Riot Games helped define the modern competitive game, stimulated the development of today's e-sports through the "League of Legends", and consolidated the game-as-a-service business model.
However, with the launch of the Netflix animated series this weekend, you might think that the company is following a more traditional narrative approach-showing the world a "magical science fiction" in the words of its staff game. Gerbil," can play a role in the adult world of Hollywood.
Riot did not simply hand over its intellectual property rights to mature television professionals, but embarked on a do-it-yourself route in its new series "Arcane"-entrusting it to employees with zero experience in the field of web animation .
When you can show Hollywood how it is done, why explain the game to Hollywood?
"Riot," said company co-founder Marc Merrill, "it is difficult to work with."
Riot did try the traditional route—a meeting in town with agents, interested studios and distributors, which eventually became "Arcane." But in the end, Riot's founders Brandon Beck and Merrill let two long-term staff members, Christian Linke and Alex Yee-or Riots, in the company's terms, co-creators, so that they can basically serve as show hosts. Both started with Riot's community-centric customer service team. None of them have TV experience on their resumes.
Merrill said that their deep understanding of the company gave them an advantage: "If you don't fully understand the journey of our players and these characters, it will feel the risks of unrealism in various subtle ways.
"We came to the conclusion that no one cares like Rioters. This is a fundamental part of the equation....We can add powerful capabilities that other creators can have, but we cannot sacrifice what Rioters has Love, attention to detail, and historical knowledge and opinions."
Of course, "League of Legends" has long been one of the most popular e-sports on the planet. Even the luxury fashion brand Louis Vuitton has accepted this well-known franchise, and this month, due to its launch of "Arcane "And "Fortress Night". If you want to understand the future of interactive-centric storytelling, check out how Riot handles "League of Legends."
The virtual band created by the studio is at the top of the American pop charts and held concerts with augmented reality. At the end of last year, it appointed Shauna Spenley, a long-time Netflix executive, to lead the company’s entry into the film and television sector, and to oversee a department, including a department dedicated to story-driven games, which extended the "League of Legends" brand to its Outside. The roots of competitive hardcore players.
After the "brother culture" crisis, Riot, the ruler of "League of Legends" e-sports, touted new games and new looks
The first is the "League of Legends" that is popular in e-sports, and then the identity crisis. After careful consideration, Riot Games has "Valorant" and a new idealism.
It's not that Riot is centered on its TV show "Arcane", which took 6 years to get a little nervous. Netflix releases will add to the stabilization of streaming video game-centric content. Riot hopes to attract the same audience to accept "Devil City", which is another adult-centric anime-inspired adaptation. In the end, everyone else is trying to look like Riot, creating intellectual property-what shareholders call IP-in an environment where players and viewers can watch, interact, and live in the physical and digital realms.
"We are very clear that the percentage of game time as a percentage of total time is growing at an alarming rate," Spenley said of her decision to leave Netflix's vice president position and join Riot. "I pay close attention to e-sports. I pay close attention to the whereabouts of time share-TikTok, social media-but most importantly, games.
"It started to attract me. I think the next big IP will come from games. I think games will eventually become the center of our culture. The entertainment and products surrounding it will complement the gameplay."
At this point, it is necessary to quote some "League of Legends" statistics. Riot reports that throughout October, more than 180 million people have played its "League of Legends" brand games. "Arcane" explores a small part, focusing on the reckless, chaotic roles of Jinx and her sister Wei. This is an action science fiction fantasy story, alluding to major topics such as class differentiation and the benefits of privileged class, but it focuses on family tensions and barbaric, sometimes marginal-Jinx’s creepy behavior, a Harley Quinn-like The character is a mixture of recklessness and seriousness.
This is also a linear narrative with more than nine episodes. "I think our dream is to be able to provide our audience with more than a completely passive experience," said Linke. After gaining internal success through a short music video introducing the background story for the "League" characters, he began to promote it in Riot. series.
However, experiments that try to combine games and television, many of which use a format that chooses your own adventure style, generally speaking, well, not very good.
"I think we, as creative people, must be careful," Link said. "In the final analysis, ordinary people sign up for the experience because they want to be entertained by people who are better at storytelling than they are. This interactive idea of giving viewers too much control also means that they won't make the best choice to entertain."
