Victor Turner.From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play. New York: PAJ Publications, 1982:44.

click to start the game. After tens of seconds of waiting in queue, the button to accept the game appears in the center of the player's computer screen with significant sound effects. Press this button with the mouse, and hundreds of "hero" avatars appear on the selection interface. Choose the "Hero" of this game and start the game! After everything is selected, what follows is the reading loading page. As the loading progress displayed in percentage continues to advance, the players' moods gradually become nervous, and a virtual battle is about to begin. The special effects similar to the simulation of space-time tunnel shuttles that often appear in science fiction movies are applied here. Players enter this tunnel that connects reality and virtual worlds from the first perspective. When the loading number reaches 100%, the "hero" selected by the player is thrown from above the formal game scene in the form of a beam of light and then turned into entities. The above is the game opening process that players will go through in each game " League of Legends ". As a result, the player also completed a mentality adjustment: through this time and space tunnel, the player transformed into a "hero" and devoted his attention to the fictional world of "League of Legends".

"League of Legends"

In the "League of Legends", the player controls the "hero" character to fight, obtain resources, destroy enemy buildings, and finally wins with the goal of destroying enemy bases. In this process, in addition to abandoning the buildings that confront both sides, the "hero" characters controlled by the player, and the resources that can be killed (such as soldiers, wild monsters, etc.), the game map itself can be reduced to two elements: passable roads and impassable "walls". This is the most basic map mechanism, which can be regarded as the physical rules of the game. Many unique skills of "heroes" are effective through interaction with the wall. The most common general skill "flash" in the entire game is also favored by players because it can ignore the terrain, or to put it bluntly, the function of "passing through the wall". Through the unique skills or "flash" of "heroes" to complete various wall-related interactions will also be considered exciting operations and included in various "operation highlights". In essence, ignoring the wall is a breakthrough in the basic rules, in which players can gain benefits and happiness beyond the rules - just like the video game itself, it is a medium for crossing the wall of reality and fiction and escaping from reality to transcend the daily norms.

need not be repeated, electronic games play an increasingly important role in the lives of contemporary people. In the past decade, "Home League of Legends" (League of Legends2) is one of the most influential video games worldwide. This multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game produced and released by the American Riot Company in 2009. According to official data, as of October 2021, there were 180 million monthly active players around the world [1], while registered players have reached more than 600 million since 2011. This is undoubtedly a huge size. The official event that it is a competition event also has a huge influence. In 2021, the highest event of "League of Legends" "S11 Global Finals", the highest event of "S11 Global Finals", reached 70 million at the same time, which is the largest number of electronic game events. [2]

"League of Legends" also has extraordinary significance to China. Although it was born in the United States, it has the largest player group in China. Although the game's Chinese server player data has never been officially released, it can be seen from the popularity of the official event League of Legends Pro League (LPL). According to the "2018 Top Ten Popular Sports Events Rankings of China" selected from the three dimensions of popularity, commercial value and influence in 2018, LPL became the most popular sports event that year, and its overall influence was only after " Chinese Super League " and CBA. [3] Therefore, the analysis of the phenomenon of "League of Legends" is actually an analysis of the current social and cultural status of China.

1. "League of Legends": Anti-narrative electronic games and their cross-media narrative

electronic games are very chaotic. Due to their media complexity, the composition pattern is also very different from art forms such as literature or movies. In the words of American game scholar Ian Bogost, it is "elephony games are a mess". He proposed that the game mode should be studied at five levels: acceptance and operation (Reception/Operation), interface (Interface), form and function (Form and Function), code (Code), and platform (Platform). [4] Although he believes that discussing "whether the essence of games is game science or narrative " is an outdated argument [5], in essence, the two are not opposites. Perhaps we can think so: these two represent the basic types of two independent but can be integrated into each other, namely "competitive" and "narrative". These two inherit from two development contexts. The former comes from sports, competition, or from the concept of "game" itself; while the latter inherits from the narrative part in art forms such as literature and film. Of course, just as literature and movies are not all narrative, electronic games also have expressions beyond narrative.

