All language subtitles for League of Legends Origins 201

- This is MissZammer.

- This is SummerGypsy.

- My name is EzekielChaos.

- SparklyPancakes.

TaylorSwift.

- I play Top.

- And I play Jungle these days.

- I like to support as Teemo.

- I fight for Demacia.

Oh, yeah, we're playing LoL.

I was like, "What's LoL?"

He's like, "Laugh Out Loud?"

I was like, "No, fool!

That's League of Legends!"

Holy crud, did this suck us in

and get us connected.

- We're raging at each other.

- We're raging. We're laughing.

League is something

that is not as much of a game,

but more of a place

where we can be ourselves

and enjoy what we do

and who we do it with.

You guys ready?

Yeah.

Yup.

Queue it.

Let's do it.

Here we go.

All right we're queuing

up.

GLHF, everybody.

- I wasn't ready.

- I can do it.

We got to gank real quick.

There's always been

that parent to child stigma

of whatever you don't understand

is obviously not valuable.

A lot of parents or society saw

people as being antisocial.

"Hey, this kid is holed up

in his room playing games

and it's totally

ruining society."

I don't think gaming

is as niche and isolated

as a lot of people think it is.

There are these really

strong human stories.

He started playing

and I found out he liked me.

We've only known each other

about a year.

Give or take.

Give or take and we're just like

brothers, so...

The game is all done

through the word of mouth.

85 percent of the people who

come is through a friend.

League of Legends has over 100

million players actively playing

every month.

That's over one percent of

people on Earth.

The nerds are coming together.

We will dominate this world.

Competition and player

versus player engagement

is as old as video games

have been around.

- We don't get that competitive.

- Not a single one of us is

competitive.

We swear.

It's a giant guerilla

warfare scenario

and only the smartest, strongest

and best players come out alive.

Oh, my God, he wins

the game!

He got it!

The finals drew in 36 million.

That's more than the

Stanley Cup Finals,

the World Series

and the NBA finals combined.

I've been playing games my whole

life.

I started playing PC games

when I was about seven years old

and I thought it was

like a magic puzzle.

It just felt like

a whole new world opening up

because I had a huge passion

for games like Dungeons &

Dragons

and role-playing

games in general.

The most powerful game

experience that I ever had,

even to this day,

was in a text based multi-user

game called Dragon Realms.

You could sort of boot up

the computer, log in,

and be surrounded by hundreds

of thousands of people

from all around the world

simultaneously logged in,

living out adventures in a world

with seemingly limitless

possibilities.

My parents were pretty anti

- game.

They were big on

academics and sports.

So we had pretty strict rules

in the house.

For me, it was a bit of an

escape.

And when I was really into

games,

I wasn't the best student

it became a huge source of

conflict and clashing.

Let's take a look at League of

Legends,

it is one of the most popular

video games out there.

It is raking in

billions in revenue.

Riot Games is the

company behind it

and today the company is front

and center on the cover of Inc.

Magazine.

Joining us now

for a CNBC Power Lunch exclusive

are Riot Games co-founders

Brandon Beck and Marc Merrill.

Brandon and Marc, welcome.

Good to have you both here.

I think one of the great

delicious ironies here

and either one of you

can pick up on this

is that neither of your parents

were all that thrilled

at the amount of time you spent

gaming as young guys.

What are you-- What do they say

now? How do you like me now?

Yeah, exactly. You know, uh,

actually my first Nintendo

was something that I won

at my first grade school raffle

because my parents

were so anti-video games

and so, you know,

we'd sort of think about it.

It was fate, couldn't

keep us away.

Marc and I met at a summer

program

right before college.

I was younger than him.

So I was one of the young kids

in the program.

I was like, 16.

I think he was 17 or 18,

he was about to go to USC.

And I'm like, "Oh, you're from L

.A. Oh, cool, well, me too."

And "Oh, you like video games,"

and we instantly sort of hit it

off.

Marc had this dichotomy

of like, an Eagle Scout

who was captain of

the football team

and crushing it in school

and like, tabletop D& D nerd.

Brandon was a business

major and the consummate

business guy,

even from a really young age, he

was just really thoughtful about

opportunities.

Marc and I were playing

tons and tons of games.

We're playing the heck

out of Counter-Strike and

Starcraft

and World of Warcraft at the

time were sort of our main

games.

But, ultimately, our favorite

game at the time was DOTA.

DOTA was a custom mod for

Warcraft 3.

When Blizzard shipped Warcraft 3

they shipped it with a map

editor

and people would

use the map editor

to make different scenarios

that you could play on.

It really pioneered a

new sub-genre of real time

strategy games

by focusing on one particular

unit that was really powerful

and interesting

and then working with a team

of other people.

It's come to this!

Five players was

really a lot of coordination.

That was really

fun and exciting.

But it

loaded really slow.

And there was a strong lack

of matchmaking,

so you could be playing

with someone who was

ten times better than you were.

First blood!

You had to kind of beat your

head against the wall at every

step

from hearing about the game

to getting the installation done

to downloading the map to

getting into the game for the

first time.

Even though it left a

lot to be desired from a service

standpoint,

DOTA demonstrated

that games as a service

was something that could work.

We felt like a lot of game

companies

weren't really focused

on gamers like us.

We don't want to buy a box,

play a game and be done 30 hours

later.

If the online multiplayer arena

of the game was compelling

enough,

we want to spend hundreds of

hours in it, thousands of hours

in it.

We wanted to compete as part

of a community over and over

again.

We then

started to ask,

"What does the future

game company look like?"

And how can we

potentially build that?

We spent nine months

putting together a plan,

trying to talk ourselves

out of it, really.

We wanted to build a

company that unapologetically

embraced

the hardcore gamers

that might be considered niche

or a small slice

of the audience.

We had a feeling that this isn't

a particularly small niche

and there is a lot of us

and there is a lot of pain

points

that we could solve as a company

that really cared about that

type of player experience.

So Marc and I pulled the trigger

and we started Riot Games in

2006 in West Los Angeles.

It's like

the gaming company version

of like, The Mighty Ducks.

We were in this tiny office

with this stained floor

and we had one conference room

and the ceiling leaked.

I guess from the investor

perspective

it would have been described

as "capital efficient," which,

you know,

I think that in the common

vernacular that means "shitty."

We essentially had some really

passionate, really smart, really

inexperienced interns

and a couple of industry vets,

who hadn't had a lot of career

success.

We had to learn

everything we didn't know

and do it with a very young team

and we were really nervous

because it was months before we

had a big demo

and key milestone

for the company.

Marc and Brandon

demoed the game to me

on the street in San Francisco.

He put the laptop on a newsstand

and we proceed to play

this really crude tech demo,

like the game play.

And I saw the game and I just

thought, "Oh, God, what have I

gotten myself into."

That map is awful.

It was like the-- It was so

terrible, so cheesy looking.

It was clunky.

The interface was really bad.

The art was really bad.

But they'd managed to do more

in three months

than some of these other

companies that were paying

stupid sums of money.

And I was just like, "Wow!

This is actually pretty

compelling."

It was so ambitious.

The amount of software

that they wanted

to write was crazy.

We built matchmaking.

We built your inventory, champ

select.

We were building everything

outside of the game.

The engine was an absolute mess.

It barely ran.

