Consumo e fandom em jogos: um estudo de caso sobre league of legends

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to investigate how does the relationship between players and games work through a case study of League of Legends. With that, it is intended to understand the consumerism practices and understand how the relationship of player-consumer can evolve to a player-fan relationship. Initially, it is made a brief overview of the videogame’s history, characterizing the games and focusing on League of Legends’ category: online and multiplayer games. It is, then, developed the idea of consumerism: what detaches itself and distinguishes itself on the fans consumerism and on the games consumerism. Moving forward, I explain better how the game is itself, describing some of the characteristics and elements that exist on the game, as well as the existence of eSports, which gain more popularity each time. The methodology is a case study made through a brief online mapping of the Facebook’s group “League of Legends SM”, answers of fifty seven online questionnaires and six interviews made through Skype. From that, this study concludes that the success of the game League of Legends happens, in a big part, through the sociability allowed on the multiplayer mode. The influence of friends, just as the character of variation of the game and the dedication that the firm has with the users seems to explain why the players call themselves fans of League of Legends.