Thanks friend! We are staying safe and we appreciate you.

Welcome to League. It is great with friends, so bring them with you. ;)

ilovecollege_nope

Hi /u/dzareth, thanks for the great reply to this question! Your position was one of two that attracted my interest when looking at /u/The_Cactopus list.

Checking riotgames.com I see the position of Analyst, Strategic Advisory is based in HONG KONG, CHINA. Is there a particular reason behind that?

Do you have team members in LA or other locations? If yes, could you provide the link to it, please?

Location is not an issue for me, just interested in the reasons behind the choice. Seems like a great fit for me, so I will be applying soon - just need to update my Resume :)

Thanks!

Yes! We have many people in LA! I think it looks like Hong Kong office is looking for people too!

PilifXD

Are there 'machine learning' departments at Riot or anything related to it ? Always interesting to hear how different companies make use of ML.

Yes, we have MLE types, Date Engineers, Data scientists.

Your shop is powered by ML, for example.

MrDortydort

Hey is actually someone working on the client?

Yes. There are. Joe talked about this in Riot Pls: https://youtu.be/ADUMS8oZQkE

Ildigrub

!RemindMe 15 years

Ah I didn't take that long :P

MrDortydort

Hey is actually someone working on the client?

Yes!

GodPleaseGiveMeAName

Thank you very much for your answer, I would totally understand if you didn't/couldn't answer them. I'm planning to start an MBA soon (tm) and the gaming industry seems very fascinating to me, so I would like to know more about the perspective of some of the professionals in it. Again, thank you very much. Also, your games are pretty cool. Keep being awesome

Hey! Good luck with the degree! I enjoyed mine a lot even if I enjoy memeing about MBAs! My advice: Take every technical class you can and care about your grades. Futures and Options? Hell yes!

y3chai

u/dzareth With many in finance focusing heavily on returns and cash flows, while in league, I imagine the to be a much bigger emphasis on player engagement and satisfaction. For example, while making skins for unpopular Champions might be unprofitable, the decision to invest time and capital to develop for these champions is required to keep certain player bases happy.

How has working at Riot changed your perspective on how projects like this should be evaluated, and how do you balance both sides?

I think it's been a constant challenge to think about getting that balance right.

To let you in on a secret of how I have changed my thinking is that I remembered that we are a "player focussed" game company and not a "champion focused" game company. Our champions are great. I love our IP. Don't tell anyone though, but they are not real. And they are certainly not our audience or players. So, given that I stopped thinking about giving "champions" skins, I think about us giving players skins. And while I wish every player could have everything they wanted, there are only so many developer hours. The lowest play-rate champions have very, very few "I only play this champion" mains. Most players play a few champs. So most players have something for themselves even if they wish they had one for their champion. The second insight is that we are going to lose economic profit on those weaker champions, but it is the only way we can show those players we care about them. We take that hit. We...

GodPleaseGiveMeAName

u/dzareth, hope you're the right person to ask this and the questions aren't too invasive

1. What is your stance on the dynamic pricing some mobile games are using?
2. Ideally, do you believe microtransactions should be kept for FtP games only or should it be used (as it is right now) in AAA games?
3. Did the skins randomly dropped by chests affect LoL's revenue? Was it a "short term loss with middle/long term gain" situation or did it have a negative effect on revenue and Riot is taking the financial hit for player retention?
4. What do you think would be better for the LoL franchise/brand?
   1. LoL 2 after the end of LoL's lifecycle; or,
   2. Extending LoL's lifecycle indefinitely with regular updates;
5. What sort of academic background do you need for this job? Do you think it is the driving factor behind the way you do your daily functions or it is "IRL experience" or a mix of both?

Hey! Thanks for asking. These are solid questions. These are exactly the type of things we discuss at work.