You know, you can't expect that

much

of a company that's

never shipped a game,

with a President and CEO

that have never shipped a game.

There was a lot of pressure.

We have one shot at this.

That's fun,

The real problem to solve

is you have to make a game

that all these people that love

DOTA and love Warcraft

and love strategy and love

hardcore games, are going to

want to play.

The game was about characters.

And built mood boards of awesome

art

We basically scoured pop culture

and things that captured

powerful archetypes

from history and from folk tales

and from fables.

We took the ones that we thought

were the most compelling

and kind of added

our kind of pop fantasy spin to

them

to bring them to life

and to show a face to them

players have never seen before.

They'll be tattooed and badass

and they're kind of renegades.

And so, we needed to make 40

champions in a year and a half.

And make sure that we covered

a wide cast

so that any player

that came in could say like,

"That one's awesome,

I wanna play that one,"

then have a good time.

That was the goal.

Welcome to Summoner's Rift.

League of Legends is a five

- on-five game that's played

across 20 to 45 minutes.

In it, you cooperate with your

team of four other players

to try to storm the base

of your opponent's

and destroy it before they storm

your base and destroy you.

One of the closest sports

analogies for League of Legends

is basketball.

There's a map in League of

Legends called Summoner's Rift,

and that map is the same every

single time much like a

basketball court.

As far as the game

play elements go,

you get to pick what type of

thing you want to be going in.

In basketball you

have point guards,

centers, power forwards,

forwards, shooting guards.

At this point, League of Legends

has 137 different things on the

roster.

So the amount of different

things you can play as is really

big.

You're in this fantastic,

magical world, and you need to

divide and conquer.

What draws players in

and drives that process of

mastery

is the fact that

you are so connected

to that character

that a tiny, tiny mistake

can result in a massive defeat

or a huge victory.

Once you kill the other team's

base, which is called the Nexus,

you win.

Victory!

I remember the first time

we wanted to show

anyone outside the company

League of Legends

and we weren't sure

if it sucked or not.

When you're building a

community,

you really have to start

with the individuals.

And so, I think day one was,

let's start establishing

personal relationships

with the 200 people

that are going to be the first

people who get into this thing.

One on one.

Riot Games is here at PAX really

to interact with the community

You know we have a huge focus

on the community as a company

and so we love talking to the

users, having them,

you know, sit down and play the

game, getting their feedback

live

promote the game and expose a

lot of people

and really trying to also

who have never heard

of the kind of MOBA genre

or "Multiplayer Online Battle

Arena" genre,

which League of Legends

has really helped to pioneer.

It handles a lot like DOTA,

coming from years of DOTA

experience.

This looks like it's actually

not going to be just a mini

- game, you know.

It's an actual, like,

solid game, you know.

I was not expecting

to enjoy it this much.

I'm generally not very good

at multi-player games

and there's something like a

three-hour wait to get in a game

right now.

Sivir, an ally of

Tarakey on the blue team, just

got killed

and now Morgana

is up there all by herself.

She could get sniped herself

if she's not careful.

The Frost Phoenix is up there,

it could slow her down and kill

her.

Yeah, I got my beta key already.

Downloaded it last night.

I played it last night, too.

Can't get enough, yeah, man.

We had gone three years

without making any revenue,

just spending other

people's money.

Then, we had the audacity

to not sell our game

and to make it

available for free.

Free games had a huge

stigma in the late 2000s,

because the only games

that were available

that were free were really old

games from Asia.

MapleStory was the first

free-to-play game in North

America.

When I first brought

MapleStory out here,

a lot of the business

was going towards console.

So, I kind of went on a path

to being an evangelist

for online gaming

and for free-to-play.

Because, not only was

online gaming very strange,

free-to-play was extremely

strange and the PC,

supposedly as a

platform, was dying.

Traditionally, people buy stuff.

But the one thing that free

- to-play really addresses

is that it's free-to-play.

So a lot of kids would start

playing these games

because there wasn't a hurdle

for them to play.

But, free-to-play

kind of has this reputation

of being a little bit scammy

and tricking you to do these

things or there's going to be

another player

that buys power who's going to

basically overpower you with

their wallet.

Then, out of nowhere

came Riot Games

and they used free-to-play

kind of in the right way.

I'll never forget this.

We're in this meeting

and we're talking about Annie,

how she's all built with fire,

and we're talking about Blue

Annie, and she would use frost.

Maybe Frost Annie

would have like a slower attack

rate

but a little bit more damage

rate, and we'd sell that.

You see Steve Feak kind of

sitting there a little down

about it,

"Steve, you haven't said

anything.

And Brandon says,

What do you think?"

Steve looks up and he's like,

"I don't like it,

but I'm having a hard time

saying why."

And Brandon says,

"Does it-- Does it feel bad?"

And Steve's like,

"Yeah, it just feels bad."

Power.

So, we decided

early on that we wouldn't sell

We didn't want the person

with the most money to win the

game.

People said, "Oh,

man, we're giving up

assuredly making

$100 million on this game

where we don't know how much

we'll make."

In order to try this experiment

There are ways that people do

spend money, they engage deeper

with our content.

We offer a series of champions

on a free rotation,

so several of them will be free.

Those champions rotate

every couple of weeks.

Some players use the free

champions as part of their

repertoire in a game.

For others, they'll buy the ones

that they like the most.

And they will spend our in-game

digital currency called Riot

Points.

One of the other big items

that we sell in the game are

skins.

Skins are a uniform.

Because the game is free,

because people get so much value

out of it,

our players are like,

"Yeah, I'll pay for that skin.

It's kind of a silly idea, but

I'm more than happy to pay for

an outfit.

I'll spend my five,

ten dollars, whatever,

because I had a thousand hours

of fun in this game."

About a week before we

got to the launch date,

people came into the game

and tried out the store

and the store

immediately fell over.

Literally we get 500 people in,

as we're scaling up to a couple

thousand in a scale test, store

falls over.

And watching the public chat

channel

We're sitting there

and one guy had gotten through

the store and had bought Cho

- Gath.

And he was like, "No worries,

guys, I got my man Cho.

It's all good."

It was like one guy out of like

5,000 or something,

and I was like, "Oh, this is

bad. This is really bad."

There was no store in the game.

There was no way to make money.

We would be paying

all the infrastructure costs

and having all the

players in the game,

but without a way for them

to unlock any content.

And so that was when we decided,

let's think through this as

players.

If we were a player,

what would we want to happen to

us?

And so as gamers we decided,

let's make everything free.

We called it a launch

party like, "Hey, we've

launched!"

When in the background

you had like half the company

trying to build a store.

And after locking ourselves

in a room for, you know,

110 hours a week for about six

weeks, uh, we ended up shipping

the store.

We brought the system

down November 18th

and we brought it

back up November 19th.

This right here is Riot Games

history.

Screen and it's blank for like

two minutes.

But we're like, staring at the

And then lo and behold

this little blip shows up for

five bucks.

And so we're like,

"It works, it works. It totally

works!"

And that was the launch

of League of Legends.

League was not an instant

success.

It wasn't like we

launched the game

and then suddenly our numbers

went through the roof.

It was marginally

bigger than the day before,

and the next day was just

marginally bigger than the prior

day.

To tell you the truth,

when I first saw this game,

I thought it was lame.

I thought it was boring.

I looked at the game

and it didn't really appeal to

me.

