if you go to the home page there is a list of job openings

Game designers don't do concept art, although they do have a say in its direction.

I think most new game designers at Riot would start off on the champion team or live design team. They work with tools and files to make champions actually work. Here is a very rough example:

Champion Base stats.ini
Speed = 20
Attack = 50
AttackSpeed = 130
Model = Death Bringer
etc...

Champion Spell.ini
For Each Champion Spell Hits
ApplyDamage(50, Magic, Champion)
Stun(Champion)

It is really a simple form of programming although its not typed. It can also be used to adjust things like minions and towers. There is also things like figuring out what the champion says, balancing the champion with lots of tweaking and fixing bugs with champions as they arise.

These designers also go to a lot of meeting to figure out champion direction, skins and provide design feedback about new champions.

There are other designers than champion designers. Like designers that help with level design, UI, things like the tribunal and pretty much any other player facing feature. I think a lot of what they do is generate a vision for a particular aspect of the game and hold that vision. It keeps things consistent across the product.

There are also tech designers which are a hybrid programmer / designer. They don't work on super huge programming problems however they aren't 100% committed to designing either.

At the top level you get experienced designers like Tom Cadwell and Morello. These guys hold the big picture, they steer the ship.

Lets say I've been tasked with adding game tips to the loadscreen and we've decided it's a priority over other features. Well, where would it go? What would we move around. A UX designer would help me with that as we iterate on the feature.

I might decide that this is taking me to much time and create some tools so the UX designer can do the loadtime tweaking herself/himself. Note that before our champion creation tools existed, I was originally responsible for putting some of the champions together although I didn't design them.

Anyway I hope that helps. Let me know if you have any more great questions like this :P

Yes many and we are always looking for more. We call them operations (OPs) and we also have an IT department which helps with internal issues.

http://www.riotgames.com/careers/technical-operations
http://www.riotgames.com/careers/information-technology

@Hohums You are awesome. How does one eventually get to work on champion development? Also can anyone at anytime suggest things to the company? Like if I had an idea for a new game mode or something. Thanks in advance.

P.S. I live in Canada and I swore I'd only move to the USA if I was working for either Riot or Bethesda, so kudos for that :P

I think most new designers start on Live design where they are balancing and fixing bugs in champions. Designers who show interest and promise in champion design may move over to that department in time depending on what resources that department needs.

Sure internally a lot of suggestions are made. However these have to be prioritized against everything else (including tasks like server stability) and the sorts of skills we have available. We are constantly hiring more people so we can do more.

We have several Canadians working here.

Who is the Deathbringer?

Thanks a lot for replying to everyone in this thread. It means a ton to me personally (and everyone else, im sure) that you took the time.

It's me when I'm playing well.

this is an awesome thread +1 to huhums

Good save.