Thank you very much for your answer, I would totally understand if you didn't/couldn't answer them. I'm planning to start an MBA soon (tm) and the gaming industry seems very fascinating to me, so I would like to know more about the perspective of some of the professionals in it. Again, thank you very much. Also, your games are pretty cool. Keep being awesome
God bless, and good luck with your MBA!
u/dzareth, hope you're the right person to ask this and the questions aren't too invasive
- What is your stance on the dynamic pricing some mobile games are using?
- Ideally, do you believe microtransactions should be kept for FtP games only or should it be used (as it is right now) in AAA games?
- Did the skins randomly dropped by chests affect LoL's revenue? Was it a "short term loss with middle/long term gain" situation or did it have a negative effect on revenue and Riot is taking the financial hit for player retention?
- What do you think would be better for the LoL franchise/brand?
- LoL 2 after the end of LoL's lifecycle; or,
- Extending LoL's lifecycle indefinitely with regular updates;
- What sort of academic background do you need for this job? Do you think it is the driving factor behind the way you do your daily functions or it is "IRL experience" or a mix o...
I’m texting u/dzareth rn telling him to get back on because these are actually cool questions.
While I’m here, on 2) I think it depends on longevity of support—premium-priced games that turn into long-supported games may very well merit some sort of ongoing monetization. These can be ethically done, if you’re smart. The decision to go FTP or “premium” priced should mostly be determined by how niche you think your game is. Niche market games should probably charge an entry fee, at least in today’s market
On 4) I personally think LoL 2 should never happen. Ongoing support and “Ship of Theseus” style replacement of the parts seems more player focused. That said, definitely bookmark this post so you can come back and call me a liar if we release League 2 ten years from now
*total item gold efficiency
Gold cost per point of Mpen is still = at 62 MR with Orb v Void
I was coming from a evaluation of just the cost per point of Mpen. After digging I see where the 90 MR number comes from, it's just including stats other than Mpen, which I get now that's what you were referring to.
Appreciate the clarification.
Sorry for the confusion! Looking back at the segment it is even more jumbled than I thought because me, Mark, and Azael all bring up slightly different arguments before we've finished talking about any single one >.<
On the bright side, since so many people were confused, im getting a new segment started soon with Phreak where we make clean visuals to explain some of these things with concise language that hopefully will come out in the next month or so! I also find the lol wiki had some really useful tidbits of info if you are interested in these sorts of things.
Oh hey it's really you!
Thanks for clarifying. Now that I see your source it makes total sense. I didn't consider max HP as part of it.
I love you, dude who thinks This is the same word as That, but is still able to wake up on time, so that should make up for it. I never doubted you or your alarm clock.
Thank you for reading my gibberish and caring enough to gather links and respond. You're a legend.
Ahahaha thank you! I've tried to give my explanation of "this" to flowers but he won't have any of it. Here's how my mind works: "This" always refers to the thing that is closer to me for some reason, on my side. And "that" is always the far away answer or something that isn't mine. And I'm always backwards because I'm on the "that" side of the show! Ty for coming to my Ted talk xD
u/dzareth Hi! Two questions:
Bringing TFT to mobile seems like a slam dunk to me. On the other hand, Riot has been very focused on the core PC market in the past. How do you tackle the challenge of influencing an organization to get behind a project that some stakeholders might not believe aligns with the core business?
- I'm an MBA student at USC, where we've had several Rioters come and talk to our different schools. (Dan Sutton has come three times over the past few months that I know of!) Any chance you'd want to come talk to us?
1) This is a great question. At Riot the easiest way to make something happen is honestly to show how the players are experiencing the product and how we can improve that experience. I love TFT and I also believe that the mobile product is fantastic, but I tend to disregard my own personal tastes and beliefs and try to understand what our players want. (And TFT mobile is what many want) This is when the conversation becomes nuanced. Players want many things. Sometimes some players want some things and others want the opposite. There are opportunity costs. Tech challenges. Dependencies. And the heart of influence becomes in listening, understanding and making sometimes incredibly difficult trade-offs. It's exhilarating and hard. We don't always get it right. But we are always trying.
2) Yes, reach out. I'll be happy to come.
/u/dzareth Is Riot now producing other games because mobas are on a downwards trend in general right now? Do you think league of legends will always be the main game Riot works on?