The goal now is not to invent or re-invent any format, or to imagine a more approachable version of "League of Legends". This is just to provide more stories to the audience that already exists. This can be "Arcane" or inspired by the immersive theater in Los Angeles later this month through "Arcane: Into the Undercity" in collaboration with London. Weekly event-Secret Cinema, an immersive company.
"I think most Hollywood don't realize how huge this is," Spenley said. "I think we have a huge opportunity to build an amazing organic story within this world, and let it quietly build and become the IP that defines a generation. It will take a while."
The topics and debates that have dominated the game in recent weeks have focused more on technology. Look at the potential of the persistent online world, such as the so-called Metaverse, or how NFT (for non-fungible tokens) can change the game world, mainly by creating ownable virtual items or guiding the game to earn models.
Since 2006, Merrill Lynch has helped the company become a video game giant while also trying to weather the cultural crisis of legal allegations of workplace and sexual harassment. He has his own views on both issues. Last year, in an interview with The Times, he frankly talked about the company's "reflection" and the actions taken to restore confidence in employees and the industry.
Today, sitting in a public space that doubles as a video game museum — Merrill Lynch is flanked by six TVs from different eras, and at least one copy of each video game console — he can easily predict the game business and fist Development direction heading.
Riot has dabbled in the world of virtual interactive concerts, but he is also content to let others try to establish what such a digital metaverse-like space can look like, and is willing to bring "alliance" content there. For example, "Arcane" provides an opportunity to collaborate with Epic Games' "Fortnite", a game that has a global franchise mashup. When Merrill talks about long-term goals, his references tend to lean towards story-centric entertainment brands.
"If other companies do a great job - better at attracting content to people who want to see it than us - that would be great," Merrill said. "In addition, I think a problem is related to user-generated content-crowdsourcing and planning. We tend to believe that there will be a great demand for well-made things for a long time. This is the focus of our attention. Maybe Pixar is a company that can maintain great creativity for a long time."
Although other video game companies praised the future of NFT, Merrill Lynch once again took a wait-and-see attitude. Nonetheless, he acknowledged that NFT is a unique code, similar to an electronic certificate of authenticity, allowing the sale and possession of almost anything, which is a "huge growth part."
"This will be an economy that is fundamentally different from the current Riot ecosystem," Merrill said. "We sell digital products, but this is the license of our services, not ownership. Ownership conversion is more suitable for different content than what we are trying to do. This is not to say that we can't do some R&D and explore what it might be. Looks like. We are experimenting and thinking about it, but this is a very different model and method."
Riot's recent focus is very clear.
Soon, the company will disclose more details of its publishing brand Riot Forge, which is under the jurisdiction of Spenley. Riot Forge games will reduce the player-to-player trajectory and instead focus on narrative or experimental experience. People at Riot today generally refer to the company as a company more similar to a traditional entertainment company than a game publisher that focuses on technology.
15 games will keep you fun all year round
Games that use new and old technologies, as well as some face-to-face choices, celebrate the power of interaction—the ability to connect, share, and connect.
"I met Marc last summer and he said,'We have hundreds of millions of people playing this game and want to get more content around our IP. We just need to figure out how to do it,'" Spenley recalled.
"One of the things I heard when I first came here was,'We want to be black licorice.' That's really harsh. It doesn't matter if we don’t suit everyone. [On Netflix,] I’m in one we should A place for everyone. Personally, being able to focus and better understand the players and resonate stories is really great for me. We don’t have the limitation of “must expand”. We are more like a think tank group."
But even this emphasis on story-driven experience is not natural. Although "League of Legends" is immersed in fantasy legends, it is a competitive game aimed at the most stubborn part of the community. For those who are not proficient in its language, this is undoubtedly overwhelming.
Linke and Yee encountered resistance in promoting "Arcane". An animated series seems to be a big project, and no one is particularly excited to figure out how to make one.
"I remember going to them and saying,'I think there might be an animated series about Vi, it might be really cool.' Their first answer is no," Link said about starting this six or seven years ago Said at the time of the project. "I remember they said,'If you have story ideas, bring them to the team that does these things.' We have a CG team, we have a film team that explores things, I will go to the team, and everyone said," no, thank you. "So I think we can only do it ourselves."
