League of Legends is a very competitive game that used to revolve around creativity and fun. The competitive aspect often breeds much toxicity, My intervention initially went through multiple phases. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to use a website called “Ultimate Bravery” (a website that randomizes the items you should buy, as well as what skill to make more powerful first, along with a random character) and I wanted to see if I was able to build a playstyle around it, where I could take it. I wanted to see if I could affect the game itself through a rather awkward build that may or may not work. I realized, though, after doing THIS:
Kills/Deaths/Assists
It was not going to work. I was too inexperienced as a player to be able to adapt to such randomness in a build. Also, it was not fun. I then realized that League is SUPPOSED to be fun. This made me decide I wanted to do something in ranked (because ranked usually isn’t fun). So, with some suggestions from a friend, I decided that, instead of intervening with a random build into a normal game to test my capabilities of making it work, I decided that I would instead intervene into ranked. Ranked is essentially the place where serious people go to play, to test their skills against others. What I would have done normally would be very detrimental to other, but this is the pre-season, aka before the actual season where ranked counts immensely.
I had a friend help me out, and we essentially swapped roles. Before the game, we had to teach to each other how to play our respective roles/champions. I played jungle and he played ADC. I sometimes play jungle, but I almost never play Shaco, one of his favorite champs. So he gave me a detailed explanation of what I should, what to build, what runes to take, and then we played. I did the same with him. I actually only followed half of what he said, because I wanted to let my creativity to flow a little. The reason I consider this is an intervention is because ranked is a place where you take your experienced champions and playstyles to put them up against others. What we are doing directly refuting this because we are taking our unexperienced champions and pitting them against others. It did not go well at first, as seen by the next image:
After the next few games, though, I eventually got the hang of it.
But even while playing, my friend was constantly giving me tips on where to go, what I should be focusing on, etc. The goal of this intervention was to show the ranked mentality that could be screwed up (please never do this during the actual season). I was also not expecting that last score. Way higher than I initially expected. I wanted to test how my learning and adapting skills faired against those either experience.
Inspiration
My inspiration was taken from the Jejune Institute and video games. One aspect of what the Institute did was is that it essentially tried to take the seriousness and turn some of it into an enjoyable fairy tale, and also how they had to learn and adapt to everything on the fly. I wanted to do the same with League, especially the Ranked aspect, where most of the toxicity and hate resides. By having a person learn a champion on the fly, it allows a lot more creativity as well as the partner giving some direction on where to direct that creativity. But please do not do this in ranked during the season. You will most likely get banned.
I also took the ideas of intervening in the serious aspect of the video game, similar to the man who intervened in the game created by the military to recruit soldiers where he wrote the names of soldiers who died in the war. Mine was supposed to be the opposite where you can have more fun while learning on the fly in a serious environment than adding serious content to a “fun” environment.