As a MOBA game, "League of Legends" seems to undoubtedly belong to the former, and the organization of various official events may be added to the Asian Games performance events, etc., which further illustrates that this is an unquestionable fact. The so-called "competitive" game inherits the concept of "game" itself. It can be explained by the viewpoint of Dutch cultural scholar John Heyzinha . Games and competitions are essentially the same. "Most Greek competitions are very serious in competition, but they cannot separate the competition from the game based on this, nor can they deny that the competition has game characteristics. Competitions have all the formal characteristics and most of the functional characteristics of the game. Dutch and German have their own words - wedkamp and Wettkampf - which clearly shows the consistency between the game and the competition." [6] In the game mode of "League of Legends", five players from both teams attack and achieve the goal in a team-based way, and can be said to belong to the same type as sports events such as basketball, which also proves the establishment of the above view. At this level, "League of Legends" undoubtedly belongs to a "competitive" game. When a "League of Legends" player does not need to know what kind of background story the characters he controls have, or what purpose they are based on (referring to the game narrative level, not the player's game purpose); as long as you are familiar with the rules and operation methods, you can play the game. But another fact is that since the birth of this game, Riot has had the ambition to use this "competitive" game as a "narrative" game at the same time.

In 2009, when the game was just released, its narrative was rough and trivial, with contradictions in details and even many joints were directly ignored. However, in terms of overall background setting, Riot Company has built a relatively sound story world framework. Even in the early stages of the game running, "cross-media narrative" began, and one of the typical examples is "The Journal of Justice" founded in 2010. "Justice Weekly" is a virtual reading based on the world view of "League of Legends". It is set as a newspaper and magazine that exists in the background of "League of Legends", which records the deeds of each game character or the strange stories of the "League of Legends". However, its creator is not the official official of Riot Company, but a kind of "fan" creation. This seems to be exactly the same as the "Prophet Daily" website created by Harry Potter fans. Henry Jenkins' so-called "text poacher" is a manifestation of "participatory culture", but its actual situation is very different from the " Prophet Daily " website.As the copyright holder, Warner Bros. does not like the "Prophet Daily" website, and even once wanted to force it to shut down, which also caused Jenkins to shout for Harry Potter fans; but Riot Company seems to be happy to see this "text poacher" cross-media narrative, and even quotes it to the official website of its own game. In the writing of gradually expanding official narratives, you can sometimes see references to "fan" creation, which is also a kind of "inclusion".

In 2017, the creation of " "League of Legends" universe " means that Riot Company will officially add the "narrative" attribute to the main part of the game "League of Legends". Based on the basic structure of the original story world, Riot drastically repairs, adapts and even rewrites the original trivial and contradictory story details, and then uses the game as the main body, and at the same time, "cross-media narrative" is carried out in the form of comics, short animations and novels. The method of constructing the story world of "League of Legends Universe" is not like the previous cases. It aptly reflects Henry Jenkins' definition of cross-media narrative: "Transmedia narrative refers to such a process in which the entire fictional world is partially systematically dispersed among multiple channels in order to create a unified and coordinated entertainment experience. Ideally, each medium can do its part to unfold the story" [7], and "League of Legends Universe" has, at least so far, been in this "ideal state". For example, compared with the example "The Matrix" series given by Jenkins when he proposed this concept, although the latter completed the narrative of various media such as movies, games, animations, etc., the main body is undoubtedly in the movie. Although the game "The Matrix: Path of Neo" (2005) supplements and connects the plots between movies, it actually does not affect the completion of the overall narrative. Because this is a plan in sequence, even if the movie "The Matrix" was not popular, the subsequent games would not have been born. This is more like a commercial continuation, rather than the design of the overall story world. The more influential cross-media narrative case in recent years may be the "Marvel Cinematic Universe" or "DC Expansion Universe" founded by two major American comic companies Marvel and DC, which is mainly based on movies. Even the current word "universe" as a signifier of a certain story world comes from the "Marvel Cinematic Universe". But in fact, in the original world setting of Marvel or DC, the "universe" is a "multiverse" or "parallel world" set in countless comics that have been serialized continuously for decades due to conflicting plots, or the same character has to unfold different stories for commercial reasons, and then set up the "multiverse" or "parallel world". Even in movies and comics, such as the image of "Iron Man", they do not share the unified narrative. Of course, with the great success of the "Marvel Cinematic Universe", Marvel also began to layout cross-media narratives in the true sense, and works that share the same narrative under the same worldview also began to appear, but this has the same problems as the "Matrix" series mentioned above. The difference between the "League of Legends Universe" and the examples mentioned above is that if both the "Matrix" or the "universe" settings of Marvel/DC are all certain strategies and plans due to commercial operation, which can be summarized into the scope of the concept of "cross-media narrative" proposed by Jenkins, then the "League of Legends Universe" is based entirely on "cross-media narrative". This seems to answer several of Mary-Raul Ryan’s questions about “transmedia narrative”, that is, “is it a narrative or a common marketing strategy, whether it is a new thing.” [8] Most of the previous "cross-media narratives" were based on one subject narrative, and then supplemented or expanded on other media. However, the special point of "League of Legends" is that the game as the subject is a "competitive" game and does not have the "narrative" function.After the player starts and ends a game, it is meaningless for the entire narrative, and almost all of its narratives are unfolded outside the game game - through novels, comics, animations, and game easter eggs that do not affect the game game status. There is no medium that becomes the subject. All stories in the medium are carried out in the same world, and their connection with the game lies in the roles controlled by the player will be the protagonist or supporting characters in these stories. Due to the disappearance of the subject, in this structure, there is only a certain "protagonist of the story" and no "protagonist of the world". In other words, it is precisely because of the lack of part of the narrative attributes of the game in League of Legends as the main body that it has become a unique condition for it to adapt to the unique "cross-media narrative". In this regard, it seems that the video game IP "Warcraft" series, which has a huge influence in the first decade of this century, has a higher narrative completion, and is also based on multiple media - games, novels and movies; or the world's largest IP, "Pokémon" under Nintendo seems to be a successful case, with an IP value of up to 100 billion US dollars [9], and its coverage also includes the main body of the game and various media such as animation, comics, novels, and movies. The narrative function of the game as the main body is also lower. However, it should be noted that the former game itself is the main part of the entire narrative, while many official novels are just recaps or supplements to the game plot. As for the movie "Warcraft" (2016), it is a completely adaptation of existing stories and does not conduct a new narrative; while in the latter, what Nintendo linked "Pokemon" to various media is not a "story", but a "image".

