Interview With Riot Games On League Of Legends
Riot Games has a pretty impressive staff roll, and they're looking to really take the industry by storm with their game, League of Legends.
Gaming Union was able to catch up with Shawn Carnes, Lead Creative Director, and Steve Mescon, Director of Community, at GamesCom 2009 to get their thoughts on League of Legends.
Gaming Union: What do you think defines the game, what sets it apart from other games of the genre?
Shawn Carnes: That's a really good question.
Steve Mescon: The thing I have to say about that for the most part is it's a relatively new genre, there's no existing popular genre that this game fits into. It doesn't really fit into RTS games, its not an MMO, its not really an RPG, its not a first person shooter obviously, so ultimately the fact that it is its own game and it is its own genre sets it apart itself. There are a few up and coming games in the genre that we could get into specifics if you have more specific questions.
SC: Compared to some of the other games coming out in this genre, and like Steve said we really are a new genre, the big comparison I guess in my mind is how is this game stack up to Dota Allstars and I think the big thing there is the first thing we are working on is ease of use or ease of access rather. Our game is going to be infinitely easier for new players and people who don't have the same skill as pro players to actually jump in our game and start playing. We are specifically developing content such as a tutorial that will allow players to get that head start, and we're not. I'm not; compared to lot of the other players out there I'm not a pro player. I want a game I can play with my friends.
SM: He's not even very good (laughs)
SC: I'm getting better... yeah you're right I'm not good. (SM - Laughs) It's pointless to take a new person and throw them into the deep end of the pool and have them like 'oh my god I'm getting beat all the time, I'm not having a good time'. That's not what we are interested in doing, so that's something that's really going to stand out, even compared to Dota Allstars and even compared to some of the other games out there that are coming out. I think our visual style really stands out too. One of the problems that a lot of these games have, are there is a whole bunch of stuff going on, on the screen at one time and so its difficult to understand what's going on. Our visual style and our UI work and our game work. They really help the player understand what's going on on the screen at once.
GU: Yeah in some games, people just spend more time looking at the UI than they will actually spend looking at the game.
SC: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
SM: We're actually trying to get as far away from that as possible, so we're working on revamping our UI right now, it's going to be different from what you saw in the video. We want the UI to be something you use occasionally at a glance, and for the most part people should be using hot keys and other on screen indicator and spend most of their time playing the game rather than looking at the UI.
SC: Yeah we're a team that's really dedicated to that iteration.
SM: Besides that, the game is actually free and that's another pretty powerful differentiator. Our focus is on having as a many people play it as possible. We want to raise the awareness of the genre, and get it into the hands of a lot of people and so it was really a decision that we made that kind of supports that. So ultimately you'll be able to play the game and unlock all the content without ever having to pay anything, and so payment is entirely optional, and we expect many of our players will never play anything.
SC: But some of our players…
GU: Will remain more dedicated
SC: Absolutely, absolutely
SM: Sure
SC: We'll have ultimate champion skins and you can unlock things faster by spending money. If you only have a little time to play, you'll be able to purchase power ups that will allow you to get exp a little bit faster than normal and therefore if you can only play two or three times a week, we're not going to burden you with a monthly subscription. You basically put into it what you want to put into it.
GU: Obviously you're going to try and draw off the Dota community when this game comes out. You just said you made it easier for new players, were you worried about alienating the older, more hardcore, community by doing that?
SC: I don't think so at all.
SM: So it's a line you have to walk. Ultimately, you make decisions and some decisions you know are going to alienate the existing Dota community, and some decisions are going to make it extremely easy for new players to get into. I think we found a really good balance between the two and I think we're in a really good position. Obviously there will be some people who aren't interested in it and we don't expect all the Dota players to jump over, but you know because the game is free there's no harm in trying and if they don't like it, they don't like it.
SC: And it's not like we're not going to support those hardcore players.
SM: We do a lot for the hardcore players, as an example we recently flew seven professional level competitive sponsored Dota players to the Riot office and we did a kind of round table discussion with them and talked about what they'd like to see in the game. We had some gameplay sessions, we had a bunch of discussions it was literally an entire day 12 hours of workshops and we had them help us design some stuff and did some mechanic decisions that we made and it was really helpful. So we are doing a lot to cater for that audience.
GU: It's coming out for the PC do you ever see any kind console release in the future?
SM: Who knows.
SC: We're not going to say no, but right now we're just focused on the PC.
GU: There's going be some more characters after launch, so effectively you're saying there's going be an unlimited amount of characters?
SM: We'll continue to add characters regularly there will be a lot of characters. As time goes on we'll add more and more.
SC: Our plan is to have some degree of cycling that goes on at some point. We're still in discussions phase as far as development of seasons and what not go.
SM: For competitive play, we'll lock a certain number of characters, ultimately it is a really competitive game and we're doing a lot to support that competitive community and just for the sake of balance we'll lock characters in for competitive play seasons.
SC: As far as the general game goes we'll always be adding more and more champions; more and more content like that.
GU: How long do you see the project lasting?
SM: For as long as we can proceed. We haven't got an end. So as long as we can continue to develop it we're going to have a full staff working on it.
SC: And on top of just introducing champions, it's very easy. Like Steve pointed out earlier, we're going to be introducing new game types too. It's just a matter of the more time we have putting into it.
SM: Maps, objectives.
SC: Yeah exactly.
SM: We're going to be adding a lot more to our multiplayer platform we built an entire enterprise level, multiplayer platform from the ground up, that we're going to be able to do a lot of really awesome stuff with over the next long time. In terms of how we're operating that's when we see it more like a World of Warcraft where there's regular updates, new features new content.
GU: It seems like you guys listen to the community as well.
SM: That's why I'm here. Riot has a huge focus on the community, I obviously come from the Dota Allstars community, and I've been there since the dawn of the Dota Allstars community, back when it was 30,000 people and now it's millions. Yeah I've put a lot of blood sweat and tears into that.
SC: This game is nothing without the community.
SM: Community is really important to us.
SC: Absolutely
SM: We're going to be doing a lot for the community on the web side, we're building lots of community engagement and involvement programs, we have beta, thousands of beta testers that we listen to every day, we actually collect player feedback and prioritize our development based on the feedback that we get regularly in the beta.
GU: That's good to know.
