Riot Games wanted to build a massive event hub for the Riot Arcane event, a month-long experience to celebrate the launch of Riot’s first animated series, Arcane.

In Q4 of 2021, the release of Arcane — an animated television series set in the League of Legends universe, would mark Riot’s expansion into the film and entertainment space.  This was a big moment and Riot was looking to leverage this launch to elevate player perceptions around their IP, games and sports with a total ecosystem that weaved all of Riots products together.

We designed and produced an entire city with various unique districts in WebGL as an immersive in-browser 3D experience for the RIOT fans to explore and interact with. Evolving over time, players embarked on a narrative adventure and solved missions to earn in-game rewards.

• A browser based 3D city with seven districts unlocking over time
• A big amount of characters in every district
• A narrative adventure taking players through all the places on the map
• Rewards and easter eggs hidden all over the place
• Original artwork and sound design making the experience it’s own thing

During the campaign the city grew and transformed through missions completed by players until it physically manifested at the campaign’s experiential climax at a celebration called Undercity Nights.

People was to come here first thinking it was the launch campaign for Arcane and then be surprised not only with that but with an unexpected move – A moment in time when the Riot metaverse can be experienced all together for the first time.

Quick overview of the districts that made up the city of Arcane. The city is divided into 7 districts (influenced by the different RIOT IP’s). Each district had different Points of Interests that users could explore by moving in the 3D scene.

I led the narrative and level design of all the districts and their layouts while my team created all the art and assets used in the resulting scenes.

A workshop in Zaun where a community of Little Legends live to compete in battle bot competitions where all the bot pieces resemble an assembly of champion parts (eg. bot’s with Vi fists, Viktor laser arms, etc.). The area is mostly made up of workshops, labs, boxes of parts, showrooms that sell premade bots, and an arena in which the best come to battle it out.

The Lanes are the bustling street markets of the Undercity where you can find a variety of (shady) deals. The Last Drop is its centerpiece where weary travelers come to trade, scheme, and enjoy some downtime

A busy cafe located on the ground level of a bustling shopping district where people can gather to play together. The cafe behind them showcases thematic foods, easter egg posters, callouts. The wall on the side of the shop features a TV screen airing our WR Launch CG.

Killjoy Workshop space in VAL HQ where agents can come and relax. Highly personalized, and a space where Killjoy recruits everyone to come and enjoy an Arcane watch party together.

The University of Piltover is a sprawling town of academic excellence. In addition to technological marvels, we imagine that the college is also full of priceless knowledge and a collection of important items.

A finely cultivated city park/outdoor designed to look like Summoner’s Rift. Includes the Piltovan Archives where players can learn more about the event content.

RiotXArcane was initially projected for 600k visitors, but surpassed all expectations, attracting over 9 million unique visitors(!) With an whopping 5.30-minute average time spent, the engagement far exceeded projections, highlighting the global impact and resonance of this awesome thing we built for half a year. I highly regard this project as a perfect example of the power of digital storytelling and interactive experiences.

Play-through

Necrit play-through

Enjoy some random shots from the project. More to come when I dig up the work files from a hard drive that is currently somewhere, somehow and sometime.