According to an interview with Variety, Marc Merrill has said that Riot is planning on releasing a handful of games every decade. The company doesn’t want to be known as the “League of Legends” company anymore but instead wants to actually have the “s” in Riot Games mean something. Besides releasing League of Legends 9 years ago, Riot has released a board game and a few mini-games in the past. However, Merrill has said that these don’t really count as new games. Instead, they want to create actual new games besides League of Legends that will focus on a niche audience.
Last year Marc Merrill had already announced that he would step down from managing the company and that he instead would start focussing on creating new games. This combined with the interview means that there’s definitely something brewing at Riot Games, but we just don’t know what.
Regarding the tweet on the MMO, Merrill brushed it off a just being a joke, kind of. He said that after releasing the new Ryze cinematic he wanted to see if there would be support for an MMO at all. Unsurprisingly, fans, professional players, and even Riot employees responded with extreme enthusiasm. When asked during the interview if Riot is actually making an MMO he had the following to say. ” I’m not going to answer that directly, the question that is really interesting and relevant is, ‘What does the future of MMOs look like?’ I think we have a view, others have a view, players have a view.
This is an extremely political answer by Marc Merrill, which is probably a smart move during such an interview. It doesn’t really provide us with too much information although we at the very least know that they have thought about it.
Merrill also stated that diehard League of Legends fans have nothing to worry about as that will still remain as the core focus of the company. The new games that are being made will not cause League of Legends to be neglected. We probably won’t know what Riot is planning to release for at least a few years but it certainly has me excited that an enormous company such as Riot is finally creating new games.
