Paper Info
Title
Motivations to read and learn in videogame lore: the case of league of legends.
Abstract
League of Legends is a multiplayer online battle arena game that follows a freemium model, but where the in-game transactions do little to impact a player's performance or ability. Although its characters, called Champions, can be purchased with actual (or ingame) money, there is a weekly rotation of ten free champions where players can test new champions before buying them. When new content is launched or a Champion is changed or reworked, players react to that by either using that Champion more or less (depending on whether they perceive it as positive or negative). Additionally, from time to time, Special Events are launched. The Bilgewater event, \"Burning Tides\", is one of such events, the only one that happened in season five, that aimed to merge lore with gameplay and represented Riot most ambitious story-telling experiment to date. Moreover, the seven Champions that had its background tied to Bilgewater were added to the free rotation on top of the other ten during the event, so there was no economic limiting factor that could hinder players from using them. This paper aims to understand how an event such as Bilgewater impact players in two dimensions; first, whether special events have an impact in Champion Usage and second, whether lore events can have an impact in player's motivation to read and learn in League of Legends. Results show that the effect in Champion Usage is unclear, with other factors being more relevant than Special Events, but that lore events have the potential to drive motivation to read and learn about the Champions and their story, events or optimal builds in the game, with a clear peak of interest in them.
Year
DOI
Venue
2016
10.1145/3012430.3012578
TEEM
Field
DocType
Citations 
Literacy,Freemium,Advertising,Launched,League,Psychology,Champion,Merge (version control),Battle
Conference
0
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.34
2
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Marçal Mora Cantallops100.68
Miguel-Angel Sicilia229830.58