Graham Ashton: It's really like blurring that line between esports and gaming, and then just general entertainment as well.
Allison Mages: Today we Make IP Your Business. It's a podcast that explores how intellectual property (IP) positions a company to succeed or stumble.
I'm Allison Mages Head of the IP Commercialization Section at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).
We call this season “Videogame Development: A Quest for IP”. Join our adventure through five levels of game development, where you'll hear from industry experts about how these rights will help your business “level up” or reach "game over".
Micaela Mantegna: And hi everyone, I'm Michaela Mantegna, a videogame lawyer and researcher at Berkman Klein Center at Harvard, and I will be this season co-host. We are on Level 5: IP in esports.
Today we will talk with Riot Games about the incredible world of esports and how so many different IP elements contribute to its success.
Allison Mages: Our guest today is Graham Ashton. Graham is the External Affairs Manager for esports in the EMEA region at Riot Games.
Micaela Mantegna: Welcome Graham, it's really a pleasure to have you in our podcast. And just to kind of do an ice breaker, can you tell us a bit about how do you stumble upon the videogame industry, was it on purpose? You were a gamer, you were a fan?
Graham Ashton: I have been a gamer and a fan of videogames for my life, but it definitely was not on purpose. For some reason, growing up, I just working in the videogame industry was not something that I actually intentionally wanted to do, maybe because I felt like I wanted to keep it as a hobby or maybe I felt like to do that you need to know coding or you need to be an artist. I can't do either of those so I pivoted to a different path.
I worked for a few years in music journalism, also did a bit of content marketing, and then I started just writing esports articles as a part time endeavor. Just because I started to understand that competitive gaming was growing, that there was a whole community around it. I thought, as a former journalist, there might be a new avenue to go down. Before I knew it, I was working as a full time business journalist in the space.
I have started around 2017, I worked for three years at the “Esports Observer”, which is a B2B focused esports website. I learned an infinite amount of knowledge about the industry. Built a lot of good, great contacts. Got to see, you know, esports at its best. And then around 2020, I joined Riot Games. I think at that point I was ready to move on from journalism, wanted to take a role in the industry that was quite different, where I could maybe have a little more influence. And that's basically where I am now.
Allison Mages: What an awesome path though, to come to this industry. So Grant you know that this podcast is about intellectual property, so we always like to ask when did you first hear about IP?
Graham Ashton: Well, kind of as a coincidence, I guess. One of my previous jobs when I was working in content marketing was producing content for a startup that basically it used reverse image technology to help photographers and other creatives track copyright violations of their work and then basically pursue legal action. And that job was quite interesting cause I had an interest in photography in general, but it gave me a solid basic level insight into how IP laws work, particularly on copyright, and how they are being adapted into modern technology.
Then, when I was working at esports, was over my focus topic as a journalist was governance and regulation and the interaction between governments and politics in esports, and that's what led me to my position at Riot. And I quickly learned through that intellectual property is really what distinguishes esports from traditional sports. The fact that the competitions being played are based around commercial products that they are of course pieces of interactive software where every aspect of them has sort of been designed or created and therefore is protected by whether it's copyright or trademarks. And as I'm going to explain, you know in this interview, it's really what allows a videogame to scale and to adapt to the needs of its player base and as well it's really the key to cultivating an esports ecosystem and building a fan base around that game.
Micaela Mantegna: So we were talking about Riot titles and of course we know a lot about the company. But for those people that might have never heard about them before, can you tell us a bit more about the core business, the missions, the games, what makes it different from other companies?
Graham Ashton: Yeah, absolutely. So I'll go, you know, right back to basics. Riot Games was founded in 2006 with the idea to develop, publish and support the most player-focused games in the world. So in 2009, Riot released its debut title, League of Legends, and it's gone on to be one of the most played PC games in the world and even the key driver of the explosive growth of esports and with a fan base that exists almost as its own subculture in gaming. The game has actually, you know, been around for over a decade at this point and in a second decade, Riot is still continuing to evolve the game while delivering new experiences to players.
So we've released a number of, I guess you could say spin-off titles, like Team Fight Tactics, Legends of Runeterra and mobile version called League of Legends Wild Rift and multiple in progress titles, including a fighting game. And then we also released a game that was completely separate to the (League of) Legends called Valorant, which is also our entry into the first person shooter genre.
