Riot Games' League of Legends MMO has been a long time coming, with very little information actually shared about it, but studio co-founder Marc Merrill is still confident it's going to work despite thinking there are plenty of "smart reasons as to why we shouldn't do what we're doing."
As spotted by PCGamesN, Merrill shares his latest thoughts on the MMO's challenges in a new episode of the Lemonade Stand podcast (below). Merrill is asked why he thinks the game can succeed when it'll be launching into a difficult space – one where die-hard MMO fans are generally older with less free time to spend on games, especially when other massive games like World of Warcraft exist and may well be eating up a bunch of their time already.
"I don't disagree with a bunch of your concerns," Merrill admits. "There's all sorts of smart reasons as to why we shouldn't do what we're doing." …It's not the sort of statement that'd fill worried fans with confidence, let's face it.
"MMOs are insane," he continues. "The scope, the expectations, the challenge… the argument that they're niche, all these different types of things. But there are lots of decisions you can make in terms of how to approach it."
One thing going in Riot's favor, Merrill suggests, is the dedicated fanbase that the League universe has accumulated. "We've been building this world of Runeterra for 20 years, and pouring our hearts and soul into it, and there's an awful lot of players around the world that have developed [a] deep affinity and love for these characters, this world, for our factions," he says.
"And that fandom is expressed in so many ways, through League, and through Riftbound, and through all these other things that we're doing, all of our great games… People want to live in that world, and we want to deliver the ability for people to do that."
Riot "didn't want to even try to go take on this sort of insane space until we had a global fanbase of hundreds of millions of people," in addition to "great revenue streams," a strong team, and plenty more, he adds.
The studio has all that now, Merrill suggests, but that's not to say making the MMO is straightforward. "The challenge is around, can we do justice [to the IP], and if so, how?" he explains. "It's a mistake to try to make absolutely something for everybody, because, like we just talked about, you often end up making something for nobody by trying to make it too watered down."
Merrill isn't afraid to reiterate that "there are some really hard problems," but he reckons they're the sort of problems that are worth getting "out of bed for every day" to solve. In fact, he says, everything he's helped build up to now – from League of Legends, Riot itself, to the Arcane TV show – "all felt crazy and stupid" at the time.
Despite his confidence, you can understand fans feeling a little bit cautious about the whole thing. In August, it was announced that League of Legends fighting game 2XKO is ending active development in December… after its full console launch in January. At the time, Riot explained that "we haven't seen enough players stick with the game to get to a path toward sustainability," and ultimately couldn't see "any viable future." Let's just hope the MMO doesn't meet the same fate whenever it eventually launches.
