League of Legends can teach us a valuable lesson about cybersecurity

I stumbled across this article the other day, and was surprised to find a valuable lesson in it! For the uninitiated, League of Legends is an online "battle arena" style game that relies heavily on working as a team, and usually a loss can be attributed to a weaker link in the team. As usual, the team is only as good as its weakest link.

The community around the game is commonly described to be pretty toxic, where veteran players take out their frustrations on their less-experienced teammates. I really thought the moral of the article would be something along the lines of "don't give in to the nerd rage," but it was a bit more insightful than that. Instead, the lesson was this:

No matter what someone doesn’t know, what mistakes they’ve made, or what they’ve forgotten or overlooked, they’re still worthy of being seen as intelligent and capable in their own right.

It's pretty easy to use the screen to separate yourself from your users, and it tends to dehumanize the interactions we have. What's important to remember is that no one was born with knowledge, and that it's IT's job to solve the security awareness problem. How we do so depends on how we can empathize with our users.

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Infosec_Sam

Skyliinez92 said:

There's more salt in League of Legends than a British chippy on a Saturday night.

Isn't that the truth! I honestly feel like I've seen a considerable quality of life improvement since giving it up.

Infosec_Sam

Skyliinez92 said:

I wish I could say the same. Didn't stay on LoL or WoW for too long, but Runescape, that's a whole other level... 'I can stop playing whenever I want'... (15 years later).

I relapse back into Old School Runescape at least twice per year! I spend a month or two grinding the hell out of it and then put it down, a little ashamed of myself. We never quit - just take long breaks!

JDMurray

Skyliinez92 said:

There's more salt in League of Legends than a British chippy on a Saturday night.

The same is true of Counter-Strike. A team game with a lot of *$^%#! language. I much preferred Team Fortress Classic matches to any CS server banter.

TechGromit

I'm not familiar with League of Legends, but I've experienced that same thing when i used to play World Of Warcraft, your member of a team of five (or 10 for raids) and say your a healer and your can't keep up the healing on a warrior or "tanks" attacking pace, your quickly kicked from the party and replaced.

The game used to involve a lot of planning when attacking group of monsters in a dungeon, mage you sheep monster with the X, warlock cast your sleep spell on the monster marked with the Diamond, Hunter pull the boss out of the room far as you can before feigning death while we deal with the remaining monsters, the warrior attack, concentrate you fire on monster marked with the box, fight, win, rest for the next fight. It's not like this anymore, it's pull fast as I can, no resting or planning between fights, if I pull too many monsters and I die, its your fault not healing me quick enough, kick, get auto replaced. It's get to max level quick as you can, few do the enjoy the leveling process, it's like hurry up and get this life crap finished so we can retire and not work anymore.

shochan

I was more like Gordon Freeman geek

Infosec_Sam

TechGromit said:

I'm not familiar with League of Legends, but I've experienced that same thing when i used to play World Of Warcraft, your member of a team of five (or 10 for raids) and say your a healer and your can't keep up the healing on a warrior or "tanks" attacking pace, your quickly kicked from the party and replaced.
The game used to involve a lot of planning when attacking group of monsters in a dungeon, mage you sheep monster with the X, warlock cast your sleep spell on the monster marked with the Diamond, Hunter pull the boss out of the room far as you can before feigning death while we deal with the remaining monsters, the warrior attack, concentrate you fire on monster marked with the box, fight, win, rest for the next fight. It's not like this anymore, it's pull fast as I can, no resting or planning between fights, if I pull too many monsters and I die, its your fault not healing me quick enough, kick, get auto replaced. It's get to max level quick as you can, few do the enjoy the leveling process, it's like hurry up and get this life crap finished so we can retire and not work anymore.

I hear ya there - I could talk for hours on the "work to live" vs "live to work" ideas and the theory that life cannot be enjoyed until retirement. Video games sure do teach us quite a lot about many different things!

Meggo

LoL is a dark place.

I loved WoW circa 2008, expansions since ICC have not been great imo. I haven't seriously played since probably 2011?

https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/character/us/dragonblight/meggo

DZA_

Before there was League of Legends, there was Quake 2/3 Rocket Arena and Team Death Match.

JDMurray

Deathmatch started with DooM and Doom II back in the early 1990's. I use to play with my stepson using two laptops and a serial crossover cable. From DooM Deathmatch went to Quake, Quake 2, Quake 3 Arena, Half-life, Half-life 2, Team Fortress Classic, and Team Fortress 2. That's basically been the last 25+ years of my FPS gaming life.

DZA_

JDMurray said:

Deathmatch started with DooM and Doom II back in the early 1990's. I use to play with my stepson using two laptops and a serial crossover cable. From DooM Deathmatch went to Quake, Quake 2, Quake 3 Arena, Half-life, Half-life 2, Team Fortress Classic, and Team Fortress 2. That's basically been the last 25+ years of my FPS gaming life.

You sir have summed up my childhood. Those were the good old days.

10Linefigure

Halo on Xbox live before it was monitored..... lol.. the abuse was unreal. Probably some of the most savage roasts known to man happened over those mic's.

LoL used to be bad, but I played last year for about 3 weeks when I was interviewing with Riot before they offered me a job. The community had actually cleaned up a lot and there were new tools to keep raging players in check. Actually wish I had more time to go back and play now.

Infosec_Sam

10Linefigure said:

Halo on Xbox live before it was monitored..... lol.. the abuse was unreal. Probably some of the most savage roasts known to man happened over those mic's.

Ahh, yes. Back around 2007-2010 there was a window before censorship really took place in online games, and I remember taking a verbal beating in games like Halo 3 and Call of Duty. I'm convinced that living through this has had a significant positive impact on the thickness of my skin.

bubble2005

JDMurray said:

Deathmatch started with DooM and Doom II back in the early 1990's. I use to play with my stepson using two laptops and a serial crossover cable. From DooM Deathmatch went to Quake, Quake 2, Quake 3 Arena, Half-life, Half-life 2, Team Fortress Classic, and Team Fortress 2. That's basically been the last 25+ years of my FPS gaming life.

You missed a few....Doom and Quake for sure. But in parallel were Unreal Tournament and later 90's Golden Eye.

jeremy_dfir

DZA_ said:

JDMurray said:

Deathmatch started with DooM and Doom II back in the early 1990's. I use to play with my stepson using two laptops and a serial crossover cable. From DooM Deathmatch went to Quake, Quake 2, Quake 3 Arena, Half-life, Half-life 2, Team Fortress Classic, and Team Fortress 2. That's basically been the last 25+ years of my FPS gaming life.

You sir have summed up my childhood. Those were the good old days.

I won't mention Duke Nukem 3D and Wolfenstein, otherwise i will be the grandpa of this thread.