Yeah... I was going to say that Candidate 2 seemed not equal to Candidate 1 until you added the new #4. It definitely does seem like you put over emphasis on getting into a good school though.

I've compared class work of friends at prestige schools with the class work of friends at average schools and there really isn't a huge difference from what I've seen. Like comparing UPenn to PennState. Both Pennsylvania schools, different tiers of prestige, but very similar overall material and learning experience. Granted, you generally have to do a lot more work and usually be a better student to get into a prestige school, but that's not directly related (correlation is not causation and so on). You could have had financial difficulties or other things crop up. That isn't to say other things aren't equal, such as facilities and connections and such.

I know you went to a prestige school, along with a lot of other Rioters, but do you think that it might be a bit of a bias towards prestige schools? I assume from your personal experience you've had better candidates from more prestige schools? What about the experience of recruiters who did not attend prestige schools, do they have similar view points or what?

Recruiting is a correlation process until you know candidates, and then it's a judgment process Prestige schools, as you say, are related to the selection process as much as they are about the education or experiences you have. We have to filter resumes on a comprehensive basis, and that's one clue we can use to form a picture. I'm actually more excited about candidate 1 in the example I presented, btw, because starting your own business successfully requires a bunch of personality traits and self-image characteristics that correlate to high performance here.

Well, here's the educational pedigree of the various executives and leads in design and writing, on a person by person basis. You tell me how much priority we are putting. I've listed only highest degrees of each individual here.

1) MBA from Northwestern/Kellogg
2) Undergrad from Waterloo
3) MBA from Stanford
4) No college
5) Undergrad, Cal-state Stanislaus
6) UCLA undergrad
7) Ph.D from UBC
8) Associates degree from Full Sail
9) Bachelor's degree from School of Visual Arts

As you can see, there's a pretty wide breadth here. We are very open minded, but we've tuned this approach based on what has worked, and tuned it by also letting virtually anyone who applied take the design test for a small period of time.

Fundamentally, it's hard to find great talent. We take it where we can get it.

Hey Zileas did you catch my question on the last page? Sorry if you've answered it before in another thread!

I love how this thread has been completely gutted and reworked from it's original "Hey we can't fix our **** come do it for us" form.

How does a philosophy degree look to you guys? I graduated with a philosophy degree and went back to school and currently working on my Game programming degree. you said critical thinking is a big thing for you, so i was just wondering if philosophy helps. Since i'm in school again, I applied for the internship.

Zileas:

Quick question for you. Would you consider experience designing content for non-computer RPGs to potentially have value to Riot's design department? Many of the ideas that are applicable to RPG design (ease of mechanical understanding, abilities that are simple in execution but have tactical depth across different situations, and so forth) seem to have considerable overlap with League of Legend's design philosophy.

I ask because I've been doing RPG design for close to 9 years, and I've been wondering if there might be a place for that design knowledge at Riot (or in the video game industry in general). Thoughts?

Wise. And rare.

Thus the soaring student debt in this country.

@Zileas/Morello

I know this isn't exactly on topic, but I searched the other links and stuff and couldn't find anything about it. How do you go about hiring voice actors for the different champions?

Yes, it is applicable.

What about QA engineers?