Therefore, we can see that whether it is the "cross-media narrative" works based on other media based on non-games, or other "cross-media" cases that are mainly based on games, the "cross-media narrative" of "League of Legends Universe" are special, or more in line with this concept. As a game released in 2009, "League of Legends Universe" was officially established in 2017. As mentioned above, Riot has made a lot of changes under the original background structure. From these changes, we can see the basic logic of this worldview construction.

November 5, 2022, United States, 2022 League of Legends S12 Global Finals, T1 Vs DRX.

2. Re-spoke the world map: "The Universe of League of Legends" Cultural Geography

The setting of "League of Legends" has the postmodernist color from the beginning, and you can see obvious collages and appropriations from it. For example, the city-state " Ionia " has obvious Asian attributes, and is even set as an island in the east in terms of geographical location; most of the heroes from this area are mainly Asian faces, "heroes" with Japanese ninjas, ronin, or Chinese colors and even Indian images (referring to characters controlled by players in the game) all come from here. The "hero" setting is common, creating it in the form of "appropriation", "parody" and "mixture". The prototypes of many heroic characters come from characters that have appeared in reality, history, mythology or other literary works. For example, the hero "King of War-Panson" based on the Three Hundred Spartan Warriors; the character prototype of the popular hero " Breaking Sword Master -Yasu" is Japanese swordsman Miyamoto Musashi, and the inspiration for his image design is the character Bawangmaru in the game "Samurai Spirits" series; the other popular hero "Blind Monk- Li Qing " is based on the action design perspective from Muay Thai , but his character image and surname are mostly believed by players to be based on the prototype of Bruce Lee . In fact, Riot Company did later make two related "skins" for this character (virtual products that change the image of the game character during the game but do not change the operation method): one is "Supreme Fist", which was created to commemorate the opening of the Thai server; the other is "The successor of the dragon", which is a skin designed to celebrate the Spring Festival of the Chinese Year of the Dragon, which directly corresponds to the image of Bruce Lee.From Ionia's city-state design to Li Qing, or other characters - for example, the hero "9-tailed Demon Fox - Ali " designed for the Korean server server design, the mixed use of the Chinese 9-tailed Fox myth and Korean myth also shows that in the early stage of game design, Riot's understanding of Asian culture was vague, and this impression was reflected in its worldview and hero design.

If Riot Company initially gave the world view of "League of Legends" to be messy, but it roughly puts, mixes and juxtaposes various symbols into one, then the establishment of "League of Legends Universe" is a reintegration of all previous narratives, and a simple collage is re-narrative with a logical rule. Taking the hero "The Monkey King - Sun Wukong" who celebrated the Chinese server opening, Riot Company, as an example, there is no doubt that from name to image, the prototype of this hero comes from the image of Sun Wukong in the classical Chinese mythology "Journey to the West", and the earliest story setting of this hero character is even a kind of direct appropriation:

