In October 2019, I lead the collaboration with RIOT for their monumental 10th-anniversary celebration. The mission? To pay homage to the gaming masterpiece – League of Legends – by crafting an engaging and immersive experience that delved deep into the heart of the community’s fondest memories of this legendary game.

Given a VERY tight production schedule, speed was key in determining the project. The 10-Year strategy posed constraints on building hype or explicitly discussing the stream we aimed to promote. Our 3 day brainstorming session with RIOT’s creative team swiftly centered on embracing the mystery and lack of fanfare. The idea: craft an experience so devoid of hype that it became intriguing.

During brainstorming, I proposed a bored-out-of-their-mind League of Legends character trying to find stuff to do while waiting, exactly like the players would. Like making the legendary druid character Ryze swat at himself if the user repeatedly clicked him, or having occasional subtle moments, such as him stretching, sleeping, pondering or a dragonfly passing, occurring only every 10-12 hours in a video with otherwise minimal activity.

We didn’t completely reject the hype, adding a touch of celebratory fun. Easter eggs like a clickable boombox playing esports and community clips, spontaneous dance parties with Little Legends and jungle creatures, and a countdown monument shaped like the 10 Year logo were incorporated. These elements prevented confusion about the web experience being canon lore.

The behaviour of Ryze and the experience was broken down into:

• GLOBAL TIMED EVENTS — Ryze’s primary behaviour during the countdown. At midnight a congregation of monks slowly march to the temple and strike a gong and activate the monument animation. The light, monument and parts of the world changes gradually in steps
• GLOBAL RANDOM EVENTS — Ryze’s secondary behaviour (kicking a stone, doing yoga, sneezing). Weather, phenomena, birds.
• USER-SPECIFIC EVENT — Playing the latest monument animation whenever a user reaches the page to bring them up to speed and reward the visit
• EASTER EGGS — Embedded details in the monument parts and other places in the scene, relevant to League lore and history, all to bring an additional layer of depth and speculation to the experience.

Launching the experience was a thrill as players took on the challenge of unraveling its mysteries. We added a touch of tech magic to safeguard the secrets, ensuring a surprise-filled experience. In the end we still wanted the players to come back to check out what Ryze was doing.

HERE’S ME AT THE EVENT BEING CONFUSED AND NOT KNOWING HOW TO PLAY ANY OF THE RIOT GAMES SO I DRINK BEER INSTEAD