Is stoicism the only way to enjoy Games?

2009 was a busy year for the gaming industry. Multiple loved titles saw their peak this year. This was the year Angry Birds released, the second Assasin’s Creed came out, the infamous Batman Arkham Asylum came into existence and ofcourse the everlasting Left 4 Dead 2 was introduced as well. Along with these titles, we also got a game that would mark an important point in the history of online gaming. Riot Games announced a standalone game inspired by the Warcraft III expansion, and it would be called League of Legends. 15 years later, League now has 15 times the players it once had in 2009. By 2023, 151 million users had accounts in the game.

In the game, two teams of five players battle in player-versus-player combat, each team occupying and defending their half of the map. Each of the ten players controls a character, known as a “champion”, with unique abilities and differing styles of play. During a match, champions become more powerful by collecting experience points, earning gold, and purchasing items to defeat the opposing team. Confusing enough?

But if you are someone who stuck around enough to actually immerse yourself into this game, you would know that this confusion is very short lived. In fact most players go from not understanding a single thing about the game to having biased opinions about players and teams, leagues to cheer for and regions to be disappointed by in a matter of months. But with all this excitement, there is one major problem with League of Legends. So much so, that it has slowly become the identity of a league player in modern gaming communities. It is the problem of toxicity.

Now, to be clear, all online games have toxicity. It is an inherent part of the nature of online games. Perhaps you could say, its because we, human beings are the ones that are toxic, and online media is one of the few public forums for this behaviour’s exhibition. Do games make you toxic, or do they show the toxicity in you? Regardless, some data shows that the behaviour is consistent in online games. In 2022, The Anti-Defamation League in Newyork conducted a survey which showed that 76% of players have experienced in-game harassment. According to this survey (https://www.adl.org/resources/report/hate-no-game-hate-and-harassment-online-games-2022) “ An estimated 2.3 million teens were exposed to white-supremacist ideology in multiplayer games like Roblox, World of Warcraft, Fortnite, Apex Legends, League of Legends, Madden NFL, Overwatch, and Call of Duty.”

The toxicity in League specifically, often comes from the root of League’s vision — Competition. League by design is intended to be a competitive experience, and competitive environments create tense situations where emotions get the better of us. What makes League’s ranked mode so much more toxic than other games is that the ranked system in League actually works. The ranked system is so accurate that it also results in desperation. If you are a diamond player, you “will” be diamond no matter what, until you improve to be a Master player. And with the system being this rigid and structured, two parties start to rise in debate. The players who complain about the game, about their team, about the matchmaking, and sometimes even about themselves. And then there’s the party that advices, that has transcended the struggles of the climb and is now at a point where they reflect and speak on the true nature of the climb, the topic of this article, the stoics of league of legends.

Before I go into stoicism, there is one important thing to know about this philosophical system. Stoicism can be dated back to 300 B.C. and currently we do not possess any complete work written by any of the original three heads of the Stoic school — Zeno, Cleanthes and Chrysippus. Chrysippus is said to have written over 150 works, of which only fragments remain. The only works that have survived are the ones written during the imperial times. Overtime, Stoicism has made various appearances in history. It has been used to promote healthier lives and it has also been used to suppress human beings as well. A philosophical system that has been carried through over decades of history can be interpreted and used subjectively. Infact, the new wave of stoicism can also be referred to as Neo Stoicism.

In simple terms, Stoicism is an ancient philosophy that focuses on reframing the mind to not react to what we cannot control. Today, it’s often used by people to help with their personal and professional development and is referred to as Modern Stoicism. The stoics emphasise what you can control. The choices you make are in your character. In doing so, they use the so-called cardinal values of Socrates: Courage, Temperance, Justice and Wisdom. What you consider good or bad is up to you, but it should never come at the expense of these values.

In competitive league of legends, a similar philosophy arises. If you ask any highly ranked player what the best way to improve is, chances are they will say something along the lines of playing to improve your own skill and trying to win the games on your own without depending on your team. Coaches who help a substantial amount of players improve professionally, like Coach Curtis has extensive material on the mindsets and methods of improving in League. While there are more nuances to this subject, it is clear that if you are serious about improving at the game, you focus purely on yourself and even opt to mute out your teammates from using the chat feature.

To put it simply, you must focus on just yourself and not on your team in a team game, for your own sake. The emphasis must be on what you can control, ie, your own gameplay. This is a rather healthy way of looking at self improvement. Stoicism in general has this positive element to it. But there is also a small problem with this way of thinking.