"In the War Academy, there are many heroes from another world, most of which are "invited" by the summoners, while the other small part comes uninvited. Sun Wukong, the Monkey King, is one of them. The ordinary life after becoming a Buddha, makes Sun Wukong, who is greedy for nature, feel tedious. He was very upset. During a wandering trip to another world, he discovered the Rune Continent, a world with extremely frequent energy fluctuations. He began to understand this world in depth, and was awakened by the fair and unique fighting methods of League of Legends, as well as the heroes with their own characteristics. So he divided his soul into two: Fighting and Fighting Buddha and the Equaling Heaven Great Sage. The former continued to stay in the Buddha realm and was worshipped by the world. The latter escaped from the golden body, possessed a stone in the plague jungle, and descended to the earth in Valoran through the ritual of the surrounding monkeys. "[10]

In the original design In the magic forest of Aonia, there is a Vastya community named Sima Ao. They are a group of cautious residents who believe that life is a climbing on the tree of wisdom, so they believe that life will be turned into a stone after death, return to the land and start the climbing of life again.

The young and energetic Kong is an alien among the Momoe Apes. He is reckless and impulsive, clever and always bored. For countless years, they have been enduring his pranks... Until one day, he rushed over and insisted that a huge elemental dragon was coming to burn their jungle home. "[11]

League of Legends Fighting Buddha Sun Wukong

It can be seen that in the new narrative, as a hero in the game, Sun Wukong has lost his direct connection with Sun Wukong in the Chinese classical myth "Journey to the West" at the story level. There is no doubt that this is still an appropriation or parody creation, and people can clearly know the prototype of this hero - but there is no doubt that compared with the original story, it has been "internalized" into the narrative of the "League of Legends Universe". In the new setting, Sun Wukong comes from Ionia, and as mentioned above, Ionia's setting is based on Asia and continues the setting of "League of Legends Universe". Ionia's logo is set as a pattern in the shape of a "Chinese dragon", and even it has a new story - an island with a closed country in the East, and it cannot be ignored by the Qing Dynasty in China. But if the heroes from this city-state are subdivided, there are certainly many prototypes from China, South Korea and even India, but more of them belong to Japanese cultural images, such as ninja , samurai, ronin and other types of heroic characters.What is highlighted behind this is the blurred impression of the West of Asia as mentioned; secondly, it can be shown that in terms of culture, Japan has a greater influence on the West, but today's discourse of "China's rise" has led to this setting of "inside" with Chinese culture, but essentially loaded with a certain "inside" Japanese culture. Of course, the direct reason may be the huge group of Chinese players in League of Legends, and the Riot Company itself has been acquired by Tencent , but in essence, this is also a reflection of the "Rise of China".

, at the audience level, also embodies a certain "postmodern Consciousness". Of course, this may not be the creator's subjective creative intention, but the result that will definitely be produced based on this form of cross-media narrative. American scholar Paolo Xavier discusses the game " Dark Souls " in his doctoral thesis (Dark Souls, 2011) series analyzed the "postmodern consciousness" in the series. He borrowed the theories of Japanese scholars Higashihiro and Mayuki Osawa, believing that "players" have lost interest in all grand narratives, but are only addicted to cultural symbols in the "database", collecting and reorganizing these symbols endlessly. The narrative of the "Dark Souls" series is broken, full of rejection of "subject narrative". If players are really interested in the "history" of this game, they can only restore the entire narrative through the words provided by various elements and props in the game scene [12] - and most players are actually not interested in this. They do not know what their purpose is, nor do they know what role they play in this narrative, but they still enjoy fighting in the game and collecting various elements. The players' narrative of "League of Legends" seems to be exactly the same as that of Paolo's "Dark Souls" players in the world view structure. Although they once had the "fighting reason" of players, that is, as a "summoner" who manipulates a "agent war" from various city-states or heroes based on various purposes, the players have the purpose of winning. However, there is no doubt that most players do not care about this, and these small settings have even been completely removed in the narrative of "League of Legends Universe". If the player becomes interested in the narrative behind these symbols, he can selectively enter the text of "League of Legends" and even read only the parts he is interested in: such as the story of a hero he likes, or a city-state. And if you are not interested in this, it doesn't matter, and players can still play the game happily. In contrast, there are also many "League of Legends" viewers who actually do not play the game in the "League of Legends" game - although to a certain extent they already know the game very well - just like a football fan doesn't play football by himself. This also leads to the fact that although there are a lot of intersections between League of Legends players and the audience of "League of Legends Universe", they do not completely overlap. This situation is the embodiment of "postmodern consciousness" in the work "League of Legends". Although the narrative of "League of Legends Universe" has a macro structure overall, for most viewers or players, the narrative they accept is broken and trivial, and even just "database consumption" as Dong Haoji called. And unlike many works that are created based on this method, people actively choose to accept this narrative in this way, which seems to be more proof of the influence of "postmodern consciousness" on our current culture.

