Of Random Maps and Bigger Things - An Essay

Dear Riot,

I’m a genuine fan of League, and I want the game to grow and be a source of entertainment for 10, 100 years. To get there the game must continue to evolve.

Why random map? I’ll start by saying that I am a creative kind of person. I dislike the laning phase where I find last hitting repetitive. I dislike having a meta, I want the freedom to play the way I want. Same goes for the map, I find that the structure being at the same place every game quite boring.

I have gamed for many years now, and I believe we are drawn to moba games because of its complexities. A random/rotating map can push the level of complexity further, thus creating even more interesting and diverse gaming.

One of the argument against random/rotating map is that ‘because real sports have the same playing field. As a game company, Riot shouldn’t think ‘well that wasn’t done in the past, we shouldn’t do it for the future’. If you think about, the whole MOBA genre came from PLAYERS. It was created and invented BY PLAYERS FOR PLAYERS. That’s pretty cool isn’t it? Why other companies didn’t see the value of MOBA? Early game companies even thought of the idea of ‘multiplayer’ game was absurd. Time has changed. While the idea of non-static map may sound absurd to you right now, it may not be so for the future.

With that said, I’m actually a pretty big sports fan. Basketball is my favourite sport. I watch a lot of it. I want to point out about the ‘difference’ of Sports and eSports. I argue that real sports is a showcase of athleticism, and eSports is a showcase of creativity. If you think about it, the top plays of any sports has a level of athleticism to it. As spectators it wows us to see people running really fast, jumping really high or hitting the ball really far. ESports are different. If you think about the top plays in eSports, they are plays with a level of creativity. In esports we can play ‘mind games’. When we use our creativity to outplay/confuse the opponent, it is EXCITING.

I feel Riot employees may not see the need for creativity/random maps and other things that the community wants, here is why: When you have to ‘work’, it is different.. Your needs and desires already differ from many of the players. Even though Rioters are gamers, they are not the gamers like high school/college/recent grad gamers. Riot employees are relatively well paid and live in a very nice location. Riot employees may not see the need for creativity because they are living the life already surrounded by it. They live a life that DIFFERS from players, and are gamers of a different kind.

I want to go back and talk about early years of MOBA. Many gaming companies never saw the potential of MOBA. It is crazy to think just how SLOW a company like Blizzard reacted to MOBA. I’d imagine they once had a board meeting that probably went something like this:

“Hey, look MOBAs are getting really popular!”

“yes, but why?”

“I don’t know, its not fun for me! It’s just a fad. No one is going to play it in a year”

“Yep, those companies offering free game won’t make any money as well, too bad for them!”.

“Yea, and our stockholders want a ROI of 22% this year, we need focus on milking the WOW subscribers!”.

At riot, the same fate may follow. At Riot, designers and head management have “different taste of what is fun from the average gamer. Rioters are gamers, Blizzard staffs are gamers… but they are not the kind gamers the majority of its players are. Who are we? What are our needs? For one, we are people who are trying to find identity in this new and interesting world of technology. We are extremely diverse. You can do market research and hire analysts to paint picture of who we are, but I doubt you can really understand us beyond the surface level. The way you nerf champions like Lee Sin, just shows how confused you are. You are great, accomplished, smart people but you don’t really understand us because you live a life that differs from your customer. You have to live on street to experience what it is like for a homeless person - so to be speak. I don’t think you need to understand us. You just need to create the tools and let us experiment with the game. We love experimenting and we want to show you what is fun for us. This leads to my next topic:

Community generated content and the future economy

Even if you have the greatest minds, you cannot match the brainpower of thousands of 14-29 mostly males like myself, who has an abundance of time and creativity. I feel that the greatest ideas and the next big thing in gaming will come from players/community again. We have a lot of free time to experiment. We are creative and innovative. We are growing. We need the tools to create our ideas. I think of Minecraft, people have so much freedom to create… In League there is so much we can try and change, and so many great ideas may already lost its chance. What 10-20 designers think is good or bad, may not be true for the its millions of players… We are after all, a diverse gamers of a different breed. We are not the middle class people, come to work every week, kind of gamers, you know.

Now to go back to random maps. This is just my idea improving the game. We all have different ideas of making the game better. What if Riot create the tools for people to test their ideas. Community generated content is the future of the internet. Reddit, Facebook, youtube are just some examples of what's to come. Bigger and better community generated things are to come and I hope Riot can see the value of it now.

TL:DR

1. Riot designers’ live a different life than the vast majority of its gamers. Different life, environment leads to different needs from games. While Riot are gamers, they are not the same kind of gamers than the majority of us.
2. Community generated content has a lot of potential. Let us show you what we want. Give us the tools to create.