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Did they just acknowledge that they f**ked up with Aurelion Sol's kit?
And the whole article just feels like a big excuse to justify "Human champs are hot and sell more" without saying it outright tbh.
Did they just acknowledge that they f**ked up with Aurelion Sol's kit?
And the whole article just feels like a big excuse to justify "Human champs are hot and sell more" without saying it outright tbh.
Lol, I actually wrote this to clear that up specifically. Champs team have no revenue goals but we do have engagement goals. Looks like unfortunately I guess that didn’t come through here though.
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This is fundamentally untrue. Lux and Ezreal skins are still money makers. It’s not like giving a skin to some new Champion makes way more then giving a old popular champion a skin. Champ sales themselves are extremely small compared to skin sales, especially since a large portion of new champs are acquired through blue essence. If we primarily cared about money making it would be a way stronger strategy to just move developers from champs team to make skins instead.
Yea, I'm not buying that at all. Everything is about revenue.
Well people having higher engagement with LoL likely leads to higher revenue, my point is we don’t judge or make champions based on the money they make. The main reason we make new champions is to keep LoL a engaging game
And while Runeterra isn’t Earth—so our goal isn’t to make champs that perfectly reflect real world locations—we have made a stronger effort to make champions inspired by regions everywhere. We want all players to be able to see themselves in the games they play, and League champs are no exception. This is something we’ve become really passionate about on the Champions Team, which you’ll see reflected in some of our recent (and upcoming) champions. For example, Samira was inspired by Persian culture, Viego by conquistador-era Spanish culture, and so on. To do good cultural representation though, you almost certainly need to make humans, or at least champions that are close enough to humans that people can relate to and identify with them. So this is another reason we’ve been doing more humans recently.
Not sure if any Rioter will read or answer this comment, but there have been a vocal minority that are bitching about Irelia looking Asian outside the lol splash as a form of "race washing" to satisfy the Chinese audience because her splash looks pretty much Caucasian despite all the Asian cultural inspirations in her kit and background. As an Asian myself, the fact that a champion representing a culture that looks nothing like people from that region is something very offensive and rude, yet people repeat that as if it's some kind of woke culture that deserves to be dismissed. So can any of you give me a definite answer whether her splash art is unintentionally misleading, or did the stance change at some point after her update? Because all her concept arts sure as hell seem pretty in line with someone you expect to look like an East Asian.
She is meant to have Asian facial features, yes. We probably just didn’t convey it as well as we should have in the splash
I hope we can get at least 1 monstrous champ each year (from either humanoid or creature). I guess the thing about humans representing humans seems obvious to people but in fact it happens in others IPs. Makes me wonder, are we going to see an Aztec inspired champ that could fit in Ixtal?
Next year we are planning to do a lot more non humans then we have been doing
I thought it was pretty clear but looking at the comments it seems as though you might need to write jot notes instead of rationale to get the point across more easily.
I have a question though, how do you measure engagement and how do you decouple it from strength within meta/between patches/regions and regional metas.
We look at it over a long period of time before we draw major conclusions so we can see the general engagement at different power levels and over multiple patches
If we can't get more creature champions...can we get more 'monstrous humanoids' then? Rito pls.
Yes, going forward our plan is more monstrous humans
With the modern emphasis on Humans inspired from other cultures like Samira/Viego, is there any plan to return to Ixtal in the near future?
The region has a lot of Meso-American inspiration and offers a pretty unique blend of various cultures that I feel isn't fully explored through just the existence of Qiyana, and I was hoping to see more given how long it has been since the region took the spotlight or even had an associated champion released.
Yes of course. The main reason we created a new faction in Ixtal was we didn’t feel we had a region that we could do Latin representation from. It’s something we for sure want to develop more on the future. Edited, apologize for the poor wording, and thanks for calling me out on it
Pls don’t use Latinx lol
Sorry for the poor wording, and thanks for calling me out on it. Edited
For future reference don't refer to a race without using the appropriate wording.
For reference of my own race;
Native American not American Indian.
First Nations =/= Native Americans.
Thanks!
Pls, as a Latino myself we absolutely HATE Latinxs. We generally don't care if you simply write Latinos to talk about both womans and mans.
Apologize, and thanks for calling me out. Edited it
Honestly 1 champ every 3 years is not very good even if you are going to do more. You know, we have like 4 black characters (no I'm not going to count stuff like azir) and that's still pretty low. But you have an entire empty region and one character who's Latina lol.
