Piece:

In the LCS (League of Legends Championship series) — it’s the biggest championship series– there are certain known playmaking character that are consistently super important to team fights. This commentator Phreak would sometimes comment “WOW big plays” whenever one of those pivotal moments occurred in a game. Thus started the hashtag #LCSBigPlays. Then it became a balance criticism after characters continually performed well in tournaments and it was theorized that Riot refused to balance these characters because they were exciting to watch in tournaments and the company didn’t want to take away from the spectacle (Specifically in reference to the character Ahri, who has been first-pick banned in tournaments for the last 2 years).

 Information & Context:

My informant for this piece is a student at the University of Southern California who has been involved in the League of Legends community for the past 5 years. He was exposed to this piece of folk Speech after watching the LCS one year in which Phreak commentated and witnessed the rise of the hash tag in online games in the following months.

 Thoughts:

I find it interesting that a lot of the folk speech insults in online games originate from an attempt to parody something in the community’s spotlight. This intrigues me because it indicates a role reversal—using something that has become overused in an attempt to highlight an idiosyncrasy in the game. This folk speech insult has become popular in an attempt to chastise the game’s creator for not providing more balance in the game to it’s players.