And so just a few like facts about the company. It's headquartered in Los Angeles, CA, but it has over 3,000 employees and 20 offices worldwide today. Myself, I work within our Berlin office. We have two offices in Berlin; one is focused on publishing in the region, but the other office is entirely devoted to esports. It's about over 100 employees. We basically run productions in a studio next to the office and everyone in that office works on everything from business development to competition management to product management, content broadcasting and that covers the entire EMEA region as well when it comes to esports.
Micaela Mantegna: I wanted to shift gears and ask you a bit about the business side, and when you are developing an esports title, you are making your own rules, you are creating a new sport. In terms of intellectual property, what are the assets that you protect and also if there is something that you can protect but you choose not to or you choose not to enforce in this kind of way of communicating with your fans and your audience, how do you trace kind of that balance?
Graham Ashton: That's an interesting question. I mean, you kind of hinted to it already, but yes, esports competitions are built around videogames and of course, a videogame is a complex creative work, obviously the software behind it has this interactive relationship with its users and that's through obviously a complex display of images, texts and sound, all of which can be independently protected by copyright. And there of course are many other IP considerations, you know, such as software patents, but by and large, copyright and trademarks, we do talk about the game name and etcetera; they're the most important.
So, to create a great esport, you need to have a great game. And defining great is kind of hard, but you can boil it down somewhat to deep fundamentals. So these might be these would be an accessibility to watch. So having game that can be viewed by the people easily and understood, even if it's a complex game like League of Legends. And the fact that the rules and the gameplay itself is always renewed and well balanced, that's a huge difference between games in the past where you would release them almost like a finished album, like music versus games now where they're constantly updating and constantly refined.
So, in order to help that game succeed you, you need to remain dedicated to the players and fans and feeding their appetite for awesome experiences, which can be very heavily resource intense. So even our most hardcore players would kind of be astounded by the sheer level of creative effort that goes into Riot Games titles, you know, and the character and the world building side, there are expansive storylines, galleries of artwork, dozens of its woven references that build a much larger universe, and we've obviously expanded that IP a lot.
We have our Netflix series, Arcane, which smashed Netflix records, won an Emmy. But even before that, you know, we established the League of Legends IP through animated cinematics, short stories, even a Marvel published comic book series. Our first novel, Ruination, was published in September. And all this to say is that there's as much as we want our esports products to retain their own identity and appeal to a specific audience, they can't be wholly separated from the IP of our games. So we want to ensure a level of consistency across our ecosystem. And I think, for example, one really interesting example and it's one of those things that does that separate esports maybe from traditional sports is tournament licensing. It's probably the most important consideration there, so even using the name of the game in a competition brand or referring to your competition as a league or a championship, in our case, that has to come with explicit permission from the publisher to avoid confusion with our trademarks or in esports, not, not just gaming.
We don't want to restrict these IP to those looking to host grassroots and amateur events. In fact, we love competition when we encourage players and organizations to organize and host their own, and we support those that create competitions for the benefit of the community and we are generally on board with any competition that follows our guidelines. And those guidelines can be quite lengthy, but we try to align them with our core values, which the most important which is player experience first. So the rules of the competition should be, you know, promote the fun and engaging experience for the players and skills should always be the determining factor of who will win all these matches.
Allison Mages: I think what's really interesting to me, Graham, about what you're describing is, you know, this constant evolution of the games that you make and maybe branching out into other areas, cross-media expansion. How does that affect your IP strategy when you're looking at it? Do you start with one set of way, you're going to protect something, and then reevaluate later on?
Graham Ashton: Yeah, I'll be touching my answers around esports just simply because that's my focus area. But IP is just, from the esports standpoint, it's of huge importance. We, for example, want to bring our esports to billions of fans around the world; that's right, billions with a “B”. And we want to create a multi general fan base, foster local communities and build a strong ecosystem. And through that, fans should feel represented in what we do and our partners, the commercial or teams or tournament organizers, they should believe in us and invest in the future of our esports, of our sport, so to speak.
