I'd like to preface my first post here by saying that my ideas are all based in speculation, and are completely my opinions based on my experiences. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
The idea, specifically, is that League of Legends is indeed a sport, even if in referring to it as such I have to stick the "e" on it to differentiate it from traditional sports (i.e. it is an "eSport"). I'm not here to debate the soundness of that claim or to talk about how there is in fact a professional league, or that those players train to do things that normal people can't, or that the viewership/sponsorship numbers verify its status as a sport, or whatever.
Actually, I wanted to talk about a specific phenomenon I've noticed in casual League players: their inability to make themselves even remotely available throughout the duration of their games (which can generally last anywhere from 20-60 minutes). Sometime last year, my girlfriend with whom I've recently moved in (actually, I guess almost two years ago isn't that recent), complained about my inability to detach from a game for a second to help her with something, ranging from largely unimportant (another perspective issue) tasks, like reading over something she wrote, to pretty significant favors, like picking her up from or giving her a ride to a meeting she was late for. She pointed out that I can never walk away from games because throughout my childhood I was allowed to invest way too much significance into them, but that as a kid she never had a problem turning off her Gamecube or whatever if her mom said it was time to go. Eventually we talked this over; I made my case that a single game of League was a fairly long time investment wherein every moment would pretty heavily impact the course of the entire experience, and not only for myself, but for nine other real people, who had essentially also agreed to commit up to an hour of their time to this venture. She came to accept that point and I started being more considerate about starting games during time-sensitive periods, and even ended up leaving a few of games when something crucial came up unexpectedly, because obviously (it wasn't that obvious to me before, sadly enough) certain life events require prioritization over others, regardless of a predetermined commitment.
Fast forward to today, where my mom regularly complains about my dad's (and my brother's) apparent League addiction(s), and I can't completely side with either of my parents on who's in the wrong. On the one hand, I completely understand her frustration, because the two manboys with whom she shares a house are sitting on their computers participating in this completely alien (to her, at least) activity, while she struggles to complete chores without their assistance because of their preoccupation with their laptops. On the other hand, (and I am not trying to endorse the idea that League of Legends specifically is more important than helping your mom/wife do housework) the situation starts to grow more complex if you consider the act of playing a game of League as a pickup basketball game, or in some cases, participation in an amateur sports league.
For people who play normal games (and even Solo Queue games, to an extent), League of Legends is essentially a series of pickup games. You log in, and maybe you'll queue up with friends, but in general you play with nine strangers who suddenly all agreed to get together and collectively participate in this activity that each of you individually enjoy (barring trolls, but that's everywhere in everything). You're interacting with other people in a shared context to achieve a common goal. As my dad can attest, you can make friends (way more than I'd be comfortable with, in his case) with your short-term teammates and even your opponents, maybe out of a shared respect for each other's attitude or gameplay, who knows (I sure don't). Playing League of Legends, despite occurring behind a monitor, despite the notoriously toxic community, is actually a deeply interactive shared human experience. More simply, and more importantly (in this case), it is effectively the same as casually playing a sport in your free time, with the added sidebar that you do it inside your own house (in our case).
As a quick aside, as far as I remember my mom complained for years that my dad needed to get out of the house more and spend time with some friends, and for reasons I don't totally understand (and as a result, don't want to ignorantly speak on), it looked like this caused friction in their relationship. My dad definitely did spend most of his time at home, just sitting on his laptop playing even less engaging games that required even less actual human interaction (like Mafia Wars or Farmville). Recently (as in within the past two or three months, but after even more months of my brother's and my asking if he was interested), my dad started playing League of Legends more than once a day, and since then I don't think he's stopped (in fact I'm pretty sure that for at least a month he's been playing more than I do). However, it's given him something with a fairly sizable content base to talk to his kids about, and to keep his mind engaged in during his free time. Maybe more importantly, it's given him something to care about, as petty as it might be, and it's given him people to talk to outside of work and home, about something that he enjoys, and on a pretty regular basis.
Now that he finally has something that he's hugely focused on though, it seems to be taking up too much of his focus. I've seen or heard about my dad or my brother being unable to help my mom do housework or unload groceries too many times to count (although who would even be counting that anyway? Only a little shit) because they were already involved in a game of League. Coming back to my original point, I can understand my mom's frustration with these situations, but I think it's important to think about this alternative. My dad could have joined an amateur basketball league at a park or something, and he would have been literally unavailable, in almost every sense of the word. He wouldn't even be around to reject the favors being momentarily asked. My brother could be one of those kids that spends a lot of time at a park (although a little time at the park probably wouldn't hurt him, speaking frankly) actually playing pickup games, and he wouldn't be around either. The only real difference between these two situations (where my family is active and probably healthy vs the current state of affairs) is that my mom has to physically look at their faces while she struggles with whatever she's doing, and then hear them bluntly deny her requests. If they weren't there, she'd just be stuck doing what she's doing alone, but I get the feeling that she wouldn't be complaining to them about their momentary unavailability. If anything, I feel like she'd probably be more open to the idea of them doing their parts once they were, by all definitions, available.
I don't want to get into arguing about how playing a traditional sport is a more valuable use of time than wasting your life in front of a laptop screen, because that means trudging into the ugly argument of "what is a sport and also League of Legends is not a sport are you joking". I just wanted to offer some context on why League players feel like they can't walk away from their computers in the middle of a game. The truth is that it's not that easy, just like I assume it isn't that easy to walk away from a pickup game mid-game (although I actually imagine that tons of kids have had to walk away from tons of pickup games, so maybe this entire post was a waste of time, both yours and mine). It appears to be easy because our society trivializes computer usage and respects physical athleticism, and from the perspective (again) of someone who doesn't play games in real-time, let alone one that requires a long-ish commitment, that's all it appears to be - frivolous computer usage.
This point seems to come from a fairly privileged perspective, but with another shift of context I think it can be made more universally relevant. The tables could even be reversed in this situation, I think. For example, if my mom was in the middle of an insane gym session or some kind of class or maybe like a dinner with her coworkers, it wouldn't be cool if my dad and brother busted right in like, "UH THIS PLACE IS A MESS CAN YOU HELP ME OUT HERE, JESUS". Maybe they'd call her or text her, and maybe they'd take care of it themselves or maybe she'd help out when she got home. Isn't it possible that the same courtesy should apply to someone playing a game of League?
That being said, my brother can be a real dickhead about not stepping away from a game at any moment for anything. Like dude you can step away from your laptop for thirty seconds if all you're doing is sitting at base waiting for like 15 gold or your hp to refill before going back to lane and your mom is literally standing outside for twenty minutes because she forgot her keys inside. It's one thing to be mid-teamfight while pushing in or defending an inhibitor turret and another to just be split pushing while your team is handling 4v5s just fine, and during a NORMAL game. You know she wouldn't leave you waiting outside for twenty minutes unless she had a really good reason, so come on, don't be a dickhead.
P.S. there are obviously reasons that you should immediately leave a game (the Master Yi whose wife was allegedly giving birth and who allegedly told her to wait as long as she could comes to mind), but...
tl;dr: I don't think the groceries are going to spoil in the trunk of the car if we wait 20 minutes for us to stomp these nooblords, and if we were out shootin' hoops our moms probably be waiting even longer or doing it themselves. And if we were just at home doing nothing at all we'd probably be getting complaints about how we do literally nothing at all. Basically there is no winning and maybe that's life. Actually,
P.P.S. / tl;dr x2: There is no winning and that's just life.
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