00:00Hey guys, this is Shox and I'm here with Preko, or Christian Linke, who is in charge of some of the awesome music we've been hearing here today.
00:17Can you give us a little rundown of your function at Riot Games?
00:20Basically, I'm involved in, you know, coming up with the music for everything in League of Legends.
00:26Tell us something about how hard it is to get, if you have a champion, you need the total picture, you need the animation, you need everything to be good, the splash art, the audio.
00:34How hard is it to get everyone on the same page with the project?
00:38It definitely is way different than the usual scenario of game development because the game never leaves our desk.
00:45Usually the company develops the game and releases it and move on to the next thing.
00:52In our case, we just constantly keep working on League of Legends because we really want to turn it into the best League of Legends possible.
00:58So, everything is way faster. You have two to three weeks and that's really what makes it exciting because you sit together with these artists and creative writers and game designers and you toss around these wild ideas and really just pick what's best and go for it.
01:14We have so much talent at Riot that it's always so exciting and always a new adventure.
01:19Alright. Talk a little bit about that creative process. One of the biggest things we've seen here today is, of course, the orchestra, the live performance of the theme.
01:26How did that idea, did that come from your mind and how did you put that in the motion, getting this here?
01:32Well, a while ago I told our people at Riot, I said, well, you know, we could have an orchestra perform at an eSport event and they were like, oh, that's, you know, that could be cool.
01:41In this case, they, three weeks ago, they said, alright, Christian, let's do it. And pretty much just let me loose and I could do whatever.
01:49And I worked with a few guys on this piece, a company called Hollywood Scoring and, you know, all these awesome musicians that were here from the orchestra and the choir.
01:59And yeah, composed this piece within, I think, three or four days. And yeah, I mean, it really, the piece itself should kind of be the same thing that you saw as a visual.
02:10It should be the season, you know, what happened so far with League of Legends. That's why it plays the established theme of League of Legends.
02:18And then it transitions into this new exciting part that kind of portrays the future of League of Legends and the eSports.
02:25Yeah, great. You said that you got a lot of freedom to do this. We've seen some bold choices in the past, like the Diana song is most definitely a milestone.
02:33Can you tell us something about that?
02:35That's the fun thing at Riot Games. It's about trust and ownership. And yeah, I mean, basically they say, here's the champion, you know, here's what we think about her and, you know, go nuts.
02:48And for Diana, it was the first time that I could just do something that is very different. Usually, you know, we have a lot of fighters and, you know, all these guys that are just these awesome warriors.
03:00And she had a very different approach. She was a very, you know, this very ethereal character, the moon champion.
03:05And so I want to do something that kind of portrays that tune and has this contrast of the visual that's very aggressive, but also the music that's very quiet and somehow it's charming.
03:16And the moon is very mysterious and something very foreign, but also very exciting.
03:22And so trying to capture that, we came up with that idea of the poem and having a singer sing it, which then ended up being a writer, a graphic designer who sang the piece.
03:29And it also was performed at OGN live, which is also amazing.
03:33Yeah.
03:34How does that make you feel? Because of course you create this piece and then they're in the login screens.
03:37And then don't you ever miss like opportunities like this to come along more often where you get a chance to really get that live performance going?
03:45It's both fun. I mean, figuring out all these pieces and trying to capture the story of every champion, this is fun.
03:52And there's so many different things that, you know, these are the things that you keep working for and that really make you notice what an impact music can have.
04:03Can you tell us what are your favorites of pieces that you've created for Riot for League of Legends or made boldest choices?
04:10I mean, I think Draven was one of my favorites because there's so many writers that participated in the recording that chants.
04:17Can you tell us that story?
04:18Well, basically, we thought about it and he's a showman and we approached the idea of Draven and he's Darius' brother.
04:26And while they're brothers, I thought about myself, you know, I have a brother and we're very different from each other, but we're still brothers.
04:33So finding a music piece that has the similar core, but still, you know, a very different character, because Draven is very different, was a challenge.
04:42And I thought it would be really cool to just have these chants there.
04:46And then I just sent out an email to the Riot office and said, hey, I need some dudes to chant Draven.
04:52And there was lawyers and IT desktop managers and artists and everything.
04:57And I just put two microphones up and counted them in and they just recorded it.
05:03And that's it.
05:04Amazing.
05:05Do you have anything that you would really like to accomplish or some sort of piece you'd really like to produce in here?
05:11Hmm.
05:12Well, I mean, there's always new awesome champions coming, so it never gets boring.
05:17That's the cool thing.
05:18Someday, hmm.
05:21I don't know yet.
05:23I mean, there's always going to be fun stuff.
05:26Yeah, I mean, it never really is boring.
05:29So I can't really ask for anything.
05:31League of Legends is a playground, it really is.
05:33I think that's a great thing to end with.
05:35Thank you very much for this interview.
05:36All right.
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