Hey guys, I'm Brandon. I'm one of the co-founders of Riot.
And today I'm going to talk a little bit about worldbuilding.
Some of you guys have had some questions about
how we think about our worldbuilding at Riot.
I just want to walk you through that process
and also how worldbuilding has evolved over the years.
So League was always the priority in the early days
like the game itself, the moment to moment gameplay loop, the characters,
what they felt like in the context of the game.
And the game was going to be multiplayer only
so we wanted to make sure that the champion pool and the IP
could facilitate as diverse a cast of characters as possible
that could all bring unique fantasies to the experience.
The challenge with having such a diverse cast of characters is
that ultimately to imagine them in the same world becomes hard.
And we made the very conscious decision that we'd rather have a world that
can accommodate unique and diverse and offbeat characters,
than have a world that was like super consistent and thematically constrained.
Which would have been easier for storytelling, but I think would have hurt the game.
I think there was a moment where we started to
just not be in love with our own storytelling.
Early on, we kind of felt like we needed a premise for the world that explained
who the characters were and why they were there.
And I think in retrospect that was constraining and it was kind of a mistake.
The problem was we were trying to sort of wrap up
all of these disparate game mechanics that were part of
a bunch of systems that made a game fun with a story veneer.
And it's sort of overexplaining. We often compare that to like
midichlorians in Star Wars.
We don't necessarily ever need to know how the force works - scientifically, biologically, etc.
It's okay that it's magic in space. That's awesome.
And I think we did that.
As much as League has excelled across things like esports,
or you may love the frenetic moment to moment gameplay
of everyday League of Legends. We want narrative that comes out of League
to really touch people in the same way.
And we we don't think we're there yet.
So we're making a lot of investments internally to
build some of these muscles
so that in the coming years, there's going to be a lot of content that is story first.
And it might not even be in the game. It's going to be around the game
where we're hoping to really capture people's imagination
and deliver on the promise of some of the bold characters
that we've all grown to love in League of Legends.
I think we've made a ton of progress building out the places in the world
and making sure that they have a lot of rich history,
and meaning, and very unique individual components that
contrast and compliment the rest of the world.
Places that are actually going to live up to the champions that they're meant to
support and provide a canvas for.
I think the evolution of Bilgewater has been interesting.
We made a pirate character in Gangplank.
We wanted an ADC that was really emphasizing gunplay,
and we dropped Miss Fortune into the game
and we really attached to her,
we loved the name Miss Fortune.
But they were too,
to be honest, tropey pirate characters.
And over time we really wanted to understand this Bilgewater place
like what was it going to be.
We wanted something different and something evolved.
And so we spent a lot of time building up this place that
was going to be this laissez-faire, black market trade hub
with this mix of transient inhabitants from all over the world
and locals with some really interesting backgrounds and stories.
I think today,
we've made a lot of progress towards turning Bilgewater into an interesting place
that has a lot of richness and depth and storytelling possibilities.
I think what's interesting about that effort is
as time has gone by we've used that storytelling background in Bilgewater
to rethink Gangplank and rethink Miss Fortune
and make them more interesting,
make them thematically make more sense.
And also, just from a narrative standpoint, have a place in our world.
I think we need to now start to surface a lot of the work that's been done
to define the various places in the world and to really build out our characters.
So we need to be developing story-first pieces. Comic books,
some sort of short cinematic, narrative-oriented pieces.
Some novellas, maybe even some full length novels
that can now share the world with all of you guys,
and where you guys can weigh in on
what's resonating, and what do you love, and what do you want next.
And some of you guys will occasionally react to
a CG trailer that we do and be like...
Ok, Riot. This is cool. Where's the movie?
And...
The reality is we're not ready for that yet.
If we're going to do it, we want to do it really well.
We don't want to be like so many other videogame movies that
have really often struggled to live up to
the high hopes that we all have. It's tough.
And so we take those challenges seriously.
We take the world and the IP and our commitment to you guys really seriously.
And what that means is we're taking our time.
We want to build up to a universe that all of you guys are really proud of and really excited about
and where there's tons of freaking awesome stories that
we all know and we all love.
Well, thanks for making it this far
and hopefully you found that interesting.
And again, if you guys have further questions or further thoughts,
please post them in the comments.
Thanks.