Like so many other recent events, the highly anticipated 2020 League of Legends World Championship has very limited seating. The month-long tournament in Shanghai has long embraced XR solutions, and this year Rokid helped to make the unique event even more special.
To learn more, ARPost spoke with Rokid Director of Product Engineering Weiqi Zhao. Zhao served as project manager and designer for the experience hosted by Chinese technology company Tencent.
The League of Legends “Worlds” Experience
The League of Legends World Tournament, referred to by fans as simply “Worlds,” is held every year by developers Riot Games. This year the tournament started on September 25, with the final Best-of-Five rounds being played on the morning of Saturday, October 31 between DAMWON Gaming and Suning.
The energy experienced at the event can be similar to that of conventional sports events, with fans cheering for their favorite team. It was exactly that kind of fan interaction that Zhao wanted to incorporate into the experience.
“We wanted users to experience an augmented physical world with LoL elements, characters, and scenes,” Zhao said in an emailed response. “We want users to have an exclusive private space within this AR Worlds 2020.”
The experience that Zhao and his partners created draws on visual cues, including the iconic Oriental Pearl TV Tower. It also draws on voice commands that help to bring users into the experience.
“By our voice recognition technology, users can shout out their favorite team’s name and see customized content in this AR space such as highlights of the game, close-ups of a favorite player, favorite team’s name, logo, color, and many others,” said Zhao.
In addition to team spirit and tournament information, the experience brings players into the game itself. As a release shared with ARPost explains,
“Fans can summon an in-game dragon to fly around Shanghai’s famous Oriental Pearl TV Tower, transforming the city into The Summoner’s Rift.”
How Visitors Experienced the Magic
Visitors to the event are able to participate through Rokid Vision, as well as by visiting a special booth that Rokid had set up at the event. There, event attendees are able to use a number of sets of glasses made available specifically for the event.
If you’ve been following Rokid, you know that they are primarily targeted at enterprise and business-to-business solutions. However, the company has also worked with other organizations like museums and exhibitions to provide business-to-customer solutions like this one. Still, it’s not every day that they do an entertainment event like this one.
A First for Rokid and for Worlds
This event isn’t just historic for Rokid, it’s also a historic event for Worlds. The event has actually featured some extended reality element every year since 2017. However, this is the first such event that uses glasses to facilitate an experience of this quality.
“Of course, we hope that the success of this event is a start for future collaboration,” said Zhao. “We believe that AR technology and AR glasses will play an increasingly important role in the future gaming industry and gaming experience.”
While we need XR solutions in the enterprise space and we’re definitely excited about the B2B work that Rokid is doing, it’s also pretty fun to see them get into the League of Legends spirit.
Experiencing the Worlds at Home
The AR experience that Rokid created is only available on location at the tournament. However, matches that you may have missed are all recorded with commentary and free to watch from home from the League of Legends eSports page.
