How League of Legends communicates action through audio clues

“At a broad level, players can readily infer the basic functionality of an action from its sound category. As players gain more experience with the game, each sound effect within a given category is differentiated enough for players to specifically identify which skill or item has been used at any given moment.”

-University of Minnesota Musicology Ph.D Candidate Ryan Thompson notes how thematic sounds can express information in League of Legends.

Clever use of sound can be just as useful to a video game as strong art design, and League of Legends is a shining example of that. In an excerpt from his dissertation, Ryan Thompson notes how Riot uses distinct, thematic sounds to quickly communicate information to players in League of Legends.

The full article over at The Rift Herald contains examples of different audio cues League of Legends uses to quickly express information to players, and is well worth a read for developers curious about how to do the same. 

Associating different spells and abilities to certain sounds helps League of Legends players keep track of what’s going on mid-game and also helps to teach them about the abilities and actions of characters played by teammates or the opposing team.

Thompson says that audio cues can sometimes even be more informative to the effects of a specific character ability than the visual effects shown on screen. 

“Visually, the color green is nearly always included as part of the healing domain (thanks again, role-playing games), but there are exceptions. Nami’s Ebb and Flow ability is a blue water effect, for instance. Every healing skill does make use of wind chimes, however, lending the aural gameplay feedback more importance than the visual.”