Sexual Politics In Video Games: A League Of Legends Case Study

Despite decades of technological and social advancement, video games continue to support discourse of the heterosexual white male at the expense of marginalized individuals and their experiences. “Sexual Politics in Video Games” builds upon previous scholarship regarding aesthetic representations and identity formation using one of the most popular video games, League of Legends (League), as a case study. Specifically, I ask: How should games acknowledge differing existences? How does representation and identification impact gameplay? How is identification formed during streaming? How does viewer-identity influence gameplay? How do viewer-identities interact and coexist? And, what does this mean moving forward? The first and second chapter of this project highlights the field and provides a review of scholarship regarding video games, history, and identification/representation. In the third chapter, I provide a brief history of video games and I offer an analysis of representation through character backgrounds in League’s lore. In the fourth chapter, I provide insight into how coded interactions and in-game representations impact a player’s identification. In the final chapter of this project, I discuss a brief history of eSports, how community identities are formed, how those identities interact with League’s gameplay, and what the larger implications are for eSports.