We’re Tom “Zileas” Cadwell and John-David “historianX” Perry the Head of Research and Development and Design, and the Head of Operations for Research and Development at Riot, respectively. And we want to pull back the curtain and give you a look at how and why we’re making new games.
League’s 10-Year Anniversary was a significant moment for us. It gave us the chance to thank players (again, thank you!) and to finally share what so many of us have been working on for all these years, including League of Legends: Wild Rift, Legends of Runeterra, Arcane, VALORANT, and Teamfight Tactics on mobile... As well as a few more we’re not quite ready to talk about. We’ve accomplished a lot in 10 years, and we’re excited to apply the things we’ve learned from League to our new games.
Last year we made the decision to rethink the way we approach research and development, so we looked at other companies in gaming and tech to figure out where we could improve. We wanted to be more deliberate in how we incubate ideas, think about audiences, and develop games.
This blog is a chance for us to share how we think about innovation at Riot, discuss some of our learnings, and hopefully shed a little bit of light into how we do R&D at Riot.
We’ll chat about philosophy, approaches to innovation, and development. We won’t discuss the types of games we are exploring, opportunities that excite us, or go into details about any games. It is R&D after all, and we do have to abide by the code of secrecy, cloak and dagger, and all of that.
Come back for regular updates and we hope you enjoy our musings.
Tom “Zileas” Cadwell & John David “historianX” Perry
