Unlocking the ‘s’: Quest Complete
Last November, Riot Games kicked off a month-long global celebration of players across all of our games, focused around the launch of our first-ever animated series, Arcane.
After watching an amazing League of Legends World Championship final match in the morning, experiencing new events and content in our games throughout the day, and finishing the evening with the world premiere of the first three episodes of Arcane, I couldn’t help but to think of the mission that has guided us and been our north star since the early days of the company: “We aspire to be the most player-focused game company in the world.”
This has been our mission statement for almost the entirety of my ~14 years at Riot Games. When we talk about players, we’re referring to people who believe gaming is a truly meaningful part of their life — whoever they are, wherever they are, on the platform they choose, and in the genres they’re passionate about. When we make a new experience for players, we aim to shatter expectations where it matters most. And “where it matters most” is extremely important, as we live in a world of constraints that forces us to choose very carefully where we spend our time. Given that there are thousands of options for what we could do, it’s vitally important that we focus on truly raising the bar in areas that are most critical for delighting players, solving existing pain points, and making it worthy of their time. Our focus will always be to maximize player value, and we believe that by delivering deep and rewarding game experiences, players will look back fondly on their time with us and be excited to see what comes next from Riot.
The Triforce of Unlocking Developer Potential
To accomplish this mission, we are continually working to create and sustain the best environment possible for unlocking game developers’ ability to make it better to be a player. While this comes in many forms, there are three critical areas that we’re currently focused on across our game studios:
- Sharing capabilities - The overall goal is to save our developers’ time and focus, allowing our teams to do more with less. This ranges from sharing game-agnostic products (e.g., account management, content delivery, social systems, meta-game features, and commerce), technology (e.g., network and server infrastructure, data pipelines, game engines, and developer tools), and services (e.g., localization, player support, live production, and compatibility testing), to having the support of our departments, who steward some of our most critical game development crafts through setting standards, implementing best practices, and investing in leveling-up the professional experience and growth of their members at the company.
- Fostering a robust learning organization - We strive to have a culture of learning and experimentation, where developers feel supported in making bold bets, taking risks, and learning from their mistakes. To enable this type of environment, we want our developers to thrive in an inclusive community, where they can feel safe to propose new ideas, constructively challenge existing conventions, and are celebrated for seeking out and cherishing diversity of thought and perspective. We want to propagate best practices throughout our teams, sharing knowledge broadly and enabling our talented developers to consistently operate at the highest level. Ultimately, we want to be better and stronger as an overall team tomorrow than we are today.
- Scaling developer talent - Large team sizes can lead to challenges with efficiency and scale. We believe our core game teams should ideally stay as small as possible, focusing primarily on the innovative aspects of the game experience that truly differentiate it. As mentioned above, sharing capabilities and knowledge helps smaller teams to do more with less. Another key piece of the puzzle is an elastic “cloud” of global development talent, where our teams can partner with experienced pods based out of our growing network of development studios around the world (like Singapore and the SF Bay Area). This allows our game teams to have “burst capacity,” a temporary addition of developers who have a specific expertise and/or capability, when needed, and our development studio pods can hone their abilities through working with multiple game teams over time. Given we now have multiple live game experiences in operation and many new projects in development, we’re highly focused on opening new studio locations where there is a high density of top-tier game development talent. One example of this approach is the new studio we will be opening in the greater Seattle area. It will host over 400 Rioters from the region who will work across our existing titles and future games in development.
From Game Start to Preparing for Riot’s Next Level
We’ve been working towards creating the environment described above and the organization necessary to support it for many years. When I look back at the history of Riot’s games, I tend to think of it in multiple phases that help describe our evolution as a game developer:
Phase 0 (late 2006 - late 2009) - The Foundation
- We built and launched League of Legends as a free-to-play game using the games-as-a-service model, challenging many industry trends, especially in the western part of the world. As players, we pursued this path because we saw a missing experience that could both bring joy to players and solve existing pain points with competitive, multiplayer, live service games at the time.
Phase 1 (late 2009 - early 2016) - The Growth of League, LoL Esports, and the Company
- We grew and evolved League of Legends globally, established the global esport, began expanding the League universe, started multiple R&D game projects, and grew the company from tens to hundreds to thousands. And we did all of this because players asked for it — mastery and competition at the pinnacle of professional play, deeper and more immersive experiences in and outside of the game, and ultimately, the ability for gaming to become an even more meaningful part of their lives.
