There’s a genre that you might never have heard of. It’s small, with roots in PC gaming, and was born of a free, custom map in Warcraft III called Defense of the Ancients. It goes by many names, but it appears that “Multiplayer Online Battle Arena” is the most accepted, with several developers scrambling to put together the first successful package to force people to pay for what started out as free. If it worked for the tower defense genre, you’d think that surely the MOBA isn’t far behind, especially considering how hot multiplayer gaming is.

Last year, Steam Powered Games released Demigod, which took the idea of a MOBA and scaled it down, vying for an experience that felt like a combination of DotA and Team Fortress 2, focusing on a few balanced characters instead of trying for several dozen. Another MOBA, Heroes of Newerth, has also been released, looking to essentially emulate and monetize the DotA experience by creating a near clone, but taking advantage of the fact that it isn’t restrained by the Warcraft III engine. League of Legends straddles the line between these two games, refusing to be a clone but also being much closer to the source than Demigod. It still has dozens of different heroes to choose from, which helps to keep things varied, but it doesn't go character for character and create clones.

MOBA isn’t as easy to describe as, say, a first-person shooter. Usually, it has a control scheme and camera similar to the one found in real-time strategy games, pulled back to display large chunks of the battlefield. Combat, too, is a lot like an RTS, save for the fact that the player is usually only controlling a single unit that plays like an avatar in a standard MMORPG. Where MOBAs start to branch out is in the gameplay, which is different than standard team-deathmatch of capture the flag. Think of it like this: there’s a war going on and it’s at a stalemate. Two armies are attempting to destroy each other’s bases, consistently meeting in the middle of the battlefield to exchange blows. Once one group is victorious, usually by only a small margin, it will push on only to be wiped out by defensive towers. This will go on forever. The only way for the battle to be won is for it to be influenced by an outside force. You are that outside force, controlling a character that can take down individual enemies effortlessly. The problem (and hook) is, you’re not alone, and there are several other outside forces fighting with and against you, each as powerful as you.