League’s New Control Scheme is a Gamble | Design Club

[Music] Good time zone, internet. Hello and welcome to Design Club, the only game design show on the internet that's late because we were too busy hyping about Silk Song and lost track of time. I am your humble design club host. Will joined as always by my pal Jeff. Say hi to the people, Jeff.
Hi to the people, Jeff. Hey everybody, I am Jeffrey Zack in the studio director of Extra Credits and Extra History and longtime video game designer and for the purposes of this talk, player of League of Legends for
too long,
a long time at this point, joined as always by my humble humble co-host Will,
who's just a little excited about today's reveal. So, uh, if if you don't if if you can't see below or you're watching this later, uh, we are filming this at like a little after 2:00 p.m. Eastern on the 21st of August, 2025. And

that's important because like 3 hours ago, a little more than 3 hours ago, uh, it got revealed that Silk Song comes out in two weeks after seven years of waiting. So,
or in a year and two weeks,
a year and two weeks. We're betting it's two weeks. So, um, very excited about this. Uh, I am in particular excited about Silkong because, uh, Hollow Knight is one of my favorite gaming experiences I've ever had. Uh, and I'm super excited to get to have another whole world of bugfilled goodness to run around in and explore, and it looks great. So, I'm I'm very excited. Uh, but that's not why we're here. I'm actually kind of hoping it's 54 weeks, but um that's just because
Well, well, there's there's actually a really interesting Jason Trier article that we we'll talk about probably Monday and we might talk about in brief later about the fact that it took seven years to make Silkong because they were just having fun and they had infinite money. And I'm like, you know what, that's

fair. That's valid and reasonable. So, good good for team chair. Anyway, today's topic is not that though that is the current breaking news. Uh today's topic is another recent announcement though not one by team Jerry. It's by Riot about League of Legends. So, um Jeff plays League the way I play Magic, which is to say
you you don't have to be a League player for this one. This is going to be a more general sprawling design thing. It's just it is an interesting industry thing that happens to be happening in League.
That is a very good clarification. Yes. So, um, uh, Jeff plays League the way I play Magic, which is to say entirely too much. Knows it entirely too well for his good. And, uh, yeah. Yeah, it's Yeah. Okay, great. So, um, we're going to talk a little bit about this uh, and why it's weird for League specifically and also why this is a weird move in general. So the move
and actually weird for the game like this is going to sound initially like it's for one game but it's happening

because of a whole bunch of industry things and it reflects on part of how the industry is evolving.
Yes. So
for those unfamiliar with League of Legends first off congratulations. You've escaped.
Well done. I'm proud of you. Uh
number two it is Will. You have this can't be right. 16 years old.
Uh that is correct Jeff. You may now turn to dust. It It released. Yes. Mhm. Yep. Released in 2009.
Wow. Okay. I have been playing for a while.
Uh-huh. That's correct. You have. So, uh, it is a MOA, a multiplayer online battle arena game in which two teams of five, uh, engage in combat in a map, farming up resources, uh, to knock down, uh, towers in, um, one to three lanes of combat, and with the ultimate goal being destroying the enemy's core structure, in this case, the nexus. Um,

the other very important thing to note is that because it's a MOA, it inherits a lot of what makes it a game from RTS's because MOBAs as a genre.
Real time strategy games, RTS.
Yes. Are deeply deeply reliant on some conventions from real-time strategy games because that's where they came from.
Yep. For those unfamiliar as well, MOBAs came out of a mod of Warcraft 3.
Yes.
Yeah. So this is
a custom map of Warcraft 3,
one of the famous games like Counterstrike that started as a mod before becoming its own
full in this case genre. Yes.
Because there have been lots and lots of them.
Yeah.
At this point and League and um Dota are the lion share occupy like 95% of the space.
Yep. with with the remainder being sort of fractionally split between like Smite
um
maybe even 98% of the space like

well yeah we got to talk about
overstate how big
league was also one of the and Dota after it one of the early lifestyle games meaning games that they wanted to like MMOs that they expect you'd be playing for long periods of time right
and so we're always looking for supporting both the game as it is, but the game as it's going to be over long periods of time,
right? So, that all is incredibly relevant because League up until this point has had a click to move user interface. That is to say that you control a singular character 99% of the time. There are exceptions of course, but you control a single character and in order to move that character, you need to click your mouse on the screen where you want that character to go. You also
similar to Diablo, Starcraft,
um, Age of Empires.
Yeah.

Basically, the kind of clicky games and the RTS games, it's in a three, it's in what's called an isometric perspective, meaning you're not looking out of your character's eyes or a follow cam over them. It's kind of a looking down to see at a tilt so that you can see a lot of the map with the perspective that a threequarter tilt gives you.
Correct. So, a lifestyle game with a control scheme that is unique to a specific genre of games. Right. So, there are people who've been playing for 16 years with this particular control scheme with the idea that in order to click, in order to move around the map, you need to click. Now you also click for other things
abilities and target and everything else.
Yes. Um, and the league team has recently come out and said, "Hey, we think that this thing, which is, I would argue, one of the most fundamental parts of a video game, the

way that you play, like
interact with the game,
correct, is keeping people from returning to League or from getting into League for the first time. So, we're going to change it. We're going to add to it.
Yeah, we're going to offer another option, another alternative way that you can interact with the game in order to help those people play the game. And I I think I'm of two minds on this. one, we're going to show you the um the little uhformational video from the actual team that's developing the WASD system to put into League. Um because we think they've got some really great things and I think that they are doing this the absolute smartest way they possibly can. I also think this is a huge gamble because this is so incredibly weird
and it it doesn't sound like it on it's like oh they're adding it's like cool you can point and click now you're going

to be able to use your WD keys and click
and the one little foreshadowing I'll give of how interesting this is before we dive into it is imagine you're playing say Halo or Call of Duty on your Xbox and they're like hey in addition to that we're now allowing mouse and keyboard for your shooter game,
right?
And you're like, "Wait a second. Mouse and keyboard is a little more accurate than my controller. How is that going to work? How is that going to be fair?"
And the answer is it's not. And there's a reason that they are now uh this is actually, if you're unfamiliar, a problem in ranked console shooters is that there are devices which can say I'm a controller to the console, but are actually hooked up to a keyboard and mouse. you spoof a controller input but actually use a keyboard and mouse to do it. And they are a huge problem particularly for incredibly precise shooters like um Rainbow Six Siege which if uh is a very tactical shooter but the

most important part for this conversation is all head shot always kill. You can't have a helmet thick enough to deflect a headsh shot. Uh, and so the game is very like there are people holding single pixel angles to try and when that pixel changes color, they know an enemy has passed by it and they will get the head shot. Like this is incredibly precise and they're having a huge problem on console with keyboard and mouse players, right? So, and as a result of that, I'm like wondering how they're going to accomplish balancing this. Um,
oh, the other thing the other thing to know about League of Legends, if you are unfamiliar, is that League of Legends is one of the biggest esports in the world.
Yes,
it may be the biggest. If not, it's in the top three. I'm
Yeah, it's it's up there. I think the only other games that come close are Fortnite and Counterstrike, I would say. Uh, Starcraft 2 might have or Starcraft might have at some point, but has sort of collapsed in on itself and had its

lunch eaten by
League has been like the premier esport or one of them for well over a decade at this point. Like esports came up in part because of how big League of Legends got. Like there are professional teams in a staggering number of regions at this point when they hold their world finals or quarterfinals and invitationals. a lot of people tune in like it's Twitch like drains over to watch certain ones as Riot is live streaming and so what that means is League or Riot has spent an extraordinarily am amount of money growing their esports and their if you're good enough you can play as a pro and make a living doing this.
Yes. um like they have their own whole broadcast infrastructure in lots of different countries and regions. Riot has really done this. And so part of the reason we're so surprised on this is