So, like a good way of demonstrating our strategy is I'm going to kind of turn it inwards to our local region, our EMEA League of Legends ecosystem. So this is kind of as I said before that our Berlin office is focused on that region. And for the last nearly ten years, League of Legends was more focused on Europe rather than in a region as a whole, and in 2023 that's going to change. We're going to basically create one giant competitive region that covers not only Europe, but also the CIS and the Middle East and North Africa. The way we're kind of building that out is: historically, our top leagues were owned and operated by Riot Games, which even to that level required the support of production partners. But our Tier 2 more developmental ecosystem that comprises more than a dozen third party brand sanctioned leagues across the region and some of those leagues have been in operation you know, for almost a decade and the organisers are the most experienced esports companies in their region.
So, in wanting to build our esports IP and building, you know, an esports ecosystem across that region, rather than restrict them or impose our own separate competition structure, it made more sense to partner together, allow access to various parts of our IP, and then build an interconnected continental circuit that can, and has for years developed the next generation of talent. We even have simultaneous deals with these companies to produce local language broadcasts of our Top League, the LEC, the League of Legends European Championship which Riot runs and broadcast directly. And then that doesn't say much then to the lower tier, which is a number of academic, grassroots and amateur tournament organizers who are there to give players their kind of first taste of high-level competition.
Allison Mages: I think it's really interesting, Graham, that I wonder how when you're working with these partners, you mentioned that you have guidelines on how you run tournaments and with your partners, but what other IP's involved? Are your partners creating IP as well?
Graham Ashton: Yeah, in the sense that they are, they're creating their own tournament IP, certainly. And of course, the teams that compete in our leagues obviously have their team branding and their team logo. I think as a sort of starting point, it's important to note that different game publishers will take different approaches to their IP when it comes to esports. So a publisher can create their own competition brands and provide license to organizers and that kind of hybrid model is the approach that Riot Games takes. It's very rare that you see a game developer playing no role in esports whatsoever, but many do take a more hands off approach so they don't organize tournaments themselves or they don't monetize their competitive scene and they simply allow third party tournament organizers to manage the space themselves.
And both approaches have different implications for IP, so the more open model tends to put less restriction into an organizers who can incorporate gameplay footage and elements in their own marketing, or even that of their commercial partners. And in the case of developer run esports, there is an increasing use of game characters and other elements derived from the game within the broadcast. So in recent years we started integrating League of Legends and Valorant iconography in our partner commercials. Or having sponsor banners actually appear in the matches, the game matches. However, I always want to stress that the latter are not visible by the competing players and they're designed to be as unobstrusive to the viewers as possible, and that does create several considerations that wouldn't be found in traditional sports.
So for example, our esports audience tends to trend a bit younger than other mainstream sports leagues, and that means we want to avoid certain types of products and services being advertised in our competitions that that don't correspond to those age groups. So teams in our leagues, for example, are prohibited from signing sponsors and categories such as alcohol, tobacco and, and betting and gambling alongside goods or services that simply violate their respective games in terms of use, such as cheating or hacking software. And I just want to stress as well that we are always revisiting those categories and reviewing them.
Allison Mages: A lot of our listeners are developers and many of them are passionate about esports and they want to build really awesome games. But how do they go about making money off of these games? And what role does IP have to play in that?
Graham Ashton: Yeah, that's a great question. There are obvious commercial benefits to having your videogame become the equivalent of a spectator sport. It encourages a high level of players to spend considerable amounts of time honing their ability on your platform and their competitive achievements bring in viewers, who in turn might become fans of your games themselves. Or they might have already been fans, but now they're going all in. So all this in mind, the journey from new game to successful esport doesn't happen overnight and historically a lot of forced esports have failed. There has to be something that's done organically and with and a lot of thoughts on how the community is going to accept the game.
So there are a number of different parts here predominantly attracting and maintaining a player base who will grow and eventually form a strong esports community. And if you're truly successful, you will have multiple generations of talented players. That's I think we're at the end goal.
So from the development side you need to have an engaging game play concept that even if you're working within historically successful genre like the first person shooter genre. it needs to offer some unique experience that would encourage dedicated high level players. That must be accompanied with a fair ranking system which is a staple of competence games now and this helps competitors settle into an appropriate skill level and around that you need to have a client that supports the creation of private games and custom tournaments and things like that.
From there, as I touched on that earlier, but the biggest challenge is competitive balance. So a weapon or item can easily become overpowered nd players need a regular what we call patch cycle that they can then structure their training around the corner. It's actually a huge part of becoming professional, competitive gamers. You need to work around the patch cycles and make sure that you're always adapted to how the game is developing. This ties into the commercial aspects because new characters, new abilities, new changes to the games, they're essential for keeping the game fresh.
