The Effects of Playing Mobile Legends to the Social Status of

Senior High School Students in Olo National High School

Chapter 1

The problem and its background

The Internet has changed our lives. People who spend more hours on the internet the longer they have

been using it. Wich means the longer they are engaging on internet the more factors and effects that

can cause because of using too much of internet or the more consequences that they have to deal with

it. Internet can serves as information in our daily life. The fact that we live in on informative way of

lifestyle where everything is updated, internet became one of the necessities in our daily life. Internet

can be a person's tool to make himself controling his time on spending time on their mobile phones.

Mobiles phones are very good at distracting people. Using a mobile phone can possibly engage you to

play online gaming. An online game is a video game that is either partially or primarily played through

the Internet or any other computer network available. (Adams, E. 2006) It was created to give

entertainment to people. Playing video games has a tons of factors to be played, it can be a social

interation, a stress reliever, relaxation, pastimes or enjoyment.

Online gaming has become a significant part of people’s lives, and one of the most popular platforms for

this is mobile. Filipinos, regardless of social status, would get involved in mobile games in one way or

another. One of the biggest titles right now is Mobile Legends: Bang Bang which is inspired by the

Warcraft 3 custom map called Defense of the Ancients and has become a major Esports title. (Chua, V. ,

2016)
One of the example of online games is a Mobile Legends: Bang Bang which is the subject of this study.

Mobile Legends Game is made by China Bamboo Curtain aka China or China. Mobile Legends game

created by Chinese developer Moonton or Shanghai Moonton Technology Co., Ltd. Moonton is

headquartered in Shanghai, China.(Moonton, Mobile Legend, 2016). Mobile Legend one type of MOBA

(Massive Online Battle Arena) is a type of online game that combines two types of games namely RTS

(Real Time Strategy) and RPG (Role Playing Game) where players run one character from two teams

opposite to the goal to destroy the opponent's headquarters. Each character which is played has a role

with strength and weakness each other so prosecuted for cooperate with team to win the game (Funk,

2013). It is the most highly recommend and popular online gaming app in Asia. Mobile Legends is also

became popular not only in urban community but also in rural places especially in the town of

Mangatarem, Province of Pangasinan.

Mobile Legends has a different kind of game mode. Gamemode MLBB have couple of gamemodes

available for players. These main gamemodes includes classic, rank, brawl, Vs A.I, custom and survival.

(2018, Shadow) Explaning the different kind of gamemodes of mobile legends can help you to undertand

what we have seen to conduct a research about this study.

Classic: Classic is one of the main gamemode. In this gamemode it’s 2 team fighting against each other

and each team consist of 5 people, players will fight with the choices of going to three different lane

(Top, Middle and Bottom). Each lane consist of 3 towers which connects to the base and 3 minions

would spawn in each lane. Destroy all of the three towers and your minions would be upgraded. In

classic, you will encounter 2 special enemies called The Turtle and Lord. Once you beat The Turtle, your

allies would gain extra exp and coins and once you beat the lord, you will get the lord as your ally. There

are also various type of monster in the jungle area.

Rank: Rank is similar to classic, but once you win you will get a star. Collect some stars to level up to the

next rank. The system in rank would change depending on your rank, if your rank is epic, the system

would change to draft pick instead of the normal way to choose your heroes.

Brawl: Brawl is similar to classic, but it only consist of 1 lane. In this gamemode there are no Turtle or

Lord available, but instead 4 monsters that would heal you up and let you gain some exp.

Vs A.I: This gamemode is basically classic but instead of other players, you and your team consisiting of

other players would be fighting against some bots.

Custom: Custom consist of classic, brawl and draft pick, in which you can control how many players or

bots available in 1 team.

Survival: Survival is a gamemode similar to battle royale and there are around 99 players in total. You

will be in a team consisting of 3 players, in which you need to balance the team with a physical damage

hero, magical damage hero and a tank hero. You’ll inistantly be at your maximum level of your hero, but

you won’t have any items with you. Monsters would be everywhere and once you kill them, they would

drop various items such as physical item, magical item, movement item, defenses item and a healing

item. There are also chest that would you give various battle spell that are useful to eliminate the other

team.

Heroes. There are various unique heroes available for players to buy. Most hero can be bought by battle

points or diamonds, Some heroes are available after you purchase any in-game currencies and some

heroes can be bought by using hero fragments or lucky gem fragment. Heroes have their own class with

a maximum of 2. These class have their own way of fighting and their own way role to play with their

teams.
Tank: Tank are played mostly for team buff and pushing their teams toward victory. Tanks are high in

armor, magic resistant and health (depending on their build)

Fighter: Fighters are not only to only fight, but it’s well known for charging, distracting or pushing

enemies back to their base. Fighter are good in physical damage with their melee attack or short range

attack.

Assassin: Assassin are similar to fighter, but they are well known to have a high damage (either magical

or physical) and they are are high in speed. They are known to be dangerous due to them easily flanking

someone and farming or stealing the enemy’s farm.

