The making of Worlds 2024 skins: A conversation with Riot

Stephanie Leung: It starts off immediately after Worlds, we chat with the winners after they're done with all their post-game press and other things. That's when we start to intake what champions they're hoping to get a skin for, we usually get two or three options, depending on what they played.

We start with champions then go into asking the players what's the general vibe you're interested in? Do you have any thematic preferences? Are there things you want to showcase? A feeling? A story you want to tell? For T1 last year, they really wanted to showcase Korean culture and the fact they ascended over time. They were riffing off of each other and that's where we landed.

I think one of the things that we did last year that I'm really excited to do again is let each player dictate what they wanted their skin to be and if the story wasn't particularly cohesive across all five, if we could still make it work visually we’d try it. So I think you get to see a lot more of each player's personality come through and on reflection we want to do that again.

I think in previous years we were toying more with the idea of thematic cohesion and making sure they all feel like a matching set. Now, I think we've found a really cool way to still get the team vibe while also being able to infuse individual personality.

After the interview we then immediately get to work, draw concepts and mock assets then usually in January or February we'll have some time again with the team virtually to show where we've landed with the concepts and ask what they think and what feedback they have.

We also ask if they can record themselves to show what they want their recall to be so we can then animate that in.

Last year was pretty interesting because Oner came in asking for martial arts, a tiger, and Lee Sin. We figured we could make that work for him, then Faker wanted a kingly theme and elegance for Ahri or Orianna.

We figured we could still infuse the Korean culture across the board, and they luckily all wanted the same colour scheme, so we decided to focus on that. It meant we could give Oner the Lee Sin he wanted with slash marks from tiger claws on his chest which is really cool because Oner is actually a black-belt martial artist. He wanted to make sure that part of him was represented. That was a fun one.

Yeah that definitely happens. I think we start to riff off other players who have a clear idea of what they want, that tends to help a little bit. Otherwise, some of the prompts we have ready are asking about previous iterations of Worlds winners like which was your favourite? Why was it your favourite? We'll also start with easier questions too like what colours do you want?

It's so wonderful to have our concept artists and art directors in the room too because there may be a moment where say, you mentioned this colour and you like the SKT and IG skins so this is the direction we could go if it's interesting to you? When that doesn't work and they really don't know, then what we'll do is in the initial concepting phase we'll pick a few directions and draw two or three options.

We had to do that with Keria last year because for the life of him he could not pick between Renata and Bard. Then we showed him the concepts and he was like ooooh... then still couldn't decide between them. I think at first he wanted Renata, then we showed him the Bard and he was like crap I don't know what I want now.

He was flip-flopping, flip-flopping, flip-flopping literally until the minute we set a deadline for him. His player-manager messaged me and said I know he picked Renata 30 minutes ago but he's changed to Bard and this is his final answer. I asked are you sure because we have to lock this in now and he said yes. Personally, it's my favourite skin of that set so I'm really glad we ended up with Bard.

Oh my gosh, saying no to Faker for Ahri last year was the hardest thing I've probably ever had to do in my life.

At the time we had already started making Hall of Legends but we hadn't had that conversation with Faker yet so he had no idea it was coming. So we were taking in all of his ideas for Ahri because we didn't just want to say no right away and we also wanted the information of what he wanted out of an Ahri skin.

I remember sitting there, being like we might have some skin conflicts with other things on the road map for Ahri but we'll check and see what happens. He said he still really wanted Ahri and I was ok cool, let's talk about her but afterwards, you played a lot of Orianna and Azir so how would you celebrate those?

We had to push him to talk about what he would want for Orianna and luckily two weeks after that we had another conversation with him where we told him the reason we were all hesitant about Ahri was because we're making these TWO other Ahri skins for him instead and he finally understood. Then we were able to use some of that time to go back and talk more about Orianna which was super helpful.

It's always such a bummer if we can't make things happen for the players so we really try as hard as possible to accommodate them even if it doesn't really fit with what we would normally do on our roadmap.

Guma's Jinx is another good example. Obviously, Arcane is coming out later this year and we announced two weeks ago that we have a really special skin coming out for Jinx. We already knew we had that on the roadmap but because Guma really wanted Jinx and it was his first choice by far, we decided to just make it happen. It doesn't matter, we'll make it work. It's mostly champion choice that's the most contentious thing but luckily that's the first thing we end up locking in.

