In Pursuit of Victory: League of Legends and a Project of the Self

Abstract

Video games are often recognized as ephemeral arrangements of signs and symbols, arranged to mimic 'real' relationships of domination and subjection. The fear, then, is that the subjects produced by video games are habituated, in a straightforward way, toward certain dispositions. Yet when we look at a competitive game like League of Legends, we see an active player-subject, engaged in an entrepreneurial project of self-improvement. This investigation is aimed at power beyond manipulation, asking how an emplaced self is made true in-and-through the pursuit of victory. My autoethnographic account looks at how we become the object of our own conditional existence through interpellation and reflexivity. League of Legends stands as an example of a particular type of reflexive subjectification, one in which we draw on prescriptive texts, guides, and techniques of self-improvement in order to shape ourselves in response to a discursive provocation; in response to the current of opposition.