After the three hour download

and patching,

we got onto League and he was

like, "Dude, just play it,"

and I begrudgingly agreed.

There's kind of this saying

in game dev that

the game developers

are the best at the games

until about a week

after it gets released to the

players.

Once you reach just so many

people, they quickly are the

ones that discover

all the things

that you never knew were there.

When I first started playing the

game,

a lot of people thought the

company was a dumpster fire.

You log on Tuesday afternoon,

can't play, servers are down.

The store is down again.

I crashed out again.

Oh, the client's full of bugs.

It was certainly stressful.

People were running around

with their hair on fire a lot of

the time

as we were attempting to sort

of, keep the wheels on the car.

Any time anything went wrong was

like, "Oh, my God, fix this shit

right now!

We can't lose this momentum!"

It was a problem

where the servers were

overloaded,

but no one would log off.

There was this real sense

of blink and you'll miss it.

So it was sort of the players

fighting the game as much as

each other.

Things slowly started

to stabilize in North America.

They were way worse in Europe.

European fans were furious.

In Europe, we weren't really

growing.

The reason is because we were

publishing League of Legends

through a partner

that had misaligned interests

and weren't trying to operate

the game

in the same way that really care

about the players.

And that culminated

in one particular weekend

where on a Friday

the service went down

at like 11:45, 11:50

local time in France

and we actually can't get anyone

that will restart the servers

until Monday morning.

It looks fine on the screen,

guys, but trust me, it's not.

I'm clicking like a maniac

and it's not working for me.

Attack. Attack that one!

Oh, my goodness, gracious me.

I get on the forums

with the European players

and just start to see

people complaining.

People are just

scrambling and upset,

and from the player perspective,

Riot doesn't care.

The players don't care about the

nuances between partners and

other stuff.

Someone's got to be there.

Like, "Hey guys, I know this is

bad, but I'm here."

And every 15, 20 minutes like,

"Here's an update.

Here's an update.

Here's an update."

And when that doesn't happen,

the imagination runs wild.

People start to make up stuff

and it just goes south really

fast.

When you're looking

at that kind of data,

you realize that the fundamental

belief that players are human

beings

that deserve to be

treated with respect,

and our partner

doesn't share it,

that-- That's just-- It's not--

It wasn't going to work.

We were very fortunate in being

able to unwind that deal

and then launch Riot Europe.

We had exactly 53 days between

the moment we hand-shaked

and the moment they were going

to stop servicing the game to

find a data center,

set up an entity, hire people,

catch up localization,

build up a website,

setting up the whole thing.

And 53 days later, over a

weekend, we transferred the

service.

While we were doing the

transfer, the volcano went off.

Tonight, travelers are stranded

in all on six continents.

Volcanic ash has caused the

worst disruption in air travel

since 9/11.

Europe,

So the volcano blows in

Iceland, sending soot all across

canceling all the flights,

literally two days before I'm

supposed to transfer the

service.

So I had to plan all these

alternate flight routes to get

hardware in.

Africa and then up around the

Middle East

We were flying stuff through

to come in to Germany from the

ea-- Like, it was insane.

So, when we took

over the service,

North America was

about 18 % bigger than Europe

and within three months

Europe was nine percent

bigger than North America,

and it was growing faster.

After we launched in Europe, we

realized we can do a pretty good

job by ourselves.

This is actually what our

players want. They want a direct

relationship with Riot.

The biggest thing that we did

very early was establishing the

forums

as being a really important

conversation and communication

that we would have with players

and that players

would have with each other,

actively asking questions,

generating content.

Season One was the

introduction of ranked ladders,

competitive play.

Was all about playing normal

games.

Prior to that time the game

There was no stat tracking.

When ranked entered the scene,

all of a sudden,

that's where players who really

wanted to test their competitive

mettle

had an opportunity in the game

to go play against each other.

Let it ride, baby!

Let it ride. Boom!

Season One was our first

experiment in Esports.

They were just sort of like one

- off tournaments with a random

set of teams

that were willing and able to

show up and often the whole

tournament

would be played over the course

of a day or two.

And that meant a lot

of back to back to back games,

which was also, in some cases,

tedious to watch.

And so the Season One finals

was going to be our attempt

to wrap that loose season

altogether and crown a winner,

and we wanted to

do it at DreamHack,

because DreamHack was the

biggest LAN party in the world.

DreamHack is this really cool

event

where they take

these old aircraft hangers.

There's like 20,000 or 30,000

kids all playing games.

The tables are built

out of like pallets

and they bring their own

equipment and chairs.

It's one of the coolest gaming

events in the world.

Ladies and gentlemen,

welcome back to the Elmia

convention center,

Jönköping, Sweden.

We are here for the DreamHack

Summer 2011 championship game.

The final's about

to go underway,

$100,000 tournament held

by League of Legends and Riot

Games.

Four hundred thousand people

tuned in

to watch the finals of Season

One at DreamHack,

which blew our minds.

There it is. First blood.

And it looks like it is going to

be Jarvan falling down Shueshei.

It was so interesting to see

this untapped, like,

just world of potential

where the fans were passionate

and they were fans of the game,

but like, now they're also fans

of people playing the game.

One turret's down,

they're gonna back off.

Linak taking

a lot of damage from Ashe.

One turret dead, second turret

dead.

Three hundred damage, that is

Oh, my!

Fnatic going to win

the Season One championship!

Congratulations to Fnatic

for winning Season One.

- GG.

GG indeed.

When Fnatic won,

people were super happy

to see these players that have a

career being birthed.

When did you know

that you had won?

- A moment ago when their Nexus

exploded! -

What are you guys

going do with your hard-earned

cash?

Party for all my friends at

home.

I want to like, throw a big

It was a clear indicator

that the level of interest

within our community

around Esports was really high.

I don't think

that's ever felt like the norm.

At the same time, we were keenly

aware of what was going on in

Korea.

By the mid-2000s,

digital stadiums were built in

Korea for playing Starcraft.

Full-sized stadiums,

full of people screaming.

Starcraft is a game

where you are not on the field.

You're playing like the coach

of a football game.

You're directing Xs and Os.

But one of the things about

League is that it has an easier

entry ramp.

It's easier to pay attention to

the antics of one unit, and one

unit, and one unit,

instead of a battlefield

with 10,000 units.

It's hard to follow the action

if you're not trained.

When we look at early Esports,

part of the reason

that they took off in Korea

is because Korea

is a small country

that is dense and so it was

wired with high speed Internet.

Far higher speed Internet

than we have in the United

States.

Because the population is dense,

the idea that people

could just go downstairs

to the local Internet cafes.

That was a thing.

PC gamers view Korea

as sort of the Mecca of PC

gaming,

where PC gaming is mainstream

and where everybody gets it.

You know you can have an

airliner that's painted with

Starcraft 2 logo

and that's okay,

and it makes sense.

That's just a phenomenally cool

place to be as a gamer.

The competition in Korea

is extremely severe.

I would say the most severe

in the entire world

if you look at just

online games alone.

There are 200 to 400 new games

that are published each year

on top of the 200 to 400 games

that are already actively

being operated in the market.

They also play

pretty much only online PC games

and they're almost

all free-to-play.

So, when we go to Korea, the

novelty of League of Legends in

the West,

which is that it's free

to play online PC game,

that's nonexistent in Korea.

Everybody has that.