There is this pretty pervasive view that "mobas" are on a downward trend, but League is not on a downward trend, I honestly feel like we are still growing... Just not meteorically like in the early years. I just also think that given how people play League that it's going to be around for a long time.
My hope is that we continue to serve our players so that you all still find League a great use of your gaming hours!
I think we are making other games because we know y'all enjoy many games and we would like to see if we can bring League's approach to the player to other genres.
Does the custodian/janitor get a Riot account?
Those sorts of jobs tend to be managed through contracting orgs, which makes it complicated. I would absolutely LOVE to get folks like our custodians in a Reddit AMA one day. Would be tons of fun.
Hey u/dzareth, as a business professional at a large IT company like Riot do you feel the need to know a a lot about the technical side of the business? Do you need to know how to code or use other technical software besides the Microsoft suite of products? If you do does it help in your decision making process?
Lastly, the most important question favourite champ?
Making games is a fascinating blend of technical, design, creative, business, product, marketing and other fields all at once. I have a computer science background and so I enjoy learning about the technical, but even if I didn't the engineers would help me to understand. I think having a holistic viewpoint is essential. I think fostering an inclusive viewpoint for all disciplines is critical too. I manage managers today and occasionally code in SQL or python or what have you. But it really shouldn't be what I spend my time on. I'd be the worst one at that and it's not gonna be what the team needs from me (even if I miss that part of the job).
I have many favorite champs and mostly play top-lane. Garen is always rewarding to play.
I'm almost done with my Bachelors degree in IST with a focus on Cyber Security, do you have any recommendations that would make me more likely to get an intern position at Riot's IT team?
I don't have an answer for you specifically for IT, but I was one of the two people on my team who handled the internship program for Application Security in 2017; I have some general advice for you.
The very first thing to do is to make your application stick out. For the internship position, we were interviewing for we had roughly 200 applicants.
About 100 of those were clearly not applying for an internship (i.e they were just sending their CV to every open inbox they could), so we threw those out.
About 20 of the remainder had clearly taken the effort to tailor their application to Riot but were unfortunately not looking to apply for the application security position so much as they wanted to work at Riot, which is admirable, but we really needed an application security engineer intern.
The remaining 80 were a bit harder. Of the 80, we had to remove any that would require a visa to work in Ireland as it's complicated to get a work visa ...
Read moreWow, thanks for the response! If I was willing to accept statistics as inevitable, would a theoretical math background be desirable for analytics?
The answer is always "it depends", but yeah there are people with math backgrounds here for sure!
u/dzareth -- Hi there! What was your career path like leading up to your current position? Were you always in the gaming industry? I'm currently working to put myself and my career more directly into my life's biggest passion: gaming. However, it has been an interesting balance to figure out how to articulate and translate my current experience to game developers that often put a lot of weight into previous gaming industry experience.
Would love any insights or thoughts you'd be willing to share! And thank you so much for doing this!
I wasn't in the industry. I've answered this more in other questions and I'm running out of time today! Thanks for asking the question, and good luck in following the dream.
My question for u/dzareth
How did you get into the industry with a financial background? What is the difference between working at Riot instead of a classic consulting firm like BCG, Mckinsey etc?
I worked at McKinsey so I can speak directly to that!
I loved working at the firm--ultimately I was tired of travel and realized that if I didn't try to follow my childhood dream of making games I'd probably look back and regret it.
Consulting is great: a lot of difficult and varied challenges, but high-pressure environment which I really learned a lot from. There's a lot of variance in the work: I worked in strategy, operations, marketing, sales, insurance, banking, mining, logistics, grocery, retail, high tech.
... but here's the thing: making video games is so much more meaningful to me. It's as cross-functional, but it's in an industry that I fundamentally enjoy. The hours are more sustainable, and there is no required travel (in my role).
Read moreu/dzareth :
What did you study in school/what kinds of positions did you work in before working at Riot? Do you spend a lot of your time working with actual financials? I'm a recent Econ/Accounting grad currently working at an accounting firm and studying for my CPA and am interested in one day working at Riot when I have more career experience, but I'm not sure what possible roles at Riot really fit that path.u/RiotMobility :
What was your background before working at Riot? Were you primarily involved in tax or something like law? What exactly is mobility tax? Google wasn't very helpful in that regard.Question for both of you:
Did you play LoL before working at Riot and did that influence your decision to work there at all? If you were invested in the game before being hired, do you think it influenced the hiring decision in any way? I've been a pretty dedicated League player for around 7 y...