There is an interesting example that Stephen West on his episode of Martha Nussbaum gives.

“a stay at home mom with three kids for example…you know the kids are running around the house doing god knows what…putting syrup all over the family cat…mom’s out of her mind, and the mom might say to herself in that moment you know what? “I can’t freak out right now, I have to just stay reasonable. I’m in charge of this house.” It’s a very understandable response to push down the emotions and try to be as reasoned as possible, some would just call that maturity.”

Looking at this example from just the basis of what we’ve talked about till now, we could say that the mom did not react to how the children were acting as it is something external to her, and focused on how she reacts to how the children were acting as it is something internal to her. But at the same time, let’s be honest here. Did any mom ever in the history of motherhood think to herself “I must act with reason, emotions are not worth it, I must look within and stay calm as the stoics suggest”. No. Maturity does not come out of a philosophical concept. It comes from a different source. A thought that might benefit us all in today’s times are “what HAPPENS when you accept the emotions as a valid compass to guide your behaviour in the world is that you REALISE how NEEDY human beings really are.”

What if the mother suppressed one emotion she was having because of yet another emotion that overpowered the first one? What if she refused to yell at her kids out of compassion and not logic? According to stoics, whenever you are compassionate to someone, you are in someway compromising their integrity. You make them weak. And here lies the problem.

A few reminders to state here. League of legends is an online (only) game where you play in real time with 4 other real human beings from different parts of the world (within a region). 5 individuals with their own lives have chosen to spend their time with 4 others in an online space to play a video game. Nothing about this is an antisocial event, contrary to the social status of gamers. And so, any social emotion must also be important here as well.

And with this in mind, I ask : What does compassion look like in League of Legends ?

Tomorrow morning, you wake up from your bed, you go to the dining room, and you see your mom has completely overcooked the breakfast to the point where it’s burnt. She feels bad and she is trying to make a new batch, although she is running late for office. What do you do in this situation? Do you mute her out, go back to your room and order your own food, because you can’t be bothered to be late yourself because of someone else’s incompetency? Or do you go and help her out?

While helping her, do you comfort her, say things like “it’s ok, there’s time” or do you not talk to her because you must focus on your own mental health and it is important to be calm and stoic in the morning for productivity. I hope for most of those who are reading this, the decision is very easy to make. But again, these decisions are the easy ones to make.

Would you make the same decisions, if it was a roommate instead of your mom? What if you’ve only talked to this roommate once or twice before this morning? Does it get slightly harder to come to the same conclusion as before?

Does it get even harder to make the same choices about a stranger you’ve never met before? And what if you never will meet them again after this morning?

According to Martha, the challenge of any society is getting people to care about the people they don’t know, and most likely would never meet.

A teammate that is still learning the game, as we all are, struggles to play well in his own role. What do you do about this? What must you do about this? Some of you may ask me now, “Why should I make his day better? What good does that do to me?”. And to those of you I say, you don’t have to. It’s not your duty. You may now ascend to the stoic realm of life.

A longstanding friend of mine recently asked me if I feel sad after losing a 50minute ranked game in League. My response was yes, ofcourse I feel a bit sad, I put almost an hour and so much effort into that ranked game. He told me that day, that this was exactly the reason he only played ARAM (a much more casual mode inside League). He could not be bothered to go through those emotions in a video game.

In 2013, as I was trying to understand League for the first time, I asked a friend what the point of all of this was. I mean you spend 50mins for what exactly? What do you get out of this? And what if you lose after all that time? His response was “ you haven’t experienced a close game of League then. Once you do, you will know it’s worth it”. And so I kept playing purely to experience this emotion. And when I finally did win a long, closely matched intense game, I understood what he meant. Interestingly, what I felt wasn’t just happiness. It was a rush of everything. I felt happy because at one point it felt like I might lose as well. I felt relieved because at one point in the game it felt like I was doomed. It felt rewarding, not because I won, but because I went through other emotions to win at the end.

Much like how Goethe in his classic work about colours show that light cannot exist if not for the existence of darkness, your happiness holds no value in the absence of sadness. Your excitement is not really exciting if there never was any disappointment.

Funny thing is, both these friends of mine are the same person. Thank you for your time, I hope it was worth this rambling essay and I hope you got something out of it, and If it did, I hope to ramble a lot more in the future.