So, what else you got?

Cheers ring out from the League

of Legends press conference.

These people are not your

average individuals.

I just want to say hi to all the

League of Legends fans out the

there in Korea.

We're getting ready to provide

a phenomenal quality of service

and bring the game

here to Korea.

I thought it was just lip

service,

a marketing policy to be

successful in Korea.

But it wasn't that. It was

really sincere.

The Korean players as well,

were able to feel a lot of

sincerity from Riot Games.

League of Legends, AOS

The newest game

on the top ten list in Korea

before we launched was

like three and a half, four

years old.

So very few of these games

ever crack the top ten.

Most go up and then go into

obscurity very, very quickly.

So we finally launched, and on

day six, we break it into top

ten,

and we were looking at ourselves

thinking, "Holy cow, did this

really happen?"

And the next thing we know

after three months,

it's the number

one game in Korea.

To the Korean gamers,

it was very different.

It had qualities of competition,

qualities of strategy,

qualities of speed

and so many components

that a lot of gamers really

truly enjoy.

I think there's cultural

universals.

People want social competition.

As the game grows,

it creates this

positive feedback loop

where more and more people

know about it,

which means more and more people

want to know how to play it,

so they can compete.

There has to be

something about the game

that continues to be rewarding.

For League of Legends, that's

mastery, the pursuit of mastery.

Knowing I'm getting better,

spending effort to pursue

getting better,

feeling rewarded

when I have gotten better.

Those are experiences that are

appealing regardless of what

culture you're in.

["Dance of the Sugar

Plum Fairy" playing]

Tetris resonated

across all the cultures in the

world.

So it got that part.

But it wasn't sport-like.

The biggest thing that makes

a sport is spectators.

League of Legends

is what's gotten me into

Esports.

There are people cheering out

there and really rooting for

these pro teams

and League of Legends has really

just come a long way

in a short amount of time.

I wanted to watch the LCS,

uh, the finals so bad

because it was really something

cool to me.

After the

Season 1 finals,

I think everybody at Riot was

buzzing from the reaction from

players

and really started to challenge

ourselves to think about, okay,

what does Esports look like for

Riot and for League of Legends?

We knew it was

going to be a big undertaking.

We had no road map.

We had a really small focused

team,

but it wasn't a team that had

much prior knowledge in

broadcast.

How do we officially get

started? Are you going to be

kicking us off here?

I believe you have the chat

prompt so if you want to tell

them to start.

Uh, I don't have

chat right here.

When you think of

NFL, you think of Sunday

football.

You think of marquee matchups

on Monday night.

And Esports didn't

really have that.

It was these intermittent

quarterly tournaments

that had no real rhyme

or reason on timing.

It was when's the venue

going to be available.

As a player, I had

watched League of Legends

Esports

since the Season One

competitions at DreamHack.

And at the time my impression

of League of Legends

tournaments,

honestly, is that

they were very unreliable.

- Why are you yelling at me?

Are you live?

Yes, we're live!

Stop yelling at me.

- Yeah.

- Frickin' A.

This is just not worthy of a

fan's time.

We knew at that point we wanted

to create a formal league.

We built out what we

thought the LCS could be.

We knew it needed a consistent

schedule of events,

a weekly regular season with a

playoffs, with a World Final

event.

You're a little fuzzy.

Are you using wireless?

I am using wireless.

Do you want me to plug it in? O

a--

- If you could, that would be

neat. -Yeah.

- Yeah, hold on.

I remember meeting Whalen.

Worried about what you guys are

doing here.

I told him like, I'm really

There are all these tournaments

and you're gonna start

to formalize it all into this.

Are people going to tune in

every single week to watch this?

If you're talking about

like scrapping the whole thing

and going,

yeah, this Esports thing,

I don't know so much about it.

We're strongly committed

to Esports at Riot.

So this is-- This is a thing

and it's going to be around.

Esports enhances

the experience of being a

player.

You have something to aspire to.

Players enjoy watching the game.

That's really the

perspective that we take

for sort of justifying the

investment.

That makes the most sense

But, we definitely like,

don't have that crystal ball.

We're going to sort

of learn as we go.

When Riot came out

and announced the huge things

that they were going

to do in Esports,

everyone was really,

really skeptical.

We're thinking this was

too big, too much, too fast.

It was going to be a disaster.

It was going to fail.

We really laid the

foundation for what would

eventually become the LCS,

but first we actually had to get

through the end of Season Two

and ensuring that

we ended strongly

with a good World Championship.

Season Two World Championship

was by far the biggest Esports

event

Riot had ever put on.

It's going to be really amazing.

The big thing here is World

Elite has yet to be seen

in the previous two days

of this tournament.

We had been having

this remarkable tournament

and it's this really cool

setting, that was in sort of the

courtyard

between the Staples Center

and the Nokia Center.

Whoo!

League of Legends number one.

Taipei Assassins!

- Whoo!

We're in the middle

of W.E., top team from China,

against CLG, top team from EU.

We're CLG. We're like

a dark horse coming into the

World Finals.

We're doing pretty well for the

year, but no one expected us

to really get

through to the top.

We're going into the group

stages against World Elite.

One of the big Chinese teams

at the time.

Only one quarterfinal matchup

remains

before two epic semi-final

showdowns to determine who will

play for the right

to call themselves

the Season Two World Champions.

Ladies and gentlemen,

the final day

of the Season Two

World Playoffs begins now.

That was kind of the

peak of Esport popularity at

that point.

Stakes were as high as they've

ever been for League of Legends

Esports,

and we just-- We just

fell on our face.

Stages went from being like one

of the best days,

The Season Two group

- frankly ever, to one of the

worst. -

Everything was going

great. Amazing team fight.

The game was about

to be decided.

And all of a sudden,

the Internet goes out.

...I think he was grabbed.

CaoMei's guardian angels

does get dropped!

- Oh, my God!

I do not believe

what has happened.

You get this little blurb on

your screen "Attempting to

reconnect."

That's bad.

Just saw attempting to reconnect

and teams lagged out,

players lagged out

and everyone's

kind of up in arms.

Like, "What the heck

just happened there?"

Fifty-nine minutes, 30 seconds

gone.

Ladies and gentlemen,

what the hell?

Normally, like,

if there is a pause or a lag

issue,

we can kind of fix

it at the time,

and our guys are just

like nodding their heads like,

"I don't think

we're going to get this back."

So we cannot unpause it

and recreate where it left off.

And so all the progress

into this game is lost.

Time. So they decide to do

another one.

The game was pretty close at the

Ladies and gentlemen,

there you can see it on your

screen.

We are into the game.

Let's hope for the last time

in the quarterfinals

because I don't think anyone

here will be able to handle

another remake.

And it happened again and again.

It clearly is adding up,

the amount of cheers they've

had--

- Oh, my God.

I don't know

what this means.

- Like, are we going to remake

again?

- Of course they are. We might.

- What else are they going to do?

- It could happen.

Imagine you're in

any prosporting game

and you have to just start over

after you're sweating

and you're out there for 30

minutes. That's what happened.

A typical League of Legends game

should go on for about maybe 35

minutes

to 45 minutes, an hour at most.

In the group stages for seven

hours.

We played this one game

No matter how long

League of Legends Esports goes,

if it grows on for ten years

and becomes bigger than the

Super Bowl,

all those things,

everyone who was here will be

like,

"Remember when they had

a seven hour best of three,"

and everyone will know

what they're talking about.

