Sean Day

Professor Bailie

English 2089

1 April 2019

Assignment Three

I participate in a gaming discourse community for a MOBA (multiplayer online battle

arena) video game called Smite. Before I dive into the actual details about the Smite discourse

community, I’m going to have to explain some things about the game because otherwise it will

be difficult for an outsider to understand what the hell I’m talking about. Oh yeah, that kind of

language is acceptable - nay, expected when interacting with fellow gamers online. Anyone

who remembers the good ole Xbox 360 days can attest to that.

Anyways, as you can see right here,

I’ve put together a labeled map of the premier

game mode in Smite, Conquest; a fairly complicated 5v5 game mode with several objectives.

Each piece of jargon I use throughout explaining the game should be labeled on the map for

reference. Before the game begins, players each draft 1 of over 100 playable characters, or

Gods, in Smite (the game’s theme is mythology, so characters and their abilities are

interpretations of Greek, Roman, Norse, Chinese, Japanese, Hindu, Egyptian, Mayan and a

couple other pantheons of gods; for example, Thor, Zeus, Medusa, and Hercules are all playable

characters, to name some that most people would recognize) to build a team composition that

works well together. This is important, because each god/goddess has their own unique kit of

abilities that consist of 3 base abilities and an ultimate ability. You want to draft gods that work

well together in combat and/or counter the enemy team’s picks as it will increase your chances

of winning. For example, Awilix is a goddess with an ultimate ability that pulls enemies to her

when they are either leaping or knocked up. This means if the enemy team drafts gods with

leaps in their kit, then Awilix would be considered a good counter-pick into that matchup.

Likewise, she would also be a good pick if paired with a Vulcan; a god with a knock up in his kit,

because he could knock up enemies in game which would be good set up for the Awilix.

Each player fulfils a specific role in the game and each role is usually fulfilled by a

specific god type; there is a mid laner which is usually a mage, a jungler which is usually an

assassin, a solo laner which is usually a warrior, a carry which is usually a hunter, and a support

which is usually a guardian. The mid laner occupies the mid lane, the carry and guardian occupy

the duo lane, the solo laner occupies the solo lane, and the jungler roams between lanes

through the jungle as it’s called attempting to invade the enemy team to get kills, as well as

steal enemy buffs and camps.

Each game, players all start at level one. You compete against the other team to kill

minion waves and camps placed all over the map in order to gain experience and level up. Each

level you gain, you acquire a point you can use to unlock or upgrade one of your abilities which

is very important as upgraded abilities allow you to do more damage or have lower cooldowns

on that particular ability or a number of other positive things. Also, throughout the game

players passively gain gold, while also gaining gold from killing minions and camps, and also by

killing enemy players. Gold is used to purchase items that can do a multitude of things such as

increase your damage or defense, lower your cooldowns on your abilities, give movement

speed, and other useful things. This is a major part of the balancing in the game because if an

item is too powerful, then everybody in the game will build it and that is not fun for anyone.

Game times average from 20-30 minutes but can range anywhere from 10 minutes at a

minimum or up to even 100 minutes long (the longest game I’ve participated in was 102

minutes long). The point being, there is a lot of things that go on in this time but the overall

objective of the game is to get ahead of the other team in gold and experience so you can have

a team-fighting advantage and destroy their towers, phoenixes and ultimately the titan. This

can be made easier by your team killing the gold fury (take a guess as to what the reward is for

killing that) and also killing the fire giant. The fire giant is a large beast that takes pretty much

the whole team to kill but when it is defeated your whole team gains a damage buff,

health/mana regeneration, and also gold and experience. This is essential because when sieging

enemy towers and phoenixes, these things really come in handy with the longevity of the fight

and being so far away from your own base which you can enter to fully regen your health and

mana.

Now onto the important stuff. The reason I joined the Smite community is because I

rank in the top 100 players on Xbox, so people offered to create a team with me and I accepted.

Once this happened I made a Smite Twitter and was surprised to see that almost everyone on

my level of play has one, with the purpose of networking with other players as well as offer

opinions about recent balancing issues in the game. Being a part of this community has been

really impactful to me because I am very passionate about video games and this makes me feel

like an important and contributing member of the gaming community as well as being

respected.

An example of community discourse comes from my very own Twitter profile. When I

tweeted this

I was referencing a recent change that Hi-Rez had made to the fire giant, making the

objective much more difficult to defeat and much more of a risk to commit to. Several people

responded to my tweet either agreeing or disagreeing; in other words we were engaging in

community discourse.