There are a lot of articles on the web explaining why League of Legends became so successful. They talked about the Marketing, social factor, how developers listened to the players...etc. Yes, these are all important and played a big role in growing the player base, but I believe these reasons doesn't quite explain how League attracted players in the first place. More importantly, why did players chose League over the others? Is League really the best game out there?
I want to look at this from a different angle. If you study why some startups became so successful, you will notice that they all followed a similar pattern — they started by solving a pain point for a small specific group of people, for example, Facebook was exclusively for Harvard students, of which there are only a few thousand, but those few thousand users wanted it a lot.
This method works because it allows you to focus all your resources in serving this core group really well. Once you solved the pain points for this group, they became your best sales force and helps you to promote your product through word of mouth. Word of mouth is the best way to spread your product because people trust what their friends say.
Other reasons
MOBA is a hit thing, over-riding War3. DOTA is limited by War3 engine. Players are looking for spin off. HON & LOL was out. HON died, LOL emerge. DOTA2 undervelopment
LOL — No deny. No radius. No stats. F2P, easy to adopt.
Best F2P game out there.
Similar situation is Battle royale. Same pattern: Spin off from game, success genre. One rise, other falls.
Pain point League of Legends were solving
So what pain point was League solving? Back in 2008, the number of gamers were on the rise (In fact 68% of American households play computer or video games), and gaming started to become more socially acceptable— it’s not just something for geeks. What this mean is that casual players are willing to play games with their core gamer friends because they see it as a normal social activity.
The problem League of Legends were solving is that a lot of core gamers had a really hard time to get their friends to play the same game with them.
For every hardcore gamers, there are around 100 casual gamers out there, these casual gamers — although they do play games — are not as into gaming as their gamer friends. Unless they are really commit into the friendship, it is really hard to ask your friends to spend 50 bucks on a game so that they can play it with you. So, even though there were a lot of people playing games, they weren’t necessarily playing on the same games.
Anyhow, the core gamers still want to socialize with their casual gamer friends through games, and they are looking for a common ground, so what choices do they have?
Why League of Legends is the best choice
Wouldn’t it be great if there are some high quality free to play games out there that both the core gamer and his casual friends can play together?
They key here is high quality, a game with depth. The core gamer here is looking for something that they — as core gamers —can enjoy, and also know that a) it is easy to bring their friends in because the game is free and b) they know their friends will enjoy the game because they have already vetted it.
As mentioned, not any kind of F2P games will work for the core gamers. In order for a game to be a best candidate to be played among friends, it needs to meet a few more criteria:
- Competitive — it is fun to compete with others, it is just something that is build into our DNA because it feels good when we know we are better than our peers, and better yet…
- Cooperative — it maybe be fun to beat your friends, but it is more fun to ally with your friends to beat a common enemy, be it PvE or PvP. Nothing can create a better social bond and unites a tribe than an “Us against them” situation.
Back in 2009, there isn’t much F2P game that can match the above criteria (Take a look at this list of popular F2P games, you will notice they all came out/ switched to F2P a few years after League came out). Compared to other F2P games, League stands out by a mile because of its focus on providing the best experience to its player. League didn’t have the best graphics and it wasn’t necessary the best game, but it definitely was the best F2P game out there at that time.
League of Legends became the most logical choice among core gamers that want to socialize with their friends. It is convenience and the only commitment it requires is the willingness to spend time with your friends.
Summary
To summarize, back in around 2009 the market were drifting towards a F2P model, while the market were filled with crappy F2P games, League risen as best choice among players that were looking for high quality F2P games.
The game served its initial players really well and this group started to get other players on board through word of mouth. Combined with the excellent marketing and continuous tournaments that created hype to attract people that were on the fence, the player base soon gained critical mass and grew exponentially. A few years later, League became the success as we see today.
So what do you think? Am I missing something crucial or I have been misguided? I would love your feedback, feel free to leave a comment below or email me at timchan171@gmail.com. Thank you for reading.
Ref: https://medium.com/@dunn/get-one-thing-right-89390244c553#.m459k5eoj
