Brains behind the popular Video Game: League of Legends

Brains behind the popular Video Game: League of Legends

When the Riot Games, the company behind the most popular video game of the world, League of Legends started organizing different tournaments around the globe, noisy events where players can play the game and compete under huge screens in different venues full with fans, they are now required to design a trophy. But the question is: How much should the trophy weigh? Among all the correct answers, the trophy is "about 70 pounds" Seventy pounds is roughly twice as heavy as hockey's Stanley Cup, and hockey players, if we can generalize for a moment, tend to be brawnier than the League of Legends Gamers.

"It takes five people to hoist it," said Dustin Beck, a vice president at Riot Games. He was sitting in the company's offices in Santa Monica, Calif., and talking about what is officially known as the Summoner's Cup, an oversize silver-plated chalice that looks like a faintly sinister "Game of Thrones" prop. "We thought we'd be able to send it back to Thomas Lyte" - the British company that fabricated it - "and they shaved like five pounds off. Still not enough."

Dozens of those players are packed in Seoul at the fourth world championship. On Oct. 19, the finals will be held in a stadium built for soccer's World Cup, with 40,000 fans expected and many times that number watching online.

Last year, Riot Games says, 32 million people around the world saw a South Korean team win the Summoner's Cup, along with a grand prize of $1 million, in the Staples Center in Los Angeles.

In the process of this game, it has become an e-sport. If you are not a male between the ages of 15 and 25, a group that Riot says accounts for 90 percent of all LoL players, the odds are good that you have never heard of e-sports, a catchall term for games that resemble conventional sports insofar as they have superstars, playoffs, fans, uniforms, comebacks and upsets. But all the action in e-sports occurs online, and the contestants hardly move.

In the case of League of Legends, players work a keyboard and a mouse, wielding exotic weapons in a virtual forest of turrets and torches, apparently landscaped by refugees of "Lord of the Rings" and it's a battle between two teams of five players.

Ticket prices ranges from $15 to $50 for seats at league events. The tournaments function as marketing to bring in new players and to inspire loyalty in regulars, says Marc Merrill, a Riot Games co-founder and the company president.

"A lot of money is now funneled through e-sports," said Steve Arhancet, who owns Team Curse, one of the most successful squads based in the United States. "When I negotiate a contract with one of my players now, it's my lawyer talking to his lawyer. It wasn't like that two years ago."

As the game goes on, A new champion, Azir, had just been unveiled. He comes from a place called Shurima, a once-grand empire in a sweltering desert. The Foundations team looked at Shurima images from the art department, projected on a large video screen.

Truly, League of Legends is a legend in the video game legacy. Everyone is hoping that their future plans will give more thrills and fun to the old and new gamers of the League of Legends.

Also read: The Mechanics of Winning, The Secret to Why you Lost

 

 

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