
Or is it just a version of a slot machine to to waste time, to artificially produce a flow state of feeling good? And in a nutshell, I know that's my my distinction as is, but I'm not sure if you have any thoughts Andrew. I think that's a great distinction. I suppose, unlike yourself, I i am concerned about placing value in digital worlds.
00:18:26
Speaker
And that actually brings me to one item I did want to talk about with League of Legends, because we've spoken about League of Legends very positively so far. And I actually think that's a really interesting place to start, because I'd love to, when we finish this, talk about how parents can make sure if their children are playing League of Legends that their experience is a positive one, as opposed to a negative one, which people do experience. But League of Legends, it is a free game.
Psychological Tactics in Gaming
00:18:54
Speaker
which means that they're making their money elsewhere. And in this case, as I understand it, it's predominantly cosmetics and microtransactions. Yes. Wow. What a topic. what What a topic. And the I'd like to start this topic by not talking about video games.
00:19:13
Speaker
But bear with me. So if you're in the supermarket and you buy some washing detergent or laundry tablets and before I became a specialist inside consumer research, what you'd expect is maybe they did a little bit of consumer testing. Some genius in a lab somewhere came up somewhere, came up with a formulation that makes your clothes brilliant and someone rubbed their hands together. Right. We're going to run with this. But that's just not how it works. There's large teams.
00:19:41
Speaker
Large teams everything from the color of the product to the way it smells to the particular consumer segment that you're in these are and but Think about the amount of money there is in laundry there of course There's hundreds and hundreds of people working on this and that's because the products that we consume are highly manufactured To achieve certain outcomes And video games are no different. And unfortunately, regulations, although obviously I've got a soft spot for it and I can speak positively for it, is a really terrible offender in regards to deploying a lot of the malicious tactics. So with laundry detergent, for example, you know, they might say, oh, it's 10 percent bigger, but they've raised the price for 20 percent and you pick it up off the shelf and you like bargain, but you know.
00:20:27
Speaker
That's in essence what these games companies do. So a really great example is you don't spend, you don't give your daughter or son credits in a video game. You give them V bucks. You give them riot points. You give them basically these artificial fake currencies. And that's because what they're trying to do is obfuscate value because we're really terrible at keeping track of value. We know how much a pound is because we can compare it to everything in our lives. you know the older The adults among us, a three pound 60. Oh, that's a pint of Guinness and weather spoons. We know how much three pound 60 is worth of monetary value. We don't know how much 500 V bucks is.
00:21:05
Speaker
So you could spend 50,000 V-Bucks and it's meaningless. You spend 10,000 pounds. And oh, Christ.
Compulsive Spending in Games
00:21:12
Speaker
And these kind of underlying mechanisms are what League of Legends and the all of these video game producers basically do. The first step in terms of this microtransaction process is obfuscating the value of the money that you put into it. And League of Legends is a bad offender.
00:21:31
Speaker
So you have the standard kind of randomized rewards. Oh, you want this really, really rare cosmetic? Well, you you can't buy it directly. You need to spend this amount of money on this orb that you buy from that this ah this obfuscated random currency that they've invented. And when you do finally buy it, oh, you've got a little bit left over. And to buy something else, ah ah you need to put in another 10 pounds. And that's one of the reasons why people get stuck in this kind of purchasing loop.
00:22:01
Speaker
And just to illustrate this point, this isn't by accident. This is by not even design. This is by highly tested, A-B tested in the market design. And what I mean by that is they'll deploy different versions of it, see which one produces the most money out of people, and then roll that one out after many, many iterations to the rest of the the the gaming community or or their end users.
00:22:25
Speaker
And so Legal Legends is riddled with these. It's not forced, but you know we're designed to look for status symbols. We like looking different. it's a you know Arguably, in some cases, and it's an expression of identity. right And if you spend thousands of hours in something, you do have a tendency to want to buy the expensive skin. Because the more time you invest in something, the more likely kely you are to spend money in it as well.
00:22:51
Speaker
And that's the key thing to kind of remember is that when your son and and daughter asked to purchase something in an online environment, it's not from most of the time, it's not from one lone developer trying to create high art. It's a group of 50 to 60 psychologists trying to squeeze out as much money from a targeted player segment as humanly possible.
00:23:16
Speaker
And yes, they are aware that that targeted player segment may be of a younger age.
Balancing Game and Real Life
00:23:22
Speaker
And I think just a great reminder for listeners, this isn't just coming from some concerned parent or or somebody running a blog. This is coming from somebody whose job it is to do this. So we've spoken quite a bit about the potential pitfalls of microtransactions and cosmetics in League of Legends. But what other game design elements should parents be aware of?
