Spring Quarter 2017 Week 3: Riot Tour

On the 13th of April. WICS toured Riot Games’ corporate campus in Los Angeles to gain insight of the game development industry as well as learn what drives the success behind Riot’s popular game, League of Legends.

Upon our arrival at the campus, we were warmly greeted by Grant Cushman, Riot’s University Relations Recruiter, who was our guide for the tour. After getting our name tags, Grant gave us a brief introduction to what League of Legends is and shared with us how it has grew to become a big part of competitive eSports. We were then greeted by a large Annie and Tibbers statue in the main lobby and all of us were excited to take pictures with it. Next, we were led to see meeting rooms themed after League of Legends’ champions, a cafe with a Bilgewater (pirate) interior, a large cafeteria serving a wide selection of food, an arcade filled with retro game machines, an internet cafe lined with rows of gaming computers and open workspaces in which almost every desk had at least two monitors and a hardworking employee.

Our tour was wrapped up by a Q&A session with 3 software engineers who worked in different departments. They shed some light into the life of working in a game company, the challenges they face as well as how working in the game industry contrasts to working in other industries. Since we were a small group of 18, we were able to ask all of our questions and learned a lot from these experienced programmers. We were also inspired by how Riot employees seemed to have a “work hard, play hard” philosophy, as many of them play games together while still taking their work very seriously.

Overall, we are truly grateful to Riot Games for giving us this opportunity to tour their campus as we learned a lot about the game industry. Thanks to everyone who participated and we hope to see you again!