And we're sitting on stage

saying, "Riot, is this game

going to happen?"

Where is the competitive

integrity? Where is all this

other stuff?

These teams were playing.

What are you going to do about

it?

The plug.

Eventually, we just

decide, you know, we got to pull

We had to send our audience home

without having finished the

group stages, even though they

purchased tickets.

We were so disappointed

in ourselves.

Like we were-- We had just--

and we just like let everyone

down.

We'd built up this huge event

It was the biggest

tournament. It was a high

profile failure.

That's something that could

totally alter the course of Riot

Esports.

First step was letting our fans

know and Brandon bit the bullet

on that one.

And he's like, "I'm going to go

out there and talk to everyone."

It kills us to have

to deliver this news

because you guys have been

so unbelievably patient with us,

but let me explain

exactly what's going on.

We've been having a myriad

of Internet connectivity issues.

Given what these players

have been through so far today,

we think the possibility

of another restart on a game

would just be unfair to them.

We recognize the sacrifice

that you guys have made

being patient with us today.

I want to talk about what we're

going to do for you guys, the

live audience.

We're going to be refunding

your tickets.

I'm sure you don't care about

that. We're going to be

refunding your tickets.

We're going to be giving you

guys $25 in Riot Points.

One more thing.

We also have

a merchandise store full of

stuff

and we want to give that

to you guys, too, for free.

At that point we open up the

merch store.

We said everybody can get,

you know, merch for free.

We ordered pizza for all the

people who were staying there.

I want to just one more time,

we're so sorry about this.

Literally, we've been

scrambling like crazy.

We've been having so much fun.

- Thank you.

And they start to chant, Riot.

Riot! Riot! Riot!

They were actually,

remarkably understanding at the

end.

That felt amazing.

Our ops team built

an offline server.

They ripped a server out

of our data center

and made it so that the Internet

can no longer mess with our

tournaments.

And then that kind of fueled us

into Galen Center,

which was a couple days later

for the live event for the

finals.

Rivington the Third

here coming to you

live from USC's Galen Center

in Los Angeles.

Guys, let's take a moment to go

behind the scenes

and just see what's going

into the production of the world

finals.

Right now, the grand final stage

in the process of being built

in preparation

for the League of Legends Season

Two World Finals.

TPA was in the driver's seat.

Toyz was on Oriana yet again

and his shock wave into

Stanley's taunt gave them

complete control,

locking up two members of Azubu

leading to a Baron.

Not playing

like the underdog any longer,

the Taipei Assassins

push their way to the Nexus

defeating Azubu Frost to become

the Season Two World Champions.

Against all odds they take home

one million dollars,

the Summoner's Cup and the righ

to be called champions of the

world.

TPA! TPA! TPA!

Our own naiveté was

actually an advantage in those

early years.

We never really felt

like it was going to be real,

like, more than sort

of like a dream,

but players were just showing up

en masse and filling all the

seats,

and it felt justified.

It didn't feel like we were

being extravagant or crazy.

It felt like, we can do this.

And then the question became,

"How the heck do we pull it off?

Like, how do we broadcast this?"

I was the guy

that had the broadcast

experience

and I had worked at NBC

and I had worked on sports

before Esports.

There were a lot of aspects

of broadcast sports

that we were able to bring

into this new frontier

where there were

these young people

who are so passionate

about playing this game.

It's like opening up

a new world for them

that added

some of that drama of live TV.

We're trying to find the right

blend of sport, game, and kind

of show.

Demacia!

We have to stay true

to League of Legends.

There are some sort of

ceremonial game show almost

aspect to it.

We're going to ask

some of our fans

if they could marry a champion,

who would it be?

- I'd marry Leona.

- I love the Teemo.

I would marry Teemo

because of the hat.

In Season Three,

we had to grow our talent pool,

our on-air personality pool

before we could even host an

analyst desk.

And that's something we wanted

to do from the get go.

Because we're big football fans

and we know that it's not just

about watching the game.

It's about watching

the analysis.

He's in the worst shape of all.

He's down to half health

and he's going to get dropped by

Cybolic, Vladimir, right here.

With professional

Esports players,

when they started even playing

League of Legends,

Esports didn't exist.

For them, they've just suddenly

gotten dragged and dropped

into this world of

stardom and fandom.

When I first decided to pursue

this,

my dad definitely thought

it was a bad idea.

I was playing from Scotland.

There's this stigma that's

attached with gaming in general,

which is when your mom's

basically on your case all the

time saying,

"Get off the computer,

go and do something productive."

With my parents in regards to,

you know,

There was an educating process

this is a-- This

can be a big deal.

Let's go baby, double kill!

Get that top tower!

We overestimated the pro player

ability to like actually engage

with the crowd

because, again, these are 17,

18, 19-year-old kids

who aren't used to being stars.

I had to start

doing interviews and dealing

with fans.

I definitely was

not good at that,

I've really always been scared

of like public speaking

and being on stage

and all of that kind of thing.

Welcome

back to the show.

Ballz from the victorious

Quantic Gaming.

Phreak here with LemonNation and

You guys didn't make

it through groups.

How do you feel

when you're like, a favorite

and you like--

What does that do to you?

Uh... it was very depressing.

We were joking about suicide.

I've always been too awkward

I guess, you know?

Sometimes they don't understand

the importance of, you know,

giving a good interview

and doing all these

promotional activities.

They don't realize

that what they're signing up for

is not just playing this game

at a professional level,

but it's being this kind

of celebrity player.

You have this huge amount of

influence and eyes on you all

the time.

It's keeping sponsors happy

and keeping your fans engaged

and a lot of it is growing up,

you know, very quickly.

Job. Like, you play video games

for a living?

It sounds like a really easy

That sounds great.

My kid would love to do that.

It's not that easy.

It puts an immense amount

of pressure on you as a player.

There's no respite,

there's no hiding.

You're constantly online.

And if I'm not online, I'm

missing out.

If I practice football

for eight hours in a day,

I am completely exhausted.

I have no more energy left.

I go home and I rest

and I come back the next day.

Esports doesn't have

that physical limitation.

We could be playing

anywhere between ten to 14 hours

a day,

and that's just playing.

That's not necessarily the

thinking.

I go to bed and I'm thinking

about the game.

If you can play

for 12 or 13 hours, you should.

But, that takes a toll on you.

It's like a hammer on your head.

Boom, boom, boom. Everyday.

Boom, boom, boom.

It looks like Dyrus is

down for the count already.

That is classic Dyrus right

there.

He's going to have to be

careful, keeping an eye on...

When I was a player, I knew the

risks, but I felt like I was a

gladiator,

you know, in an arena

and I had to entertain the

people.

They could

look to finish it.

Good Esports games

are all about moments.

League of Legends

has these peaks and valleys.

When the Jungler is coming up

through the river,

the suspense starts to build

as he goes in for a gank.

And the crowd in anticipation is

like, "Oh, what's going to

happen?"

No!

The xPeke backdoor play is

probably one, if not the most,

famous play of all time.

It's time for the last League of

Legends game of the day

and it's a big one,

ladies and gentlemen.

- Please welcome Fnatic Raidcall!

XPeke is playing for Fnatic.

