Just as the Super Bowl can see the emergence of new technology designed to help view the game, Riot’s League of Legends World Championships also set the stage for a tech upgrade with the introduction of a live game-flow presentation never before seen in eSports that leverages the projection mapping commonly used as an interstitial during traditional sporting events. The result was a game-driven visualization will allow fans to track the overall game progress through a “living chess board,” showcasing which team had the advantage, creating anticipation for crucial moments, and celebrating spectacular achievements.
To create the presentation, Riot turned to sports powerhouse Troika to launch the experience. Cynopsis eSports & Gaming spoke with Troika Creative Director Seton Kim about the launch.
Kim on the challenge: What happened on Saturday was the culmination of us looking to raise the bar for a live eSports competition and experience and how we could enhance that to be enjoyed by the people in the stadium as well as people who are casual fans and might know a little bit about the game but want to follow it better. What we ended up doing was working closely with the Riot team to channel a vision that extends what’s happening in the game on to the floor. They knew they wanted to use projection mapping, so we had to figure out how to get what’s happening on the screen onto the floor in a really unique and innovative way, how we can create narrative points throughout the games so that the audience can track along and understand the game progress and how to celebrate the key moments.
On results: It was exciting to see a sold stadium of eSports fans who celebrated that game in a huge way. This was a level that I have never experienced before. The outcome at the end of the day was establish a vision with Riot of what it could potentially be and I think we’ve got some room to continue to explore and push in terms to technology catching up. I think at some point in time in the near future, we will get to one-to-one true representation of what’s happening in the game onto the floor. At this point, however, we laid out the groundwork for that and there are some exciting opportunities to take it further.
On lessons from traditional sports: The fan always comes first. Everything from the visual language to the storytelling points had to be tailored to the gamers and hardcore crowd. That said, we brought in traditional crowd prompts and mechanisms from traditional sports. There were ways that we were using our experience in traditional sports to that broader audience and to make the competition as exciting for casual fans as it is for hardcore fans.
On Troika’s vision for eSports: What brought Riot to Troika was our extensive sports experience and how we innovate around live sports storytelling. We have experience with a lot of those foundational points in the narrative to bring the audience in to the flow of the game. That’s something we do really, really well and it translates perfectly into eSports.
