MUSIC IN THE RIOT UNIVERSE
Riot Games, for a long time, has understood that music not only enhances the player experience, but massively increases community engagement. Whether they’re designing their own virtual bands, or collaborating with well-known established artists, their primary goal has always been:
connecting with the players.
The ability of music to establish emotional ties is vast. Within Riot’s games, music aids an immersive gameplay experience, while also functioning as an artistic language to convey character traits, motivations, and environmental detail. But Riot goes further. Music means more to Riot than a mere marketing strategy. It extends their community beyond the boundaries of code, opening up the Riot universe to welcome new audiences and content creators across the world…
IMAGINE DRAGONS
Pop-rock band Imagine Dragons has a long collaborative history with Riot. They were the studios first band collaboration and struck a pivotal moment for the future of Riot’s Musical endeavours. Imagine Dragons frontman, Dan Reynolds, talks in an interview with NME about how the game became an obsession for the band prior to working with the studio. Reynolds mentions that they’ve even been late to the stage because they were finishing up games in League of Legends, and wanted to steer clear of a ban for dropping out early! Their collaborations came about from a chance encounter when Reynold’s brother happened to meet a Riot employee while at church. Their conversation organically flowed about how his brother would play League, and how he was also the lead singer from the acclaimed group of musicians known as Imagine Dragons. This seemingly intwined the band and Riot together by fate as they were soon invited for a tour of the Riot Games studio. Both creative forces found themselves to be inspired by each others company, staying in contact with studio leads by playing the game, and reportedly “nerding out” over D&D through occasional house visits.
ID: WORLDS 2014 - WARRIORS & Arcane
In 2014, Riot held their fourth World Championship for League of Legends. It was here that Imagine Dragons would work with Riot to create the event’s first anthem, as well as perform live on stage at the Grand Finals held in Seoul, South Korea.
The rousing music was written specifically to initiate excitement, with Riot aiming for a war cry-like sound for players to rally behind. It was created in close collaboration with composer Christian Linke in an iterative process, where Christian would send them drafts of scored music, and the band would return song ideas based on that music, to which Linke would write more orchestral layers. They ended up with a successful hybrid fusion of a typical Imagine Dragons song and epic-orchestral fantasy music. The live performance matched the tracks energy and exceeded it with the help of over 100 live musicians on stage, including a traditional Korean drum ensemble and live orchestra. Imagine Dragons would be the first in a long list of established artists from a wide range of popular styles such as singer and rapper Lil Nas X to EDM artist Zedd working with Riot to make ‘Star Walkin’ (2022) and ‘Ignite’ (2016) respectively. All of these collaborations resulted in anthemic tracks for their annual world championship events, with the latest being ‘Gods’ (2023) from the supercharged K-Pop Girl Group ‘NewJeans’. In 2021, Imagine Dragons would eventually return to the League of Legends universe to write the song ‘Enemy’ featuring rapper J.I.D. It was used as the theme for Riot’s hit animated Netflix series ‘Arcane’ based on the lore of the games. The show was a signal that Riot were keen to expand further into multimedia territory, and give the fans more ways to engage with the games ever expanding content.
Unfortunately plans for the 2021 live show plans had to change quickly… as that years’ Worlds event would have to go audience-less and become a completely live-streamed show. It did, however, have Imagine Dragons return to a Worlds event alongside J.I.D and PVRIS with whom Riot collaborated with on that years anthem ‘Burn It All Down’. Each performance would have a bespoke music video filmed on a real world recreation of sets from the Arcane show.
STEVE AOKI
Another artist that has worked with the Riot Music Team in recent times is DJ Steve Aoki. He produced a track for the cinematic release video from Set 10 of TeamFight Tactics named Remix Rumble. TFT is essentially an auto-battler which is set in an alternate timeline featuring League Champions that have forgone a different destiny. Aoki’s contributions to TFT meant working closely with Riot composer Kole Hicks. They started with multiple genres, with Hicks sending Aoki audio files from various songs in the TFT soundtrack with widely differing styles, including classical, hip hop, jazz, and metal music. Aoki would then pick and choose a few elements based on the concept they were both working to. The idea was that that differing musical styles should be weaving together to work as a strong musical reflection of the game, as well as working as a stand-alone piece of music that they could release to streaming services like Spotify, and Apple Music. This concept was important to the gameplay of Set 10 Remix Rumble, as the update would allow the player to recruit champions that are related to the different styles of music intending for the player to build a genre-bending super-group. After Aoki built his remix, Hicks went on to edit and add a couple more elements to streamline the track for the cinematic. As well as being involved with the music, Aoki also added a range of Team Fight Tactics themed merchandise to his clothing brand ‘Dim Mak’.
Like Imagine Dragons, Steve Aoki also has a gaming history. In 2016 he became a co-owner of an esports team that played competitive Counterstrike and Overwatch, known as ‘Rogue’. The team came first in League European Championships in Spring 2022, and ended up finishing 5th overall in the Worlds event of the same year. More recently, after undergoing multiple rebrands, they have reestablished their team under the tagline ‘Hood Up’ with plans to return to the LEC this year.
CONCLUSION
Riot has a reputation for being committed to its players first and foremost. It’s evident that they are eager to work with creative people who have a passion for their games, and for the industry. Imagine Dragons, with their love for League, and Aoki’s own foray into esports made it a no brainer collaboration. All of this considered, it’s easy to see that Riot’s music is more than just video game music. Over time they have learned that if the music speaks, the players will listen!
References on request













