“I’m very new to this,” I typed, “just to warn y’all.” A second later, someone responded: “You’re a smurf, aren’t you?” “What’s a smurf?” I asked. “Yep,” another wrote, “definitely a smurf.” This was a few weeks ago, right before the fifth, maybe sixth game of League of Legends I had ever played. League of Legends is the most popular video game in the world by many metrics. Last year, Riot Games, its developer, said that 27 million people play the game every single day. 67 million play in a given month. 67 million people. That’s more than eight times the population of New York City, the place I live and spend most of my time in the real world. More baffling to me than those figures is the fact that this, of all games, is the one that 67 million people are playing. It’s famously difficult to play well, even harder to master. I’ve played tons of games in my life. But I’ve always had a hard time understanding League . I tried to get into it a few years ago and dropped off after playing two or three games. It just didn’t make any sense. Most games I…