The Tribunal

The game that I'm hooked on now is League of Legends. With a community that outsizes World of Warcraft and has more players to boot, it's clear that LoL is a very popular game, and it keeps getting more popular every day.

One thing I can admire about the staff at Riot Games is their seemingly vast kindness they show to their players through effective communication. They aren't perfect by any means, but when they screw up, they come right out and admit it. When they think we, the players, are unsatisfied, they offer an explanation and maybe even compensation. They even start and play games with us on a regular basis! Not all game developers can say they play games with their player base every day and have their players know about it.

What I love the most about Riot though is how they trust their community to do the right thing. This is proven in the Tribunal, a system made for fully-leveled players (read: people who have played enough to understand the team-based gameplay) to judge their own peers on their behavior.

You read that correctly. People read about, judge, and decide the fate of other people based on their behavior. I have NEVER seen anything like it before, and I think it's amazing.

It's honestly a little more simple and a little more shallow than it looks. Basically, if you get reported enough by other players in the games you play, you're more likely to show up in the Tribunal. Players then read the in-game chat logs and other general information about the champions you played during the matches where you were reported. A majority vote is cast among everyone that reads over your case and decides whether you receive punishment or forgiveness. I'm honestly not sure what the punishment is, but I'm assuming it's a temporary ban, with multiple Tribunal trips resulting in more severe punishments.

How cool is that? Players get to decide how they want to shape their own community, rather than leaving it up to moderators and administrators. The majority of the cases you'll find in the tribunal are punishable too, at least for what I've found, so I'd think it's safe to say that the system works, but unfortunately participating is entirely optional. Still, those that play League that aren't taking advantage of this are probably insane, because you get paid small amounts of in-game currency for correctly voting, and they stack up week after week considering you can judge 15 cases every day.

To be fair, the Tribunal isn't perfect. With the knowledge of it existing, people can unjustly threaten others with reports in games in order to follow their rules. There's also the probability that the selected population of players that judge a case could consist of the same players that deserve judgement themselves, such as those that consider calling out and harassing poor players part of the game. There are also those who may not read entire cases and could unjustly punish people, and there's also the possibility of the one single person who was in the right being reported by a bunch of people who were in the wrong. These are considerable issues with the system, and while they can and probably do exist out there, Riot staff have data readily available for any account that is banned by the system, and while I believe that they do keep track of each case themselves to weed out the possible incorrect judgements, for those that are unjustly banned could send a ticket to the Support department and plead their case. This is especially true considering that you are now emailed a "report card" with evidence as to why you were banned. I'm fairly certain that there's no way that this sort of notification system could pass without having some kind of overlooking from Riot staff.

Overall, I love this game, and I love the developers that run it. Their near-constant attention to the game they make and the community surrounding it shows that they really care about it and the direction it drives gaming in. With a little more than 2 years under it's belt and having become so popular, League of Legends is one of the games that drives video games (and eSports) today, and I'm eager to see where it takes us into the future.