He's going up against Ocelote

and SK Gaming.

Do you have something

to say to your rivals?

- Have fun.

- Okay. Thank you very much,

guys.

XPeke uses his teleport

to sneak into the opponent's

base.

...he instantly

teleports straight...

He only needs to get

one more shot on him

and he'll be dead and

SK would have won.

And he's able to keep rift

walking around the Nexus for

several seconds

while he's evading

the other defense coming in.

Is anyone going

to be able to deal with this

one?

Catches him with another axe.

He's very low on health.

They're pushing on the Nexus.

And he's able to

take down the Nexus.

- I do not believe it!

- Oh, my God!

They slaughtered them!

XPeke and Fnatic

were just in utter disbelief.

Ocelote and SK,

they were very, very upset.

This is the ultimate drama

with so much on the line.

This really does feel

a lot like sports.

We are just destroyed

right now as a team.

And we failed. We failed.

I'm not going to lie.

Even today,

I'm a bit salty about that one.

Um...

it was a good play,

especially in that context,

great tournament, important

game.

As bad as that moment was,

when it comes into competition,

you always need competitors

that you want to destroy.

As a professional

gamer, there's no balance.

You just can't afford

to have a social life.

But, then you have to realize

why we all do it.

Like, we love the competition.

We love saying "we're the best."

We love kicking someone else's

ass.

That's what we all strive for.

We strive to prove ourselves

on a world stage.

Marc and I grew up in LA.

Staples is the home of the

Lakers.

So, being here today is just,

I don't know how to describe it.

It's just really sentimental.

Welcome to the Season Three

World Championship Final!

Coming to you live

from the Staples Center

here in Los Angeles, California.

And we've got the double boxes

and double redundancies?

We have two servers.

We have Internet back-up.

We have back-up power.

This is the spot

where we will bring you guys

all the analysis, the

highlights, and the predictions

for tonight's final,

starting with our extended

pre-game coverage.

Yeah. Good luck.

Crush it. See you, guys.

By bringing up the players on a

lift

and using technology to sort of

elevate this new type of sport,

for us that felt

like another step forward.

SK Telecom, they will be

the Season three World

Champions!

League is such an international

game

and the international leagues

are so popular.

We knew we wanted

to take it on the road.

Korea was the obvious choice.

The Seoul World Cup

stadium is, to Koreans,

a very historic place.

The fact that it's possible to

do Esports in a place like this

with 40,000 paid spectators

gathering,

that becomes huge news.

Forty thousand people? What the

hell? 40,000 people?

The opening ceremony

will begin shortly with

traditional Korean music

followed by a live performance

from Imagine Dragons,

playing their hit

song "Warriors."

♪ We are the warriors ♪

Spending big money on events

like this isn't very common.

Especially in a place like

Korea,

parents with young children

consider games to be harmful.

If you enjoy games too much,

you can't study well and go to

a good college.

You can't get a good job.

Until these perceptions change,

it's difficult to say when it

will be acknowledged as a sport.

Hello, Berlin!

Ladies and gentlemen,

are you guys ready

for the 2015 League of Legends

World Championship?

At Mid Lane, Faker!

Then you have players like

Faker.

Who, I guess

if there is a Michael Jordan

of League of Legends or Esports,

this is the guy.

I think almost universally

considered the best player,

Faker has remained dominant

for years now.

He's just that good.

I have so much to tell you, but

my English is not good.

So, thank you and... thank for

cheering and always loving me.

It feels like we're returning

to our roots,

but with way better

production values

and capabilities to actually

deliver a show like this.

We used projection on the floor

to demonstrate how the field

position would work on the Rift.

You could feel as the stakes

rose,

the intensity of the fans

and of the players

and the entire

vibe of the event.

SK Telecom

have overcome every challenge.

They are the undisputed

best team in the world!

The SKT reign continues.

They win their third

World Championship!

Truly a legend.

Faker! Faker! Faker!

Faker became such a big player,

because he could do all these

mechanically advanced moves,

always hitting everything

at the right second.

That's where idols come in.

That's where you start

wanting to be like somebody.

Today's games

were absolutely awesome!

I lost my voice

because I was screaming too

loud.

It was the best experience

I've ever had for League.

Because they have

spent virtually zero dollars

on traditional marketing,

League of Legends has kind of

flown underneath the radar by

the mainstream.

Suddenly, when all these stories

started popping up about Esports

and these tournaments and,

"Wow, the Staples Center

was sold out for

this massive event,"

you naturally had a lot of

derision from traditional media.

It's a pastime

some think is symbolic of

slackers,

- of teenagers killing time.

But video gaming is now

a professional sport.

You could call

it the Super Bowl of video

gaming.

It's the biggest competitive

event we've never heard of.

League of

Legends. -

League of Legends.

League of Legends.

League of Legends.

What is League of Legends?

League of Legends

is the most played, like, game

ever.

- The most--?

- The most played, downloaded

game.

Oh, because it's--

it's an Internet game?

I had zero knowledge

of the fact that this exists.

You didn't know

there were cyber athletes?

My hand to God, I didn't know.

But my issue is it's still not a

sport. It's a game.

Have you guys seen Esports

and the Eleague?

I don't know if that's sports.

Do you have any statistics

on how many of those people

also go to Star Trek

conventions?

I

find it very bizarre.

This is the sign of the

apocalypse

I feel like it's really--

that people are actually

into this sort of thing.

I don't feel that way.

I'm kind of excited about this.

I can understand people

watching a golf game.

No.

I can't understand people

watching somebody

play a computer game.

Well, I have to say my wife

can't understand people

watching a golf game

because she's not a golfer.

So, if you're not a gamer

that's not going to appeal to

you.

For a lot of the older folks,

they're like, amazed by it.

Watch other people playing a

game?

They're like, how could people

The flip side is we watch other

people playing a game all the

time.

- Games like basketball,

football, etc. -Yeah.

Throw

home! -

Won't go!

I like sitting down and watching

League of Legends games.

Like, I don't normally watch

sports either.

Which is funny

because I played a lot of

sports.

Chris Kluwe is perfect.

Chris' right footed punt.

Very high.

You have five guys

working together on a team

and if they don't work together

then the other team's going to

beat them, and I mean, that's

what a team sport is.

You have traditional sports

athletes

like Rick Fox enter the space

with his own team.

They are digital athletes.

Athletes. No look, can you think

about--

They're professional digital

athlete.

Look, I think about what it took

for me to become a professional

Took a lot of concentration,

a lot of dedication, practice,

preparation, stamina.

They're sponsored.

They have careers.

They make hundreds

of thousands of dollars.

Player is close to $300,000 a

year.

The average salary for a

There is

rumors like Faker

turned down multimillion dollar

salaries in China.

Players are now

even eligible for U.S. P1 visas

normally reserved

for touring athletes.

What is a P1A visa?

A P1A visa is a visa

that's given for athletes,

which means that you are

an exceptional athlete

from another country

coming into the United States

and you have to prove that

your athletic capabilities are

good enough

to guarantee you living

inside the United States.

Equivalent of the Super Bowl in

my world?

The Worlds? Is this the

Yeah, I would say so.

Except the only difference would

be if the Super Bowl

is just U.S.

This is like, there's 13

countries that play this game,

and they all come together

for the World Championship.

The best Korean team comes

to the States to play

the best North American team.