00:23:46
Speaker
Well, I'm a huge believer in growth. If the people that are supportive of video games and, you know, really follow through on this kind of, you know, the the fact that it helps you with your decision making, it could be a social platform or X, X, x Y, and Z. the The kind of concurrent thought to or congruent thought to that is that the moment it's not about growth in the real world, it's about growth in an artificial world while sacrificing real world performance. That's when it becomes a problem.
00:24:14
Speaker
And that's the kind of, I think the key balancing act, is you want it to enhance your life as an individual player, or you want to enhance your ah your your child's life in some way. And like it has to be taken in the context of these these environments aren't and particularly nice. League of Legends is not a pleasant place to be, the best of time. The majority of users will back this up. You can go online.
00:24:43
Speaker
And it's a very, very toxic, competitive environment. Infamously toxic. Infamously. You will log on and 20 minutes of your time will just disappear like vapor in front of you because one person's had a bad other game and now they're going to ruin your game, right?
00:25:03
Speaker
and And that's the the real danger of this is that it's not always a high and well a high high period of time or a high use period of time because of other people. And that can be a double-edged sword because it it it does teach you patience. It does teach you responsibility. If you want to get frustrated, you know, you can be banned. And, but you know, more importantly, as a league player, your rank will go down. you your your your Your win rate will go down as a response to that. right And that's just something that you know comes with the double H sort. I always think it boils down to that almost one sentence, which is, is this growing you outside of a virtual space or is the virtual space taking away from the real world space? Because although we can try to fight it and in a perfect world I would have done, the real world catches up.
Parent-Child Gaming Engagement
00:25:57
Speaker
And and if if you're not taking these huge, sweeter benefits, like learning to communicate, learning not to be frustrated, learning to be consistent, understanding what it takes to get truly, like truly great at something, which I never did, by the way. i You know, I got to like what would now be like Masters rank, which is still pretty good, but like I could never be Grandmaster. It's just not in me. It's like like being the third best person at your local chess club.
00:26:24
Speaker
Well, I think that's less not doing me enough credit, Andrew. but for the Yeah, sure. But yeah, like so so I think that's that's the key thing to keep in mind. Because I know in certain periods of my life, like that definitely happened to me, where I would neglect certain things in my world to to play a video game. Sure, I feel like I'm a great communicator, arguably, because of the amount of time I spent having high intensity conversations with people.
00:26:53
Speaker
in a game setting, but it's still a huge time investment. But bringing it to a downer level, what does that positive growth within the context of a video game look like compared to this sort of more negative experience? How can a parent who who who doesn't know the Xbox from their PlayStation really be able to tell the difference? What what are the signs here?
00:27:18
Speaker
So I think a really weird one is maybe engagement. So if your son or daughter is playing League of Legends and they start on that ranked journey, which what I mean is you start playing on this kind of ranked ladder where you can see how good you are, be part of that. Hell, maybe even be supportive. Treat it like a high school like your your son or daughter is competing on a high school football team.
00:27:41
Speaker
Maybe even reward them when they get to decent ranks, you know, you can look at what these ranks mean, you know, gold means that you're in the certain top percentage of players, platinum, another percentage, your sector, et cetera. And through that engagement, ah ah you can also offer like advice or even guidance on it, right? Oh, you can't be frustrated. It will ruin your win ratio.
00:28:02
Speaker
so So just being literally just being a present part. I mean, we we all talk about the importance of being present in your children's lives. And then so often seem to treat video games as a part of their lives that we can just check out of.
Understanding Toxic Environments
00:28:17
Speaker
And then wonder why there's negative impacts.
00:28:20
Speaker
It's a really compelling, compelling argument and because once you understand, you'll be able to tease apart, but also understand the dangers, right? Which is you can actually have a serious conversation about how if you're going to play these games, you need to get better emotional regulation because it's not only affecting your life in the real world, but it's affecting you digitally, too. And they don't have a leg to stand on. You're getting frustrated because you're not good or you're failing or you're failing at something. and That's not how you deal with failure.
00:28:49
Speaker
And even that like sentence, that that echoes through the the eternity of someone's life, and it is an eternity. Every failed relationship, failed exam, job interview, missing a promotion, things not going well. you know One of the key advantages to these landscapes is that it's a very, very brutal environment to learn howl how prone to failure human beings are. Because, and trust me, in League of Legends, you'll find on a regular basis, regardless of how good you are.
