League of Legends fans aren’t sufficiently aware of the miracle that Arcane’s release was. The Netflix series has been a huge hit, appealing to even those who’ve never set foot in Summoner’s Rift or the Howling Abyss. However, making it was a real odyssey for Riot Games and Fortiche, the animation studio that worked on the series. Everything depended on the will of those involved in the process and on a bet of some $65,000 which, until today, had not been disclosed.
The bet that changed League of Legends forever
One of the driving forces behind the series was Christian Linke, also known as Riot Praeco. This developer employee insisted on creating an animated series that would tell the story of League of Legends characters and had suggested the idea several times — an idea consistently rejected by his superiors. However, he managed to convince them to make an almost insignificant investment. He first received $2,000 to create concept art with Fortiche, then $5,000 for 3D models, and finally a final investment through which the League of Legends developers decided to take the plunge.
Praeco used a very clever strategy. He not only knew that by slowly increasing his demands, he was much more likely to get a positive response, but also that once studio officials saw the potential, it was impossible to say no to the development of ‘Arcanum. In this sense, he needed a final test, which cost $65,000. A much higher amount that would give League of Legends expansion officials pause, but was finally given the go-ahead by the company. This resulted in a fight between Jayce and Vi which led to the bosses giving the series their final thumbs up.
As for what happened when Riot Games officials saw the scene, Christan says: “I think that’s when they realized I was serious. I said something like, ‘Now you have the concept art for the characters and the environments.’ You also have the 3D models and the animation test. You have the material we created for the pilot episode. So… Are we going to do it or not?”. From this conversation, which took place in 2015, it took 6 years for Arcane to air on Netflix.
However, we can here say “From words to action there is a long way”. Fortiche was a studio of only 5 people who had to recruit up to 300 new employees for the project. Even with Riot Games joining, the project was completely utopian and in danger of collapsing at any moment. Thomas Vu, Head of Franchise Expansion at Riot Games, puts it bluntly: “Not knowing where we were going was an advantage. If we had known, we would have said no”.
The path was extremely complex and there were times when, after months of work, it had to be backtracked in order to maintain a higher level of quality than the average anime series. Riot Games wanted Arcane to be a series that lived up to the almost insurmountable expectations of the League of Legends community. A gigantic snowball that only stopped rolling thanks to a brawl between Vi and Jayce that cost $65,000 and changed Riot Games history.
The full documentary on the birth of Arcane can be viewed legally and for free on Youtube .
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