The best team in

China come to play.

It's the best team.

Trained together for a whole

year.

Right. That's the difference.

So, you're getting the games

at the highest level.

Oh, my God!

Quadrakill from Fnatic!

Quadrakill from Fnatic.

The feeling in there is exactly

the same as being on an field.

You have fans cheering.

You have, you know, big plays

developing.

You have moments of glory

and moments of defeat.

Eli

throwing into traffic on the

sideline.

It'll be really

interesting to see if the

sustainability is there

and whether we can take League

and build it

into what can be

generationally relevant.

The way that we identify

with teams be it

if we're a Red Sox fan and we're

long suffering until the 2000s.

The Boston Red Sox are World

Champions!

We want to see that type

of generational rich fabric

of fandom

that goes beyond year to year.

That's the goal to have Esports

become sports that last.

The growth around League of

Legends and the growth around

Esports

has been tightly coupled

with accessibility of the

content.

Live streaming Twitch and

YouTube and Facebook,

all these places you can watch

this content.

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen,

to Greatest League Talk Show.

I am your host, Scarra.

Streaming has become

such a generational thing.

Some people don't

want to watch sports

or they don't want to watch,

like, TV, but they want to watch

gaming.

Use a slow roll. Wait for peopl

to slowly smash your face in.

They are gamers and in their

free time they want to watch

what they love.

All the top streamers are

usually old professional

players.

They're kind of going to have

to start fights off of Scarra.

If he can land really, really

good ults, he'll just make

things happen.

I ended up being like,

one of the first ever

educational streamers.

I would talk about

what I'm doing.

Now, that sounds crazy right?

Super easy. But is it?

Ideally, you don't want to get

into a range to Q over...

Think about you narrating your

life, every aspect of your life

every day.

That's what we're doing.

100 and f-- Oh, my God!

I have a subscriber base

where they pay a certain amount

every month to support me.

Donations, and they can support

me just by watching

They can support me through

because I make money

through ad revenue as well.

I am currently making

six figures right now.

I will eventually

be a millionaire.

- Oh, my God, what a game.

Victory!

Infernal! Sorry.

I was exposed to Twitch

via my online friends

and I started watching these

streamers and I got hooked on it

and I'd watch them and I'd be

like, "Wow, I love what they do!

I wish I could do that someday."

Aw, give me the penta, dude!

As a streamer, I'm

here to entertain,

smile, and I want to enjoy what

I do.

I want to make people laugh,

Yes, yes! All three CS.

I did a lot of stuff like

student council in high school,

was a part of clubs, dance team,

soccer team, stuff like that.

I really love making friends

and I remember hitting triple

digits, "100 people watching."

I thought that was like,

the biggest deal ever.

Nowadays I average like 5,000

to 10,000 people watching me.

People come up to you

and they say like,

"I watched your stream and you

really helped me through a tough

time where

I lost a parent or

I lost a friend"

Thanks, Chenyascream!

Welcome to the Poki squad,

appreciate 'ya.

You really help people stay

happy and feel company just by

streaming.

So, I'm going to play with a

bunch of my viewers right now.

We're all just

loading into a game.

I love

human interaction.

And there's just no better way

to interact digitally

with anyone

than with live streaming,

period.

Ocelote was a

streamer back in the early days

of League of Legends.

There's comic timing to

everything. Even anger.

And if you're charismatic and

funny about being angry and

furious,

- that can go a long way.

It was kind of one of the first

streams that banked on being

entertainingly toxic.

Ocelote, Ocelote, Ocelote, yeah

When you're immature,

when you haven't lived through a

lot of ups and downs in life,

then you get thrown a bad

teammate, in a bad moment,

in front of a few thousand

people watching you,

and then that amount of

pressure, peer pressure.

It's just everything

comes too fast,

and you just feel very

frustrated about the situation.

And you say things that

you don't even feel yourself,

you know.

In the case of Ocelote,

he would say terrible things

to insult people

whether it's your opponent

and you're just trash talking

them

or it's your own

teammate on your team

that has not performed up

to your standards.

Riot had to get

involved and say,

"If you're going to be

a professional athlete

representing

not only League of Legends,

but Riot Games, playing in this

League, you're going to need

to clean it up."

Of course there was

no ill intent. And I'm a kid.

I remember it was about the time

that my father, actually,

was going through chemotherapy.

But reacting that badly,

especially in front of people,

is the worst thing you can do.

You know, because these kids

look up to you.

Fuck, fuck, fuck!

Showing them that kind of bad

side of competition

is the worst thing you can do.

I remember the community

and Riot being extremely fair.

Which helped me also be self

- reflective.

Being judgmental,

But at the same time,

being empathetic,

and giving me a second chance,

which they did.

So, I'm incredibly

grateful for that.

Thank you very much to all of

you. I love you all. Bye.

While there's one

case of Ocelote,

there are a hundred

cases of players

who have not reformed,

who have not cut out the

toxicity.

The Internet

has this amazing power to create

crowds

and crowds create anonymity.

Because it's free-to-play,

you can get people coming

into the game from anywhere

and you can have people having

almost zero accountability

for their actions there.

League of Legends

has a really bad reputation

for being toxic because you're

in a high pressure situation.

There are a lot of factors

outside of your control.

I can see why people

get frustrated

and I can see

why in today's online culture

that frustration turns

into something pretty ugly.

No fucking joke.

I'm not kidding. Kill yourself.

It's very similar to

what you see in road rage, for

example.

It leads to that "flash in the

pan" rage where we tend to act

out.

The part that I find very

painful, just as a gamer,

is that my crime

is that I show up as a woman.

I don't play on voice chat

because you're going to figure

out pretty quickly

that I'm not of the

male persuasion,

and so that usually leads to,

you know, variety of your

classic,

"get back to the

kitchen" comments

to nasty stuff that I'm totally

not going to repeat here.

I don't think it's a

League of Legends specific

problem.

I think it's a gaming problem.

For a lot of us, it's

become white noise.

If we got legitimately upset,

we would never play.

You almost have to learn a bit

about human psychology

and realize that this person

must be in such a terrible place

to be doing that kind of thing.

I almost feel bad for

them in that sense.

Although you can

get a lot of hate,

I try to focus more

on how to fix the situation

as opposed to being mad at it.

Early League

started out small enough

that many of these problems

didn't manifest.

Then it grew.

At some point, League said

we need to take this seriously.

We need to engage

in the process of governance.

Welcome to the Tribunal.

The Tribunal allows you to shap

player behavior for the better,

acting directly on reports

from fellow players.

We built a penalty

system for that.

And we even experimented

with trying to pull the

community in

and have them be the arbiters

of what deserved a penalty or

what didn't.

After reviewing the

chat log, I decide that I want

to punish him.

But, if we jump in there and

we're like, "You can't do that"

and "That's terrible"

and all of these different

things.

Then what happens is we just

collectively as people dig our

heels in.

Like, "Whoa, this is change.

Whoa, what's happening?"

That's what lead us to say,

"Let's figure out what this gap

is."

And it turned out

that it was encouragement.

It was telling folks

when they're doing a great job,

that they're doing a great job.

Instead of it always being

about the punishments,

let's celebrate with players.

And that has worked

so much better

than just strictly focusing

on those penalties.

But we're never going to reach

perfect. There is no perfect.

There is no end state.

