In 2009 the game League of Legends was released and was seen by many as a clone of the Warcraft 3 mod Dota. Today, LoL is one of the most influential games. This is also due to many decisions that were made around the game. One of them was the formation of a virtual band that even appeals to non-gamers.
What makes LoL so important? League of Legends is a phenomenon. In 2019, it was the PC game with the most players worldwide. When the world championships are on, tens of millions of viewers tune in. The impact of the game is huge. According to the Esports Observer website, LoL was by far the most influential game on the market in the 3rd quarter of 2020 – in terms of hours played, hours watched and tournaments played.
Fans are still playing or looking at the same map as 10 years ago. Although the details and graphics have been reworked, it basically still consists of the 3 lanes and the jungle in between.
But in 2020 there is much more to League of Legends than the map “Summoners Rift”. There will be new games like TfT or LoR, huge events in the real world, social media profiles of champions and even virtual pop bands.
At a virtual press conference attended by MeinMMO, Riot Games talked about the band’s background, confidently stating that there’s more to it than just being a computer game.
“We want to create pop moments that everyone remembers”
What does LoL do to become even better known? One of the most successful actions around the LoL universe was the creation of the virtual band K/DA. They released their song Popstars as part of LoL Words 2018. It has more than 380 million hits on YouTube.
What was the idea of K/DA? The creation of the band was a promo action to promote new skins for the characters in the game. But for Riot there is more to it than that.
Their big goal was to combine LoL and music and “create pop moments that everyone remembers”. This is how Patrick Morales, the Creative Director for Marketing at Riot Games, described it.
This should have been successful with their appearance at the LoL Worlds 2018, when the virtual champions were even on stage.
With the music they want to inspire not only already existing LoL players, but also reach new target groups. This includes gamers as well as people who do not play. According to their own statement, this has also been achieved through good placements in the charts of Spotify or iTunes.
Today, on November 6th, the band’s first complete album called “ALL/OUT” has been released.
K/DA is not the only music project: The band K/DA is not the only project that Riot Games has concerning music. Already with their songs about new champions they always attracted attention.
One of the most famous examples is “Get Jinxed”, the song to Champion Jinx. After all, the video from 2013 gets almost 100 million views.
Besides such single songs there are two more projects – Pentakill and True Damage:
– Pentakill is something like a preliminary stage to K/DA. There are also songs for LoL, but without the singers or champions in the foreground.
– True Damage, on the other hand, is a hip-hop group and basically works like K/DA. It was founded in 2019 and wears skins designed by Louis Vuitton.
But even music is far from being all that makes up the LoL universe.
“Players love to interact with their champions”
What else does Riot do to retain fans? In recent months, the developers have been focusing more on profiles of the champions in social media. On Twitter, Instagram and Weibo, for example, you can find the band K/DA, but also the latest champion Seraphine.
They tell stories from their lives, discuss with followers and even organize challenges. According to Patrick Morales, that goes down really well:
“Just like real pop stars, we wanted our players to be able to interact with them like real people – via social media.
Something we also recently discovered about in-game events like Spirit Blossom is that our players love to interact with their champions.
