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[askghostcrawler]

I have heard that ageism is an issue in the games industry, and that it does make it harder to find work. Would you agree or disagree?

I have learned how dangerous it is to extrapolate from “I never see this” to “Therefore it must not happen.”

Overall, this industry does struggle with a diversity problem, so it wouldn’t surprise me to understand that older people are part of that.

I will say that I am older than almost all of my colleagues, and this has been true for most of my career. I definitely feel old a lot. I try to feel young. I try hard to stay informed and connected. I don’t think it’s okay to say “I don’t understand or care about this thing that young people are talking about” (assuming young people are a significant part of your audience).

Where companies go wrong, and honestly Riot was not immune from this several years ago, is to think “I need employees and colleagues who are excited by our mission and values” but then to act as if “Therefore, I need employees and colleagues who look and act like everyone already here.”

What Riot has tried to do is shift to looking for people who champion our mission of caring deeply about players, and worry much less about how many hours of League someone has played. (Caveat: if you are going to work directly on key parts of League, you really need to understand the needs, desires and pains of LoL players.)

11/15/2019

[askghostcrawler]

Do you still consider world PvP to be bad or unnecessary for MMOs because it's mostly ganking?

I actually don’t mind ganking. It can be a lot of fun for the person doing the ganking, and the risk of it for the victim can make the world feel dynamic and unpredictable. 

I have fond memories from WoW of when I got my guildies to help me hunt down someone ganking. I also have bad memories when someone kept camping the region in which I was trying to quest.

So the issue is how common it is and how dominant it is, which come down to the specific combat systems in the game and how those numbers are tuned.

11/15/2019

[askghostcrawler]

A few years ago, I wrote you asking for advice about applying at Riot (/post/164340943093/). I've applied pretty religiously since then, every time I leveled up my craft, and I just wanted to say that I've just accepted a full time position with Riot. Thank you for your advice back then, and maybe I'll see you around (:

That makes me so happy. Let’s grab a cup of coffee.

It can be hard to break into this industry and I am very empathetic with anyone out there that hasn’t landed it yet. But the industry is also growing all the time. Skill matters, experience matters, but never forget the important if frustrating roles that luck and timing still play.

11/15/2019

[askghostcrawler]

“What's do you think is your/Riots goal with these new games?”

We want to meet the needs of an under-served audience. When we first made LoL (though it was before my own time), we loved the moba genre, but thought there were things we could improve to make a better overall experience. It’s the same with the new games or any game we make. While we may love a particular game, we see potential improvements in technical aspects, game design, or even business model that we think could make a great game into a game that has the potential to be a true breakout. We used to call this “genre-defining.” While that term has become a little tired within Riot walls, it still illustrates the point. Make a game that becomes the name someone thinks of when they consider a particular genre... even a genre that doesn’t yet exist.

Overall, our goal is to delight players by giving you stuff you want and stuff you didn’t know you wanted. :)

10/23/2019

[askghostcrawler]

“Why is the water so much more blue around the pacific islands?”

Think of tropical water (whether Pacific, Indian, Caribbean etc.) as a desert. The water is blue because there isn’t anything in it. Near the shore in a place like the East Coast of the US, you have millions of liters of water pouring in from rivers, and that brings particulate matter and also nutrients. The nutrients let plankton bloom, which turns the water green. Similarly, if you are in colder water, the lack of a temperature barrier allows upwelling of nutrients and again lets plankton bloom. 

In the open Pacific, the amount of nutrients, and therefore plankton, are very low so you just see the water. The sunlight reflects on the water, especially if there is a white sandy bottom, blue is reflected instead of absorbed, and you see blue water instead of green or brown.

10/23/2019

[askghostcrawler]

“What do you think are the biggest differences (i.e. pros and cons) of working with Riot Games vs Blizzard?”

Ooh, a spicy one. Look, at the end of the day, they are both great places to work. They are triple A studios that make games beloved by players, are financially secure, and have many good years ahead of them. While both occasionally make missteps, overall they are professional organizations. You are never not going to get paid, which is something that happens with less established companies.

Blizzard cares a lot about polish, and it’s hard to argue with that strategy, given how well it has worked for them. If you’re the kind of person that likes to ship something at an 80% quality bar and then iterate on it later based on player reaction, then the Blizzard polish bar may rankle you. While their communication style has evolved a lot since I left, at the time, my desire to just talk to players directly sometimes thwarted communications campaigns (while at Riot, it just feels natural). Blizzard also has a really deep leadership bench, so if you’re a hotshot associate, it could potentially be awhile before you achieve a leadership position. (There are always exceptions, and superstars tend to climb the ranks of any company quickly.)

