Careers in Gaming With Riot Games: My Experience

I would self-describe as a creative. With this in mind, the Q&A panel with creatives from Riot Games felt like a breath of fresh air to me. I have been recruiting for jobs in the finance industry, and came into the Q&A with a very cynical view of careers, period. The impression the panel left me with was that, though pursuing a career in the game industry would likely be incredibly difficult, it was also a far cry from what I assumed the journey was like.

Character Creation & Trailers

I had an overarching, vague understanding that for animation, voice lines were recorded first before any drawing or rendering occurred. However, I mentally skipped over the crucial step of storyboarding. From a logistical perspective, it makes complete sense. A storyboard is static; less complicated (from purely an animation perspective) to create. However, I assumed that art would be the first step, before recording any voice lines. I thought that the process would be storyboard → voice lines → animatic etc. To me, it is interesting that voice lines are recorded prior to the creation of a story board—does the way voices are read have an impact on how characters are drawn in the storyboard and eventually the animatic?

Another thing that surprised me was how wide the span of research conducted was. I severely underestimated the level and creativity of research that went into character creation. One detail that stood out to me was that the creators looked to media such as TikTok for inspiration. I have never really associated social media with professional work (beyond marketing) so this was a completely new angle for me to view social media at. A question I had was whether rotoscoping played a particularly large role in character trailers at Riot; if not rotoscoping, then I wonder how many (if any) videos were recorded that animators used as a reference while making Gekko’s trailer.

One aspect of Riot’s creation process that I thought was particularly unique was the collaboration between different teams. The collaboration distinction between Riot and other large gaming companies was interesting to me because I am a people person by nature. I wonder how this cross-team collaboration affects character generation; if the music team is working closely with the art team, for example, do music team members have a better grasp on what music they should look for/create than if they are simply told/shown what the character looks like?

I would argue that the collaborative aspect of Riot’s creation process is crucial to funnel into the well-roundedness of their characters. While it might take longer, I believe it is a key part of their design process in that creation is inherently mixed-media. Even with casual modes of design—artists that create Original Characters (OCs) might create a spotify playlist that ‘represents’ their character. This might then, in turn, affect the way they present their OC. In this way, having the product team collaborate with the marketing team replicates this natural creation process, where each step keeps multiple aspects of the creation process in ‘conversation’ with one another.

Credentials

This panel also reframed my perspective on how to break into the gaming industry. Initially, I assumed that most employees were applying via platforms like LinkedIn or Indeed. However, I have now realised that the most common path to a career in gaming involves having a different career prior to entering the industry. Additionally, university degrees matter less than experience. For me, this was particularly surprising (as I was approaching the talk with a finance career mentality, when university degrees matter quite significantly alongside experience). It was refreshing to hear from a panel that seemed to really care about the kind of people they were employing, as well as their resumes.

The breadth of professional backgrounds was very encouraging. To me, that diversity spoke to the sheer level of creativity that Riot showcased through the Gekko trailer. I believe that allowing for a wide range of backgrounds in your company’s employment makes way for more generative conversations / research.

Overall, the panel allowed me to gain a meaningful and realistic insight into a career in the gaming industry. I was able to reframe how I viewed breaking into the industry (taking many steps to get there rather than diving right in immediately) as well as revolutionise my conception of how characters were created (far more breadth of research than I expected based on my own experience of character creation). The panel taught me that I have a chance, and that to keep on keeping on is the most important mantra!