Phase 2 (early 2016 - end of 2019) - Preparing for the ‘s’
- We began preparing for the multi-game future, as multiple games entered production and the cross-game platform (RPG) was established. Players saw our level of commitment to evolving and supporting League of Legends and wanted to see that same approach in other game genres they loved.
Phase 3 (end of 2019 - end of 2021) - The ‘s’ Becomes a Reality
- Starting with the League 10-year anniversary celebration (L10), we put the ‘s’ in Riot Games through the launch of new game experiences (Teamfight Tactics, Legends of Runeterra, VALORANT, Wild Rift) across multiple platforms (mobile, PC) and in new regions (like MENA); we also launched our biggest expression of the League of Legends universe outside of a game with Arcane and the RiotxArcane overall experience.
Phase 4 (2022 and beyond) - The Next Chapter
- We believe we’re entering a new era where gaming is the center of entertainment and, as part of our mission, we want to ensure this new reality is one that is focused on players and creating excellent, world-class game experiences for them.
The Quest for the ‘s’
It’s humbling to look back and reflect on how we’ve evolved from a single-game company to the multi-game future we’re living in today. For almost a decade, a big part of my focus has been preparing for this.
During phase 1, as we transitioned from solely focusing on League of Legends to also developing new games and scaling the company, I established our first department, Engineering (later renamed to Technology), which focused on supporting our engineers and technology teams across the company. In early 2016, I partnered with Oksana Kubushyna to establish the Riot Platform Group (RPG), whose mission was to transform Riot into a global, multi-game company by providing a “golden path” for game teams to develop, launch, and operate their games, and creating an ecosystem around our games to improve the overall player experience.
In late 2017, when our founders transitioned away from their operating roles, I became responsible for development operations holistically, bringing together all of our development departments across Creative, Technology, Design, and Production. In early 2019, collaborating with other leaders to help prepare for the launch of our new games, we established the Game Studios group, whose mission was to nurture, deliver, and grow our games to be genre-defining. Starting in late 2020, I began evolving the Game Studios group into our new games division. This structure united all of our in-house game development teams and efforts, including our live game experiences, new games in R&D, the global network of development studios, the platform initiatives, the Technology/Creative/Design/Production departments, our game operations teams, and many other talented folks who are constantly thinking about how to delight players and make it better to be one.
While serving as a technology leader during the development, launch, and growth of League of Legends was both extremely challenging and one of the most fulfilling achievements of my professional life, the quest of putting the ‘s’ in Riot Games has been THE most challenging and rewarding experience of my career so far, one which I’ll be eternally grateful for having been a part of.
Hitting Pause
At Riot, we use the internal metaphor of climbing a mountain with multiple stops, or ‘camps’, when we think about our long-term mission of aspiring to be ‘the most player-focused company in the world.’ The quest for the ‘s’ was a critical part of reaching Camp 1. It’s been a long climb and, as we finish this game-changing chapter and embark on the path to Camp 2, I’ve decided that this is a perfect time to hit the pause button and take a break in the form of a 12-month sabbatical. I’ve been looking for an opportune window to recharge my batteries for quite some time now, but there has always been another exciting opportunity to focus on, another game to ship, another initiative to level-up how the company operates, another promise to fulfill for players. With the new games division in place, after all of these years, while it isn’t easy to step away (even for a bit), I know our players are in great hands with the extremely talented company and games leadership teams we have today.
Last summer, I shared with Rioters my plan to start the sabbatical later this quarter, and I look forward to rejoining the leadership team in 2023. Given the length of time I’ll be away, I’ve been partnering with leadership to find a successor to run the games division going forward.
As I mentioned in a recent interview, I don’t think there has ever been a better time in history to be a player. I look forward to spending more time being one for a bit and then continuing on the mission after some R&R. In the meantime, we’re hiring! We’re looking for diverse and inclusive senior leaders who are passionate about our mission and have successfully led studios and game development teams during their career. Check out our job board for the latest roles, including the Head of Dev Studios. Glhf!
