3 takeaways from TFT Summit: Monster’s Attack!

Riot Games partnered with Beyond the Summit for the Teamfight Tactics Summit: Monster’s Attack!, featuring Set Eight gameplay, top content creators, devs, and so much more. 

Over four days, from Dec. 8 to 11, the TFT Summit showcased 24 content creators gathering together for a casual LAN event. The Monster’s Attack! Summit could have been all about Set Eight gameplay and the event would have been a success. But individuals like Dan Frodan, BTS Zane Bhansali, product lead Chad Smeltz, and game designer Stephen “Mortdog” Mortimer helped turn the casual tournament into an epic event. 

Here are some of our main takeaways from TFT Summit: Monster’s Attack!

Community and gathering

Content creators within TFT have a wide variety of personalities. The Monster’s Attack! Summit put those personalities on full display and nothing burned to the ground. Fans were treated to a healthy mix of streamers—from those with outspoken personalities like Bebe and Milk to North America’s rookie of the year Rainplosion and longtime streamers like Becca and Robin. TFT devs and casters were also thrown into the mix. 

Just about everyone in attendance took turns casting from the basement couches, providing fans with a chance to experience the personalities of players who typically turn off their cameras when competing in tournaments.

Each day ran around 10 hours long, showcasing non-TFT games like MAFIA, a talent show, an omelet cooking competition, and a special Set Eight dev Q&A in addition to the Set Eight gameplay. And on top of all that, several quality skits were produced. 

The best short of the weekend, though, showcased Mortdog and his “shadow brother.” 

By bringing the TFT player community together at the Monster’s Attack! Summit, each player was able to showcase skills outside of a first or eighth strategy when it comes to gameplay. The movie shorts highlighted acting skills while participants made fun of themselves and got “Mortdogged.” SpicyAppies and Rainplosion showed off musical skills during the talent show and Robin can cook a mean omelet with a golden spatula.

Set Eight premier 

The Monster’s Attack! Summit didn’t just focus on the people who make up the TFT community, though. It also featured the top streamers and professional competitors playing Set Eight. Having just dropped onto the live servers on Dec. 7, the Summit provided viewers with high-level gameplay of Monster’s Attack!

Most set launches will feature a wide variety of hot takes from content creators without much but their own gameplay to back it up until the meta starts to get solved. Placing 24 of the top TFT creators in one space after launch to “unlock the meta” was a brilliant move that not only led to great hot takes, but those takes getting either confirmed or shot down by players putting them to the test on the spot. 

Getting into a new TFT set for casual or inexperienced players can feel overwhelming. The Set Eight Summit helped break down some of those barriers by showcasing so many different styles of play over the course of four days. And having players casting during the matches, along with TFT devs, provided a ton of insight into the Set Eight mechanics, champions, synergies, and overall gameplay strategies.

Solid viewership

Twitch viewership for TFT has been consistently growing since Set Three and the first World Championship in 2020, with Set Seven being the first World Championship that actually saw a decrease in viewership. Some in the community have assumed that overall viewership was directly related to specific individual streamers, like C9k3soju. And others have argued that it’s more about gameplay within a set.

The TFT Set Eight Summit may have put the individual streamer theories to rest, though. The event pulled in an average viewership of around 17,000 to 18,000 while hitting a peak of just over 31,000, according to Esports Charts. And C9k3soju didn’t participate in the Summit event until the final two days, as a caster and not a competitor. 

For a casual event, peak viewership was almost half of the Set Seven World Championship and around 20,000 less than larger Set tournaments like the EMEA and NA events that led up to Regional Finals. 

Viewership for the TFT Summit shows that fans are into Set Eight and that the community is thriving because of all the content creators, not just a select few.