Riot has spent a long time trying to make sure that their game is one of the best competitive esports in the world. fundamentally messing with how you interact with the game when you have that many professional players and that much money being earned is also a really interesting thing.
Yes. Yeah. You you are um you are upsetting a delicately balanced ecosystem by introducing a new factor, a new variant.
Yeah. Uh
so let's watch their announcement. Let's see what's going on here.
Yeah. Uh okay, let's pull this. Am I going to get small, Will?
I believe you will indeed get small. Uh I need to add that thing to the other thing. Don't worry about what that thing is.
There you go. Push it up.
Okay, cool. Great. Awesome. Excellent. So, uh we won't be dealing terribly much with these two. They're just right before the two individuals that we're very excited about. Uh Jeeoff, I think we're just going to let this go. I don't

think we need to comment. It's It's pretty short.
Uh so, uh without any further ado, here's what the Riot team has to say. you can expect.
Hey gamers, I'm Dashi Jador, the producer for Wazi,
and I'm Dean, the designer for Wazdi.
We've been working on WASD for a while now, and we want to get it in your hands to test. Ultimately, our goal with WADI is to make playing League intuitive for first-time players or those returning without changing what makes League. That said, we're longtime league players ourselves and have been using point-and-click for years. So, we've been working hard to ensure that both control schemes feel great across all ranks, champions, and modes. In order to make sure that's true, we've been gathering tons of feedback from our internal play test team, from brand new players, and from pro players at MSI. And now we're ready to get even more feedback from all of you. WASD is going to come to PBE in the next few patches, and it'll stay there for an extended run. We're taking a slower than usual roll out where we'll start on PBE, we'll move to unranked cues, and eventually into ranked. Our goal is to make sure we have the time to gather feedback and act on it before full release. We're rolling

it out this way because we want to make sure that we can catch any bugs, unintended interactions, and to ensure that your ranked games aren't disrupted by someone wisding into walls.
We've discovered and resolved a lot of edge case scenarios while in development. Uh, so we're hopeful we got rid of the most atrocious bugs. One of the earliest bugs led to a few play tests where Noo-Noo could do this sick 180 instantly while snowballing, and that unlocked a new fear for many of us. Now, let's talk about balance. Our goal is to make sure WASD is an awesome way to play League for the players who want it, but no one should feel forced to switch control schemes just to stay competitive.
One thing we'll be keeping a close eye on is how WASDY affects balance between moving and attacking, especially at high attack speeds. With pointand-click, kiting or chasing someone down while attacking takes serious precision, and WASD controls can make this a lot easier.
This is something on everyone's minds, so we're going into PBE very aware of it, and we'll be ready to make adjustments if we need to. Beyond WADI movement and improving the way the champion feels while in WASDI, we feel

there should be a few other things that can be improved for both control schemes. So, we're making some updates to those spaces like keybinding and camera. For keybindings, we're exploring a lot more finite controls for players to be able to set whatever they want. For example, we'll let you bind the left click on your mouse without having to edit your system files. For the first time in leaks history,
we're also adding a new version of locked camera called dynamic locked camera. It extends your view towards your mouse and our hope is to get the simplicity of locked camera but with some flexibility to see more of the action when you need to. Both of these updates are going to be locked to WASD at first and the only reason we want to do that is to make sure all WADI related features are in a great state before we roll them out to everybody. While WASD is on PBE, we'll be consistently shipping improvements and tweaks based on your feedback. We're still in an experimental state, so you'll likely see changes patch to patch.
And that's why we really need your feedback. So, when WADI launches in a couple of patches, go to the PvE, try every champion, find the weirdest bugs, and tell us all about it. Seriously,

some of you are some of the most creative and wildiest players out there, and we need you. So, grab a friend, get to the PvE, and WASDY your way down the rift. Make sure to give us feedback and help us make a fun control scheme for new players. That's it from us. If you want to learn more, you can check out the blog. It's out now. All right. So, that's that I I felt like so I had I had like questions going in and I feel like by the way
this kind of video from Riot along with like the patch notes and the style that they do them for League phenomenal, right? Like I'm not a huge fan
communicates better than I think any other group I've ever seen or any other game group. and and they really have to because uh they they have this uh like you said this this very unfranchised player base and uh they really need the the trust of that player base.
Um
so
that covered a lot.
It did. It did. So let's let's break this down. So

the reason that Riot is doing this is
16 years in
16 years in right is that they are noticing a trend in the players and that trend is that it is difficult for new players to get in and difficult for returning players to return assumably after playing other games for significant periods of time and return to this I'm going to call it archaic control style and and I don't know that That's fair and I'm willing to like have a little fight over the word archaic, but it does feel like this is um League is in a very narrow slice of games that control in this fashion. It is by virtue of its size sort of the industry standard for MOBAs, but it is still weird compared to every other game.
I don't know. I mean, when I play Diablo or Torch Light, I still expect like there are certain games I expect to do that or RTS's.
Sure. But when I play what I would argue is the most relevant current ARPG for

like cutting edge ARPG design, and that would be Path of Exile 2,
I also use WASD because Path of Exile 2 also released with WASD controls. So, they're move they're moving in that direction as well. And they, I would argue for uh Path did a really good job with that. I I felt much more comfortable playing path two than I did playing path one. And it wasn't just a lot of the weird systems, right? Um
but so they basically they have seen like from a game running or studio running perspective, they've seen a trend that they think is significant enough that they're willing to invest a lot of time and money into seeing if they can add this to the thing.
Yes. They basically because something like this I let me tell you the team had to go whoever was thinking about it and they tossed it around like it had to be there were a lot of people that had to sign off on doing this.
Yeah.
Straight up very high ranking people in

Riot
because
possibly all the way going up to the CEO, right? like saying we're going to fundamentally add a whole new way that we people can interact with the game that brings our studio in enough money to pay for all of these people.
And here's the other one. They can't really put this back now. Like yes, it's in testing and yes, it will be like in testing for as they said a very long time. We'll talk about their testing approach in a while. But from a community relations standpoint, I don't think they get to go back on this because now they're
they could I mean they could six months from now be like, you know, we tested this a lot. We don't think we're ever going to have a fair solution.
Correct.
So, we're shing it.
The problem is then that some portion of the new players that have joined in the intervening time and the players who have begun to adopt it will be unwilling to go back to the old control methodology and
not if they keep it on the P actually let's talk about that. what a PBE server is because that's a good starting point.

