The Career of Being Offended - League of Legends

[Jack Wood]

Felicia Taylor - 2015

In the current state of society there is a sort of aggressive nature that appears to be forming in different subsections of the groups we're a part of. This aggressive nature has been creeping in and out of society through the years and although I refer to it as aggressive I don't totally mean it as a negative thing because it has been very instrumental in forming the safe society we live in today. Had this aggressive nature not come to life slavery, degradation and war could very well be a part of our everyday lives and cause the world we live in today to be much darker and bleaker, less open than it is now. There's no denying it has helped civilisation grow but has it gotten to the point where it's just too much?

I know this is an extremely touchy subject and I'm not trying to say society is perfect because it's far from that, but there's a point in which people seem to think there's a need to be offended on matters not even relevant to themselves to the point that you could almost say they're trying to become "professionally offended".

What is professionally offended? A slang term that has popped up in online communities over the past few years that could be defined as "The act of being offended for no other reason than to attract attention to yourself or cause an individual/group of people to feel lesser because of an act they have committed" (self-definition.) There are a lot of examples of this happening in today's pop-culture which I could bring up that would describe perfectly what I mean but there's a specific example referring to one of the games I know almost inside out, from dev visions to the core backbone of the gameplay, which should allow me to perfectly articulate exactly what I mean.


French Maid Nidalee - Riot 2016

The hypothesis is this: League of Legends is a fundamentally sexist game because of it's use of overly exaggerated female body structures and lack of representation. It's use of overly erotic skin lines such as french maid, Headmistress and Seductress... Yeah, not exactly setting a great image from the very start but if I didn't have a point I wouldn't be so willing to defend it. (or maybe my chronic "fanboyism" is speaking... Hmm...)

Now, I don't in any sense of the word believe League of Legends is innately sexist. Do I believe it has undertones of sexism that are included? Yes I do, but I don't think it's an attack on a specific gender either, in fact I believe someone could make a point it's worse for the male characters in LoL than it is for the females but that's a topic for another day.

To truly understand my point of view we need to think of what a game is that could be classed as completely and utterly sexist in the first place. For example, Dead or Alive Paradise is widely known for it's disgustingly poor representation of woman as it's just a game designed to have very pretty girls in bikinis "jiggle" and "bounce" for the players erotic enjoyment. This is our guideline for a fundamentally sexist game and going into more detail we can analyse what makes it so sexist. The use, or lack thereof, of varying body types in the game is abysmal; every girl in the game has above average breasts, perfectly skinny bodies and a complete lack of blemishes. This could be referred to as an unrealistic standard of the perfect female form if you were to take it from the stereotypical hormonal boys mind. This is the fundamental to making a game sexist; a lack of actual representation of different types of a specific gender (remember it is possible for sexism to be aimed at men also) while also never attempting to give personality or any form of human component to the character which makes them something more than just an object to please the eye.

Let's compare this self-defined example to League of Legends by starting at the very beginning of the game back in it's BETA form. The first completed set of champions included 40 different champions you could choose from which were (Note: It's very important I list all the champions AND their titles for my point):
Twisted Fate, The Card Master, Male; Tristana, The Yordle Gunner, Female; Teemo, The Yordle Scout, Male; Soraka, The Star Child, Female; Sivir, The Battle Mistress, Female; Sion, The Undead Juggernaut, Male; Ryze, The Rogue Mage, Male; Nunu, The Yeti Rider, Male+Beast; Morgana, Fallen Angel, Female; Master Yi, The Wuju Bladesman, Male; Kayle, The Judicator, Female; Jax, The Grandmaster at Arms, Male; Fiddlesticks, The scarecrow, Male; Ashe, The Frost Archer, Female; Annie, The Dark Child, Female; Alistair, The Minotaur, Male; Warwick, the bloodhunter, Male.

(Important Notes: Annie - 8 Year old girl; Yordles are a race of tiny creatures that have varying body types; Soraka is a half goat creature; Genders were based on the assumed genders, some may be genderless such as Fiddlesticks who is actually a scarecrow)

Taking a few of these characters I will base my final analysis and hypothesis off their representation in the game. Taking the two most generic characters first I will use these as my baseline. Twisted fate and Sivir are both human, have body shapes which resemble that of the generic human body (My definition of the generic human body is "As seen in scientific text books"). These two are the basic characters you would expect to see in any video game and if every character was based off them then you could very well say League of Legends was setting an unrealistic example of the male/female body and would be sexist. But the fact is their body type is never repeated even once in the rest of the original champions and they could even be referred to as complete outliers. The closest male to Twisted Fate would be Master Yi who has a completely different body shape in the fact that he's extremely skinny, has numerous eyes and looks more like a samurai where as Twisted Fate is a cowboy of sorts. The furthest character in terms of body type from Twisted Fate is Alistair. Alistair is a "Minotaur" in League of Legends definition, meaning he has no actual human features other than arms and legs where as the rest of him is an overbearing mass of muscled cow with purple skin. The closest Female to Sivir is Annie, an 8 Year old girl who wears a basic schoolgirls uniform. The furthest female character from Sivir is Tristana who is a 2ft tall purple skinned, big eyed and elf eared yordle that would not feel out of place in a Tom and Jerry skit.

Just from this very brief example you can see from the beginning League of Legends' design was never fundamentally sexist as they were just letting their imagination run wild trying to come up with different types of characters that were interesting. League of Legends is now 130 characters deep and because of that has recurring body types that keep popping back up which is why the stigma of "oh well League is sexist" came from. Logically thinking you have to realise not every human on this body is so drastically different that you'll notice at first glance. Body types do repeat and some people look similar so while representation may be extremely good you have to have a point where you accept that not everyone can be different if you actually want realism to take part in your game.

[RobReed]

Some very interesting thoughts, and well expressed.

I'm interested in this concept of people being offended as a kind of 'career'. It does seem that there's a sense of entitlement to a lot of online culture, which seeks victimhood and wants to speak out on the behalf of others, often without necessarily understanding those 'others'.

I do think, though, that there's a reasonable critique of representation which is not about being 'offended' and is about intellectually disagreeing with something.

The images you provide of the LoL women do look very similar in terms of representation. Yes, there are lots of different hats and colours and such. But the body shapes appear very similar indeed - slender, with disproportionate breasts, heart shaped faces etc. I have little knowledge of the game itself, though, so this is based on observing your provided images.

To me, it's not about calling a game sexist. That would suggest something deliberate. It's about saying that maybe our culture has a tendency to think about women in a certain way, and that we unconsciously reproduce that way of thinking.

Interesting thoughts.