League of Legends and Networks Effect
One of the largest businesses in South Korea is online games. One of the most popular attractions of South Korea is “PC bang”, where people can go to use computers while paying a small hourly fee. Largely, people go to play online multiplayer games. Since online gaming is such a significant part of business in South Korea, many websites releases weekly report of gameplay statistics of PC bang.
Diablo III, when it first came out on May 2012, its market percentage on the first week reached 39%1, which meant that 39% of all PC bang customers were playing Diablo III. At the same time, League of Legends (denoted LOL), which previously remained its user percentage around 25%1, dropped down to 11%. As of November 2012, Diablo III’s user percentage dropped to 6.6% and that of LOL jumped back up to 25.8%2, which was what it had been.
There are many factors that affect the percentage of users playing the game, or simply, popularity. The features of the game, like graphics, varieties of contents, and story, matter significantly. Establishing those as the baseline, there is also phenomenon where people copy the behaviors of others. Simply put, people decide to play game because many other people are playing it. In terms of information-based principles, there has been a cascade of people who chose to play the game before I did. Whether my signal about the game is a high signal—game looks really fun to me, or is a low signal—the game looks really boring, I decide to follow the decisions of my numerous friends who are playing the game. Since many people are playing, it means there is something good about the game I am yet to discover. In terms of the network effect, I choose to play the game because I get an explicit benefit when I decide to play the game like others. For League of Legends, it seems that network effect is more significant than information-based principles.
What is the reason for its popularity? LOL is an online game where two teams, each team having five members, fight. When people get in the queue after logging into the game, the game’s matching system drafts five people, based on their levels, and match two teams in a game. It takes ten people to run about an hour-long game. There are other games very similar to LOL, like Heroes of Newerth and DotA 2. However, LOL had established a good number of loyal players, as it is the oldest game among the three, and it was free-to-play since the beginning. What is the benefit of having people already playing the game? There are many direct benefits. The game becomes faster. Since there are many users, when I put myself in the queue, it only takes an average of twenty seconds, to gather nine other people and start the game. In DotA 2, there is less number of users than in LOL. As a result, waiting time in queue averages about two minutes. Naturally, people would want to play a game that does not require a long waiting time. Furthermore, if I play the same game with many of my friends, we can play together, which turns the game into a socializing activity. Moreover, now whenever we meet, we can talk about the game and that increases social bond amongst friends.
LOL recently hosted a first worldwide tournament. As the popularity of LOL is continuing to rise, more people are playing the game. It seems like the Riot Games, the maker of LOL, will thrive, and the rich will only get richer in the future. The future of Riot Games look bright.
1 Gamereport.netimo.net
2 http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2012/10/18/starcraft-2-struggles-as-league-of-legends-rises/
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/league-legends-popular-pc-game-world-muo-gaming/
-HighSociety