Um,
if they kept it exclusively their will, I think they could pull it back once it goes to a live server. No.
So, most games that are things like MMOs or anything with competitive nature need to test it with real players in addition to their testing crew before they release it. Yeah,
this is fine if your game's not out yet, but if your game is out, usually there is a separate set of servers stood up where you during development upload your stuff to test it. Actually, you have your private test servers and then you have this middle staging area which is a place people can go live people can go play on it before it actually moves over into the place everybody plays. This is always an optin system. you never accidentally end up on basically the check it out server that you're like hey I want to see the upcoming stuff
and and this is a longstanding practice in live service games this goes back to

uh EverQuest does it not like and before
we had these yeah we had
almost yeah staging servers have been around for 25 years for these kinds of games like this is just how you do it
right and there will be a group there will be a cadre of players who are very interested in getting their hands on this thing first. And generally, by the way, on on um these servers, you're given extra um you level faster, get extra currency, get cool shiny things to play with as sort of an incentive to do it, unless you're testing something that would be broken by all of those things to help incentivize players to play in a different cool environment. Yeah. Um,
there are a lot of players, excuse me, there is a portion of the player base that really enjoys getting to play with and break the new things.
That is also very true. Yes,
that community is very very important to the health of a long-term game like this. So, when they said they're going to move it to the PBE server, what they're saying is we're not putting this live, we're putting this on the place

that people can test it.
Yes.
So, that's a very important like
step. And then
well they've said that once they're done with an extended period of this private test server thing that they are then going to roll it out exclusively for unranked games.
Yeah.
Games where the end result does not have permanent consequences on your uh win loss record. Right. Like people care about winning and losing in on ranked but not in the same way that they do in ranked.
Yeah. And for those unfamiliar again, um, many mobile games and other kinds of games with competitive playing have some sort of matchmaking that is based on player skill that they then make visible and they're like, "Hey, you're a silver level player or a gold level player or, you know, I different games do it in different types of metal or gem or other ranking style, but they rank you." And almost every game that does that has the ability to play ranked or unranked. In

other words, like, oh, you just want to go mess around with your friends, go play unranked. You want to do it for your bragging rights of how good you are, go play ranked. And people invest a lot in that, what their rank level is in other things. And they don't want that messed with.
Correct. because that would damage um uh one of the very sort of nebulous concepts that has concrete consequences for live service games and for lifestyle games and those broadly overlap but are not wholly the same thing in my opinion uh is disrespecting the player's time. If you disrespect a player's time because that's really the investment that you're asking for from them to be a daily player to incorporate your game into their routine. If you disrespect their time, they tend to not take it well. And it's easier to accidentally do that than it is to disrespect their dollars because companies have like very

clear data on like the dollars part, right? When like there are some pretty clear rules on that, but disrespecting time is a little easier to do accidentally. So, it sounds like they've got a So, this is a very safe roll out. This is a very methodical, very safe, very
It is very method. We'll we'll see how and they're doing it as safely as they can. But yes, so like backing up for a second because we kind of jumped ahead cuz I wanted to say what the PBE Yeah. was is
they basically said we think to continue to stay competitive in this market and competitive in this market also means continuing to attract new players.
Yes.
We need to make a fundamental change. here. We've we've they've been doing it for a while, obviously. They've been gathering information in private tests. They said they were talking to pro players and they've gotten it to the point where they're now actually announcing it to the public and putting it on the PBE server where they haven't said when it's coming off. They've said it's there for an extended period of time, but

I would say 6 months minimum.
We'll see. Yeah. Like I have no idea
what that is. So that's kind of that is the move that they're doing and the why which is they think they need this to stay competitive
and a little bit of possibly fresh.
Yeah.
League is actually very good at trying to keep it reinventing itself. They have extensively tuned over their 16 years over 16 seasons how the game is played adding and subtracting and modifying bits of it. So it still feels roughly like the same game. But if you were playing in season 8 or season 11, those are going to feel a little bit different.
And that's part of the reason they've had such longevity is they continue to refresh and update their game in addition to adding new champions.
I will say that I think that the best way to encapsulate that notion is that league's biggest competition is not another game, it's churn. So churn is the process by which a uh every day a

number of players, a number of people will stop engaging with a kind of media simply because it doesn't fit their life anymore. This happens for every game that tracks daily player statistics and every other kind of media, every YouTube channel, every cable network if those still matter, right? Every Tik Tok uh user, right? every kind of media experience is churn to some degree. And so I would say that I think that they're they're acutely aware. I would say that League is probably very acutely aware of their churn rate and that this is that that's um the other side of this is that they're not they're not worried that someone's going to eat their lunch. No one can eat league's lunch. League's lunch is too big. Um but they will slowly lose parts of their lunch as players turn out. And so doing something like this
and the seagulls and pigeons swoop in.
Correct. Doing something like this does two things. One, it changes the churn rate, right? There will be people who

don't leave because this is a new and interesting thing for them to do. And there will be people who return. So they're increasing the influx rate and decreasing the rate of turnout. And I think this is a smart way to do both of those things without doing something that like I I I can't say more fundamentally, but like changes the game's identity in a way that's more visible on screen, if that makes sense. Right. They can't make something newer or flashier or a new champion or something like that to do this amount to to the thing.
Yeah.
And it's actually one final thing before we kind of dive into it. In the same way that like World of Warcraft spikes in daily active players after they put out a new expansion,
putting out a notable thing is a great way to get people to come back and check in on a thing. Y
and if you've had a game that's been going for this length of time, reactivating any number of lapsed

players is also an invaluable thing.
I think that's very true. There's there's a lot of things that they could get out of this, but there's also a lot that could go wrong. So, we've kind of laid out the general.
Yeah.
Let's talk about a little more specifics.
Yeah. So, you mentioned mouse and keyboard verse controller.
Yes.
I think this is a bigger move than that. I think that's one of the only roughly analogous moves that like we can compare it to.
I think this is moving from touchscreen to controller. And I mean like single like stylus touchscreen, not the kind of touchcreen that some mobile games have where you have fake joysticks, right? I'm sure you've seen these, Jeff, where like the lower left and lower right corner become virtual joysticks that you can use to control the game. And the reason for that is that um whether I'm doing forward and back on a mouse or up and down on the right stick on a controller,

