Baron Pit Dodge ball

Context: League of Legends is a popular video game in which players are placed into 2 teams of 5 and must fight each other. There is also a wide roster of characters for the players to pick from and use. Due to the free-flowing rule set of League, many community-made mini-games have been created. One such popular one is ‘Baron Pit Dodge ball’. In this game, all the players confine themselves to a small circular part of the arena called the ‘Baron Pit’ and create a line using place-able items. They must also pick characters that have primary abilities that have to be aimed. They then play dodge ball by only using a single aimed ability. There are many adaptations of this game, and every group of friends will have different in-house rules. S. is once such example as she plays this game with her friends quite often.

S: “In a league of legends, my friends and I would play dodge ball in the baron pit, we would put wards in the middle and make a line for the court. We then would only play skill shot champions, if you die, you are out.”

Reflection: ‘Baron Pit Dodge ball’ is an interesting case where the community of a video game has created their own mini-games within the confines of the greater video game without having to change or ‘mod’ the game in any way. It is particularly interesting when these mini-games emerge because that indicates that the rule set of the video game is loose enough to allow for such creativity on the player’s part.