Riot cares a lot about player authenticity. (That’s not to say Blizzard does not - it’s just about what they emphasize. Blizzard focuses on epic experiences.) At Riot, every question gets answered with what is in the player’s best interest. This can make it hard for someone who just wants to focus on making the best art they can make or tell the best story they can tell. Riot is a younger company and has a bit more of a start-up feel than Blizzard (even though Riot with thousands of employees is hardly a start-up any longer). The ambiguity and occasional chaos here isn’t for everyone. But I thrive in it. :) 

I’m realizing now what a long topic this could potentially be, so I’ll probably have to revisit it from time to time. But overall, there isn’t a good guy or a bad guy here. Both companies make awesome things. Blizzard has a great track record of games that we can only aspire to.

10/23/2019

[askghostcrawler]

“How do those of us satisfied with developer choices combat what feels like a vocal minority that complains? It feels like complaints about X have more power and may change X, even if most people like X bc developers are only seeing complaints and not satisfaction on forums.”

Any communication with a developer will *always* be in the minority. Not that many players, as a percentage of a game’s total audience, will ever reply about anything. And that’s fine. Majority rule is not a great way to make decisions anyway. Maybe you care more about an issue than most players. Maybe you have more insight about an issue more than most players. Those should weigh in too.

I have made changes to a game because of a single well-articulated post. To set expectations, there isn’t a particular trick you can employ to make sure this happens. But if you are reasonable, make a logical argument, and get the developer to understand why your suggestion might be better or your problem is worth fixing, then that’s the best you can do. Getting a ton of upvotes or whatever doesn’t really significantly improve the odds.

10/23/2019

[askghostcrawler]

“When looking to hire a software engineer what types of projects do you like to see? Games/desktop apps/mobile apps/other? “

I’m not a software engineer, so I’m not the kind of person who would ever be reviewing your code. As a game designer / whatever I am now, I would first like to see that you had been able to finish something, through all the tribulations of design changes, feedback, bugs, general malaise etc. So making any software that you can finish is more important that what kind of software. 

Beyond that, I would consider the role you applied for. If you are applying to work on a mobile app, then seeing that experience would be more relevant than seeing you make a game. There are other ways to demonstrate that you love games.

10/23/2019

[askghostcrawler]

“How much do you miss @ckaleiki?”  

A lot! It’s one of the shittiest parts of changing jobs. You really miss your old coworkers.

10/23/2019

[askghostcrawler]

“Are there going to be multiple versions of TFT that people can play so that if they wish to play with an older roster of champs, they can?”

This is my understanding from talking to the team: we really want players to adapt to the updates. We know that requires relearning some stuff and possibly seeing your rank etc. falter while that happens. But we also believe it’s necessary for TFT to evolve like this to avoid eventual stagnation. If after a few waves, we realize that design is just not working then we could probably try different solutions, such as less drastic changes, or possibly even let players choose which version they want to play. But let’s at least give the current design a fair shake first.

10/23/2019   

[askghostcrawler]

“When you were a developer on World of Warcraft, did you ever have anything to do with story/lore? Not necessarily meta-themes, but did you ever design a series of quests or have input on a storyline that was personally meaningful to you? Did you have anything to do with how characters like Jaina, Sylvanas, Tirion, etc, were represented?”

Not directly. I was involved with classes, items, PvP, encounters, and systems like achievements, transmog, the UI and so on. Really it was everything but levels and quests.

As a lead, I was in a lot of discussions about our big story beats, and I did playtest a lot and give the quest and story folks feedback.

The closest I got was the lore added to the Archaeology artifacts (not 100% certain, but I probably came up with the word Ny’alotha) and I also named a bunch of quest, dungeon and raid items, and some of those hint at lore beats.

To be honest, I really missed being more involved with story / lore when I was on WoW. My first job in the industry was writing the scripts for the Age of Empires campaigns. Part of the reason I took this new Creative Dev job at Riot is because I wanted to be closer to story and lore.

And it wasn’t like anyone on WoW was trying to keep me away from the story. It was just with dudes like Metzen, Afrasiabi and Kosak, there wasn’t much need for me.

1/17/2019 

[askghostcrawler]

“For you, what's the biggest challenge when it comes to designing marksmen and their place in League?”

They are based around using auto attacks, which has risks of a particular MM champ not being interesting to play or being hard to balance or having less interesting itemization stats, since a lot of the damage just happens. But if you add too much of the power to their specials, they start to feel like a mage and not a MM.

You could probably also get into the topic of how historically they were virtually guaranteed to own the bottom lane (and therefore be near mandatory for any comp), but the AA thing was what first jumped into my mind.

1/17/2019

[askghostcrawler]

“Do you think Garen and Master Yi go too far in being "beginner friendly"? You may view them as good for new players to learn the game, but from where I'm standing, they just terrorize low level players. Garen's too tanky to deal with for players learning to kite (and even harder for melee champions to deal with), and Master Yi requires team coordination to prevent his resets. Basically, they require so little skill to use at the base level while simultaneously requiring many skills to counter.”

