Tanner Nypen ’15
The Roundup

Saturday morning Edin Bekric ’15 powers up his computer, selects his favorite music playlist and clicks on the “League of Legends” icon on his desktop.

“It’s relaxing, and it’s a good time waster,” Bekric said. 

He plays “League of Legends” on his home computer with friends on weekends. Bekric first started playing this game through his friend Austin Berry ’15.

“This is a game that Edin would like, so I started that and got him into it,” Berry said.

Bekric he will usually play with two to three friends.

He most often can be found playing on his home desktop with his wireless headset for talking to friends over Skype or using his Lenovo school laptop.

“League of Legends” is a MOBA, multiplayer online battle arena, game. Teams of five versus five fight on the ‘field of justice.’ The field of justice is the map that Riot Games, the maker of “League of Legends,” put into the game.

The goal of the game is to reach the other team’s base and destroy their nexus. However each team has several turrets that protect the nexus.

Each player selects one champion to play as on this map, and then picks one of the three lanes on the map.

“The champion that I play most would probably have to be Lee Sin,” Bekric said “He’s such a versatile champion, he has range, he has a slow, and he’s just an all-around good champion.”

Players build the items for their champions depending on how they play.  One example is AP, or ability power. Some items increase this stat for that champion allowing for the champion’s abilities to become stronger and do more damage.

“My favorite aspect of the game is…I would have to say the option to pick any champion and go off into the field of justice and play against anybody across the world,” Bekric said.  “It kind of connects you with other players and it’s kind of its own community.”

All the players have picked their characters and the game begins to load.

In the action

Bekric watches his screen, deciding his plan as he sees the other team’s champions for the first time.

The game loads, and he buys his starting items and begins clicking furiously with his mouse and his character moves to the top lane.

This 40-minute game has begun and Bekric is ready to lead his team to a victory.

As the game goes on Bekric begins stockpiling gold by killing his opponents.

Soon his team will cause enough damage to their enemies to force them back to a final defense of the nexus.

Bekric and his team kill all the enemy champions, gaining a window to destroy the nexus.

Bekric’s team has not wasted this window and they destroy the nexus and win the game.

“I would call myself mediocre (as a player), because there is still a lot to learn,” Bekric said.