League of Legends’ fighting game spin-off 2XKO might have a bumpy start come launch since Riot Games is keen to “try stuff” in a new genre, but the studio’s also committed to ironing out those creases over time, according to game director Shaun Rivera.
2XKO’s lead said as much in an interview with Edge Magazine’s latest issue, admitting that he’s both “excited” and “also terrified” about its early access launch this October because “it’s going to be a little bumpy when we get out.” That’s partly because it’s the first time a lot of the team have led a new game, and 2XKO also doesn’t have the benefit of building on past games, like Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter do.
“We’re going to make mistakes,” Rivera added. “We’re the type of team where we want to try stuff. Sometimes it’s going to land and sometimes it’s going to whiff, but we will be trying things. I want to set those expectations for players that something we try might go wrong or it might not be good, but we’ll address it.”
“I do want to call out, though, that we’re a team of people making a fighting game for the first time in a sense, and we don’t have older fighting-game animations to reuse or things like that,” he continued, before addressing the game’s slightly thin beginning roster. “We’re making our champions from scratch, and we’re learning as we make them… we’ve got a lot of champions at various stages of development down the pipe that I can’t wait for people to see and play.”
2XKO director wants to rub shoulders with giants like Street Fighter, but the League of Legends fighting game has “got to earn that spot”
