As strange as it sounds, League of Legends is nearly 15 years old. In many ways, the industry standard-bearer in multiplayer PC gaming and esports, once a shelter for young, competitive players, is now a “old” title—and its playerbase reflects this.
At least, that was the gist of League’s leadership team’s remarks during a private media event held on Riot’s Los Angeles campus. Make whatever you want of it, but the playerbase is getting older, and with that comes a new set of issues. “It is not fundamentally a bad thing,” game director Pu Liu stated in response to a query about League of Legends players getting older after confirming the claim. “If you have a game that maintains players really well and has a continuous inflow of new players
With an aging playing population, the League squad faces new obstacles that did not exist a decade ago. Liu mentioned the difficulty of getting new players into a game while maintaining “very competent, extremely knowledgeable” gamers for more than a decade. Andrei “Meddler” van Roon, Head of League Studio, has mentioned that many older players’ expectations of the game had shifted. While the game’s middle years appeared to be dominated by players who focused solely on ranking success, Meddler stated that older users preferred a more balanced blend of casual and competitive experiences.
“Now, for some of our audience, especially those with jobs or children or whatever, we are seeing more of a shift,” Meddler added at the same private gathering. “It is geared toward, ‘Hey, I want to be competitive at times, but I also want to have other experiences.
The game is also receiving a new executive producer in this climate, where there is a constant push and pull between delighting players who have been with League from its inception and trying to attract new players. Paul “Pabro” Bellezza has a long history with Riot; he was one of the company’s original interns, one of the first ten developers to work on League, and maintained numerous positions on the game for a decade, including lead champion producer, before moving on to other Riot projects in recent years.
Bellezza takes over the role vacated by Jeremy “Brightmoon” Lee, and in a Q&A with media, he also identified the new player experience as one of League‘s biggest areas of potential growth. “As a player, I believe there is still a lot we can do to make the game more accessible and clear,” he said. “There are opportunities to improve the game’s teaching methods, such as visual clarity, UI, and tutorials.” That is probably something I want to check into.”
Many of these things, as Bellezza pointed out, can go over the heads of League players simply because they have all been playing for so long. The familiarity with the renowned title can often blind developers to how confusing a MOBA game with nearly 170 playable characters can be for new players.
And those players will face new champions. Designing new characters for a game as old as League is also a problem, and according to Matthew “Phroxzon” Leung-Harrison, the team has sought to reduce the number of too complex champions introduced over time.
“One of the difficulties we tend to battle with, and we are getting better at it over time, is balancing simplicity and complexity,” Phroxzon added. While there are still opportunities to create more complex characters and types of characters that more niche audiences will enjoy, Phroxzon stated that doing so repeatedly will only serve to further narrow League’s audience—again, the push and pull of pleasing an aging audience while also attracting new players.
That is not to say Riot will never produce difficult champions; just look at Hwei, who is barely a year old. However, there is a preference for finding characters who perform new things in easy ways that both new and experienced players may enjoy, such as Milio.
However, simple champions will emerge, possibly more frequently than more complex ones. To compensate, Phroxzon stated that the team sought to ensure that those simple champions always brought something fresh to their kits.
“Certainly, it becomes increasingly tough to build new champions and ensure that they always resonate with players,” Phroxzon said. “[But] we ultimately want to do a combination of both simple and complex, and we want to push the boundaries of both, and we want players to always feel like League is coming up with something new.”
As the saying goes, learning new tricks can be tough for older dogs. However, with the excitement of a new producer and a clear vision for what they want from its champions, future events, and esports scenes, Riot appears to be in a strong position to succeed.