Riot Steals IP. China Controls eSports.

Riot announced five new games. Well…one we’ve already heard of. Team Fight Tactics. The other four are;

1. A fighting game with League of Legends Characters
2. An FPS game that looks like Overwatch / Paladins but with LoL Graphics.
3. An RPG that looks like Diablo but with LoL characters.
4. A card game because what 1 billion dollar company doesn’t have one

It’s a big announcement but one that shouldn’t be praised. Riot are basically Apple. The majority of these games are going to use Riot’s established eSports productions as a marketing tool and further seize dominant control over eSports. These games were only chosen to be made because of this fact.

But before we continue. It doesn’t mean these games won’t be fun. But as I always say not everyone realises how much fun they are having or how much more fun they could be having. If you play League of Legends then surely you are aware of how many people do not enjoy the game and yet continue to play it every day in a state of permenant anger.

The Fighting Game

So a fighting game with League of Legends characters. Fighting games are rather simple. We know there is an eSports demand but the scene has never been large on one particular game. Or to put it better. “It could be bigger”. Riot can do that. Riot can take the base template of any fighting game. Adopt LoL Champions and place pro players up on the stage and you’ve got a top tier game…

And I mean top tier as in “it beats the competition”. Not that the gameplay is good or innovative. Just simply that is all it’s going to take. League of Legends has tons of established lore, artwork, promotional videos. It already has a huge loyal fan base with a love-hate relationship and years of investment. In ways it is good riot is rewarding that investment by expanding the lore outwards.

A fighting game is a really smart move for Riot. My only complaint is fighting games havn’t innovated for a long time. Our fighting games are still heavily offensive based with little defensive options. Our fighting games continue to lack resemblence to cool movie fight scenes because of that. Most cool fight scenes in movies are not two people hitting each other until one punch makes them fall over. There’s lots of ducking, sidestepping, blocking, dodging and grapple reversals.

The reality of fighting games though is animations are too quick for players to be able adequately react and create that kind of gameplay, and if you take the first hit of any combo standard fighting game rules dictates you can no longer block any of the next attacks unless the game has a “combo breaker” charge which operates more like a get out of jail free card than a reaction.

What I’m trying to say is. It’s great that Riot are doing something else but all they are doing is painting their LoL characters on a different game. The game could be awful but it’s going to propped up on riot’s established esports, character lore, and already loyal fan base.

FPS game : Project A

This looks like Counter Strike with abilities (like Overwatch/Paladins) and Riot’s graphics. Like above. Riot havn’t really done anything here and what will drive it? Their already established eSports production.

The game looks like it will operate no differently to what we currently have. Counter strike and Overwatch don’t have the production levels that Riot have. So the only thing really being brought to the table here is not a gameplay element.

Card Game : Legends of Runeterra

The lowest effort game that could be possibly made. Any large company should feel shame for developing a card game. Nonetheless people do enjoy them and whose to say they shouldn’t?!

But could we make the big companies try and achieve big things. Why do we need Bethesda, Blizzard, Valve, some others and Riot to do this? All of them can do better.

Riots Role Playing Game : Speculated Hack'n'Slash?

I’m speculating here from this screenshot below. This appears to be a Hack’n’Slash with League of Legends characters.

So…Diablo. Hang on a minute. Wait a minute!

Did Riot ( Tencent - China ) just pull a massive copy cat?

Their RPG game is basically Diablo.

Their FPS game is basically Counterstrike/Overwatch.

Their Card game is basically Hearthstone.

Their Fighting game is…well…it’s your generic run of the mill fighting game by the looks of things. So I’ll give them that one.

I’m not sure I need say much more but I think that’s something to think about. Riot has taken a lot of gameplay that already exists and just pasted their own art style on it. They’re going to use their eSports production to make them the biggest thing ever. Tencent (China) will control all of that. Not just in China but the eSports for those games globally.

The games do look interesting even though they aren’t innovative. So check back later and join the discord.gg/toki for a chat!