How League Of Legends Paved The Way For Mobile Gaming Innovation

At the end of the 2000s, the gaming industry was going full throttle into online design, and although there was some interest in the mobile gaming market, several factors still held it back. The key one was the lack of fast, reliable, and cheap internet. In the modern age, this is commonplace; it’s rare to have any issues with mobile data unless you are in an extremely remote region or you are overseas. 

However, a decade and a half earlier, smartphones were not renowned for gaming. The App Store was still in its formative stages, and the first-ever iPad was still in production. Playing games online in the modern market requires fast, reliable internet, a plethora of apps, and digital communities, and it wasn’t until League of Legends that gaming companies got a real sense of the potential they had. 

Creating The Blueprint 

We’ve seen how other gaming platforms have used the foundation League of Legends established in the late 2000s to develop their own brands. It was around the same time that casino gaming companies began developing their own mobile gaming ideas, given the success of mobile gaming and concepts that League of Legends truly built on, such as digital communities, in-game marketing, microtransactions, and an interconnected web of gamers from all over the globe. Casino games like poker started to gain traction.  

To play poker online, casino gamers will go down two main routes, at least in the modern market. There’s a more contemporary version where casino gamers set up a crypto wallet and connect it directly to the casino wallet.  

Crypto poker players do not have to worry about cross-border fees, extensive KYC requirements, or the problems that can arise when a bank oversees the transaction – they are obsolete in the crypto poker world. Simply fund your wallet and go. 

Despite these advances and the expansive range of payment options, conventional casinos remain a popular option for poker players and offer more visible, recognizable payment methods, such as VISA and PayPal. 

Switching The Format On Its Head 

Until League of Legends developed its free-to-play model and brought in millions of gamers from all over the world, game design companies were reluctant to develop ideas that didn’t involve an upfront cost. Twenty years ago, gamers would buy physical copies of games upfront; they didn’t engage in in-game purchases or online updates.  

It was one transaction, and you were buying the game in its entirety. Many gaming companies did not think there was a market for a free-to-play model, in which gamers would pay as they played. It was an ambitious move from Riot Games, but its incredible success made many conventional games sit up and take notice. 

Even games like Grand Theft Auto V, within a few years, began pouring millions of dollars into developing their online worlds and introduced microtransactions, which generated billions of dollars in revenue and created a highly lucrative, brand-new way for gaming companies to make money.  

Without the first leaps LoL made, Rockstar would’ve been unlikely to put real time and capital into this idea, and it is likely going to play an enormous role in GTA 6, when it is released later this year.  

Embracing The Socials 

Another innovative step League of Legends took was to turn the idea of a game into something more like a sport than a gaming experience. Due to the game’s popularity, the socials often served as a great way to check out promotions, ideas, and the latest game updates. This idea has bled into every other facet of the gaming marketing world, as you can see in the link below.  

By revolutionizing the concept of gaming, turning it into a 24/7 watchable experience via streaming and influencers, and a form of entertainment where you can play for free, social media became the main route for marketing.  

This transformation in marketing played right into the LoL design’s hands. It embraced a global, online community, didn’t have to rely on the fragmented nature of gaming communities in the pre-internet era, and helped shine a light on how influential social media can be when leveraged correctly from a marketing perspective. 

Final Thoughts 

In the modern era, mobile games are ubiquitous. There’s been a tsunami of ideas that have arisen in the wake of League of Legends’ success, and while some have had some success and developed a market of their own, Riot Games’ initial push into the unknown, at a time when many in the gaming world were reluctant, helped put them on the global gaming map. 

Whether these factors will continue to be so influential over the next decade, only time will tell. However, social media, blockchain, and gaming influencers are more popular now than ever, it seems, and if this trend continues, we will continue seeing the lasting influence of League of Legends for the next decade and beyond.