But the gameplay experience can spiral out of control if you don't introduce new elements without enough thoughtful thought. If a player, for example, invents a new strategy around a certain combination of characters or a different set of items, as a game developer that you should feel proud about that, that's that feather in the cap you've given them the tools to completely change the nature of the game, but there are instances where a certain matter or you know if you talking about digital card game for example a death type can cause the game to really stagnate and become repetitive. And so that's where a balanced team needs to be adept at finding a comfortable middle ground between the commercial needs of the game, but also the player experience needs.
That doesn't even touch to things like community and player support as well. You want games to feel like they're part of something unique, and that can only be achieved by growing a community organically, and that's done through a mix of content, social engagement, and transparent communication from your development teams.
And then just to sort of touch on esports specifically and on oturnament organization, no esports can succeed as well, without a strong amateur and grassroots scene. So as I've alluded to a few times, there needs to be clear guidelines and tools to help third party tool and organisers bring their games to local competitors and audiences. This is why, maybe a little in my view, it's why a game publisher should be active in its competitive community. It should be highly alert to feedback and determining how and when to become directly involved in organizing competitions themselves.
Micaela Mantegna: I like how you describe before the game as kind of a living organism. That is kind of iterating, but at the same time, it depends on the feedback from the player base, the user base, and how it's kind of evolving.
Allison Mages: So Graham, what would you say is the difference in IP between traditional sports and esports?
Graham Ashton: Esports competitions typically feature many of the same IP rights for sports, including trademark for leagues, tournaments and teams, copyright on the matches, and licensing and merchandising agreements. However, the IP rights the game publisher create a new dimension to that, so the use of gameplay footage, character portraits, and even the name of the game itself are managed by licensing agreements. So that creates profoundly different commercialization considerations and it's obviously commonplace that even now, with esports, we see players indoors, products and services, like traditional athletes, but we have to be quite thoughtful with everything about game commercial integrations. You know, whether it's an automotive partner or a food and beverage brand. We want our game IP to be subtly and carefully integrated into the promotional material we build with our commercial partners.
I think one of the most meaningful examples of how we did that was through our Louis Vuitton partnership. So for the 2019 World Championship, we had an in game virtual music group called True Damage, which basically is pop star alter egos of League of Legends characters that like exists in an alternate universe to the main world of Runeterra, which is more fantasy and steampunk based. So we have the characters wear outfits designed by the brand and then Louis Vuitton also designed the trophy case for the tournament as they do for the FIFA World Cup and other sporting events.
So that's a really good demonstration of how a commercial partnership can add value to both our players and partners in esports fans without intruding too much into what people have come to know League of Legends as being.
And then for game publishers, the difference in IP ownership from traditional sports also opens up many possibilities that we're only now delving into. So a key one is the integration of the live broadcast and the fan experience. So we for example can offer reward drops to our players who spend time watching esports matches. So watching whether it's through Twitch or another platform or through our website, they can earn in game rewards or currency by just watching it, or we have what's called Pickens, where they can kind of pick their favorite teams at the start at each stage of the competition, you know, kind of predict who's going to win. And even as traditional sports kind of continues to explore online streaming spaces, which are interesting, they could really learn a lot from the gaming and esports industry and how to innovate their broadcasts and provide different levels of engagement that we've been doing for a number of years now.
Allison Mages: This partnership that you mentioned, Graham, with Louis Vuitton is really great because it's a way that two different brands create value between each other using their own individual IP. So they both get sort of this push from each other from maybe different audiences.
Micaela Mantegna: It's like a synergy, I think, and also sometimes it's something that people doesn't expect, particularly people that it's outside gaming communities, these kind of collaborations take them by surprise, by showcase, maybe how great gaming is.
Graham Ashton: And I think it's something that we were able to offer because we've really turned our temple tournaments into huge events in of themselves that are far more well, the match of course is the main most important thing; the competition is the reason everyone's tuning in. But we've built something much larger around it. We've kind of built the Super Bowl, right, like when always you know the Super Bowl halftime show is not as important as the match, but it's become so synonymous with that event.