But on the other hand, although it is the "data-based consumption" of symbols, players in different cultural contexts have different choices about "symbols". From a universal perspective, all players prefer "human" heroes, which is undoubtedly dominated by their identity of human beings.Reav3, the chief producer of the League of Legends team, focused on the definition of three hero categories in the developer log released on May 27, 2021, and that is, humans, humanoid creatures and other creatures. Most of the heroes launched by LOL since 2017 belong to the first two, which is because Riot "takes making heroes with a wider acceptance as its clear goal... an important factor that makes heroes more resonant and more attractive. One is the identity of human beings, and within human beings, "some heroes have different choices in different regions. The heroes play the same way in all regions, but Jinx is more popular in the West (more resonant with punk rock) than in the East. Zhao Xin and Jiawen are more popular in China. Yasuo is very popular in all regions, but especially in the East. This phenomenon is not limited to these examples: the popularity of heroes varies between regions, but very Many differences can be traced back to the degree of resonance between its theme and the corresponding region. "[13] This has indeed become an implicit and subtle influence. For example, as an Asian, I will be more interested in the city-state "Ionia" based on Asia and its heroic characters. The previous discussion also unfolds this way, but there is no doubt that the center of the League of Legends world is not "Ionia", but " Demacia " and " Noxus " are two huge and powerful city-states. The former is a royal state designed based on the medieval European era, while the latter becomes a symbol of iron-blooded imperialism that represents the bourgeois regime after the Industrial Revolution. In addition, there are port city-states "Bilgewater" symbols that symbolize the Age of Discovery, " Piltwov " and "Zuan" in the Victorian "steampunk" style, as well as the "Giant God Peak" of religious tribes, the "Northland" of ancient Nordic, etc. In the cultural map of the game world, the political pattern of the real world is actually reproduced in the process of fictional creation, with Europe and the United States as the center, and the rest of the areas are "others".

Demacia's Miyin City

One thing that needs to be noted is that in the process of creating and reshaping the world view of "League of Legends Universe", "Ionia" stood out among the city-states and became the third pole in the geographical map of the game world. Although in the background story, it was still suffering from war and invaded and bullied by "Noxus", there are already so many heroes and narratives produced based on this city-state. However, as mentioned above, regarding the influence of the discourse on "China's rise", the prototype of "Ionia" is actually Asia, but most of the heroes come from East Asian civilization, and there are only a handful of prototypes in the rest of Asia. Therefore, it can be said that the cultural geographical map of "League of Legends Universe" is based on the business philosophy of Riot Company to capture larger users, the implicit ideology of European and American creators being influenced by Western-centrism to regard the East as the staring others, and the political and economic pattern in reality. In this seemingly completely fictional game world that is different from reality, reality reveals the reflection of reality everywhere. As the developer himself said, "We hope that all players can see their own shadow in the game", and the game world is the shadow of the real world.

3. Reverse the Imperial Myth: Post-colonial situation of the animated series "League of Legends: Battle of the Two Cities"

"League of Legends Universe" is to build a fantasy world that allows people to freely enter but is very different from reality. Perhaps as Mary Raul Ryan said, this is the most standard "transmedia world construction" [14]. Therefore, when the electronic game "League of Legends" cross-media is the animated series "League of Legends: Battle of the Two Cities" (hereinafter referred to as "Battle of the Two Cities"), its story world construction method is more worthy of attention than the basic plot direction, especially the issue of worldview.The so-called "two cities" are the class metaphor of the spatial structure: as the "upper city", Piltwov "look down at the sea, and batches of ships crossing its huge bay entrance, full of goods from all over the world", and is a "city of wealth and dreams" [15]; but as the "downer city", Zuan is a different situation:

Zuan is a huge dungeon area, located under the winding gullies and canyons around Piltwov. Various smoke and dust leaked from the interlaced, layered, corroded and aged smoke exhaust pipe network, filtering the light from above into a strange color, and cross-reflecting it between the colored glass in Zu'an Workshop. [16]