I studied computer science in undergrad and an MBA later on. I work across actual financials: revenues and costs, economic profit, telemetry and research findings, etc. I am more focused on the recommendation and I think about the right tool for the job.
Keep an eye out for roles, I think there are definitely roles for people with a solid accounting background. Careers website might list them all.
My hiring decision was based on my professional qualifications for the role, and today when I make hiring decisions that's my only factor. The exception would be for certain jobs where there is a specific business need for gameplay knowledge (such as the "balance team"). Of course, most people are highly passionate gamers at Riot.
u/dzareth do you guys hire interns? I'm majoring in math and computer science with a concentration in software development. Am I someone that riot would hire?
There is an internship program but it doesn't always have all the roles, also keep an eye out for the "associate" or "entry" level roles. I can't answer anything specific here, but check our careers site is my best advice.
u/Dzareth What do you recommend college students/grads think about/gather experience in when trying to go into a business strategy and advisory role? Also, what does your day to day work look like in such an emerging industry like eSports? Did you have any experience in a more traditional field/industry before riot?
I’m personally going to be starting in big 4 audit & assurance and look to exit into a business strategy/advisory role. Being able to work for the eSports industry in this role is what I’m looking toward so that the work I’m involved in is something I’m passionate about!
I encourage people to do their best in their grades and to be showing impact and leadership. Aim high and get the best job you can, and that is great for you until you land your dream role in the industry.
My background before Riot was at McKinsey, and I work with colleagues who were at one of the big-4s... so work hard, learn as much as you can and keep your focus on delivering value for your clients!
u/dzareth Has there ever been discussion on putting pros like Doublelift on shows like Jimmy Fallon? Or maybe teaching him the basics of League with a charismatic pro like Damonte? I want to see League of Legends grow and it make even more waves in the mainstream... and I think we have some fun and personable pros to do it! Or anyone from Riot really, like Tryndamere?
Yes, we also want League to grow and I'm glad you share our goal. Most of League's most successful growth comes from players telling their friends!
We think a lot about how to encourage interest in the right types of players and in a way which is cost effective too. Over time we are experimenting with different channels. Some channels create a lot of interest, but with players that might not actually want to play League... I think the esports might see us become more and more mainstream, and when K/DA came out the overall interest was much broader than League players.
Hey, and one great bit of news: League is continuing to grow, it's a great time to be playing.
u/RiotDavin I'm not sure if you're the right person to poke about this, it might be u/dzareth later, but I work in continuous improvement and operational excellence with a current focus on manufacturing(Principles tend to transfer well across industries from what I know), is it one of your teams that works on this kind of stuff? Does Riot do CI/OpEx as a dedicated set of goals? If I wanted to work at Riot doing OpEx where would you recommend I look?
I love operations, I had a tonne of enjoyment working on operational efficiency projects in a past set of work experiences.
Depending on what set of skills you have it might apply more to a "dev manager" role--assuming you've got some agile/lean background.
u/dzareth What kind of strategic functions are there to do at Riot? What kinds of opportunities for internships are there for that field? What are some things you need to know in order to fulfill your job (like classes, experience, ect. ect.)? (Sorry if that's too many questions, this topic always interests me and I'm quite curious)
We think about business unit (mostly game) and corporate (company) strategy, or corporate development (like m&a, etc.). We occasionally have internships, keep an eye out.
I think there are many backgrounds, mine was from a management consultancy, but some might come from a corporate strategy team or investment banking, etc. There are a lot of different paths.
riven. i think a good riven player can 1v5 more successfully than anyone. i missed one ban on riven this season and i ended up against a 650k mastery player and
actually i fed pretty hard and our yorick did very well but i'm gonna blame riven anyway
u/dzareth As a green and upcoming data scientist soon to start grad school, is there any advice you would give for someone who is interested in eventually being in the role you're in now (after you've been promoted of course LOL)
I'm very set on wanting to work at Riot, and would love to know if you had any advice for getting noticed.
Thanks again!
I think that people who are committed to great work increase their chances. Get a repo on github, share your projects and models. Solve interesting problems, and basically have fun building models and discovering things.
In terms of how you do what I'm doing today, I spend a lot of my time managing the managers of the people who are doing the core craft work. Management is a completely different skill to doing craft, and I think it's never too early to start thinking about how to help people grow and advance in their careers, but it requires you to also understand their craft.
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