The World Championship, which I mentioned a couple of times for League of Legends, and that's been running since 2014, it started at a Swedish gaming festival where maybe we had a few hundred people there and now it runs annually, yes, every year, where we have tens of thousands of people in the audience watching there. And then in terms of that I think we still haven't released the numbers yet for the most recent championship, but the event from 2021 it had a record of 73 million peak viewers. And it's also become known for its opening ceremony, where we kind of combine the latest in entertainment sports technology to create something that that I don't think you'll see elsewhere.
I mentioned before the pop group we did, that's actually we've done that a few times. We, for example, had another pop group called K/DA where I think it's also worth mentioning that the actual singers for those characters are real life American and K Pop stars just kind of brought to life through our characters. We've also done really like crazy things, like when we held the 2017 world opening ceremony in Beijing, we held it at the Bird's Nest, which is an Olympic Stadium there. And we had basically a giant augmented-reality dragon coming into the arena. And so if you watch the broadcast, you would just see this giant dragon just move across the crowd. And that actually helped that event become the first ever esports broadcast to win a Sports Emmy. So it's really like blurring that line between esports and gaming, and then just general entertainment as well.
Micaela Mantegna: I love that you brought up K/DA into the mix because it became like a standalone success in in its own merit. This is a full confession because I love skating and I used to skate with K/DA music.
Graham Ashton: Yeah, they I think bit shout out to Riot’s music department. The way we kind of arranged the company is gaming is, our is our cool pillar and always will be. But our two other pillars are our esports and entertainment. People probably think of the Arcane Netflix series, which makes sense, but it does encompass so many other things, and music is a huge part of it.
I mean, we generally bring big artists to do kind of the themes for competitions like Lil Nas X did the theme for Whales this year, but we also released lo-fi hip hop albums that you can listen to. One of the things that I love mentioning is that for the LEC we have like a year annual tradition of producing rap battles where the commentators basically rap representing one of the teams. It sounds absurd, but it's actually like really well put together to the extent that other, professional rappers, will watch the videos and just be, like, blown away by what they're seeing.
Micaela Mantegna: But I also think that it shows the value of IP and how can you translate it into a cross media expansion and strategy. Because you start with one core IP and you expand to music to other areas of entertainment. And I think it's really a really smart strategy to do.
Graham Ashton: And you can of course, enjoy those things individually. Like you could show one of K/DA songs to some of these into pop music and enjoy it. But I think there's kind of a deeper enjoyment if you know who the members of K/DA are in terms of their League of Legends characters. And maybe there's also subtle references to their there's like multiple layers of the IP that you can dive into. And I think that helps from an esports point of view that that's again why actually, being a player of the game helps you enjoy the matches so much.
I also use this line a lot, which is that one of the big differences between sports and esports is when you're watching sports in the stadium where you say you're watching football in a stadium, most of the people in that stadium don't play football and if they do, it's obviously just something they might do occasionally on a very casual basis. If you go to an esports event. not only are most of the people in that arena playing that game, they might go home and play it that night, which is really unique, yeah.
Allison Mages: I have one more question. If you don't mind, Graham, we're working with a lot of small studios who are listening to this podcast and I think what they want to know is: if they're looking to collaborate with a major player like Riot Games, you know what should they be thinking about, particularly from an IP perspective?
Graham Ashton: We actually have started working with other game developers on titles, so in November of 2021, we launched our first game developed by a third party developer. It's called Ruined King, a League of Legends Story. So as the title suggests, it's a spin off in the League of Legends canon and the developer Airship Syndicate basically used the familiar settings and characters whilst building out their own original gameplay system. And we've since announced and released several other third party developed titles, mostly focusing on single characters or region within the wider interior universe.
One thing I'm also interested in in some mentioning is like, maybe separate to us if the studio is interested in like basically wanting to build their own esports title, because that's also something that's still relatively recent, this idea that you could develop a game with esports in mind. Valerant was very much that kind of game where we knew that that had to be its trajectory. It had to become a competitive title that people want to play, I have some thoughts there.
I think it's fun to know that, like, not every competitive game needs to have a fully developed universal back story like League of Legends. Not to that same level of complexity, but it should boast the recognizable aesthetic and a tonality for players to attach themselves to. So the branding and mythos of the game can heavily influence the attitude your competitive community adopts. If you want it to be kind of like Valerian has a bit of like a more edgy competitive community than League of Legends, and I think that's kind of inspired by the game.