I'm controlling the character's motion in the same
general way. I'm already doing the same forward, back, turn left, turn right. The the device I'm using to do it is different, right? But I'm still manually controlling each step that my character takes in a path,
right? versus.
Yeah. So, let's talk about this for a moment. I'm going to use the back of an iPad.
Sure.
Because I need a surface to playing this on.
But we talked for a minute about mouse like for a shooter game on a console. Introducing a mouse and keyboard is an unfair advantage because when you're holding a controller, you're the preciseness that you have with your thumbs is different than the fine granularity that a mouse can move back and forth,
especially when you're trying to aim in a very precise shot. And honestly, it also bounces around a little less when you're moving your controller. the

effect of like your your movement with one thumb
does actually move the actual controller which means you have to be compensating
and there's a spring, right? Just like the return to center motion has a spring and that doesn't exist in a mouse.
And this isn't bad in any way. Like controllers are great, but if you're looking for absolute precision,
yes,
a mouse is just going to be more accurate.
Yes.
And there is no competition on that. Like
correct. It just it is a stated fact in gaming. A mouse is going to be more accurate than a controller,
right? And
but Will is right on a fundamental level that both the controller moving around and the mouse are how you interact with basically aiming your gun in a shooter. In a mobile, for those unfamiliar, if you see your car, say your character is sitting in the middle of your screen, how you interact with a mouse is you're like, I want you to go here. And whether you click here, here, or here, your

character starts moving in that direction from the usually from the center of the screen. And if you're like, oh, go this way, you have to then click on the other side. So if you want to, you also interact with an object by clicking on it. So if you're here and you're like, I want to move this way and then cast a spell on this guy, you click to move, you click to cast, and if you want to then alter your movement, you click back over here or here. or maybe you want to start going forward. So, part of how this interacts is your mouse is constantly going back and forth. And if you're navigating a fight quickly, as the video said, like trying to do something like retreat while targeting enemies and shooting has you moving your mouse back and forth and back and forth in addition to hitting keys.
Yes.
Very quickly. And honestly, some people, including myself at my age, are not as quick and precise as they used to be when, say, they were 18 or 20,
right? Uh, and I think so we can think of the mouse's position as a resource

here, right? The mouse has to be where you want to be and where you want to target and where you would like to skill shot, which means that it takes a lot of control to do all three of those things at the same time.
I'm retreating and I'm firing off a rooting skill shot to cover our retreat and I'm also trying to auto attack someone to apply my slow or whatever.
It covers movement and targeting.
Yes. with the same interface. Correct. With the same hardware device.
Yes. So by splitting those up,
right?
By still having
what we're talking about is divorcing movement from targeting
because what WD is is it's movement,
right? And that
and like the initial concern and Will's going to like back me up is if I used to be doing this, this this this this going back and forth and suddenly I don't have to be doing that. I am moving with my fingers. This movement part is gone and I'm just like click click click. It's a lot easier to keep clicking on my target

if I'm not having to go back and forth and do movement or other things around it.
Yes.
Like there's a position called ADC right now which is a very high rate of input click to both move and attack.
Right.
I am not fast enough to play a good ADC in a highly competitive environment. With WD I might be.
Yes. So um there is another com highly competitive field of video games which experienced something to analogous to this exact thing and it's fighting games. I forgot to mention this when we did this but there are two general kinds of control schemes three general kinds of control schemes for fighting games. Two of which are equivalent and one of which is not. Controllers are just like an arcade fight stick. So, if you're familiar with a fighting game in arcade, I'm sure Jeff played a lot of them back in ye old and golden days of
Street Fighter 2 for a long time,
right? Okay. So, you have a stick and some buttons that control what you do.

There's another kind and and that's just like a controller, right? You have a a stick that controls the motion of your character and some buttons that
By stick, we mean literally a thing that sticks up that you're
Yes.
pushing and moving around.
Yes. There is also a device called a hitbox which removes the stick and replaces it with four directional buttons. So you can have an up, down, left, right like WASD on a physical box. And there have been problems with that because um you they had to certify for a while that you couldn't hold that you couldn't both be inputting left and right on the hitbox at the same time. Because the problem is that if you do that and then you let one of them up, your character will immediately move in the other direction. A thing which you cannot do
on with a physical stick.
With a physical stick because the physical stick has a transit time just like your mouse has a

physical stick is binary. It is pointing one direction.
Correct.
It's not quite by like it is either going left or it isn't.
Right. Right. But it has travel time. You might think that travel time is insignificant. It's a control stick. How long can it take to move? In highlevel fighting game play, a reminder that that windows of opportunity to perform actions are measured in frames. They are not measured in seconds. They are measured in frames. So, every advantage matters. And similarly, there are some very narrow, tight shenanigans windows in League that need to be accounted for. And that's just one minor part of this idea of divorcing movement from targeting that we're talking about here, right? that that now um I will be very interested to see whether you can hold A and D and if you do what happens right do I do I go do so I go nowhere do I continue to move in the direction that do I continue to move left do I continue to move right what happens
right
yeah does it make me spin

does it make yes
and part of what we're wondering too is they're saying WD but like are there going to be diagonals or you going to hold W and A at the same time to go di you know upper left diagonally because they're going need to take most likely multi-button input
on this like we could start delving into the like how you do design on it but in some cases that's less important.
Yeah.
Then this huge concept of divorcing the movement right
from the selection.
Yes.
Because that used to be one thing because that fundamentally decreases the amount of mouse clicks and the accuracy of the mouse clicks you need to be doing.
We Okay. So, so and and both of those things are good and bad, right? Uh less accurate with mouse clicks probably not great. Lowering the skill uh uh floor, maybe the which is a desirable thing to have in a highly competitive game. You want the skill floor to be at a certain level so that people feel like they're on an even playing field, right? Um,

and on the other hand, I'm not wearing these today to make a point, but like I've played too many games and my hands hurt. I'm getting old, right? I I can play on a controller, which is real useful because I'm playing Elden Ring right now, and they don't hurt as much. But when I raid in 14, a thing which is highly mouse click,
uh, mouse button intensive, my hands hurt. So, there's good there's there's positive and negatives here to this, right? Reducing number of clicks is good, but lowering the skill floor might not be.
Right.
Yeah. And it's interesting, too, like thinking about it as I get older and play games, I have actually in League started selecting champions that I can do less clicks per second. Like I'm selecting ones that have basically higher impact per click.
Yes.
And that's that is an actual choice. like my strategic play is still pretty good and my reflexes for my age are still pretty good, but again they don't

compete when I was I might have been almost prolevel when I was 20, right?
Like there's a difference
on that and it's a noticeable thing. And so part of saying we're introducing this is also opening this up for a wider range of players to play more competitively.
Yeah.
But what they also don't want to do is disenfranchise players who don't want to make the switch.
Correct. Because that was one of the other things they said is we want people to play without feeling like they need to switch over to a new scheme and relearn the game to be competitive,
right?
And by relearning like most people know how to operate a WD. Let's just not all do, but let's assume most do. But also, you have a lot of muscle memory for a game like League of Legends. League of Legends currently uses the four top keys, QWER, for your four abilities, your three regulars, and your ultimate. They also use other keys like the S key to stop moving, the A for an attack move, use

the number keys to use activated um items in your inventory. There's a lot of binding around there. So the fact that you know you I have my mouse for selecting targets but I'm using the keyboard for selecting excuse me mouse for moving and targeting. I'm still using the keyboard to select which thing I'm doing at the moment. You know do I want to pop a potion before I use my Q skill shot and then drop a ward you know and you know now cast my shield spell as the thing comes in. Like if you change WD to be the middle of where all the other controls used to be, it also means players going to have to relearn where all of that is. And that's not the end of the world. But what you're telling somebody is a game you've been playing a while, you're going to have to relearn it because we just made a big change.
Yeah. And um
if you think you have to switch to it. And the other of course issue here is as Jeff has just described this isn't flat

right and they even admit this right that some roles some some roles like ADC a notoriously um attack heavy micromovetheheavy
designed to be that way
yeah it's designed to be that way
players who play that role will probably feel differently potentially more but we'll go with for certain differently motivated to change control schemes than someone who might play support, right? Even though they're in the same lane, even though they're usually in the same fights, the the
supports usually have more activated items, for example, than ADCs do, which means they're hitting different buttons.
Uhhuh.
Um,
you even have some ADC, like I'm curious to see what they're going to do for Kalista has non-standard movement on click, one of their ADCs. Like there's all sorts of weird edge cases.
Um let's not even get into it's

