Riot Games is going all out promoting its new animated series, Arcane, which premieres episodes weekly on Netflix. Largely, that promotional effort is stemming from the company’s RiotX Arcane initiative, a month-long event dedicated to marketing Arcane through every possible avenue.
This month, Riot has made it a priority to bring the world of Arcane to its five game titles, as well as games outside of the Riot umbrella. Over the last two weeks alone, Riot has partnered with games developers such as Innersloth, Epic Games, and others to bring Arcane’s thematic elements and various characters to titles outside of the Riot universe.
At the head of RiotX Arcane is Brandon Miao, the project director for the groundbreaking event. Miao sat down with Dot Esports to provide insight on the RiotX Arcane project, and how Riot’s collaborations with other game developers rose to the surface.
Earlier this week, Riot and Innersloth revealed the latest multi-game collaborative effort to center around Arcane—a crossover that brings certain League champions who appear in the show into Among Us.
For Riot and Innersloth, the biggest challenge the two developers faced when combining the aesthetics of Among Us and League came in the form of the two games’ vastly different art styles. “Thankfully, we’re no strangers to having to change our world and characters for the appropriate medium,” Miao said. “For Among Us, Innersloth and Riot had a conversation about iconic silhouettes and shapes, and key wardrobe choices that would be memorable from the show.”
With that in mind, Riot and Innersloth added 17 different cosmetic items into Among Us, each representing a piece of Arcane’s most notable characters. From Vi’s iconic pink hair to Heimerdinger’s sweeping moustache, the two developers worked in tandem to ensure the cosmetic items added to Among Us captured the spirit of League and Arcane.
Beyond Among Us, the RiotX Arcane project has expanded into other titles, including battle royale games such as PUBG Mobile and Fortnite. Earlier this month, Jinx—one of Arcane’s most prominent characters—was added to Fortnite as an equippable skin.
“It was very important to us that Arcane’s Jinx read well within the Fortnite art style,” Miao said. “Ultimately, the Fortnite player is the one who will live with the experience in the long term and we wanted to avoid anything that was tonally jarring for their game. Epic has plenty of experience with other collaborations, capturing the essence and ‘read’ of a character while managing tones for their audience. We had full confidence that this would be the case for Arcane as well.”
Since 2018, Epic Games has added nearly 100 different characters from individual franchises and projects into Fortnite. This year alone, Epic collaborated with Marvel, Universal, and many more to bring significant characters from the world of entertainment into Fortnite.
As for Riot, these recent ventures to showcase their IP to other audiences are completely new and unique for the company. “Anything is possible,” said Miao on plans for future collaborations. “This was just the first step for us when it comes to cross-game collaborations outside of Riot’s titles. But nothing is set in stone. We’re just really happy with the execution and the opportunity.”
Moving forward, the RiotX Arcane project will continue over the span of the next few weeks, with more episodes of the show premiering on Netflix. The second act of Arcane, which consists of the fourth, fifth, and sixth episodes of the show, will premiere this Sunday, Nov. 14, at 2am CT.
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