Compared with the class issues in the Twin Cities setting, the racial issues are more complicated. In the world of "The Battle of the Two Cities", the ethnic setting of human beings comes from the real world, so there are various races: black people, such as Ike and Mel; white people, such as Jace and Jinx; and Chinese mixed races, such as Caitlyn. It can be seen that Riot intends to completely eliminate the differences between various races when constructing this story world. Their construction of this world expresses Gilroy's view that "race" can only be constructed by society and politics, and the carefully designed ideological system always maintains various forms of "racialization", because the latter is an important feature of capitalist development. More importantly, we must compare and analyze the concept of "race" in different historical situations and examine the inseparable relationship with politics. [17] What the creators do is to de-ideologically, and they want to completely shift the constructed concept of "race". Therefore, there is no dispute over skin color here, which is reflected in politics. In parliament, we can see that blacks and whites have real power, and there is also an inhuman existence - Hemerdinger of the "Yordells", and even a robot MP.

but this is just a manifestation. In reality, the concept of "race" is not absent from the social structure of "Two Cities". Blacks, whites, and Asians seem to be no longer different from each other, but this is just because they have become different signifiers of the same concept, and there is only one reference: the dominant subject race, that is, in the "Two Cities", "humans" have the "white nature" in the real world. Then the position of ethnic minorities/vulnerable ethnic groups uses a more straightforward symbol - non-human, such as Hemerdinger, who is the "Jodel people".

Therefore, although Hemerdinger also became one of the members of the "Parliament", even because the "Yoder" clan was longer than the lifespan of human beings, as one of the founders of Piltwolf, he has been a representative of technology so far. In addition to symbolic meaning, he has not grasped any real power for the "reign" time several times longer than others. And after his student, a human being, received the capital to replace him, he could immediately replace him from the center of power and gradually gain real power that Hemerdinger had never held. This is very similar to the situation of the minority in reality. Although it enjoys a nominal or even in some respects higher than the subject race, it is actually unable to truly integrate into it. In the world of "Two Cities", although a utopia where races have long been equal is revealed, it is like the paradise created by Ike in the dirty and polluted place of Zuan in the film - it may be a coincidence that Ike happens to be a black race who is discriminated against in reality.

In addition to this, Hemerdinger himself is also associated with another major theme of this work, that is, the metaphor of the English title "Arcane" (literally translated as "Arcane") about "The Battle of the Twin Cities". In the world of "League of Legends", "arcane" is a mysterious substance containing great energy, but it also brings endless disasters to the world. In "Battle of the Two Cities", Jace, one of the main characters, his main contribution is to develop the power of arcane into an artificially controllable "Hex Technology", but was strongly opposed by his mentor Hemerdinger.Hemerdinger's worries are that he has seen the consequences of human abuse of the power of "arcane" in his hundreds of years of life: irreversible damage to the environment, the demise of life and the destruction of civilization. After witnessing several broken wells, Hemerdinger refused to carry forward this power in Piltwolf. He said: "I have been studying science all my life, but some puzzles are still unsolvable." Therefore, on the first level, arcane refers to new energy such as "nuclear energy" that has brought various disasters that need not be described. "Hex Technology" represents various new technologies gradually developed by mankind; deeper level, Hemerdinger's anxiety symbolizes the postmodern "anti-science" trend that has emerged in the Western world since the 1970s.

Jess

The postmodernist anti-scientific thought in "League of Legends: Battle of the Two Cities" is due to various global issues caused by technological progress: war, nuclear weapons and nuclear fear (such as the Chernobyl tragedy), and the deterioration of the ecological environment year by year... We can see the discussion of postmodern scholars: "Our planet (earth) is facing many troubles: the consequence of technological invention is that 50,000 nuclear warheads were produced, and the industrialized economy led to the ecological extinction of various continents;... An indisputable fact is that human beings are in a terrible situation as a species and a planet." [18] This description is almost the same as Hemerdinger's attitude mentioned above. What developed this is a kind of doubt and denial of science and technology. In the United States in the 1990s, anti-scientific thought was particularly prevalent. A series of debates called "Science Wars" occurred in the famous publication "Social Text" (Social Texttml8), a famous publication in the field of cultural research. The content is a series of debates about the essence of scientific theories that unfold between scientific realists and postmodernist commentators. After continuous development of anti-scientific thought, more systematic theories have emerged, just like the view held by "Social Text": science has become a new religion, and questioning science is questioning "truth" and has caused harm to civilization, and on this basis, the "superstition" of science should be broken. [19] To this day, although this trend of thought seems to be fading, it has actually been integrated into the "background board" of culture and has had an impact so far. As Leotard described in his book "Postmodern State: Report on Knowledge", "postmodern society" is in a state after the rupture of "meta-narrative" or grand narratives. The world is divided into countless smaller worlds. Each world after it is split has its own narrative, and science is just one of them. "Scientific knowledge is not all knowledge, it was once redundant, and it is always in competition and conflict with another kind of knowledge." [20]

