Using API Data to Understand Learning in League of Legends: A Mixed Methods Study

ABSTRACT

This mixed-methods research was conducted to understand the impact of learning and player growth in a League of Legends summer camp. Eighteen adolescents engaged in a three-day sleep-over summer camp with various team building activities. Data collected included API metadata from pre- and post-camp as well as semi-structured interview data with youth who attended the camp. Exposing the participants to teamwork methods had a significant impact on changing how players approached competitive game play and engagement in digital environments. In particular, we find that participation in the summer camp led to significant changes in vision score, the most team-focused aspect of the game for which statistics were available. Furthermore, as demonstrated by the qualitative data, evidence suggests youth have an understanding for how teamwork can positively influence peer interactions within digital environments. These findings are important as they demonstrate that teaching team-focused activities can have a significant impact on the players of competitive esports games, and it also implies that the role of teamwork within various digital platforms needs deeper study. Findings indicate that a transfer of learning occurs between physical and digital spaces and that youth recognize the importance of teamwork and team-building activities in digital learning spaces.

KEYWORDS:

• Application programming interface data
• adolescents
• videogames
• League of Legends
• teamwork

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the Center for Enhancing Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities at Sam Houston State University for providing the grant funding that allowed us to conduct the three-day summer camp that enabled 18 middle and high school youth to engage in learning the value of teamwork within esports environments. We would also like to think C.J. Ellis, Ruben Garcia, and Jorge Munoz for the help running the three-day camp and working with API data pulls.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The history of these competitions date back to local area network (LAN) competitions, between friends in the 1990s (Taylor, 2012). In LANs, friends bring their computer and gaming hardware to one location and all connect to the same network and play games with and against each other.

2. The NBA is a men’s professional basketball league comprised of 30 teams; 29 in the United States and 1 in Canada.

3. The LCS regions are North America (NA LCS), Europe (EU LCS), Korea (LCK), China (LPL), Taiwan/Hong Kong/Macau (LMS), Vietnam (VCS), and others.

4. By traditional team sports we mean sports such as, but not limited to American football, soccer/football, basketball, and baseball.

5. In the United States and North America, secondary schools and universities offer talented student-athletes a level of competitive engagement called varsity athletics. Many varsity teams are school and university supported, which means that the athletes are offered coaching, uniforms, travel, and other perks free of charge.

6. In a club or an organization, members are responsible for funding their own equipment, coaches, uniforms, and so on, as opposed to the school/university-funded operation of a varsity-level sport.

7. Internet penetration has passed 50% worldwide, with now over 4 billion people connected to the Internet. However, note of caution must be exercised in making generalizations, in that the majority of the connectivity is developed countries and less so in areas such as sub-Saharan Africa.

8. Remix and/or mashup is an approach that is similar to a disc jockey who mixes multiple albums to make a new song (Lankshear & Knobel, 2008).

9. An API key is a code that allows data to be transferred between programs and applications in online environments. They are often procured by developers so that they can build applications to interface with websites and software.

10. In League of Legends, matches generally take place in 1-versus-1, 3-versus-3, or 5-versus-5 team match.

11. All characters share a resource known as health, while other secondary or tertiary resources such as “mana” or a “rage bar” can be shared among many characters or be unique to a single character.

12. Mana is what allows players to cast spells/special abilities. Health is the amount of life a player or a structure has left.

13. A “kill” is recorded when the player’s character killed another player’s character on the opposing team.

14. A “death” is recorded when a player’s character’s health goes to zero.

15. An “assist” is recorded when a player’s character damages another character on the other team before their health reaches zero, without being the player to reduce their health to zero.

16. Bots are computer-controlled units that players must battle against.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported in part by a grant from the Enhancing Undergraduate Research Experiences and Creative Activities Center at Sam Houston State University.