"For us, it's really about, are we doing a great job at meeting the needs of our audience," says Marc Merrill

A few days ago, we chatted with the co-founder of Riot Games Marc Merrill as part of our Fun & Serious 2020 coverage. As part of the interview, we asked Merrill about what Riot is hoping to achieve with their new mobile game League of Legends: Wild Rift, particularly if they aim for the game to become a top-tier mobile title.

"For us, we recognise that there may have been many many players of League of Legends that maybe while they were in college or what not, were maybe able to spend more time playing the game, but their needs have changed or their lives have changed, and they now have careers or families and different obligations. We wanted to find a way to bring a genuine, great League of Legends experience to different platforms with shorter games and that you know, would be able to fit into our changing players' lifestyles. We think Wild Rift does an excellent job at doing that."

Merrill continued talking briefly about how Riot looked to achieve these goals and whether making the go-to mobile game was ever in the plan.

"We think that if we do an excellent job at delivering a true League experience that feels like League, that's responsive and has character abilities that feel awesome and is highly competitive, with a skill cap that is really high but is still accessible with the comfort of the controls: then the game will find a great audience. That's what we're really trying to do, but we literally don't set targets about how big the game needs to get or those types of things. For us, it's really about, are we doing a great job at meeting the needs of our audience."

If you haven't already checked out our full interview with Marc Merrill, be sure to look at the video at the top of the page to see what he says on the future of Valorant, League of Legends and Riot-based esports.