If you’ve paid any quantity of consideration to preventing recreation followers, influencers, or gamers over the previous 12 months, you’ll know Project L is the looming presence thundering in the direction of us from the murky future. It’s the elephant within the room within the purest sense, a presence that each new launch, each new announcement, and each new growth within the style is measured round.

The of us at Riot Games seem to know the atmosphere they’re strolling into; R&D Projects that find yourself greenlit and pushed into the forefront. The first ever bit of stories we ever noticed with Project L revolved across the esteemed and skilled workers that have been main growth, a method Riot had beforehand used earlier than with Legends of Runeterra and Valorant, which championed huge names of their respective genres. This, because it was clearly supposed to do, made each 30+ 12 months outdated buster with an arcade stick a little bit sizzling across the collar. Follow that up with bulletins of free-to-play, nice netcode, and a 2v2 format, and the pants got here off.

But, whereas Riot could have the gang with boxed copies of Street Fighter 4 hyped, it’s arguably much more necessary for the long run success of Project L that it wins over the non-fighting recreation crowd. The League, Valorant, Runeterra and Wild Rift communities not solely dwarf the FGC, however are most probably the primary group of actually contemporary gamers who’ll choose Riot’s foray into preventing video games up first, too. The huge query on my thoughts concerning Project L proper now could be merely, ‘do League of Legends gamers truly give a shit?’

To discover out, I FADC’d to a aircraft to Copenhagen and protected jumped on a prepare to Malmo, Sweden to the League of Legends LEC Summer finals. The first occasion with a dwell crowd in two years, and a hotspot for competitive-minded Riot followers who — in idea — needs to be shopping for what Project L is promoting.

“I don’t really like the Street Fighter games” admits Alex, who travelled to Sweden with their three longtime gaming buddies Kate, David, and Owen, to look at the finals. “I’m more of a fan of RPGs, and League has RPG elements in it in a way.”

“I think it’s just easier to play together!” follows Kate. “You can’t really play together with a fighting game, whereas in an MMO you can. We play a lot together in WoW, New World… games like that”. Of the group, none have been notably excited for the preventing recreation primarily based on the style itself or its hyperlink to the broader LoL universe, no matter their long run expertise with League and aggressive on-line gaming.

However, there have been some ‘What Ifs’ that raised pleasure ranges among the many group, and which apparently would go a great distance in successful them over. Alex brings up the thought, which in flip has his buddy group nodding in settlement: “Maybe if they had a feature like in Tekken Tag Tournament where you can swap out between players and tag others in – if we could queue up as a five or four and tag each other in, that would be awesome.”

It is price noting that amongst the Riot Games catalogue, the overwhelming majority (aside from Legends of Runeterra, which we’ll contact again on later) permit for teams of buddies to actively play collectively, concurrently, without delay. Fighting video games like Mortal Kombat have tried to convey the entire gang into the expertise with King of the Hill modes, however even that also leaves the overwhelming majority of gamers in a spectator place, most of the time. The overwhelming perspective I discovered from these attending the LEC finals final weekend was that they might moderately leap into the motion alongside their buddies in a roundabout way, with some emphasising that it is the skill to play with buddies that retains them taking part in sure Riot titles.

One attendee, one of many few diehard Rogue supporters I discovered standing within the expo merch line, had been conserving tabs with Project L since its launch. He thought it was “really brilliant”, that the sport was fixing points that different huge fighters had, however nonetheless got here away with a priority. “From what we know right now, there isn’t a unique feature no other fighting game has right? Legends of Runeterra has this big single player rogue-like thing, League has seasonal events and Urf. I would like to see the fighting game really surprise people with a new idea.”

However, it’s not all doom and gloom, nor tragic indifference. Not a single particular person I talked to mentioned they have been towards leaping into Project L on account of two foremost causes: free-to-play, and its connection to the League universe.

“I’ll give it a go, because why not? All of the games Riot has brought out have been good – I’ve played TFT, I’ve played Legends of Runeterra, and obviously I’m big into Valorant at the moment, and it was not having to actually spend any money that was important to me early on” mentioned Theo, who flew over from France to assist G2. “I mean, I play a lot of games you have to buy, like big single player games, but I’ll play anything that’s free. I’ve played shit, but as long as I don’t lose money trying it I don’t mind!”

Walking across the expo, and out of doors the world previous to the video games in the course of the weekend, it was a little bit wild to expertise a crowd of individuals I might have beforehand thought have been down on day one for a Riot made fighter be up for the sport, however with some severe caveats. However, a number of selection League gamers additionally introduced up a side of aggressive preventing video games they actually hoped Project L would seize. Bogdan from Romania, coated head to toe in Fnatic merch, hoped for a few of that old-school group really feel. “I would like to see the hype that was around like Street Fighter back in the day, that’s what you need to create a really dedicated community.”

One different, Stefan from Germany, was like a young person out of time. He turned visibly excited after I introduced up Project L, mentioned he watched and learn the latest Illaoi replace, and needed to see “the sort of great moments you got back in the Marvel vs Capcom 3 days”, andclaimed he actually appreciated the “raw” moments he remembered seeing again then. A League of Legends fan with a deep love of early 2010’s preventing recreation occasions? It felt like a unicorn talked to me earlier than prancing into the Malmo enviornment.

All of the above clearly comes from a small variety of a large occasion, however as hardcore League followers every person – hardcore sufficient to spend some severe money on a flight overseas for League – it’s inconceivable to argue they don’t maintain opinions indicative of the broader playerbase’s ideas. From what I noticed in Sweden, Project L could have gained main factors with preventing recreation dorks like me, however they’ve nonetheless acquired to win over the the Riot faithfuls.

For extra Project L protection, try our articles on 5 Leagoe of Legends characters we might like to see in Project L, in addition to why Project L could have what it takes to make it huge.