Where do ideas come from? It's one of those classic reporter questions that creative folks hate, usually because there's no single answer. That doesn't mean it's not an interesting place to begin considering the process of game design. Indeed, several of the creators of League of Legends: Clash of Fates pointed this out during a recent discussion about their Defense of the Ancients-inspired action/strategy game, "Ideas are everywhere," said Game Designer Steve "Guinsoo" Feak. "The tough part is filtering down all those ideas into something that's actually usable and fun." Mark Merrill, the President of Riot Games, echoed Feak's comment about the new characters they wanted to show off. "They're varied in their origins, but the bottom line is they all need to be fun to play."

The basic premise for League of Legends is almost as paper-thin as that of the average fighting game. The world of Valoran abolishes war by settling all international disputes via single combat between powerful champions. This is by design. As gameplay producer Travis George points out, there are some games that need an elaborate back-story and internal consistency to work; others need just enough to justify wild and memorable character design. League of Legends is going with the latter. "Our background just provides a setting and some context," George said. "There will be some people who will care about it and try to dig into the background of our characters so we want to have interesting stuff available for them. Many won't care at all and that's okay too. We just want a wide variety of archetypes so that everyone can find something they can relate to.


Interestingly, the four new League of Legends characters the Riot Games team wanted to show off all demonstrated that diversity of origin. The first character we looked at was Warwick, a bloodthirsty werewolf built around the idea of melee attacks and draining life. "Warwick started life as a game mechanic," George said. "I loved the idea of skulking in the woods and being able to surprise enemies." According to George, that basic concept matured into the idea that such a character would need high DPS, a high movement speed and something to work around the line-of-sight restrictions that are a big part of the strategy in the game. It would also need a corresponding weakness -- in this case the need to get into melee range in order to do damage.

Once the basic idea had been thrashed out, the art department took over. While several concepts emerged from the idea of a mobile, stealthy melee character, the one that ended up getting through was the werewolf. The archetypal image of the swiftly-moving blood hunter that leaps out with tearing claws was an obvious fit for the character, though the developers stressed that there were several other concepts that would have been as good a fit. Settling on a name and image for Warwick (as he was eventually named) allowed the team to come up with themed powers and abilities. "Blood Scent," one of Warwick's main powers, stems from the idea that a werewolf can detect any blood in the area around it. It's translated into actual gameplay by giving the player the location of any enemy Champion within a large area and giving Warwick a movement buff for each Champion spotted.