League of Mindgames

League of Legends isn't just about the farm, team strategy or picks/bans. League is a game that requires players to be at the top of their game mentally in order to win. Due to the nature of team motivation and mental state, mindgames become a major part of the overall winning strategy of any team. 

So first off I want to bring up Razer's Pro gamer academy. Its this nifty little thing them have done where pros share tips and tricks that help them stay at the top. Now what is far more interesting than any LoL thing they have done is what Athene is posting in the academy.

Athene isn't focusing on any game in particular but on the psychological aspects of gaming at the top tier. He has talked about backwards rationalization, which is the rationalization of impulsive (in most cases) bad decisions. Athene also has been talking about motivation, which is really important when trying to stay on top and keep a good mindset. 

 

So, Tilt.
Tilt is when emotion takes over reason and drives a person to make impulsive decisions. Tilt is seen in poker a lot when someone loses one hand after another they go on tilt and make emotional plays that most of the time result in them losing a lot faster. Tilt is a key thing to know about and try to avoid in games where you need to be logical and calm to make the best play possible.

Do note that in League of Legends tilt can have some serious consequences in both Solo queue and tournament environments. In solo queue tilt is far more prevalent than tournament play because of the focus on the individual rather than on the team. With that known a popular strategy of having the jungler camp a certain lane or duo with top/mid and consistently steal buffs is being used to (a) deny the enemy team and try to snowball (b) put the camped lane on tilt, thus making them throw the game at every opportunity.

This leads into motivation
Motivation is what can win or lose matches even before they start. Most people have played against themselves at one time or another and trust me nothing is harder than trying to play against another team and your mind at the same time. This is where motivation ties into tilt, as putting enemies on tilt and forcing mistakes will grow the confidence and motivation of your team. This will make all players more comfortable within the team dynamic and allow for some synergistic and game changing plays from the team.

At the same time the enemy team will be losing everything you are gaining psychologically speaking  The enemy team will be imploding, playing the blame game and throwing the game whenever possible, potentially even quitting. The reason that the team ahead gains such an upper hand is because they are playing with their mind, they are calm, cool and collected. The enemy team is in such bad shape that they are not only playing against a team that is making more or better plays but their team is also playing against their minds out of rage and emotional response.

 

Lets look at a pro match, at the highest level that had players on tilt like I have never seen in a tournament.

 vs  

CLG.EU vs Azubu Frost in the OGN finals 

This series of matches were just downright amazing to watch. Seriously watch them if you haven't see them yet, some of the play was downright breathtaking. Anyways this series wasn't about trash talking it was about motivation. CLG.EU started off really well by what looked like easily winning game 1 & 2. This is the point where CLG.EU became overzealous and everyone thought that CLG.EU would take game 3 and end the series shutting out Frost without breaking much of a sweat. 

Then Game 3 happened and what I saw was just careless, over aggressive and full of easy mistakes. CLG.EU basically fed a free win to Frost due to their mindset that the 3rd game would be an easy win and that they could do whatever they want and end the game. Frost answered with logical, emotionless and skillful plays that shut down CLG.EU and end the game with a Frost victory. At this point CLG.EU were knocked back down to earth and all the motivation was lost. Frost had the opposite happen, they had taken a key game from CLG.EU and gained a massive amount of momentum and confidence in doing so.

Game 4 was another game of Frost just making really good play and decisions and spiraling the game out of control in their favor. CLG.EU had to be reeling at the point because losing game 3 had really thrown them off but bringing it back in game 4 wasn't a lost cause. The problem was that frost was just on a roll at this point and CLG.EU tried their best but couldn't stop the Frost train. Frost won and gained more confidence and more momentum out of the game 4 win bringing them just one game away from snatching victory from defeat. 

Game 5. Game, set, match and championship point

Game five is final game of the series with so much pressure and so much on the line CLG.EU was feeling de-motivated, unconfident and clearly on tilt from the previous two losses and the thought of losing  was on clearly getting in their head. CLG.EU was not going to play this game like they had the first two games and it clearly showed. Frost was at peak motivation and confidence knowing that if they could win the game and they could win the OGN champions. Frost was in a really good mental state and mindset going into the final game and their play really showed it.

CLG.EU made over aggressive mistakes, bad calls, enaged bad fights and got baited into (at one point) feeding 9 kills strait to Frost. Personally I think frost won the game at level 1 when Woong (Ezreal) sniped red buff with a Q from snoopeh after frost had already stolen snoopeh's blue.

A no-buff, very behind snoopeh couldn't do anything to help his team and the game became more and more in the control of frost to the point that Jax managed to surivive a teamfight with low health and juke 4 more respawned members of CLG.EU thus giving his team a total of 9 kills in ~2 minutes. The tunnel vision of CLG.EU to kill Jax was tilt at its finest, as an emotional decision to dive a hard to kill duelist one or two at a time vs the entire Frost team was not logical whatesoever. This tilt play resulted in Frost pushing and winning the game.