What about someone who is interested in designing Lore for a game like League of Legends? I'm by no means a grade A writer, but I absolutely -love- dreaming up new worlds, thinking about the characters that inhabit such worlds, how much magic/machinery is involved, and deeper and deeper until I realize that my food is now cold.

I remember when I was keeping up with Warhammer Online video blogs waaay back when, and they mentioned that they had someone available to look through the Lore Book. This so-called book dictated everything that could and couldn't be Warhammer.

I would love to be that guy in the back of the room clutching what must be a musty old tome and relaying to the company how we could fit certain things into the Lore of a game. How does one -get- a job like that? It's just so hard to quantify/qualify someone for a position like that. : /

This sort of stuff I as a person that's seriously considering applying for a few positions at Riot eat up, Thank you for your replys guys

To Morello, or any other Red, I have a few questions regarding Riot.

Firstly, what are the chances of getting into an internship at Riot? I'm not asking for details, just a general number, like a comparison of the % of people that get in versus the amount of people that apply.

Secondly, assuming that I can't or don't get into an internship, but still want to apply years down the road, without that immediate familiarity with the Riot group and knowledge of how the company works, is it moreso worth it to find a job/career somewhere else and gain experience in the field, after college of course, or would it be optimal to go for the application process nonetheless? I'm interested in the Software/Platform Engineering area, if that's any help toward answering this question.

Thirdly, to what degree does leadership help in gaining a job at Riot? If you're more naturally inclined to lead, would you have a better chance at getting a job, or does it only affect you post-acceptance?

Morello said the f word. Ban him

This is what I tell my mentees.

You go to college to get an entry level interview. No job is ever promised.

If you want good money for just a bachelor's, engineering is the only 4 year degree that will start you at above $50k, and the only one that can max out above $100k. No other bachelor's degree can even come close to engineering.

If you go into sciences, you better plan on turning that into a MS in engineering, PhD, DO, MD, DDS, or DVM or you better not waste your time. All meaninful jobs in science field will require a minimum of a PhD unless you want to be a lab rat which requires a MS unless you just want to wash dishes which requires a BS. Sciences like chemistry, physics, and biology extremely challenging bachelors compared to other non-science majors, but they do not pay a lore more based on how difficult it is. At least you won't make minimum wage like a sociology major!

If you go into any other field, you better hope you can get into Law school or your bachelor's degree can earn you a few dollars above minimum wage.

If you go into any other field and do not want to go to Law school, you better be extremely passionate about one area and be okay with just living comfortable and giving up some spoils in life. If you want the best of both worlds, you better get passionate about a high paying career or get extremely lucky and land a jackpot hire.


With that being said, I always tell people I mentor that job requirements are always "loose" and are never strict. If my career, at Apple, has taught me anything, the best minds are often those who haven't been in the field for 30 years and are out of ideas, but they are often those who meet no requirements but have the creative mind to think outside the corporate norm.

*These views are mainly relevant to mid- to senior-level positions only.

Apparently my interviews are some of the most grueling experiences at Riot, so I was asked to voice some thoughts here. Every company, every school, every lab or club has an all-star or two. I think everyone has met someone like this before, where we reflect and say, "I don't care what I'm doing or where I have to go--I want to work with that person and learn from that person." Riot has teams of all-stars. So what does that mean?

It means it's not about just having great ideas. When you are working with industry experts in every discipline, everyone has amazing ideas. The next big idea for a game feature could come from QA, Game Design, or even Marketing and with so many smart people focused on the same goals, I hear a lot of great ideas. In a vast majority of interviews, I'll listen to dozens and dozens of great ideas.

"I would do this for League."
"I want to build this for Riot."
"I have a great idea for this new feature."

But guess what? In 99.9% of cases, I've heard the idea 200+ times already. However, if an applicant takes a great idea and shows me how they actually executed the idea and got tangible results--that's impressive. Students often ask me, "Well, how do I get a position in PBJ? No game developers are really hiring psychologists or neuroscientists so I can't get experience." Why do you have to be at a game studio to execute on a great idea? We're now in a day and age where you can create mods, build models, or run analyses that are all valuable to game developers--why not just do it and prove that you can execute on your great ideas?

Secondly, teams like player behavior don't need to hire anyone. We're looking for the best and we are willing to wait. I often ask applicants, "What do you bring to Riot that we currently don't have?" The reason I ask this question is because I want to know exactly what is the opportunity cost of not having this person at Riot. Am I worried if this person joins a competing game developer? Is there something we simply cannot create or build without this person?

You'll notice that at this point I haven't mentioned degrees or experience. Sure, degrees and experience are correlated with intelligence and knowledge, but we all know it's not everything. Without those things, you need to have created enough awesome and show enough tangible value in your projects to the point where an interview later, I'm thinking: "We cannot afford to lose this person--they have to be a Rioter."

The color scheme on the new jobs site is horrendous. Took about a minute of trying to read and make sure everything was correct before my eyes started hurting from the black and white. Quick easy process though, good job.

Out of interest, does Riot have any publicly available data that relates to League of Legends?

I ask because it was mentioned that one way of getting noticed and, eventually, hired, would be to perform an analysis of some sort. This seems like a great thin to do, especially if you're someone who plays regularly and wants to demonstrate that something or other is a problem that needs to be fixed.

You can't really do that without data.