And in the same way you know what I was saying before being agile with your career prospects in gaming, I would say you also need to be willing to change it up and be willing to make both bets and design new game even when a gameplay concept is still gaining momentum. One of the games that we have, Team Fight Tactics, that's a really perfect example. It was originally just a side mode for League of Legends. There was a popular mod going around, basically the type of games called auto chess or auto battler, and we just kind of our development team just basically decided to build a League of Legends version of that and in less than a year it launched this kind of its own game and it even boasts its own global competition.
And then maybe like as a final thought in terms of like building an esports brand. One of the reasons I think League of Legends esports and its various leagues and tournaments keep viewers coming back season after season is thanks to that huge wealth of ancillary hype content that I was talking about before. The stuff that kind of entertained viewers outside of the matches in gameplay. You know, I've mentioned the AR elder dragon, the virtual pop groups, the rap battles, but there's so much more that goes that there, there's music videos, there's tournament anthems, there's animated promos; sometimes we can do comedy skits.
I think with the LCD we once built like a fake set of action figures around the players and had the the casters pretend they were real. It's a variety of content that basically harks back to the history and legacy of our competitions, because those competitions also kind in the same way that League of Legends has been played for 10 years. Those competitions now approaching their first decade and the reason I think that they've stood the test of time, is because the team is making them our gamers themselves, their fans, very sports leagues, and they know how to deliver experiences that will resonate with our fans. And I think that's a huge reason why younger audiences gravitate towards esports. It isn't simply that gamers are younger than most sports fans, but it's because esports content is tailor-made to that demographic, while traditional sports is still marketing them in a traditional way.
Micaela Mantegna: That was a fantastic answer and a fantastic way of closing our podcast, so we wanted to take you Graham so much for sharing this time and this interview with us.
Allison Mages: So, so great to have you, Graham. And I think this will really help people who are looking to think about their IP strategy and embrace it from, you know, a really important brand in the spectrum. So thanks so much.
Graham Ashton: Thanks very much. Having me, thanks for the great questions. And I completely agree. I think it's an aspect of gaming esports that that doesn't get enough attention. So I was happy to talk about it.
Allison Mages: So what does it take to succeed in esports? Pulling it all together with us is Professor Gaetano Dimita in his PowerUp.
Gaetano Dimita: The esport ecosystem is extremely rich intellectual property. Beyond the intellectual property in your games. IP from the tournament, the legal organizer from the teams from the player and the broadcaster will interact with each other in order to achieve the final product. The centerpiece is, however, your videogame and your videogame IP. So through this licensing and cross licensing collaboration, you can actually determine how you want the legal tournament to be designed and actually impact on the entire esports ecosystem. If you think that your videogame has potential to become an esports, your IP strategy will shape the esport ecosystem that you can implement.
There are few ways you model the ecosystem with IP: you can decide to run the entire championship or league by yourself, or you could allow others from fund to commercial entities to create esports from your game. Or as an alternative you might not want anyone to use your videogame sport. IP is what gives you the control to decide whether and how your game is going to become an esport. And you do that via IP licensing or on the other side IP enforcement.
You can decide to license assets of your game to another company, probably someone more experience in esports to run your competition exclusively at the international level or license more companies in different regions. Or as an alternative, you might not want to be involved directly, but still allow for people to organize tournament using your videogame, in which case you might want to provide them with a permissible license.
This might be helpful also when dealing with the investor and advertiser or the license itself to actually legitimize this tournament.
Of course, you might want to have a totally different approach regarding professional esports and semiprofessional ones and grassroot events. These models are constantly evolving because esports is a very fast-paced market, but as a publisher and copyright and trademark owner, you are the one deciding how you want your esport ecosystem to be managed.
Micaela Mantegna: And that's a wrap for level 5. Remember to check out the whole season of “Videogame Development: a Quest for IP”. If you like the show, if you have questions or if you want to hear more, reach out to us and let us know.
Allison Mages: Thanks for listening to Make IP Your Business, this podcast is brought to you by WIPO, the UN Agency for IP that enables innovation and creativity for everyone, everywhere. You can find all of the episodes, download the PowerUps and join the community on our website. Check out the show notes for the links. Goodbye for now!