Insight certainty 4/5 debate potential 2/5

Beck: Founder naivete is an asset that prevents talking oneself out of ventures

Brandon Beck · Riot Games: Brandon Beck and Marc Merrill · Dec 14, 2020 · at 25:52

Riot Games co-founder Brandon Beck reflects on how underestimating game development costs kept the founders going.

0:00 / 0:15exact quote · 15.6s
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“Our own naivete was in many ways an asset to us. We were so unprepared to do what we were trying to do, and we were so unclear about what we were really up against that we didn't talk ourselves completely out of it.”

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More from Brandon Beck

Assertion Not checkable as stated
League of Legends cost $20 million to build, vastly exceeding early estimates
“I mean, I think all said and done, it was closer to twenty million dollars.”
Brandon Beck Dec 14, 2020 ▶ 25:48 Riot Games: Brandon Beck and Marc Merrill
Disclosure
Beck: Riot Decided to Self-Publish in US and Partner Internationally
“So we decided we would publish internationally if we could find a great publisher with a third party, but in the US we'd publish ourselves.”
Brandon Beck Dec 14, 2020 ▶ 41:40 Riot Games: Brandon Beck and Marc Merrill
Disclosure
Beck: League of Legends monetizes through aesthetic customization by a subset of players
“A large subset of our players never will, but a decent percentage of our players do, and they buy aesthetic customization, and there's, you know, there's an ongoing model.”
Brandon Beck Dec 14, 2020 ▶ 45:33 Riot Games: Brandon Beck and Marc Merrill
Assertion Supported
Riot sold physical boxes just so gaming media would review their game
“We ended up deciding to sell a box because interestingly, as we got closer and closer to launch, the game's media wasn't going to pay attention to us. In fact, we didn't exist if we did not have a box. If you were a game that didn't have a physical box, you we…”
Brandon Beck Dec 14, 2020 ▶ 1:00:32 Riot Games: Brandon Beck and Marc Merrill
Assertion Supported
Beck: Riot Games raised over $20M total prior to launch
“Yeah, so, so there was even a second round of venture, I think, for eight million, and there was some venture debt, like, on, on top of it for a total, I think, over twenty million.”
Brandon Beck Dec 14, 2020 ▶ 1:03:59 Riot Games: Brandon Beck and Marc Merrill
Assertion Supported
Beck: Over one million viewers watched League of Legends Season 1 finals
“Millions, over a million people had tuned in.”
Brandon Beck Dec 14, 2020 ▶ 1:10:59 Riot Games: Brandon Beck and Marc Merrill
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