Marksman: Marksman are well known to have a high damage, high critical, high attack speed and long

distance. They are known to be deadly in a long range fight, but they are weak in short range due to

most marksman having the disadvantage of escaping.

Mage: Mage are high in magical damage. They are deadly due to them having magical damage since

some heroes mostly use armor instead of magic resistant, but even if you use magic resistant then mage

would still have the advantage of using magical penetration.

Support: Support are well known to be the most annoying class. Every support are different due to them

having different disadvantage. Some support are more focused in battle by damage, some are more

focused on poking enemy and escaping, some are more focused with healing, some are more focused

with giving defenses and some are more focused in crowd controlling.

Most team are needed to have at least 1 tank, 1 fighter or assassin and 1 mage. The other 2 slot could

be available for marksman or support, but make sure that having too many heroes with the same class

in your team could be a disadvantage. (2018, Shadow)

Gamemodes is an eye catchy, a mobile legend player can actually entertained bacuase of the

gamemodes and amazing heroes. Its has also a chatroom feature where they can communicate with

other players around the world. No wonder many students are so attached in this app. It is evident that

mobile legend is full of entertainment with such amazing characters or heroes. Battles are exciting and

challenging game.

According to Chua (2019) People are inherently selfish

In Mobile Legends (ML) or any competitive games in general, players tend to do things their way and not

care about their teammates or even the outcome of a match. You will come to know that this is also

what’s happening on the Internet especially on social media. One good example is when you’re in the

draft phase, you already picked your hero (Marksman for this scenario), but moments later, your

teammate chose another Marksman hero regardless if your team already has one just because they

don’t want to adjust. Another situation is where you’re the jungler and yet, your teammates steal the

Spinner/Reaper buff at an early phase. (Chua V. , 2019)

Mobile legends is one of the best pastimes that they gained specially for the teenagers who are involve

in playing mobile legends. Mobile legends are very popular specially in the Senior High School students

in Olo National High School. Students who are playing mobile legends are just having fun. They just

actually play because they just want to feel some relief. Having fun is okay but the inappropriate usage

of playing mobile legends can leads in some problems such as being distracted in class because your

mind all the time is on mobile legends and that can affect your image or the impression of your teacher

towards yours, your social behaviour will be judge. But not only on being distracted bacause playing
mobile legends has a tons of effects in every aspects. Your social status with your teachers, with your

friends, your families, or anybody can possibly affect because of too much spending time on playing and

this is one of the effects that we are seeking for the answer.

Social status definition means a measurement of a social value. (Sauder, Lynn & Podolny, 2012) It is how

we deal with other people. In our own perception, social status is how we interact with other people. In

this study, we would like to know a better understanding on how a mobile legend player socialized, how

they interact with other people. Some writers have also referred to a socially valued role or category a

person occupies as a "status" (e.g., gender, race, having a criminal conviction, etc.). (Anderson, Hildreth

& Howard, 2015) Studying the effects of playing mobile legends to the social status of students is

somewhat similar to study their social behaviour. Social behaviour is a process of communicating. The

social behaviour of Mobile Legend player is refers to how they act, think, and communicate with other

people.

Life is boring without socializing and jamming especially with your friends, parents, family, teachers and

even your love ones. Back then we usually used to play outsides but as we can see today, most of us are

prefer to spend our time on our mobile phones and playing alone instead. We are surrounded by people

that who prefer to spend time alone with their mobile phones instead of starting conversation with a

random stranger personally or having a quality time to their friends and families. Most of the yougsters

today are getting more and more addicted to Mobile Legend. Instead of spending a quality time with

your families, friends and anybody's they stucked in playing alone with mobile phones.

In the "New Data" (2019) stated that someone who only plays the game is called player, one of

developer online games www.steam.com said if there are 12.675.696 players who download that online

game and the players are dominated by teenagers and early adults aged 15-25 years. In online games

especially is Mobile legend the player can interact with the other player to communicate and give ideas.
There are features to support their communication which are called chat room. In chat room, the player

can chat with team or enemy, Therefore, they are usually a lot of emerging special languages that are

used in mobile legend game, called as register. Which means in this quotation a player can interact

through virtuality and we are in terested to know how mobile legends player socialize in reality.

We observed how Senior High School students are effeciently and good in playing and got addicted in

mobile legends. And that's one part of the reason why we would like to conduct this study. Curiousity,

interest and concerns about the cause of playing mobile legend that may affect to the social status of

students lead us the researchers to conduct this study. The importance of this study is for better

understanding and to gain new knowledge about those mobile legends player who are unconcious to

the effects of playing mobile legends to their social status.

Every effects of playing ML can affect the socializations of the players. We want to find out if ML player

makes their relationship with Family nor Friends and other people steadfast or make it more

complicated. And we also want to know if being ML player could make you more active in socializing

with other people. Is their social status changed in a positive or in negative way.

Why study the social status of mobile legend player. The researchers felt the need to determine the

effects of playing mobile legends to the social status of Senior High School students in Olo National High

School. The purpose of this study is to find out the possible effects of playing mobile to the social status

of Senior High School students.