1) Dynamic pricing. From a microeconomics perspective it is certainly very efficient at getting at the "willingness to pay" of the individual players, and given some of these games have a limited lifespan without these revenue models their financial viability might be significantly challenged. However, these models also over time can undermine players sense of trust and fairness. "Why did I pay x for that when that player paid x/2?" On League we discuss about our goals for players to be happy about their experience with monetization before, during and after, and without creating issues for people who don't or can't monetize. Monetization has to suit the product that you are developing, I personally think that predatory monetization practices can be very effective at driving money in the short term, but not the long term. I am personally attracted to the long term perspective. ...

GodPleaseGiveMeAName

Thanks, but I understand if they don't want to answer anything besides Q5.

Q1 and Q2 involve commenting on industry practices by rival companies (and potentially Riot in the future).

Q3 and Q4 are about what could be considered as business private information.

Oh well, at least we tried

Edit: we got an answer!!

Haha. Yeah. Sorry I didn't see it during the time. I got through a bunch.

Blizzxx

/u/dzareth Is Riot now producing other games because mobas are on a downwards trend in general right now? Do you think league of legends will always be the main game Riot works on?

There is this pretty pervasive view that "mobas" are on a downward trend, but League is not on a downward trend, I honestly feel like we are still growing... Just not meteorically like in the early years. I just also think that given how people play League that it's going to be around for a long time.

My hope is that we continue to serve our players so that you all still find League a great use of your gaming hours!

I think we are making other games because we know y'all enjoy many games and we would like to see if we can bring League's approach to the player to other genres.

nosaystupidthings

u/dzareth Hi! Two questions:

1. Bringing TFT to mobile seems like a slam dunk to me. On the other hand, Riot has been very focused on the core PC market in the past. How do you tackle the challenge of influencing an organization to get behind a project that some stakeholders might not believe aligns with the core business?

   1. I'm an MBA student at USC, where we've had several Rioters come and talk to our different schools. (Dan Sutton has come three times over the past few months that I know of!) Any chance you'd want to come talk to us?

1) This is a great question. At Riot the easiest way to make something happen is honestly to show how the players are experiencing the product and how we can improve that experience. I love TFT and I also believe that the mobile product is fantastic, but I tend to disregard my own personal tastes and beliefs and try to understand what our players want. (And TFT mobile is what many want) This is when the conversation becomes nuanced. Players want many things. Sometimes some players want some things and others want the opposite. There are opportunity costs. Tech challenges. Dependencies. And the heart of influence becomes in listening, understanding and making sometimes incredibly difficult trade-offs. It's exhilarating and hard. We don't always get it right. But we are always trying.

2) Yes, reach out. I'll be happy to come.

mombawamba

Wow, thanks for the response! If I was willing to accept statistics as inevitable, would a theoretical math background be desirable for analytics?

The answer is always "it depends", but yeah there are people with math backgrounds here for sure!

SuperiorKangaroo

Hey u/dzareth, as a business professional at a large IT company like Riot do you feel the need to know a a lot about the technical side of the business? Do you need to know how to code or use other technical software besides the Microsoft suite of products? If you do does it help in your decision making process?

Lastly, the most important question favourite champ?

Making games is a fascinating blend of technical, design, creative, business, product, marketing and other fields all at once. I have a computer science background and so I enjoy learning about the technical, but even if I didn't the engineers would help me to understand. I think having a holistic viewpoint is essential. I think fostering an inclusive viewpoint for all disciplines is critical too. I manage managers today and occasionally code in SQL or python or what have you. But it really shouldn't be what I spend my time on. I'd be the worst one at that and it's not gonna be what the team needs from me (even if I miss that part of the job).

I have many favorite champs and mostly play top-lane. Garen is always rewarding to play.

Mr2be

My question for u/dzareth

How did you get into the industry with a financial background? What is the difference between working at Riot instead of a classic consulting firm like BCG, Mckinsey etc?

I worked at McKinsey so I can speak directly to that!

I loved working at the firm--ultimately I was tired of travel and realized that if I didn't try to follow my childhood dream of making games I'd probably look back and regret it.

