How Ao Shin Changed Riot Games

Wow, it’s been a while since I uploaded a video on this channel.
I never really intended for this break to be this long.
But I have to be completely honest with you guys, I was just really burnt out making League
of Legends videos.
And I think the content I was uploading in the past month or two before my break really
reflected that.
And I needed to just take some time away to revitalize myself creatively.
This was the longest break I’ve taken from uploading since I started this channel in
August of 2012, but I took some time off, worked a bunch on my other channels, and now
I’m finally 100% ready to come back with a fresh start, no more bull, and just to sit
down and make some awesome videos for you guys.
So sorry for the break, but I hope you will enjoy the future content we are making.
So without further adue, let’s get started.
Riot Games is a company that is often criticized for making some pretty serious mistakes from
time to time, and probably all of us can think about maybe one or two decisions that we strongly
disagreed with.
But probably one of the more fascinating blunders they’ve made throughout the years is the
way that Riot handled Ao Shin.
Looking back on it, it wasn’t really anywhere near as bad as some of the other things they’ve
done, but it was definitely one of the few mistakes Riot made that had a massive impact
on League of Legends as well as Riot Games as a whole.
The story of Ao Shin begins way back in 2013, when these images and blueprints for a design
were leaked of a new dragon champion on a Chinese Major League Community Website.
Following a massive amount of community hype and excitement, Riot quickly released a post
confirming that the leaks were true, and announcing what their plans were for the character known
as Ao Shin, saying that although he wasn’t going to be coming out anytime soon, he was
someone they were very excited about.
Unfortunately that Dragon’s development experienced delay after delay, and Ao Shin
was never released.
And finally in 2016 Riot announced Ao Shin had been cancelled for a variety of reasons,
and that a new character named aurelion sol was taking his place, and they apologized
for the mistake and ended things on a positive note with the hopes that people could still
be excited about Aurelion sol.
This entire process and eventual cancellation is what I believe you can look back and point
to as the turning point that sparked a major change in how the company Riot Games approached
the community.
You see, up until this point Riot had a pretty strict policy of little to no communication
with the playerbase.
Every time something happened that the community didn’t like they would often just stay silent
in the hopes that things would blow over, and they would only ever communicate their
thoughts and decisions in major posts, release hype content, or more often than not, in ways
that just didn’t really make much sense.
And this issue of communication was one of the biggest criticisms of Riot Games as a
company for the longest time.
At least, until Ao Shin.
Ao Shin was something that never really had to be a problem for Riot Games.
There’s nothing wrong with cancelling a champion, it’s something they’ve done
literally hundreds of times.
The problem with Ao Shin was the way they communicated him to the community.
And it was obvious that they couldn’t really sit back and try to let things blow over,
because players were so excited to see this dragon champion come to life.
And in Ao Shin’s case, for one of the first times, Riot admitted that they had made a
big mistake.
They admitted that they shouldn’t have let the hype for Ao Shin become so big in the
first place, and if they had kept things under wraps, and communicated clearly what was going
on with him, it wouldn’t have caused so many people to be let down.
From that point on, after realizing their mistake with communication, it made them realize
that communicating with the playerbase can bring a ton of positive things to the game
and their company.
And as a result, a lot of changes happened.
Riot implemented a new forum posting policy for their employees.
Now any rioter is allowed to post whatever they want wherever they want, as long as it’s
not breaking NDA of course, in an attempt to increase communication across the company
as a whole.
And there’s been almost weekly blog posts, developer updates, forum posts, clarifications,
weekly live streams, developer Q&As, and all sorts of more stuff.
And for just about every single change that happens to the game, there is a developer
post somewhere, outlining their thoughts.
You can always find Riot Meddler on the forums talking about upcoming buffs or nerfs, or
Riot Repertoire talking about the latest upcoming rework, or Riot Ghostcrawler talking about
their plans for the future as a whole.
They’ve also implemented other major communication policies within the company internally.
And there’s no doubt that compared to a few years ago, Riot’s communication has
become immense.
And communication for a developer, any developer really is something that breathes so much
life and positivity into a game.
Now we get to see constantly, why things are being changed, or why something maybe isn’t
getting changed.
We’ve gotten consistent updates on future content, as well as tons of posts, both major
and minor with the sole purpose of just explaining and outlining things to the community.
Hopefully most of us can agree that Riot Games has become at least a little bit better of
a developer in the past year, with all of their major releases and updates.
They still have some ways to go and tons of improvements that could be made, but it’s
kind of crazy to think that Ao Shin was the catalyst that got them heading in the right
direction.
As always, thanks for watching.
All of the posts and information I referenced can be found at links in the description,
so feel free to check them out if your skeptical of my information, or just want to do some
research on your own, and I’ll see you guys next time.

How Ao Shin Changed Riot Games

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