Marc Merrill Blog Critique

From Marc Merrill's blog http://tryndamere.blogspot.com/

"1) Riot structures our organization in an empowering way that enables teams that "own" different parts of the experience to make decisions. We create frameworks and high level philosophical guidelines and empower our teams to go crush. Thus, many specific choices of how things will manifest are not "run up the flag pole". New or controversial things tend to get more eyes on it rather than established pipelines (like champions), but once there is conceptual buy-in, teams move fast and don't often check in again with details"

Gee Mr Merrill. Maybe that is why the game is constantly being tweaked drastically in ways that are actually not good, and create chaos, confusing and anger among the players?

BUT he goes on to give the excuse:

"Now, to really understand why Riot sometimes comes across as inconsistent or contradictory, you need to understand the mindset of a Rioter and what our working environment is like. First of all, we've grown relatively quickly, and as every single business person will tell you, it is hard to grow and it is incredibly hard to grow well and stay aligned"

You see, its our fault for not understanding the mindset or being sympathetic to their terrible situation of growing so fast. Poor Riot!

He also says"

"2) Long ago, we made a decision at the company to encourage all Rioters to "be themselves" and "engage directly with the community" on forums and on social media. Brandon (Ryze) and I largely credit Steve "Pendragon" Mescon for helping us realize the power of this idea and we love it when we see Rioters develop meaningful personal relationships with the community. We have great examples of this all over the world where this works out well and we think Rioters and players who connect really enjoy this.

But in other cases some Rioters end up getting harassment and death threats. This stuff is pretty disgusting which makes us periodically waver in our commitment to this ideal and is likely the type of experience that has caused pretty much every other large game company to only communicate via very structured and formal announcements / dehumanized corporate speak."

Gee Marc, have you ever wondered why people get so angry at league to the point of making death threats and harassing? Could it be you created game that is inherently toxic? You put people on a team with 4 random people, and when you lose, even if it wasn't your fault at all, you lose the same LP. For some reason, instead of winning 20 LP + or - a multiplier based on your performance (such as winning 30 LP for an S score, or only winning 10 for a completely awful match where you basically fed) you guys have flat LP that doesn't reward personal performance. This tiny bit of control would help the game be less toxic because players wouldn't feel as powerless--you might lose a match but only lose 10 LP because you were amazing in the match. Shouldn't individual performance be recognized and be a factor?

POWERLESS. Do you get it? Being powerless makes people angry or sad. That is human nature. All the tribunals in the world won't change that. Its very frustrating game, but you guys made damn sure it was frustrating as possible.

Riot is an example of averagely competent people being in the right place at the right time, rising to their own level of incompetence. They aren't brilliant or especially creative--they just have the largest market share currently. Just as McDonalds food is crap, and many other people make better food for the same price, but they still are the most recognized fast food chain in the world.

Don't put Riot or anyone there on a pedestal. They aren't that amazing.