League of Legends is one of the Internet’s favorite video games, and Machinima is paying tribute with a week’s worth of short videos featuring the game’s characters in action. The gaming network’s Machinima Realm channel is hosting #LoLWeek, a five-day series leading up to the debut of a new League of Legends-themed show on Machinima’s TwitchTV channel.
League of Legends, for the uninitiated, is an online multiplayer game in which two teams attempt to destroy each others’ main “Nexus”. Each team fights toward this goal by employing a number of different “champions”, each with their own unique abilities. The five #LoLWeek shorts match up two champions in animated combat, with plenty of fast-paced action and magical abilities. The first video pits champions Jax and Veigar against one another. It is a testament to League of Legends‘ popularity that this video scored nearly 500,000 views in just one day.
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#LoLWeek, however, is about much more than YouTube hits. Once the five shorts have been released, Machinima’s TwitchTV channel will debut Chasing the Cup, a web series profiling two teams from the League of Legends Championship Series. League of Legends is the most popular game on Twitch, and by buying into that massive audience, Machinima has a chance to build a huge presence off of YouTube, which is a current priority for most of the online video industry’s top multi-channel networks.
#LoLWeek therefore plays to a large audience both on and off YouTube, while giving new fans a bombastic introduction to the game. If this is your first exposure to League of Legends, tread carefully–there’s hardly a more addictive video game out there.
