MOBAS, coercive behavior and popular trends
There's nothing quite like playing for the first time a game of League of Legends or DOTA if you might. The objective of the game consists in taking down the enemy base part by part, in order to destroy the enemy core building. Teams are assembled out of 5 people, where collaboration between each other and positioning is key.
It's not particularly fun, or it stands out as other visually impressive games. It doesn't offers inmediatly complexity, variety to the objectives, the map, or even the characters (as most of them have inherently similar abilities at times). The large amount of time it takes a match to develop, as well as the fact it can not continue regularly without one of the 10 players involved would all seem to add as a detractor for newer players who'd want to get involved.
Yet it stands out as the most popular genre of today, with over 2 million concurrent players on LoL, and 500,000 on DOTA2. It doesn't seems evident for an outsider (or even an insider at times) how this could have happened. Games like Quake 3 have come and gone, without the repercusion and massivity that a game like League can offer. (Edward Zhao throws some info on the percentage of the userbase distributed among mobas that may be of use). So the question remains, why then, why this genre, why now.
"Well, they are free to play"
One of the focal point to the popularity of the genre seems to be a rather obvious one: anyone with an internet connection does can download the game and have at it. Most of the games of the genre (except SMITE) are optimized and targeted towards lower end computers, thus enabling people from all over the globe a smooth experience on the performance of the game.
The dynamics of the genre would also point to friend building and in the particular case of League of Legends, a grinding system that keeps the player working towards a goal (unlocking characters)
Nevertheless, this wouldn't account for the fact that none of these are new concepts or strategies, or ones that haven't been introduced in the past 15 years or so. The playerbase on DOTA 2 is almost tenfold compared to most of the other multiplayer based games, some of which also are free and have a bigger exposition in other websites; not even to mention the fact that League of Legends is the most played game on the planet. (Although this fact is mitigated by the obvious possession of the chinese game market by Tencent, owner of Riot Games). Another inmediate topic that comes up is the money behind the operation, but both DOTA2 and League do not bring the biggest revenue per user at multiplayer games. World of Tanks, and Combat Arms both have bigger revenues despise smaller playerbases.
Referal Marketing, Positive Reinforcement and Accesible content
This is particularly a point where Riot Games has seen to set itself apart from the competitors. All of these three focal points on League's popularity can be attributed to its low entry barrier: The game takes pride in telling its players that the fundamentals are easy to grasp, but hard to master. Written content is there for advanced mechanics, but for anyone else interested in just having a good time with friends, League is the better option out of all the availeable mobas. Losing gold is non existant, denies don't encourage the focus of the player on the creepwave but rather the other player in front of you. It's clear that from a design standpoint, the targeted is focused towards an audience looking for a fun and enjoyable experience with friends.
The learning curve, which seems to be the one of the biggest complains of the MOBA community, is mitigated around balancing teams to ensure even if you're the most skilled player, you won't be able to win it by yourself, hence implicitly forcing the playerbase to have similar amount chances for winning and losing. This is one of the most polemical aspects of the game: the lack of one self's impact over the real improvement possibilities. That is not to assume that one can't improve and learn from his own mistakes, but the way the game is designed as well as the way the matchmaking forces a gameplay dynamic where the player isn't accountable of one's mistakes as much as the combined team hero decisions, gold obtained as well as yes, personal prowess.
Improvement is there, but it develops quite slower than it would if the skillcap'd be brutally exposed to the player. Even if you're the worst player on your team, you still have as much winning chances as the next guy solely based on factors at times, completely out of control.
Furthermore, this clashes with the aparition of a "Tribunal", where the players are judged upon their actions to determinate wheter they deserve an appropiate punishment or not. It'd all seem as if it was originally intended for fair play and keeping the community clean, but it comes out as contradictory to what the game is supposed to be: a dynamic team based game that rewards position and critical decisions. And yet the outcome seems to contrast to what Riot wants to preach, the game stales waiting for a new patch forcing the "meta" to change; and the community is seen in general akin to a word they love to coin, "Toxic".
This paradox is what surprises and still eludes me how the genre would got to be succesful: The design decisions inherently in dynamics of the genre manage to undermine the main objective behind the marketing decisions of RIOT, to provide a friendly and open enviroment to newcomers of the game.