Yeah. Yeah. Anyway,
she has non-standard movement.
Yeah.
Um so I'm I like I'm actually a little bullish on this for my own personal play. Like there's actually a thing um if when you start playing League, I'm just going to use this as a small story to kind of go along. When you click, say A to use your ability, it lights up your targeting reticule and the next thing you click on, you use your A ability. They have a setting called smart casting where basically if you turn it on, whatever your mouse is hovering over when you hit A, it's just considered an auto confirmation. So, they're eliminating the must click to confirm part. The advantage to this is it's quicker. The disadvantage to this is it's quicker. Like whatever your mouse is over, that's what you're doing it on. Y
most people competitive people switch over to this at some point when they're

playing. Switching over to this always gives you a certain amount of time learning period where you are retraining yourself on the game that you don't have to click to confirm everything. It just happens right as you click it. Mh.
And again, it's kind of that muscle memory thing, but every competitive player and even c most casual players I know have switched over to this because at a certain point they're just like, I want to be quicker. I know where my mouse is. I don't have to confirm everything. And so it's a step you go through in league. This reminds me a little bit of if they do this, it's going to be like that again. And but people went through that because they said, "Oh, this ends up being a better result."
Yes. I'm going to be really curious a year after whatever this releases to see when Riot publishes how many people are now using this system versus others.
Yeah, it it'll be um and if it differs by region. Final Fantasy 14 has two major control schemes even though they're both WASD/controller.

One of them is called legacy and one of them called standard. Doesn't matter what the difference is. What matters is that in Japan, the overwhelming majority of the player base uses legacy and almost no one uses standard. And in Europe, almost everyone uses standard and no one uses legacy. And in North America, it's split if I recall correctly from the last survey, right?
So that's very interesting, right? That that like it's it's also regional dependent and the data here will be beyond fascinating when they do release it.
Oh yeah. What is South Korea doing set the stage?
For those unfamiliar, South Korea, at least for MOBAs, has the most competitive players in the world?
Yes,
hands down. To the point that players get drafted out of South Korea to go play in other regions and they have to start putting drafting rules on which is that I believe currently for every player teams are five players at least you're you're only allowed two imports per team.

Yeah.
That you field at a time.
Yeah. like you have to be fielding at least three people that are actually from that region.
Yes. Um Yeah. So they also haven't addressed all of the minutia which leaves me with questions which we could get into but don't have to um about because like I just described with legacy and standard WASD is also not a monolith and will the changes be possible? So let's talk about it this way. I'm on my four axis grid, right? My four axis up, down, left, right. And those could all correspond to a key. So if I press W, I go up. If I press S, I go down. If I press A, I go left. I press D, I go right. Sorry, that's mirrored for you all cuz camera. Um, or are A and D turn left and turn right?

Mhm. And is W move forward or move up? And if it's one of those, can we choose to have it be the other? Is it balanced for both of those? Right? This is kind of a weird question, right? But it really matters because some people are used to A and D pivot the character turning them in a direction which is a balancing factor by the way because like Noo-Noo's 180 snowball from hell
um they want to control the turning radius right or is it simply that some combat like if I'm moving down and to the left I press A and S and my character will turn and get there eventually right how how is And will they have to support multiple like if their goal is bring in people and be familiar
like one of the things they might have to do for balance for example will is say that you know A and D are actually

turned.
Yes.
There's a lot of people who play games that they're going to come in like this isn't how it's supposed to work.
Correct. Like there is I'm going to be really curious on how they do it because if one of their goals is instant familiarity for people who play other kinds of these games, they also only have a certain amount of leeway before it becomes unfamiliar.
Yes, that's correct. And then they lose the very advantage that they are trying to gain to retain and uh cause players to reenter their game.
Right. So they have to be like something but every time they're like something else it's going to cause its own brand of problems.
Also art um uh it's called was movement typically not always typically Q and E are also options in there. It's it's actually QWE asd because you can use Q and E to do other like motion things. So

like if A and D are sideep, Q and E are pivot.
Mhm.
There's all kinds of options here. We don't have the data yet, but
or sometimes lean depending on
Oh, yeah. That's right. Yeah. Lead around a corner to Yeah. Um
my point is simply this. When we think about this and we talk about this, it's not just as simple as the first thing that probably came to your mind when we said that League was getting WASD controls, right? This is a very big, very weird problem that they've just decided that they're going to leap in and solve, right? I have every confidence that they're going to come up with a cool and interesting solution, but man is this a bigger problem than it looks like on the surface. [Music]
Yeah. Like it's it's funny. The very first instance when I heard him talking about I'm like, "Oh, that's a change." And then the more I thought about it, I was like, "Oh, that's a ch Oh, that's a bigger Yeah, that's a really big change."
Yep. And it won't be like um by the way in

case anyone's uh wondering, it won't be like um it probably won't be like uh MMO controls because MMO controls assume that your mouse is controlling the camera and that you have sort of a 360. That's true of both uh WoW and 14.
So the camera
they will Sorry, I'm getting distracted. Our Kickstarter just passed 70,000.
I wasn't going to do it because I knew you were going to Someone mentioned it in chat and I wasn't going to mention it because I knew you were going to get distracted. I was going to bring it up.
I had to go look. And it's actually spiking. It's already at like 70.7. Like
Well, that's cuz people are going to get puzzles. People are going to get puzzles. It's going to be great.
We announced puzzles with it. And it's also like for those watching, if you actually if you happen to be watching and are interested um tomorrow morning at 9, excuse me, 8:00 a.m. Pacific, 11 Eastern is when it stops.
Yes. So, we'll be live.
We'll be live at the last 24 hours.
Yeah. We'll talk more about after, but um yeah, it was just a Sorry, Cat was posting in Discord and I'm like, what's Oh,
yeah. Yep. Yep. Yep.