00:29:19
Speaker
And if you're a prodigy, it will lead you to a place where, my God, you'll find an even worse type of failure, which is failure in front of a crowd. you know And I feel like it's a very misrepresented misrepresented element of the positives of video games. the The flip side is, is just like any sport, unless you want to be like one of those really soccer-obsessed parents fighting at the sideline of a five-a-side football game, you can push it too far because life's far more rich than a video game could ever provide on its own.
00:29:54
Speaker
And that's the kind of dividing line. Both of those elements and arguments, I think, do exist. And and what I would advise is, one, it's a very toxic online environment. So if your your child is 10 years old, they'd have to be one hell of a savvy 10-year-old for, you know, for maybe me to voucher. Legal Legends is a great place. but it It feels like it should go without saying, but it doesn't go without saying that Generally speaking, parents need to be having conversations with their children about what if they see or experience something online that upsets them. But again, that's something that's so often missed. So just highlighting that from the start that it is a toxic environment. If your children child is interested in this, if they're playing with it, be aware of that.
00:30:40
Speaker
Yeah, 100% correct. And just to add some context, League of Legends doesn't have like native or inbuilt voice chat. So you won't hear it verbally from people, but you're um you're almost guaranteed to get and I can't express this enough. This isn't like a one off.
00:30:57
Speaker
every couple of games, right? Every every per hour, and your your child will receive likely abuse at some form or witness it. Like it's inbuilt into just the way people communicate in that game. And they this obviously they've done they there's mechanisms in place to reduce it, and but the that kind of element of griefing or being toxic to individual players is incredibly prevalent in League of Legends.
00:31:26
Speaker
And so when you're if your child asks, hey, can I download League of Legends? That's one of the key questions, is are they cognitively able to separate out and cognitively deal with that in an effective way? And that'll be on a child by child. but And I think that decision goes down to the parents. But the moment you you actually have that information, that that's what
Shared Gaming Experiences
00:31:46
Speaker
that environment is. It enables that kind of informed decision making.
00:31:50
Speaker
So I've got one last question. it's It's a bit of a different tone, this one. So let's say let's say we've got a parent whose child, the teenager, is really interested in League of Legends. And they decide they're really going to take on board your advice about being engaged with them as as a hobby on this. Don't let this just be a part of your child's life that you check out on. What hero should they try try out first? What hero?
00:32:18
Speaker
oh Andrew, Andrew, Andrew, Andrew. I've got two answers to this question. So you've got the like just the one that they have the most fun with. League of Legends was a love story for me. It it produced like a level of childlike joy. It was my version of running around on my bike. you know And I still have some. I've laughed so much that I've cried. you know I learned a lot about myself and how to like just try to get really good at something. right And I feel like just playing it for the love of it's really good. And then the other side of the question, which is, OK, Project Verstappen. So you want to create the next world champion. You want your you want your son to retire you, son or daughter to retire you. And you play something mechanically very, very easy. So in League of Legends, you want your Ashe and you want your Garen. And you just tell them, like Project Verstappen, make them a world champion. You tell them, OK, you're going to play this for the next. This is the only champion you're ever going to play.
00:33:17
Speaker
jump What champion should the parents play? Oh, the parents play? Oh, to what to to to to beat their kid? Exact same piece of advice. You pick the easiest thing. I was more thinking as, you know, give it a go, get involved, maybe play a game alongside them. I wasn't thinking, show your kid who's boss. Well, i' sorry daddy well if that's the case, just whatever looks cool. You know, I feel like we're all kids.
00:33:43
Speaker
what whatever you think looks looks cool I can't advise it enough. one of them well I've got a memory of this actually where There's this bot lane, so like there's an element of the League of Legends map. And I encountered a father-son combination, and these guys were having the best time. And I mean that. like Even the way that they communicated, and they were like just absolutely ignoring the chaos of League of Legends around them. I remember this so distinctly. And they were just, even through text, you could tell they were having the best time together. And so if you are like-minded,
00:34:17
Speaker
The fact that I still remember that, that must have been seven or eight years ago from one League of Legends game. but Please just give it a go because I'm sure it will create. If that's a core memory for me, I can't imagine what it would do to your child and for you as well.
Preview of Next Episode: Roblox
00:34:32
Speaker
Yeah, so it's a nice question that I didn't expect that.
00:34:35
Speaker
Wow, so that's that's everything we've got, and that's all we've got time for today. Thank you so much for listening in. I've learned a lot from you, Brandon, and I hope our listeners have as well. Join us next time as we deconstruct Roblox, the most popular kids game in the world. This has been the Dopamine slot machine. We'll see you soon.