Ghostcrawler Lane Swap / Queue Dodge / Whatever

Hello friends,

I wanted to let you all know that I moved off the League of Legends team a few weeks ago to take on an expanded role. I am still very much at Riot, but I am no longer the lead designer on League. The new lead designer is Andrei “Meddler” Van Roon.

My new position at Riot is head of creative development. We don’t typically make a big deal about titles at Riot, however, I plan on still keeping up an active conversation with you all, so I wanted to explain a little bit about what this role means so you’ll have some insight into the kinds of topics I’ll be most effective at discussing.

We’ve been up front that we want to put the S in Riot Games, and I am helping with that effort. In addition, we have been taking Runeterra as a world more seriously, as you’ve probably realized with the release of the Ryze CG and the world map. While telling stories is really important to us (and I hope many of you), there is a limit to the kinds of stories we can tell in League of Legends without getting in the way of a competitive, multiplayer game. So, many of our stories will have to come through other mediums, and of course that possibly includes other games.

I look forward to all of the “GC was kicked upstairs where he can’t do much harm to LoL” memes. Let me know if I can help you with those in any way.

League of Legends is in great hands, arguably even better hands. I know it’s hard sometimes as players to have a full appreciation for how many people collaborate to make League happen. League development is very much a team effort (a large team effort), and it’s almost impossible to detect the influence of any single contributor, even a lead designer. The direction for League comes from a leadership team, to which Meddler is a great addition. He has been working on League longer than I have, and he knows all of the nuance, weird rules, and “tribal knowledge” of League design better than I do. He has a long memory of things we tried and why they worked or didn’t. He knows where the bodies are buried. I’ll also still be Meddler’s boss, so if he disappoints you, just let me know and I’ll take care of things. In all seriousness, I wouldn’t be able to step away if the design team on League wasn’t so strong.

I’ll still be out there playing the game with you, and I promised the development team that I’d always let them know what I think, by posting on Reddit of course. I’ll keep an eye on Boards as well (and more attention to the lore Boards now), but the easiest way to reach me is probably on Twitter @Ghostcrawler.

In keeping with my reputation of buffing frost mages, Meddler promised to take good care of Lissandra.