What does MOBA mean?

A MOBA is what Dota is, it stands for Multiplayer Online Battle Arena and it includes a variety of other games which similar features. To MOBA fans, MOBA means far more than just an online battle arena, it also encompasses whats involved in these games. When MOBA is said everyone who knows the game will immediately associate it with the one they are most familiar with and that will become their explanation of MOBA to others. While they are share similar qualities fans still argue which is the true pinnacle of the MOBA genre and as such the community is very much split, as Kuttainen said during the lecture "Genre both enables and restricts meaning" and that is very true as the name MOBA although sounding like it would allude to an entirety of different games truly restricts it to these lane, core hunting games.

McNeill in the article "There Is No "I" in Network: Social Networking Sites and Posthuman Auto/Biography" makes reference to a cyborg of social networks and ourselves that are created when entertaining the online world. This is very apparent in Dota as when you choose your character you become this character, you lose all sense of yourself and work with your team to fight and do what this character would do in the situation. Some even role play and become more in tune with their role and purpose, some remove their personalty completely and just become robotic tools, devoid of humanity, so that they may focus on gaining strength and strategy. Some do flex in between either but there is definitely a cyborg personality, a seamless mix of machine and human thought processing. This makes for a very interesting experience especially when you yourself give into the machine and eventually give and in become part cyborg.

Bibliography

LoL vs DOTA 2 vs SMITE: Comparing 3 MOBAs. (2014, November 10). Retrieved September 4, 2015, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_WN6IYDT3M

Mcneill, L. (2012) There is no “I” in network: Social networking sites and post-humanism auto/biography: Winter, 35(1), 65-82. doi: 10.1353/bio.2012.0009

MOBA Terminology - Smite Wiki Guide - IGN. (2013, March 4). Retrieved September 4, 2015, from http://au.ign.com/wikis/smite/MOBA_Terminology

Van Luyn, A. (2015) BA1002: Narrative: A series of linked events, week 6 notes [Powerpoint slides]. Retrieved from www.learnjcu.jcu.edu.au