However, to his advantage is his close relationship with French animation company Fortich Production, where all Riot's music videos and animated character introductions are used instead. Through cooperation with the current Riot music director Toa Dunn, Linke and Yee can dominate Riot's music-centric animation, thereby further promoting the world of characters in the game, including lyrics, poems and more detailed background stories.
This is why Riot did not completely shut down Linke's ambitions.
"He has participated in many original creations of some of the main characters that appeared in "Arcane", and has always been deeply concerned and passionate about the identities of these characters," Merrill said. "As a player, he knows how attached our players are to these characters. He wants to start this exploration to figure out how to make a story that meets the high expectations of our players."
When he re-threw the ball, Link narrowed his ambitions. A few months after the initial refusal, he asked for $5,000.
"I found these two artists from Russia, finished some concept art and showed them to them. I said,'Well, give me 15 dollars to make some 3-D models. I started talking to Fortich and said, "I don't know what this will be," but we made a 3-D model of Vi when we were writing the story," Linke said. "Then I said,'Now I need 60 Grand to do some basic animation tests.'
"That's enough. At that time, the question was whether we were doing this." And who was making it.
"I think music and animation are our strengths," said Dunn, who also gained experience in "Arcane" TV. "But they could have licensed it out, and they talked about it. But it must be correct. It must have everything we want it to have, and sometimes you just need to do that."
There are growing pains, including stopping production to readjust the focus of the script. Link talked publicly about his learning curve, admitting that he found it best to discuss tone, emotion, and story with an animator, rather than trying to prescribe the specific appearance of the image. In the end, Spenley regarded "Arcane" as a kind of business card, proving that Riot can tell his story.
She is not nervous about the reception, partly because she knows that there is more to do anyway.
"You can't farm the heart," Spenley said. "It must be built correctly. Players can tell. They are looking for recognizable elements. I don't think you can easily build with external partners. I think it must be built from within. At this point, we are trying to make Know how to recreate it as we enter reality shows and other stories."
Spenley emphasized that this is not a graduation from games to film and television. If anything, the task is completely opposite.
"When you are building a great IP and we want to do this, we want our players to feel that it is a whole for them, not that it is a different business unit," Spenley said. "This is a very bad result. All of this has to do with games in the center of culture. This is the opposite of what Disney would do. They put movies at the center of culture. We really see that games are at the center of culture, and These are complementary to this experience."
One of the advantages of "Arcane" is that it allows people to experience the core characters and world of "League of Legends" for a long time without worrying about being obliterated by strangers.
Game is treatment. Don't believe us? Ask Esther Perel, a famous relationship therapist
The interview with Esther Perel-the psychotherapist behind the popular podcast "Where should we start?" is now a game developer-turned into a therapy course.
'Behind the Frame' is a touching, interactive story about art, cats, love and loss
The relationship between memory and mystery is conveyed through paintings in the short game "Behind the Frame".
The complete guide to family viewing
Get Screen Gab weekly recommendations, analysis, interviews, and irreverent discussions on TV and streaming movies that everyone is talking about.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
Todd Martens joined the Los Angeles Times in 2007, covering interactive entertainment (video games) and popular music. Previously, Martens reported on the music business for Billboard Magazine. He has contributed to many books, including "Lebowski the Great: An Illustrated and Annotated History of the Greatest Cult Film of All Time". He continues to torture himself by supporting the Chicago Cubs. Although he likes dogs, he is more like a cat lover.
More from the Los Angeles Times
Comment: "No straight line" is a timely celebration of the history of queer comics
Break the real and mythological inspiration behind the "shangqi" mysterious creatures
Photographer Gordon Parks has inspired a new generation of artists. Here are some of their stories
Guest on Sunday’s talk show: Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen on the CBS "Face the Country" show
She helped her husband set up a far-right militia. Now the wife of the guardian of the oath says she regrets it
They turned a house full of cockroaches and violations of the code into a "must-own" home—and ADU
"Can I get an amen?": Britney Spears thanked the fans after her supervision ended
Photo: Britney Spears' supervision ends after 13 years
Britney Spears' supervision is finally over. Tell us what this means to you
The supervision of Britney Spears finally ended: "Britney is a free woman today"
More than a dozen better action movies, Netflix’s "red notices" will remind you of