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Riot Games Sees Decades Of Life In League Of Legends
Riot Games, which brought the MOBA genre to mainstream audiences, has built a business around a game concept that evolves through balancing, new player characters, and player ingenuity. In many ways, the concept behind good MOBAs is similar to well-crafted collectible card and miniature games. For that reason, it’s no surprise Riot expects League of Legends to last for a very long time.
Speaking at the Digital-Life-Design conference in Munich, Germany, Riot Games vice president of eSports Dustin Beck spoke about the developer’s new studio in Cologne built for production and streaming of the European League Championship Series. Rather than contract out, Riot decided to expand the profile themselves.
This investment fits Riot’s vision for the future of the game. “It’s a sport just like anything else,” Beck says. “Baseball has been around 110 years. I’m not saying League of Legends will be around that long, but we see the shelf life of LoL as hopefully decades.”
[Source: OnGamers]
Our Take
Just as major sports leagues like the NFL and MLB mature and change to fit the times and technology, Riot can continue to grow and adapt League of Legends in a model more common in MMOs than traditional retail games. Instead of increased level caps though, expect ongoing balancing and adapting that inspires new metagames, interesting new strategies, and more opportunities (like the upcoming static roster of easy-to-learn champions) that bring more people into the fold.
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