We've been working on this a while, so it's fun to see number go up.
It really is. It's great. So,
back on this. Um,
so we talked a little bit how weird it is for the player, right? how they're going to need to adjust to all of these different um like the way that they interact with the game and with their character, right? From a competitive standpoint and just from a like even from the most casual players, from a comfortable standpoint, right? If you've been playing the same game for 16 years and it's this way,
it's going to be difficult to do it a different way. Even if that other way is on the surface intuitive to most players, you have 16 years of unlearning to do. And that's a lot of unlearning, right? If you want to change to something else
though, if as long as it's a familiar scheme that they end up with, it should be a quicker transition.
I agree.
I'm actually interested in what this does to their development as well.
Yes, because

let's talk about that.
They're literally going back to like 170 characters at this point and being like, okay, we designed these with this with this set of assumptions in mind,
right? And it's going to be a case-bycase, ability by ability checking to see what's happened. But it also means for every one of the things League has done is as League has gotten older, they've gotten more ambitious with the kinds of characters that they create because they can now basically take longer between them and they have more resources devoted to not just the art, but the programming and the interactions and everything behind them. But again, we now have an entirely new thing which is you're going to have multiple ways to control them. So I'm curious as well for some of what they were brainstorming up or even had on their future roadmap does because again it doesn't sound big but not having to go click click click click click click click to do an

interaction but instead it's just control here click changes the kinds of things that you might have been thinking about putting in because again they're going to have to support both right
they they're moving to a forever forward future where both styles of interaction have to be able to work seamlessly and well with every new ability they put in as well as retrofitting everything they've done before.
Yeah. Which the amount of work that they have signed up for here is
bananas. Like I I
this is one of this is one of the most interesting like fundamental level changes to a game that I can imagine them choosing to make that sounds so simple and is so very not.
Yeah. This is the rabbit hole of rabbit holes.
Yes. Absolutely. Uh
and it's turtles all the way down.
Correct. And I I do wonder like I just I

have to wonder are are pro players going to switch between control schemes for different So all of these are options. Are pros going to pick a control scheme and stay with it? Are pros going to change between control scheme based on which character they're playing?
That would be my guess. on which role they're playing. Or the last one and the weirdest one and one we've seen before in professional games of a different kind is depending on which phase of the game they're in.
That's entirely
That's right.
That's entirely
You should tell this story.
Yeah. Okay. So, um for for a very long time there was a problem in Apex Legends. Um Apex is a uh battle royale game and Apex's problem is that they could not balance multiple control schemes on PC. Now, I want to be clear. This was all on PC. All of this was above board. Nobody was cheating. All of these control schemes were allowed and

approved by Apex. Okay, great. Awesome. Excellent. So the problem was that there were parts of the game for which a controller and the aim assist afforded specifically to controllers was better than the mouse and keyboard thing because the aim assist was in a place where it was more powerful for things like shotguns that don't demand precision control. You just kind of have to be vaguely in the area of their head and then you just unload with buckshot. Right. Great. Excellent. Awesome. So pros were playing with both. And sometimes pros were playing with the movement of one uh and the aim of the other. So you would use movement controls on the on the uh controller with your left hand and aim with your mouse on the right. And you ended up with all of these like weird hybrid hand cam things for a while until they tried to stop it. Right? That is an option. That is a world that we could end up in. Right? This could get so incredibly

weird. Because, and I kind of hope that it does, and here's the simple reason why, Jeff's talked about this before. Every time you add more players to a thing, every time more people see a thing,
oh, the rule of Z, my rule of zero.
Yeah, your rule of zero, something changes, breaks, you find a new problem, you find a new strategy, whatever, right? I give it like a solid week before a pro is like, yeah. So, I just after first back in laning phase, it's advantageous to swap control schemes for this reason and then you do this or like junglers do the first clear on one control scheme and then when they go gank, they swap to the other one while they're backing because while you're backing you have time to go into menus and swap control schemes and you're not using a new device, it's just a setting. Is there going to be a thing that prohibits you from changing mid-match? Why would they do that? It's just a control scheme. If they're balanced, there's no reason to.
Will they Will you be able to have a hotkey that swaps control schemes
if they Yes, that is a great question,

Jeff. That is the question of the hour. Can I press like home on my keyboard?
P to
Right. and swap control schemes, right? We are in We are off the edge of the map here. There be monsters potentially, right? Um, I do think though that the bull has a really great point. This is a really great point. My fear is that the change will be so small that people don't understand why they can't compete anymore. Big changes are easy to see. Small changes like this can be a slow poison. I agree with that. I agree that the incremental advantage is small because like with the ADC example, if it's only let's say that it is a universal across the board, every pro player is 2% better on WASDY movement than click to move as an ADC.
That means it's mandatory. By the way, that 2% that means it's mandatory for ADCs. That means there is no choice,

right? because we're dealing with again the smallest margins, the itty bittiest fractions. There are pro games that get decided by one missed CS like that snowballs into an inescapable advantage and that's the end of the game, right?
And here's the other one along that line. So, Will, say for a moment that I'm a pretty good tactical player at League of Legends.
Yeah. and that if and that my reflexes are good, but if they were basically 5% better that I think I could move up a whole like silver to gold, gold to platinum, whatever. In other words, it isn't my map sense and tactics or builds or champion knowledge or anything else that's holding me back.
It is purely that I'm not as fast as I used to be,
right?
Will something like this reorder where people end up? In other words, I maybe I'm playing tactically at a platinum level, but my reflexes have me

at a gold level. And that's the thing like I'm going to be curious if there's a whole shakeup.
Yes.
In what ranks people end up at? Will a whole bunch of people that used to be gold now be silver because other people have cut, you know, caught up to them on a little bit of the advantage and these players that were gold, their game sense wasn't good enough. Like I'm gonna be there. That slow poison might be for reasons other than people think. It might be that players some players get better because this control scheme works better for them and their game and map and tactics knowledge.
Yes.
Elevate them now and that actually pushes other people down because this is a zero sum game gain kind of thing. More wins from other people might mean less from you. Also, let's talk about another thing that's really I I think is really important
in the same way that it might make someone who's already good at the game better.
Mhm.
Reminder that was controls are potentially a way that it will make the

game accessible to people for whom it was physically inaccessible before,
which means that part is just good, right? That more people should play video games. Now whether or not all those people should play a league is a different story, but like you know neither here nor there. Um uh right because many uh accessibility controllers depend on rebinding uh WASDI inputs to a specific device. Right? That is a thing that has been uh sort of talked about as a way that accessibility controllers can sort of easily slide into a game is being able to do that. And now mouse input is used for one thing instead of for two things. So now there's more impact to being able to use an accessibility controller for your uh left-handed stuff. And you might be able to use eyetracking, mouse stick, whatever for your mouse. And that's really important. Um uh I also
I was actually trying to see if I could find it real quick. There was somebody I

watched years ago. Um what was his name? He was just one of those people that was so fast and so good. He used to make videos about him doing like crazy things with high click characters like Leblanc and others where one time he hooked up a Guitar Hero controller.
Yeah.
And played League with a Guitar Hero controller and did Okay.
Yeah.
You're just watching like
Yes.
You know.
Yeah. And and and people in chat are indeed uh suggesting ideas like let's play with a DDR pad and a Wii remote.
Mhm. Don't tempt me. Don't I'm old. I will break, but don't tempt me. Right. So, um or that uh there isn't um I liked I like this idea that that Cyber Mermaid brought up, right? That the movement of a controller and the aiming of a mouse, like some hybrid between and a third party device that could accomplish both of those is something that they're seeking for other games, right? I
I don't know, Jeff. You would know better than me. What are the gear

