Computer Gaming: League of Legends [Lol] 101

League of Legends (LoL) is a real-time strategy action video game developed and published by Riot Games for Microsoft Windows. It is built using the same principles as the wildly popular Defense of the Ancients for Warcraft III (DOTA). It was first announced on October 7, 2008 and released on October 27, 2009.

Game Development

Steve “Guinsoo” Feak, the previous designer of the popular Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne and Defense of the Ancients together with Steve “Pendragon” Mescon, the administrator of the former official support base for the map (www.dota-allstars.com), were involved with Riot Games in the development of League Of Legends. Riot Games was co-founded by Brandon Beck and Marc Merrill. They partnered with some of the key creative minds behind the creation of DotA-Allstars, Steve “Guinsoo” Feak and Steve “Pendragon” Mescon. Riot Games officially opened its office in September 2006, and currently has about 100 people working on League of Legends including their robust technology platform to service and operate the game as well as a team dedicated to community relations. According to Marc Merrill, when creating the various champions in the game, instead of leaving the champion creation to just a few people, they decided to open up the champion creation process to everyone in the company based upon a template where they could vote on which champions will make it into the game.

Distribution

Riot Games has signed deals regarding the distribution of League of Legends in Asia, Europe and North America. The game is expected to be released in the rest of the world also. The game has already released and is distributed in Australia, the United States, Canada, Europe and South Korea. 

  In Asia, Tencent Inc., China’s largest Internet value-added services company, best known for its QQ Instant Messaging client will be in charge of the distribution of LOL to Tencent’s growing 300 million Internet user base through its leading QQ Game portal. The deal is one of only a handful of partnerships to bring a US-developed online game directly to China.

Last July 14, 2009, Riot Games announced that League of Legends will be free with “no catch”. There will be a digital copy for download, but there is also a Digital Collector’s Copy that will be available to purchase that contains exclusive skins, $10 credit for Riot Points, and 20 champions to access without unlocking them normally via gameplay as well as 4 “special” runes; the Collector’s Pack is currently available for $29.99. Even though the game is free, Riot Games plans to continue to add content (characters etc…) with a full production team at very frequent intervals. Using both free-to-play and freemium models, the game is supported by microtransactions rather than ads or boxed copy sales.