There's just this ongoing

understanding of players.

Even though people might

say that the community is toxic,

I feel like we can

make it a better place

by being support talkers

rather than trash talkers.

Toxicity is negative.

Let's not keep that up.

We're all about good times.

I'm here to say

that there is a whole side

that never gets talked

about full of awesome people

who are being

really good to each other.

So, keep playing League.

League of Legends

is part of a very big movement.

It's the players and fans

that are all coming together

to craft this

experience together.

League of--

Legends!

League of--

Legends!

League of--

Legends!

It's not just a bunch

of people independently

consuming something.

It is a ton of people

all over the world creating

something.

For them, it's about

the characters themselves.

It's this character

driven situation

where you kind of assume

the fantasy of this game.

The huge cast of

characters that has developed

is one of the reasons

why League can have that

popularity.

It gives that access.

We're generally looking

for something that we identify

with,

and that means that anybody

can come to that and find a way

in.

I thought the art

of the characters was so cool.

This looks really fun and

interesting and I really like

it.

Heimerdinger does have

that best swag walk.

- Yeah, he has that swag.

- Heimerdinger swag!

Order, entropy, a never-ending

cycle.

Oh, my God, I love Graves.

They made that Graves skin

with like, no shirt and I was

like, mm!

Feeling lucky? Try me.

I connect with it so much

that I am Draven.

My favorite character by far is

Teemo. He is an underdog.

He is a little guy.

He's not strong. He's very fast.

He can't really fight you

straight up one on one.

I like him because he is super

relatable to basically anyone.

Armed and ready!

It doesn't matter if you're from

China or Korea or USA,

you see this guy and you're

like, "I know what that

character is all about."

The characters have such vibrant

backgrounds and personality to

them.

And that's the reason why, for

example, you see so many people

cosplaying.

It's not just, like,

a generic character.

It's they're rich

and full of life.

I'm a casual player.

But I'm playing Wukong,

obviously.

He's a fun character to play.

You do not want to

mess with that dude.

Seven foot, virtually unkillable

barbarian warrior is coming at

you

with a sword

that can cleave you in two.

The designers decided

to name him after a character

that I had played in EverQuest,

which was a barbarian warrior.

So they thought Tryndamere

was a really cool name

and just fit the persona.

A lot of players, when I'm

playing, get disappointed

if I'm not playing Tryndamere.

They're like, "Please play

Tryndamere."

What's the secret to

League of Legends?

It's this right here.

It's the community.

- Oh.

- Look around. Do a 360.

That's the secret. That's

literally it.

It's hard for me because

my parents don't really

understand

like, all this stuff, you know?

I've played with these guys

for like, a year now, if not

longer.

And it's just like,

I talk to these guys every

single day.

For me to actually come

and finally meet them, it's so

cool!

And when we're playing online,

it's nice to come on and have

family or a community that

understands that.

In games, there's no borders

that typically exist.

Like when I meet someone online,

I am meeting them at face value.

I know nothing about them,

I can't see them.

I don't know what race they are.

I don't know what

their socioeconomic background

is.

I don't know if they're

important or not. Like, it

doesn't matter.

Where are you guys from?

North Dakota.

Austin, Texas.

Anchorage, Alaska.

- Ugh.

- Pittsburgh.

Chicago.

- Vancouver.

League of Legends becomes

this universal language in of

itself.

Like, I can be in Shanghai

and see somebody with a Teemo

hat and instantaneously we have

this bond.

And can talk about like, "Oh,

Teemo!" And have smiles and

laughs.

It was just a hugely cool thing

to see the passion

that players would have

for League of Legends,

you know, in all these different

parts of the world.

Publishers like to think of

markets

as just completely

different internationally.

But I think gamers around the

world have an awful lot in

common

that people don't necessarily

recognize or appreciate.

As huge and crazy as it is,

they've only managed to make

this one game.

And while they've certainly

admitted that there are more

games in the pipeline,

how much pressure must there be

on you if you're working on one

of those projects

to follow up something

like a League of Legends?

You know, is League of Legends

the best game Riot will ever

make?

Is it the biggest game

they will ever make?

I don't know,

but there's a chance it could

be.

Ever since League of

Legends really kicked off

and became just sort

of a phenomenon,

everyone's sort of waiting to

see when it will die.

Every game dies.

Starcraft was the Esport

for a long time and it faded

away.

I don't think a game can last

forever.

I think eventually

another game will overlap it

as, you know, like the biggest

Esport. I think that's just the

nature of Esports.

There are more Esports titles

out there.

There are more games

taking up mind share.

It's a little bit of an arms

race of who's going to be doing

it best.

Who's going to invest more

people and more resources

into Esports and competition?

We're in a make or break time

for Esports.

Like, this thing needs

to continue to grow

at the rate that it's projected

to grow. People talk about it by

2020,

it's going to be a $1.5 billion

business every year.

All these investors have come in

buying the hype,

buying the speculation,

where this thing is going.

If it doesn't go that way,

this whole ecosystem

is at risk of collapsing.

This is Beijing, China. Welcome

to the 2017 World Championship!

We wanted to go to China

and set up a show in the Bird's

Nest.

The home of the Olympics.

That presents a lot of risks

and it's scary.

This is the exact track

in which Usain Bolt

broke his own 100-meter record.

Most sports have

100 years of history.

We have under ten.

We know that we need

to develop deeper bonds

with potential partners and

sponsors and we are incredibly

motivated.

So much of it has been about

Faker, as it always is.

But this year,

when they've needed him most,

he has played better

than ever before.

We wanted to create memories

with these big events

and we know that those memories

are what carry on.

When people look back, they

think of these kind of flashbulb

moments.

Those are the things

that you can't really value,

because it was a moment that all

of us will remember forever.

The upset is complete

as the kills come through.

The SKT dynasty is over.

All hail the new kings!

Samsung Galaxy,

- your 2017 World Champions!

Every single player

talks about revenge

against SKT and they got it.

Faker is destroyed.

Once a phenomenon

like League of Legends happens,

you can't undo the

effect it's had.

It may evolve, it may change,

but it doesn't just disappear.

The impact I think

has barely begun to be felt.

It might even be a generation

before we truly see it.

Our parents always kind of

thought that we would stop

playing these games.

And I think we're just starting

to hit the point

where people feel like games

are here to stay.

Almost everybody

can be considered a gamer.

Whether it be Candy Crush

on your phone

or whether you scrim League

eight hours every day.

You know, everybody can enjoy

some type of game.

League of Legends is a

lifestyle.

I think the only thing my

parents want is me to find a

girlfriend.

And that's it.

My parents are just like,

"You got to pursue a love life."

And I'm just like, "I'm busy

playing League, how do I do

that?"

I came out on League of Legends

with my boyfriend.

I play League of Legends

because my friends forced me to.

We ended up building a really

strong relationship through

League of Legends,

strong enough that he decided

to make me his best man at his

wedding.

League of Legends isn't

done, it hasn't reached its full

potential.

We're not perfect

and we don't get it all right,

but, man, I just think

it's such a privilege

to help make the types of games

that I most love to experience.

We realize

that it's not about us.

It's about our audience

that we're trying to serve.

You're no longer who you were.

You are now part of something

greater.

Everything that we do

is made possible by the

community,

their level of engagement,

their level of support.

The community is the game.

Nice job, guys.

GG!