requirements for current League esport? Is there like a specific mice and keyboards that are allowed and approved?
Um, I know that every mouse and keyboard brought in, you actually as a pro player, you bring them in
to um basically the competition area and they stay there. So like if you're in League of Legends playing weekly as a pro player, you actually leave your gear there. You can bring in replacements, but all of it is checked to make sure that it's not loaded with extra goodies. Um,
yeah.
And but I don't know what the exact requirements are, like
mouse can't have more than X buttons or
Yeah.
other things like that.
Yeah, there is, for instance, um, uh, it hasn't been useful up till now. There's a left-handed keyboard replacement, um, that has been made from time to time. this might actually cause a resurgence of it.
Uh where you essentially have a joystick

on your left thumb and then a full suite of what would be one to five and Z tob on your keyboard accessible only to your left hand. Um and that might see major use now because it lets you use your thumb for WD and lets you keep because they're all remindable keys. It lets you keep the muscle memory of which ability goes where. So imagine if you could have W and W1 and W2 be used for different things. Like the limit here again with third party peripherals and different controllers and accessibility options is limitless at this point, right? Because before
Lee had a I'm going to put this in air quotes simple control scheme, right? I click, I go to a place, I click, I aim a thing, I click, I do a thing. That's pretty simple, straightforward. I press a key, something happens, I click to

confirm, we're done,
right?
Less so, it feels less so now. And maybe I'm just extrapolating too far, but it feels like this is a really big can of worms. It's interesting too because I was just thinking about there's certain games especially like fighting games where macros are a big thing
like macroing in a sl you know a slide for a fireball.
Yeah. Quarter circle.
Um League the way it's set up doesn't lend itself to have to macros because there are no like with your mouse click in a circular pattern to make thing happen.
Yeah. you'd have to do like glyphs or something like click and drag on screen which is just awkward. Yeah, there's almost nothing like that in the, you know, it they've they've been pretty good about keeping a click or a point style interface. And so I was just thinking too because with hardware or different input schemes opens up possibilities of like macros and other

things, but I don't think anyway there's lots of issues that they're going to have to think about
and they'll never be able to enforce it for anything except pro play,
right? Which means that right which means that the ideal solution by the way is to get them as close to balanced as possible
right and and as close to balance as possible is probably like sub 1% difference between the two if at all possible
right which is a tall order but in fairness
the league team is pretty on the ball with balancing most things.
Yeah they're actually surprisingly good at that. Yeah, for a game that has 170 characters plus how many items at this point? Like 100
100 plus, right?
Continue the changes per season,
right? In six slots. So, you have to consider all of the permutations of all every unique item in each of those six slots with every one of those 170 heroes. Good luck. Have fun, balance nerds.
Yeah, that's the spreadsheets are for,

will
Yeah, that's right. Exactly. So, There's sort of it's interesting like I don't think most if you hadn't been like lurking around listening behind the scenes I don't think you ever would have seen this one coming.
Yeah, I I agree. There's sort of a correlary to this which I did want to bring up because I think it's it's really important. We talked about a little earlier how the control scheme for a game is one of the most fundamental parts of it,
right? It is the way that the player interacts with the game to make the choices that playing the game asks of them. Right? So for instance, Magic Arena, pretty simple control scheme because the choices are pretty simple. I play a card, right? And then I direct it at a place which means that there's not a lot of difference between um a touchpad input and a mouse and keyboard input because the interaction is very simple. And that's also true of other

card games like there are mobile versions of Ascension and Uno and Slay the Spire and Monster Train and all of these other games, but their interactions are pretty simple. When we get into more difficult things, it feels like more and more affordances, more and more um what the game does, more and more actions the player can take are based on the limitations and strengths of the control scheme. Would you say that's fair? Yeah, I mean it is a fundamental interaction and and some of that too there's a lot of design that goes into that even if it doesn't seem like I was talking to Willow when we were talking about this about someone's like slay the spire is really interesting and that the sum total of player interactions during combat short of clicking on yourself or the monster to see what buffs or debuffs it has on it is you select a card And whether it's with your mouse or your finger for a touchpad, like these

transition really well, because it select a card and it's lifted. If the card just does something like it adds defense, you drop it in the middle of the screen. If it targets, you drag it over the monster. Um, same with potions. And that's the that's your interaction. You can't rearrange your cards. You usually only have one card. There's one fight total in Slay the Spire. Excuse me. There's one fight total with monsters on either side of you. And there's five monsters total is the most you ever get in a fight. And that has custom placement for uh Recto Recmancer.
Uh uh Reptomancer is one and then Gremlin Gang can uh you can have
Yeah, the Gremlin Gang
you can have slimes in act one. There are a couple of act you can get is four.
Yes. Can you get five slimes?
If you split weird, I think you can get five slimes in one thing, but it doesn't matter. Like, it's not very many and it's custom placement.

Maybe. Let's Yeah. Anyway,
we haven't played Spy in too long. Also, Spy 2 when Anyway, keep going. Yeah, but um like it's an amazingly simple like they thought about that a lot and they li like there part of the reason that game does so well is how simple like once you learn to interact with it how simple it is and you just understand how it works like you spend all your time learning other things not learning how the controls and I'm going to take a slightly different game like FTL which is a fun game but there's a lot or for most people pause click look at number look at menu you know put in a couple things like you interact with it in a different way
I would say it is not as smooth of a game on there one of its strengths is kind of the same it has a easy to understand control scheme which is

you're playing a card and the other one is you're rearranging your jokers that's it and buying things out of the Yeah. And so part of how the game chooses to do like it's possibilities based based on that. There's a lot of background design that goes into what can you interact with it? How do you interact? Does it all have the same control scheme different? Can you do it all at the same time? Is it limited? You can only do this during combat and this during between like a lot of those choices um really reflect on how you interact with the game.
Yes. Yeah.
And make the game what it is. And they also make it more or less easy to switch between hardware going between like a console, a PC, a phone, a tablet, a TV, um,
a browser.
And when it's done poorly, we often feel that friction, that pain, right? How

many of you have either in either direction played a PC port of a console first game and found that the keyboard controls were lacking and that you really did need to plug a controller in in order to play a game on your on your PC? Or the other direction, you played a console port of a PC game and found yourself constantly lamenting the keyboard. Looking at you, civilization, I still don't understand how civilization really works on a I don't get it. It scares me. I'm gonna be honest, Jeeoff, that one just scares me. Right.
Actually, for a long time, there were no console RTS games because the point and the lasso selection of troops was so integrated into how the fundamental concepts of the game worked and this nobody found a good remapping onto controllers.
Yeah. Yeah. And I think um and it works in positive directions too, right? the well kind of positive directions. Um when I played Monster Hunter Wilds, right, we did a whole uh episode on the

controller oriented character creator. They did a one of the most beautiful complicated character creators I've seen in any action game ever. And it's all fundamentally built to be completely accessible to controller players. It is a like wild triumph of UIUX and character design. Uh it's bananas, but it doesn't work as well in keyboard, right? So, it's great, but also there are drawbacks, right? And those are reflective of the thought process that they had in mind building around a particular control scheme.
Yeah. And chat's bringing up a couple of RTS examples, but like all of those there were interesting, but also did like 2% of the numbers of what other
Yeah.
RTS games were doing on non- consoles because again, it was so hard.
I I actually think the best example from chat is uh Brutal Legend.