I'm really proud of us for putting Lux in Keria's skin last year. That was so many conversations, I really wanted to make it work for him and we knew we had to do something really interesting.

Originally, he wanted the recall to be Bard and Lux ascending stairs, tripping and falling. It was this whole, pretty elaborate story. I had to turn round to him and say I want to make this happen for you so badly my guy but a recall is only eight seconds. So we had to figure that out and then there were also gameplay clarity concerns if we just put a whole Lux skin in there so we were experimenting with sorts of different things like what if we put her in as a hologram?

That was particularly fun for me. And I'm sorry I know this is recency bias but last year's skins were just so much fun. I also loved Oner's Lee Sin recall with Bengi because he wanted to feature Bengi's Lee Sin skin. Together we were riffing and came up with the whole Spiderman pointing meme which I think is really fun too.

Yes, we're planning a similar set of the chromas that we did this year. We're planning to do a prestige for the MVP, as well ward skins, accessories etc. We also mention all of those in the first interview with the team but that's less important than the main skins and they tend to have less opinions about those, at least in the early stages.

The T1 chromas last year were a whole thing where I think the colour was just a little off so we were actually going back and forth with them during PBE just to make sure we got the colours correct. So that was a good learning experience for this next set.

As for nexus finishers, we'll see. I'm not going to say no. We currently don't have anything planned but it depends on how they're received. Fingers crossed, if people like them maybe that opens up some more of those in the future.

I believe we usually say you get a skin if you played during the Worlds run and Rekkles hasn't been subbed in. We'll see.

What's really exciting to me about this, I believe it's the first time where it's a second win for the same roster. I think historically we haven't had any difficulty because its been a different group of people every single time. So I'm actually really curious what they'll want this year.

I feel like we'll be able to find something pretty unique and awesome for them but I don't know. If they keep going so hard winning every single season, in a year or two we'll have to get real creative. But this year I'm not worried at all.

I think over the last few years we've found the whole collaboration with the esports team featuring certain skin lines during major tournaments has been one of the most successful for us on both ends which is really great.

I think the Worlds winners' skins tend to outperform a lot of other skins throughout the year. I think the 2023 winners' T1 skins were incredibly successful, they even outperformed our own expectations and we thought they were going to do really well already.

In the last few years especially, the esports team has done such a great job of detailing all the players' journeys into Worlds and I think we've really seen that reflected in the skins. Whether it was the whole Deft and Faker thing to T1's redemption last year, those stories were just so inspiring and so cool that when the skins have come out they've done better and better.

In previous years, we would normally launch them around patch 11 or 12 consistently and that's an incredibly tight deadline for a skin line because we have breaks and then all these different production deadlines we want to hit in-house.

Around that time frame is usually the earliest we'd be able to launch them. But actually this year with Hall of Legends we were experimenting with the calendar to be able to have different moments where we feature our esports greats. So we ended up having a lot more time to actually go through the process and that allowed us to have more check-ins with T1 than we normally would be able to and have more flexibility there which I think was actually really helpful. So I think we're hoping for something similar next year.

Oh that's so tough. Unpopular opinion maybe, but for me I think it's the Taipei Assassins Nunu. It's so, so, so good and I just love that we were able to use their mascot for Willump. It's perfect.

I remember I wasn't working at Riot, I was actually still in school. It was like 3am and I remember them winning with this whole underdog story. That win is something I'll never forget, it was so incredible to watch as a fan.

Ok this one is actually easier for me and I'm super, super biassed. It's Gumayusi's Jinx skin because he put his dog Doongi in. We had so much fun making sure Doongi's personality fit with how he actually acts in real life. I have two dogs at home, so that was like the easiest win for me. So as soon as Guma asked if we could put his dog in the skin I was like yes, you can have whatever you want. We can put your dog everywhere, I am so in.

It was really cute because he wanted to make sure nothing happened to the dog. Doongi just runs up to Jinx and she hugs him, nothing bad happens. And I was aligned of course, nothing bad should ever happen to any dogs! But it was very cute that he had to specify how he wanted his dog to be treated in the video game.