[Lore] A Theory: Why we don't see frequent Story

I keep seeing the question of "Why isn't there more story?" thrown around in response to a lot of things, and it's a great question that has every right to be asked.

Heimerdinger's lore seems to lack a lot of specifics. It's just the first part of the story.

How does Twitch's new lore interact with his old lore? More story will flesh that out.

We haven't heard about (Insert Champion Here) for years. What are they up to? Can we learn more about them? More story.

What about the world they live in? More story.

Well, where's the story? Since the discontinuation of the Judgments and the Journal of Justice story has been limited to bite-sized character biographies and a few release events: the Freljord event, as well as a few teasers for new champions (Quinn, Aatrox, Zac, etc.). To many players, however, this is not enough, and they've been clamoring for more story to come out more frequently. Additionally, many of the complaints people have about the newer champions' lore is that without supplementation from other pieces of story many of the characters are left with large holes in their characterization and motivation.

While Riot has been quiet on the exact specifics, I have a good guess as to why we’re not seeing much in the way of lore coming out the pipeline more frequently. Namely: Riot does not have enough staff pumping out story.

It's an easy solution; you might think. Just hire a few writers to go in and punch-up the current cannon. Have them throw out a few short stories every few weeks. And while that may seem like the obvious resolution, it’s more complicated than that. Let’s go through the process for a bit: First, the CDev team needs to decide what story they’d like to write, and the basic thread of the story is laid out. Then the story is written. Given the length this can take anywhere from a day to a couple of days, if this is the sole focus of the author. Then the piece is given to an editor who goes over everything and checks to make sure it works structurally and grammatically. Then the author revises the piece and sends it back to the editor. This process can repeat a number of times. Provided the whole thing has not been trashed or taken back to the drawing board the final piece is then translated into the numerous languages of the League of Legends player base and once that’s all is done it’s formatted nicely on the website where players can read it.

If that were CDev's only job, pumping out lore, I’d say the whole process would take about two weeks, give or take. However, what many players do not seem to realize is that this is not CDev’s only job. CDev writers are also in charge of crafting the VO lines as well as conceptualizing and helping create new champions with the design teams. The editors need to go over not just prose, but tooltips as well as any other posts that go out onto the website. Additionally, all of these also need to be translated into other languages. In short, there’s a substantial bottleneck for written content based on the size of the teams involved. And it’s not as simple as hiring a bunch of monkeys and buying typewriters, as Riot needs people who work well within their company and have the expertise and craftsmanship to get the job done with the best quality possible.

While I don’t know the exact number of people that work in CDev, I do know that the numbers are small and they are asked a lot of. Riot currently has to pick and choose what stories can be told because there’s a limit to how big their scope can be. According to my understanding, this is a large reason why we don’t see more story more often. Lore is often tied to major releases, like new champions and reworks, because those take the most precedence in terms of what gets through the bottleneck.

Please note, I’m not making any claims about quality here. There is a lot of contention about the style and narrative choices Riot has made, and that can (and should) be discussed. I’m also not saying I’m right. Like I said, CDev has been mostly radio-silent on the procedure of pushing out story so I claim no special insight on the process. I’m simply giving my theory on the information I have available to me. Additionally, my claims are primarily about the out-of-game written story, as story told in game has an even greater bottleneck and larger complications.

There’s not a lot that players can do to increase the amount of story we are receiving, unless you plan on working for Riot (coughpolishing-my-applicationcough). But, what players can do is voice to Riot what stories they want told and how they want them told. It’s one thing to say you don’t like something, but it’s much more helpful to explain why and to detail what you’d want to see instead. This also goes out to CDev as a request to engage with the player base so that players may be enlightened as to what their expectations should be for content, as well as what the scope of the game’s story should be moving forward.

So, how do you want the story to be told in League and, more importantly, why do you want it told that way?

((If you're interested in what else I have to say about League narrative/story, check out my blog here))