Therefore, from the perspective of postcolonialism, science became the "myth of imperialism": "The expansion of European colonies turned the world into a laboratory of European science, and European science made this expansion possible." [21] In the text of "The Battle of the Two Cities", Mrs. Midarda, a great warlord from the city-state "Noxus", symbolizing imperialism, had great interest in "Hex Technology". Mel, one of the protagonists of this work, is one of the supreme rulers of Pixar City and the daughter of Mrs. Midarda. Her identity setting implies a certain colonist identity, and she is also the strongest guarantee for the promotion of "Hex Technology". But Mrs. Midarda's interest or ambition for "Hex Technology" was entirely based on her ability to serve as a weapon for her to conquer the world and maintain her rule. Interestingly, Mrs. Midarda is a black woman as the highest power in the whole play. Here, not only the races as colonists and colonized people in real history have been reversed, but the common gender rhetoric of colonialist discourse has also been subverted. It can be said that "The Battle of the Two Cities" reversed the imperial myth in many narrative details, realizing the "implosure" of postcolonialism.

4. Incarnate as a hero: the possibility of emotional reality

To this day, electronic games seem to have become an integral part of human daily life, but do electronic games really promise democracy? Is there really no "barrier" to enter the world of electronic games? In developed countries, home game consoles are daily household appliances that are regarded as the same as televisions, refrigerators and other appliances; in China, people prefer computer games - because computers are common tools, game consoles can be listed as "not doing their jobs" luxury goods; and in more underdeveloped areas, people may not know what electronic games are. We may be able to judge this way that compared with European and American countries where console games are more popular, the reason why the computer game "League of Legends" has gained such a huge number of players in China is determined by the economic base. I have talked to my friends in Nepal, and he told me that in their childhood, the video game did not exist—and just like in the story world of League of Legends, the Third World is manifested, but it is not the main part, and game design cannot escape the Western-centric ideology after all. Therefore, the world map inside the game once again confirms the political and economic order of the real world.

So, what is the significance of electronic games to human life? What is certain is that the game builds a virtual world that is very different from reality, but the underlying logic of this virtual world is well known to humans. People want to complete the imaginable but incapable of real world in the virtual world. Just like the classic theories of some game scholars, games divide or create an area different from the real world - the so-called "magic circle" of Heyzinha or the "liminal" theory extended by Turner based on Vannerep's ritual theory, especially the latter emphasizes that games, as a channel to enter "anti-structure", can liberate "human cognition, emotion, will, creativity and other abilities." [22] As a continuation of this theory, some scholars use Bakhtin's carnival theory to analyze games, believing that the functions performed by humans in games are to subvert the normative daily world. However, just like in "The Battle of the Two Cities", what is subverted is only position, not structure, and "anti-structure" still has structure.

Compared with art forms such as literature, film and television, the game has a stronger sense of immersion and interactivity. Games are an excellent example of the concept of "emotional reality" derived from Spinoza and Deleuze's "emotional" theory. In fact, some scholars have analyzed electronic games using Deleuze's emotional theory. For example, in the monograph "Exploring Videogames With Deleuze and Guattari: Towards an affective theory of form" published by Colin Cremin in 2016, it pointed out that the keyword of electronic games should be affect. In Deleuze's theory, emotion is a force that, when combined with different objects, changes its strength and causes this object to transcend what it is defined itself and constantly produces new things. Claymin discussed the realism in electronic games, believing that various symbols in electronic games contain emotional movements and can be conveyed based on the various interactive behaviors of players in the game, bringing players positive emotional movements and thus immersive. He called it the "emotional realism" in electronic games. [23]

In terms of game audience, unlike readers and viewers of literature and film and television works, gamers should emphasize the individual's subjective feelings more. For example, in the domestic Otome mobile game "Light and Night", it was reported that the heroine's character was set based on an employee of the production team, which aroused large-scale dissatisfaction among players, believing that it destroyed the player's sense of substitution, changing from "in love by oneself" to "watching others in love", and the male-oriented galgame actually faces the same situation. As for players in competitive games such as "League of Legends", they can also develop "comradeship" with players who are also teammates in the game world. In fact, using games as a social method is already very common at present.At the same time, as a continuation of sports competition, "e-sports" fans and sports fans also have the same emotional structure, and ideologies such as nationalism can also be shown in the behavior of e-sports fans. For example, during the "League of Legends" world competition, various public opinion wars occurred between fans from various countries. Compared with sports fans, this struggle is nothing more than a transition from the real world to the cyberspace. Moreover, due to the more convenient possibility of "experience", such as in North American servers, which can match different nationalities and ethnic groups at the same time, there are often disputes that rise from internal conflicts in the game to ideological disputes.

