Level 6, 1071 Kills, No Regrets
Those stories about someone dying in a South Korean internet café after seventy-two hours of continuous gaming—no food, no water, a blood clot somewhere catastrophic—I always read those with bewildered distance. I couldn’t locate the psychological mechanism. What itch does that scratch that sleep and basic bodily functions can’t interrupt?
I have some ideas now.
Sixteen-plus hours of League of Legends last night, a few hours of uneasy sleep, then straight back to the screen. I’m half-Asian and I’m choosing to blame genetics rather than examine my impulse control. It’s not a theory I’d advance in an academic setting, but it’s the theory I have.
If you’re unfamiliar with League of Legends—and I was, until about thirty-six hours ago—it’s a multiplayer online battle arena game, which means I’ve just explained absolutely nothing. Basically: pick a champion, move through a map, kill things, your team tries to destroy the enemy base before the other team destroys yours. There’s strategy involved. There are also Ukrainian players on your team who run in random directions and disconnect every ten minutes.
I’m Level 6. I’ve killed 1,071 minions, achieved 105 takedowns, and won five games. I’ve lost considerably more games, which I attribute entirely to my teammates and not at all to forgetting which key heals me and which one sends me back to base. These are different keys. I know that now.
My current champion is Sivir, who is fast and shoots things and suits my chaotic, uncoordinated playstyle. But I keep looking across the roster at Riven—discharged soldier, enormous attitude, genuinely impressive chest—who costs five euros or approximately seven hundred hours of grinding. I’m not paying five euros for a character in a free game. This is a principled position that I’m absolutely going to abandon eventually.
In the meantime: headphones on, old GameOne episodes queued up for the moments when xxSchnuffel91xx destroys me because I’ve confused my hotkeys again, and the particular satisfaction of hunting down someone who was definitely talking shit in team chat three minutes ago. It’s free, it’s everywhere, and I’m sorry.