League of Legends gets World of Warcraft Veteran game designer

World of Warcraft veteran leaves Blizzard to join RIOT Games as League of Legends developer.

Former World of Warcraft lead systems designer Greg Street has updated his LinkedIn profile to reflect that he is now a lead game designer at Riot Games.

The Linked profile doesn’t indicate the project he is working on at Riot Games. In a post on his Twitter account, Street alluded to the change but implied it would be some time before he provided more clarification on it.

“Thank you for all the recent tweets, but I think the appropriate thing for me to do is lie low for awhile,” Street said. “I won’t vanish forever. Cheers.”

Street, also known as Ghostcrawler on the World of Warcraft forums, had been with Blizzard for nearly six years when he left last month. Prior to that, he worked at Microsoft’s Ensemble Studios as the lead game designer on Age of Empires III.

 

[source]

Riot Games president confirms Twitter hack

But is coy when it comes to leaked League of Legends: Supremacy art.

Riot Games president Marc Merrill has confirmed that his social networking account was compromised, but offered little comment on the images of an unreleased, unannounced card game that were leaked as a result.

Yup, someone got onto my Twitter account. Yup, someone shared some old screens from one of the many prototypes we’ve experimented with.

— Marc Merrill (@MarcMerrill) October 13, 2013

We’re always working on a variety of new ideas for League & beyond. Lots of experimentation that may never see the light of day 🙂

— Marc Merrill (@MarcMerrill) October 13, 2013

The hack was carried out by an individual calling themselves Jason and requested retweets in return for a look at artwork from League of Legends: Supremacy, which Jason reported was a standalone, fully completed title.

It’s worth noting that Riot Games did file a trademark application for League of Legends: Supremacy on May 22, 2012, with the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

The hacker later rescinded control over the account, allowing Merrill to delete the tweets and clear up any confusion relating to the episode.

 

[source]

League of Legends aims for more big corporate sponsors

Riot hopes to pave the way for companies to sponsor eSports just as much as regular sporting events.

The third season of The League of Legends World Championship recently concluded, and the online game remains as popular as ever. In fact, it’s now the number one game in China, and the growth of the title is clearly helping to fuel the maturation of eSports as a whole. Riot Games has managed to attract significant corporate sponsors like American Express, Coca-Cola, Samsung, Nissan and others, and it’s a trend that Riot execs have every intention of continuing.

“I think over time the eSports ecosystem is going to evolve its economics. Part of the reason we’ve been focused on bringing some giant sponsors into the mix, such as the recent Coke announcement and American Express, is to help pave the way for a broader ecosystem of companies to get involved in eSports the same way they do in other sports,” Brandon Beck, Riot CEO, told the [a]list daily.

The eSports phenomenon is fairly new to those in advertising, but big companies are learning fast and they want to get a piece of the gaming audience. “The Coke sponsorship is really cool,” Beck continued. “They came to us and they said ‘We’re interested in contributing to the ecosystem, and we don’t want to do a typical media buy or anything like that. How can we put our dollars to work to help the sport and the community around the sport?’ And we said ‘We’ve got this Challenger league that we’re working.’ They contributed their own set of ideas. They talked about an Olympic-style training facility and the teams brainstormed and Coke contributed a bunch of really great ideas. We also think that their involvement is going to help convince other sponsors.”

 

[source]

American Express: “League Of Legends” offers real sports opportunities

As important a partnership as the “US Open or LA Kings,” says first blue chip company to enter the eSports arena.

Electronic Sports, or eSports, has been riding the success of Riot Games’ League of Legends over the past few years. Thanks in part to the explosion of livestreaming through Twitch and the global appetite to watch pro gamers compete, and even practice, playing the world’s number one game; Riot has attracted its first blue chip sponsor with American Express. And more are sure to follow as the company has over 32 million active players.

“From an engagement perspective, Riot Games is a great partner because League of Legends isn’t just about these huge live events, it’s also about the time spent playing the game and watching others playing the game for research and strategies,” said Ian Swanson, vice president of Enterprise Growth at American Express. “We want to reach the male millennial audience on a consistent basis. These millions of gamers aren’t just watching things live on Twitch, but many times afterward to learn from the pros. And they’re also actively talking about it.”

American Express is a sponsor of LCS and the upcoming World Championship at Staples Center. “American Express is also a US Open sponsor, what this means for eSports is that we’re stepping up and saying this is no longer niche,” explained Swanson. “This is a large audience that’s strategic to our goals as a company to reach. Just as you see American Express at the US Open or LA Kings hockey games at the Staples Center, you’ll see us at LCS.”

“We told them that Riot would sell out Staples Center in a day, and then we were able to go back and tell them they sold out in an hour, so it was clear we made the right choice”

Ian Swanson

“We showed a video from the LCS Season 2 championship game at USC Galen Center to a bunch of execs at American Express and they were shocked at the fans and how excited they were and how proud the athletes were when they won,” said Swanson. “We told them that Riot would sell out Staples Center in a day, and then we were able to go back and tell them they sold out in an hour, so it was clear we made the right choice.”

“Our participation will hopefully help legitimize eSports and help bring in other brands and other sponsors,” said Swanson. “The real testament goes to the players and quality of the game Riot has produced. We’re almost on the ground floor of eSports. In the next two to five years this thing is going to be much bigger than it is. And it’s already tens of millions of people watching around the world.”

Dustin Beck, vice president of eSports at Riot, adss that the company is leaps and bounds ahead of where they thought they’d be in the eSports arena.

“All we can do is guarantee fans we have a focus on delivering high-quality, engaging experiences and that’s our first and foremost attribute,” said Beck. “We’re going to start doing more global experiences with fans. We have five distinct leagues in China, Korea, Southeast Asia, Europe, North America and we just launched in countries like Brazil, Russia and Turkey. It’s a unique situation where we have a global sport that is tough to benchmark outside of any sport except maybe FIFA or the Olympics.”

And it’s also unique in that most mainstream companies, which are struggling to connect with millennials, have yet to capitalize on this gaming audience. American Express is the first, but certainly won’t be the last.

 

[source]

League of Legends dev opening NY office

Riot Games has signed a five-year lease for a building in Manhattan

GamesIndustry International has learned that Riot Games, developer behind the free-to-play giant League of Legends, has signed a new lease agreement to rent out the entire second floor of a building at 49 West 23rd Street in Manhattan. The real estate transaction listed in the New York Times indicates that Riot has committed to a five-year lease with an annual rent of close to $240,000.

Requests for comment have gone unanswered at this time, so it’s currently unclear if the New York office will be used for game development or if it’s dedicated to marketing and business activities. Riot is headquartered in Santa Monica, has another US office in St. Louis, and also has offices across the globe, including Dublin, Seoul, Sao Paulo, Sydney, Moscow, and Istanbul.

Riot’s League of Legends has been enormously successful in pushing the free-to-play market and it’s also shined a spotlight on the rise of eSports. The US State Department recently recognized League of Legends players as pro-athletes. Riot did run into a bit of trouble earlier this week, however, when the company admitted that its servers were hacked, leading to a security breach of North American accounts tied to 120,000 transactions.

 

[source]