Oh yeah, Brutal Legends was good for that.
Brutal Legend was great for that because it was also a third person action game.
Mhm.
Because it
at different times to very different times. Uh, Brutal Legend is probably, by the way, one of the best games that got shot in the foot so hard by its own marketing that you might never have heard of it. Um, wild time. Uh but yeah, like it is it is difficult to build games for control schemes that don't accommodate the high concepts that the game is trying to accomplish. Which is why again it's so bizarre to me that 16 years in they're just like what if we instead uprooted the fundamentals that have underpinned the design of 16 years of champions and map changes and items and everything else. Like here's another weird one
that'll affect every player whether or not they use WASD. Are we going to start getting more activated items?
My guess is no because philosophically

League
doesn't do that.
Seems to think that those should be rare unlike Dota.
Yeah, I agree. In uh in Dota 2, most I would say most items the the majority of useful late game items have an activated ability of some kind or another. Um, even early game items have activated abilities in ways that most stuff in uh in League doesn't. Um, and that's sort of one of the big philosophical differences between the two. Uh, which is fascinating to talk about, but that's a different uh day.
Yeah.
But at the end of the day, Will, I think it's some people thought about it. They ran some numbers and they said, "We think even with all of this trouble, it's going to be worth doing."
Yeah. I I'm so
straight up like and they got to a scenario where they were looking at something and saying this is worth the time, effort, and opportunity cost.
Yes.
Because instead of putting this in, they could have gone and built a whole other something.
That probably also tells you how much money league is still bringing in.

Oh, yeah.
That they're willing to do this to continue that um waterfall or that huge spigot of waterfall is a better word of money. Yeah, like I don't I don't know that anyone who's Is that a question that people have whether League is still profitable?
I don't think Well,
probably casually on the internet.
Yeah,
but that's just because everybody's myopic on the games they play. If you're if you used to play League and you're not playing it anymore, or if you used to play 14 and you're not playing anymore, or WoW, like I think a Wow might be the one for a lot of people like, "Oh, yeah, I'm sure Wow's still out there, but it can't be that big." And
it's the it's the iceberg problem.
Just because you stop playing doesn't mean
Yeah, it's it's the iceberg problem, right? We we've talked about this on breakfast a lot too with like stories that break containment, right? Stories that make it outside of that incredibly narrow silo of information, right? Like fighting game news that makes it outside of specifically fighting game communities. Um it's sort of the iceberg

problem, right? you see a very small percentage of stuff that gets into your news feed or into your algorithm or whatever and then there's actually all of this stuff underneath that you can't see. Um, and that's definitely true of League uh and other live service games.
Yeah. So it was like this feels like about unless there's like other things around it, but like it really is interesting and we probably won't, but we could do a whole episode at some point on basically talking about how the interaction design of how you interact with the game fundamentally sets a lot of what makes that game special.
Yes. like talking about Slay the Spire with how much they reduced the complexity of their input
and focused on other things and you know up to League or to you know these with all of their like the high rate of clicks per second or like old Starcraft or Starcraft 2 like they used to measure pros on basically clicks per second
Yep.
or amount of input that could be done

because of how complex the game was. Like these are just fundamentally different choices and they affect what kinds of players can play it.
Yes.
And how they play it. And honestly, even the casual or more hardcore nature of the game. Like games that require more clicks per second tend to be more hardcore because casual players do that and they're like, "This is too much."
Yep. And they determine what games people will and won't pick up. I'm when I pick up Hades 2, I'm going to specifically have to pick up a pick it up with a controller because last time I hurt my hand mashing the mouse because that's how you had to play Hades 1.
Yeah. Actually, it's funny. I have certain games I just call controller games where even if I could play them on my PC, I still hook up a controller for it.
Yeah. Um, it used to just be a console PC game, but now that there's good controllers that hook up to your PC and have been for a while, but it's just it's an interesting
I use my Switch controller on my PC.

It's great. Like
cool.
Oh,
when did you switch?
Huh?
But yeah, like they it really is the fundamental interaction and it's not something that is ever that sexy. like people don't talk about it,
but it is as a practicing designer for a long time,
even we honestly often don't think it's that exciting, but it's still a thing we pay a lot of attention to.
Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you so much for joining us on our on our conversation on uh league x big gamble on WASD. What do you think? Uh if you are a league player, please let us know in the comments. Are you going to switch? Are you going to go out of the PBE and try it? What are your thoughts? Do you think this is great? Do you not care? Um, and before you do that, if it's before 11:00 a.m. on August 22nd, Eastern time,
11 Eastern, 8 Pacific,
8 Pacific, you should go over and get your Kickstarter. Uh, our Kickstarter runs uh for like less than 24 hours

left. Um, and then we'll stop talking about it, we promise. But we're very excited.
And this is for our this is the 25, but we're kickstarting our 2026 history happens every day calendar. really cool art, a history fact every day, links to our videos in there so you can watch it and supports our channel. This is part of how we keep the lights on is we sell other people do other things. We sell history calendars.
Yeah, that's right.
You know what? I'm here for that.
And now puzzles. We we we crossed our
Oh, yeah. Our $70,000 goal. Well, if we hit 70, we are committing to doing a physical puzzle of one of the art pieces from either this year or last year. And we just if the votes not up, the vote will be up shortly of which one we do.
By the way,
anybody who has pledged to the Kickstarter is allowed to vote.
Did Matt tell you? I've already committed to getting said puzzle and doing it on stream as a work along with chat at some point because uh so I'm very excited about this because I want I

want a puzzle. So,
actually, all of the puzzles came out of Will finding that plugin last year
that let us take the art pieces and break them into puzzles.
Yeah.
And we've been doing a we did a good number this year as well. And um they're fun.
Yep.
I am looking forward to getting my puzzle.
Yeah, absolutely. Well, that's going to do it for us today. Thank you all so very much for joining us. We will be back with breakfast on next week, but not design club because the crew will be at PAX West. Uh there is a uh Sunday evening panel um that you should go see.
Not this Sunday, a couple days from now, but the Sunday after at 6:30 Pacific.
Yes.
Matt and I and a couple of guests will be doing Design Club live where and looking at which one? Hold on.
The new Metal Gear.
This is all Matt's baby.
Yeah, it's looking at
Metal Gear Solid Snake Eater. the just re-released one which will re-release

like
I think a week or two before
actually that means it probably is coming out right around now.
We're going to pop it on and play through for the first time for the first hour of it and talk about it live design talk as we go.
Yeah, it'll be great. So, uh look for us there. Uh and otherwise we'll see you here the week after for more design club. Thank you all so much for joining. Uh I think that's it for us today. Jeff, say bye to the people.
Bye to the people. Thanks everybody.