Consulting is great: a lot of difficult and varied challenges, but high-pressure environment which I really learned a lot from. There's a lot of variance in the work: I worked in strategy, operations, marketing, sales, insurance, banking, mining, logistics, grocery, retail, high tech.

... but here's the thing: making video games is so much more meaningful to me. It's as cross-functional, but it's in an industry that I fundamentally enjoy. The hours are more sustainable, and there is no required travel (in my role).

Yakarue

u/dzareth -- Hi there! What was your career path like leading up to your current position? Were you always in the gaming industry? I'm currently working to put myself and my career more directly into my life's biggest passion: gaming. However, it has been an interesting balance to figure out how to articulate and translate my current experience to game developers that often put a lot of weight into previous gaming industry experience.

Would love any insights or thoughts you'd be willing to share! And thank you so much for doing this!

I wasn't in the industry. I've answered this more in other questions and I'm running out of time today! Thanks for asking the question, and good luck in following the dream.

ItsPieTime

u/dzareth :
What did you study in school/what kinds of positions did you work in before working at Riot? Do you spend a lot of your time working with actual financials? I'm a recent Econ/Accounting grad currently working at an accounting firm and studying for my CPA and am interested in one day working at Riot when I have more career experience, but I'm not sure what possible roles at Riot really fit that path.

u/RiotMobility :
What was your background before working at Riot? Were you primarily involved in tax or something like law? What exactly is mobility tax? Google wasn't very helpful in that regard.

Question for both of you:
Did you play LoL before working at Riot and did that influence your decision to work there at all? If you were invested in the game before being hired, do you think it influenced the hiring decision in any way? I've been a pretty dedicated League player for around 7 years now and I'm curious if being invested in the game is valued for positions that aren't really directly involved with the actual game.

A huge thank you to you both and the rest of the Rioters for taking time out of your busy days to answer our questions!

I studied computer science in undergrad and an MBA later on. I work across actual financials: revenues and costs, economic profit, telemetry and research findings, etc. I am more focused on the recommendation and I think about the right tool for the job.

Keep an eye out for roles, I think there are definitely roles for people with a solid accounting background. Careers website might list them all.

My hiring decision was based on my professional qualifications for the role, and today when I make hiring decisions that's my only factor. The exception would be for certain jobs where there is a specific business need for gameplay knowledge (such as the "balance team"). Of course, most people are highly passionate gamers at Riot.

kalazir

u/dzareth Has there ever been discussion on putting pros like Doublelift on shows like Jimmy Fallon? Or maybe teaching him the basics of League with a charismatic pro like Damonte? I want to see League of Legends grow and it make even more waves in the mainstream... and I think we have some fun and personable pros to do it! Or anyone from Riot really, like Tryndamere?

Yes, we also want League to grow and I'm glad you share our goal. Most of League's most successful growth comes from players telling their friends!

We think a lot about how to encourage interest in the right types of players and in a way which is cost effective too. Over time we are experimenting with different channels. Some channels create a lot of interest, but with players that might not actually want to play League... I think the esports might see us become more and more mainstream, and when K/DA came out the overall interest was much broader than League players.

Hey, and one great bit of news: League is continuing to grow, it's a great time to be playing.

aznboicasby

u/Dzareth What do you recommend college students/grads think about/gather experience in when trying to go into a business strategy and advisory role? Also, what does your day to day work look like in such an emerging industry like eSports? Did you have any experience in a more traditional field/industry before riot?

I’m personally going to be starting in big 4 audit & assurance and look to exit into a business strategy/advisory role. Being able to work for the eSports industry in this role is what I’m looking toward so that the work I’m involved in is something I’m passionate about!

I encourage people to do their best in their grades and to be showing impact and leadership. Aim high and get the best job you can, and that is great for you until you land your dream role in the industry.

My background before Riot was at McKinsey, and I work with colleagues who were at one of the big-4s... so work hard, learn as much as you can and keep your focus on delivering value for your clients!