May 22, 2022, South Korea, 2022 League of Legends Midseason Invitational Tournament on May 22.

But what we need to pay more attention to is that this demand for games is actually derived from the suppression and lack of the real world. For example, all subversive behaviors of human beings during carnival are to liberate themselves from the norms of the real world. The desires that people cannot achieve in reality and the emotions that cannot be vented are all completed in the virtual world of the game, and are completed with a powerful sense of immersion and control. Just like what Jespa Jur calls "Slaying the Fictional Dragon", that is, the "semi-real" nature of the game he proposed: "Video games are both a set of real rules and a fictional world." [24] When players need to act based on the real rules of winning the game by cutting a "Fictional Dragon", then, at this level, players use fiction to reach reality. That is, the "hyperreality" in Baudrillard's sense: "The truth that does not depend on reality." [25]

But this forms a certain paradox. On the one hand, we use the fictional world built by the game to express our real emotions and desires, but on the other hand, this fictional world is actually built on the reality we want to escape. Spielberg's movie "Ready Player One" (2018) creates a fictional game world in fictional film and television works, and all elements in this world come from the fictional humans that exist in the real world, earlier - but all of this relies on the reality of human beings themselves. Just like the background setting of "The Battle of the Two Cities", the exquisite construction is all corresponding to reality. Therefore, it can be understood why the Chinese and English theme song of "The Battle of the Two Cities" also depicts the heroine Jinx, but it is so different. The English theme song "Enemy" tells the story of how Blowboy became Jinx step by step, becoming so crazy and hostile to the world. Just like Jinx's prototype, it comes from the unique temperament of Harley Quinn, the "super villain" clown girl in the most influential superhero comic "Batman". However, the Chinese theme song "The Lonely Brave" completely expresses another attitude, namely, resistance to fate, a spirit of emphasizing fighting to the end and fighting to the death, and this discourse coincides with the mainstream discourse, and this song spread throughout China for a time. What causes the theme differences between the two songs is the real difference between different cultures.

Now we turn our perspective back to the inside of the "League of Legends" game. When players start a game, they will say to their teammates: "I'm in." Using a verb like "in" indicates the distinction between time and space. But of course the player's physical existence does not exist, and it is impossible to enter the fictional world of the game. Then what is called "entering" is only the player's attention and consciousness. The external incarnation of the so-called "avatar" that has become the carrier of player consciousness is the "hero" in the game. "Hero" is a theme set by Riot for "League of Legends". For example, the most widely circulated line of the Chinese theme song "The Lonely Brave" also takes "Hero" as the core: "Who says that the sludge is not a hero." Of course, the core expressed by "The Lonely Brave" is actually an understanding of the localization of "The Lonely Brave" in China, or it does not match the theme of "The Lonely Brave", but at least from the perspective of the audience, it expresses how players imagine "League of Legends".In fact, the role of "hero" to refer to players' control is certainly not the first in "League of Legends". Although this title is widely known by "League of Legends", before and after it, "hero" has always been the reference to the protagonist in many games. Among the common themes in Japanese games, "The Braves' Demon King", the English translation of "Hero" is also "Hero", that is, "Hero". If you trace this tradition backwards, the protagonists of all cultural myths, legends and epic stories can be called "hero". A hero is a symbol of excellence and possesses extraordinary courage, strength and spirit. In the powerless reality, heroes are rare after all, but in the game world, everyone can "turn into heroes", so in fiction, people achieve spiritual transcendence.

"Genshin Impact"

Nowadays, the "Matrix" series, which was cited by Jenkins as a classic case of "cross-media narrative", has been released to the fourth part. In the ending easter egg, the director left a line: "The movie is dead, the game is dead, the narrative is dead." This is indeed a footnote to our era, but if we regard the game as a "emotional reality", then the "death" the director calls it may not be a "rebirth". As the crystallization of human technology and culture, the game aims to build an artificial "reasonal world" and find a new possibility and meaning. For example, the popular "Genshin Impact", which may be the first game produced by China but has had a great influence around the world. Although this game is deeply influenced by European, American and Japanese games, it at least allows us to see more possibilities. The concept of game itself is also changing from broad to narrow (even limited to "digital games"). In the near future, games may rewrite the basic appearance of human life in new forms such as "metauniverse". In this sense, it is both fictional and real.

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