And like, it can't hurt with your player bases in Brazil etc.
It would be cool if you did a few in a row as an ixtal story similar to the current shadow isles story. I get why you would lean on the stories people already care about first, but even 2 in a row and fleshing out the region would be great for us lore nerds and your own representation goals
Well technically Neeko was inspired by Brazilian culture, though since she is half lizard vastayan it doesn't come though as well as doing a pure human
Ekko my dude
Also Rell
TIL Neeko was based on Brazilian culture. She doesn't really feel like she has any culture at all.
But then again, I'm Brazilian and she's my Champion with the second highest Mastery lol.
Yeah that why i said champs are more "inspired by" since they need to primarily read as Runeterran. With human champs its easier to get the reference since we can do skintones and facial features better. With Neeko its mostly her accent(The same actress does both the Brazilian and English Voice Lines for her)
With Neeko its mostly her accent(The same actress does both the Brazilian and English Voice Lines for her)
How does that translate in other languages, that might not have a stereotype about Brazilian (hence, wouldn't recognize an accent)?
This is exactly why i say in the article its difficult to do representation well without making full humans
Is there a chance for more Indian or darker skinned Asian representation from Ionia?
Karma is still the only dark skinned Asian representation in League.
I know it's not the most popular representation but I'm just surprised its not talked about.
Yes of course. We are definitely lacking in good south Asian representation right now. It’s something we want to do more of in the future. Probably a lot sooner then u think :)
Hello Reav3, is there any chance for burly or bearded champions like Graves?
Yeah we need another champ like that, especially a non-Caucasian one. It's something we want to do in the future, for sure
THANK YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
I love how super friendly and communicative you are with the community. I get really upset when I see people being aggressive towards you and other Rioters.
Thank you very much for the information, I am very happy with the news, I LOVE Karma, I am very happy to see my skin tone more represented in the game.
<3
No worries. Dont get to upset about people being aggressive. They are just really passionate about LoL, and I'm grateful to work on a game with so many people that are so passionate about the game that it makes them emotional, even if they aren't the best at expressing their emotions in text.
With what you said about the drive to add more representation in the game in through human characters, can I inquire about two specific types of people that I don't think are adequately represented in League yet?
There, to date, is not an openly gay male character in League of Legends. You have several champions that are implied, and a couple that beat around the bush, but there are no champions that directly have male-to-male interactions of the romantic variety. You've done well with female champions like Neeko and Rell, but I personally feel very left out and almost mocked with the way that gay males are not being handled. Taric checks a lot of boxes and toys heavily with common tropes for gay men, but his actual dialogue flirts with women and doesn't have any kind of interaction with males that could indicate he's gay in the same way that Neeko and Rell's dialogue with some females indicate that they have romantic interest. The other affront here is Varus, who got a lot of pomp and circumstance about his new origin story 4 years ago now, in which his body was crafted from a gay couple. Not only is this a type of "kill your gays" trope, but the actual character Varus is not gay, he's been indicated to have a wife and child who have long since died. So as a gay person, I don't feel represented, and the characters who touch on gay male tend to be queer bait more than representation.
The other type of representation I wanted to inquire about was an elderly woman type of character. Camille does not cut it here, because she's magically younger due to her technology, to the point where her age is somewhat ambiguous, and every single skin she has removes any indicator of her older age, every single one. Last year, the game Smite introduced the Slavic forest witch Baba Yaga, and she is a remarkable example of how an elderly woman can be achieved with great effect in a MOBA style game. I've always liked characters like this, and I think many people out there enjoy this type of character as well, so I've always wanted to know why League has not introduced a character like this yet. I do understand that elderly champions are part of your "niche" category and don't have broad appeal, but I do think that if she is executed properly, she could garner appeal like Yuumi or Lillia if angled towards the grandmotherly or cute aesthetic, or garner appeal like Swain or Ryze if angled towards the arrogant or grumpy aesthetic. I think there's a lot of opportunity here for a fun character, and either way the grandmotherly type of archetype is very missing from League's roster, be it good or evil.
Thank you for listening to my TED talk.
100% agree, these are both things we want to add to the game at some point (As new champions). Older woman and gay male are 2 things we want to get to in the future