Riot Games bets on social design and long-term thinking to win the next generation
Summary
Riot Games CPO Marc Merrill outlined the studio's strategy for attracting next-gen players at DICE 2025
Riot is rejecting the "growth-peak-decline" lifecycle model in favor of sustained engagement across decades
Social design, toxicity reduction, and multi-format IP expansion are the core pillars of this approach
"That doesn't mean there aren't incredible things to do to improve the experience."
01
Next-gen player challenge - new tastes, higher stakes
Younger players raised on Minecraft and Roblox have fundamentally different expectations than League's original audience
League of Legends players have aged, reducing time and energy available to master competitive gameplay
Live service production costs have risen to hundreds of millions, raising the stakes for every major release
Riot and Blizzard both faced lawsuits, layoffs, and plateauing spending - signs of an industry-wide pressure shift
02
2XKO's social lobby as a blueprint for online spaces
2XKO features a pre-match digital arcade where players navigate as customizable avatars instead of waiting on a matchmaking screen
Players can walk to arcade cabinets to spectate ongoing matches, creating organic social moments
Emotes, skins, and free-roam social space signal what Merrill's team calls a "Roblox-ification" of online lobbies
The approach mirrors Street Fighter VI's hub but pushes further into persistent social interaction
Riot has been iterating on lobby design for years, including role pre-selection updates in League of Legends
03
Challenging two pieces of conventional industry logic
Merrill called it "absurd" to assume Roblox-native players will only ever want block-based or UGC-style games
He also rejected the idea that online game lifecycles must follow a growth-spike-decline curve
"One thing we try to fight a lot is the mindset that the product life cycle is one of growth, a spike, and then a slow decline. That's also silly."
League of Legends' MAU peak was estimated in 2022, yet the game remains a major revenue driver
04
Multi-format IP strategy as a retention and renewal engine
Riot's esports events, animated adaptations (Arcane), and music productions all serve to sustain League's cultural relevance
These investments are positioned as lifecycle extension tools, not just marketing
"That would never have happened if we were like 'well, you know, we start to see churn rates increasing, time to go move all resources to something else.'"
Merrill cited World of Warcraft as another example of a live game executing long-term retention without IP expansion
05
Toxicity research - matchmaking misalignment as a root cause
Riot is studying how in-game role dynamics between teammates create emotional spikes that trigger toxic behavior
Example: an ADC player frustrated by a passive support, or a support unable to keep pace with an aggressive ADC
Merrill compared it to how mild-mannered people become aggressive in traffic - context drives behavior
A matchmaking solution that pairs players with aligned playstyle expectations is described as an "untapped frontier"
Risk acknowledged: over-engineering match compatibility could strip away healthy competitive friction
06
What's next - social infrastructure and motivational design
Riot will continue developing social lobby systems and testing matchmaking alignment solutions across its titles
2XKO is the next major test case for Riot's social-first design philosophy in a new genre
Merrill's advice to developers with smaller budgets: start from a motivational lens - understand why players love the game, then ask if you're still delivering on that promise
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