This is my opinion. I didn’t bounce it off of the champion team.

In my opinion, yes both of those champions could use a higher skill ceiling. It’s fine if they are good champions for beginners, but it’s a bad feeling if you pick one of those champs and then try to rise through the ranks only to find out that you probably picked a tough champion for higher ranked tiers.

I think you could also argue they may lack sufficient counterplay for a typical Normal or Bronze skillset.

But in both cases, I think the risk of removing them as viable beginner champions has to be considered very heavily. Messing them up for newer players is probably worse than not touching them at all.

10/23/2018   

[askghostcrawler]

“Will you be playing Classic WoW?”

Yes. Maybe I will play with my @ogpluscast cohosts. :)

10/23/2018   

[askghostcrawler]

“What do you think of what's happening currently with Battle For Azeroth and the way the devs are responding, I'd loved for an opinion of someone who went through that and how different you'd handle it?”

Look, I don’t know much about the state of WoW, or how the devs are handling feedback, and even if I did, those guys are my friends, so I’m not going to beat them up.

Instead, I will offer a generic strategy for devs to handle feedback. The general structure here is to imagine that players are unhappy with what you did with a feature (we will call that X), and for whatever reason, players believe that an alternate implementation (we will call that Y) would be better. Note that Y may or may not be better, but players believe it would be.

Option 1 is the best way to handle the feedback, though it’s not always feasible, on down to Option 6 being the worst way to handle the feedback.

1) You shipped X. Players want Y. You convince them why X is better. They now like X. (This is the Holy Grail, but it takes a lot of trust and good communication.)

2) You shipped X. Players want Y. You tell them that Y is coming. (This is the answer players almost always are looking for.)

3) You shipped X. Players want Y. You tell them why you think X is better. Players still want Y, but they understand your goals now. (This surprisingly can be pretty satisfying to players.)

4) You shipped X. Players want Y. You tell players you understand their viewpoint but aren't sure yet what you're going to do yet. (This is probably the most common answer. It’s not hugely satisfying, but it is authentic.)

5) You shipped X. Players want Y. You say nothing. (This is the easiest answer for devs.)

6) You shipped X. Players want Y. You tell them they're wrong. (This burns trust and makes players less likely to accept your answer next time. However, note that it’s really just empathy and tone that separate this response, the worst answer, from Option 1, which I consider the best answer.)

10/23/2018    

[askghostcrawler]

“what's your opinion on memes in video games? for example, an "arrow to the knee" joke”

Like any meme, they are funny just up until the point where you get sick to death of them, and then you wish they had never existed. As gamers, maybe we both embrace them and wear them out too quickly. 

I survived do a barrel roll, all your base, Leeroy Jenkins, the cake is a lie, arrow to the knee, and many more.

My advice to developers is to be really careful putting memes in your games (and yes I know both WoW and LoL are super guilty of it), given how long game development cycles can last, and how quickly memes wear out their welcome. 

9/12/2018

[askghostcrawler]

“Battle for Azeroth added a new World Quest called Beachhead. This quest, offered by the new Tortolan faction (tortoise-esque humanoids), asks you to protect juvenile turtles as they made their way from their nests to the water, which means you end up having to kill wildlife predators like seagulls and crabs. Being an oceanographer, Do you have any insights on the impact of doing such task in mass would cause? Both increasing the turtle population and reducing the predatory one?”

Azeroth has its own ecosystem (where crabs have six legs, whale sharks have giant teeth, etc.) so real world examples may not apply. 

In the real world, seagulls are thriving and crabs are generally doing fine, while 6 of Earth’s 7 sea turtle species are endangered. The causes include habitat loss (including light pollution), the fishing industry (which doesn’t often target turtles but still catches plenty), and garbage in our oceans. Those three factors are directly related to humans. So, pretty much sea turtles need all the help they can get.

Looking at ecology at large (not counting turtles specifically), removing predators can often cause a population explosion of prey species, especially prey that evolved with high reproductive rates to overcome high predation pressure. Witness the explosion of urban deer in the USA because wolves and mountain lions are at much lower populations than they were historically. 

Other species are more limited by available food or habitat. I suspect in the case of turtles, that their populations could never get that large because of these other factors. There are only so many beaches in the world upon which to lay eggs, and only so many jellyfish in the ocean to eat. There are reports of early Europeans arriving on wooden ships being kept awake because of the number of turtles bonking into their hulls all night, so clearly they once were much more abundant.

Caveat: I haven’t been an oceanographer for about 20 years now, so my understanding of some of these issues could be outdated.

9/12/2018