Me and Riot, sitting in a tree

So I've been applying to be a Game Designer at Riot for the past several months now. They have a very extensive screening process which makes sense since most prospective designers, at least from what I've seen on internet forums, are not very good. Also, even as LoL expands and Riot needs more personnel for servers and computer-bops, the core design team is more of an intensive property and doesn't need to grow as much.

I'd love to tell you about all the design tests they've been giving me, but unfortunately I've sworn the Unbreakable Vow and will literally die if I say a word. But it's going well methinks.

Let's Fix: Stealth

 Stealth

Several champions in League of Legends have the ability to stealth. These champions are often very divisive, usually powerful and often pushing the limits of “frustrating to play against”. Champions like Twitch of Shaco can engage and disengage with unmatched ease and can kill quickly after a sudden appearance. This can frustrate summoners at all levels, but is particularly disheartening to new players. Such “feel-bad” moments are necessary to any game with a learning curve, but only in moderation. Else the player may decide it is easier to just quit.

Is Last-Hitting Outdated?

This article has been making the rounds, as a proposed LoL change

Basically, the guy wants to abolish last-hitting as a mechanic by modifying the gold-reward schema. It's an interesting read.

Does he have something here? Go read it before you continue, I'm not gonna summarize it here.

Harry Potter and the Designing of Games

J.K. Rowling created a magical universe teeming with wizards, spells, goblins, and most importantly candy. The Harry Potter books are great despite all their flaws and proph-outs (when a fantasy series resorts to prophecies). But this is a game-design blog, so by Merlin’s beard we’re going to talk about the Dumbledore of games: Quidditch. From a writing perspective I would have preferred it to involve spells - you know, that thing that makes Wizards unique and interesting - but let’s talk about the mechanics as they are. At first glance the game is zany and creative, but digging deeper I become more and more glad that Rowling stuck to books rather than game design. Quidditch does a great job of showing HARRY POTTER single-handedly winning the day, but it’s not a sport anyone would ever play in reality (and not just because Americans would be too fat to fly).

Once you have seen, you cannot Un-see