Riot teamed up with Lil Nas X with a holographic robot for the opening ceremony of Worlds 2022

The last moments of the opening ceremonies of the 2022 edition League of Legends The World Championship featured star performer Lil Nas X seemingly being lifted into the air by the hand of a giant robot as a championship trophy floated around him. It was an impressive display of artistic vision and technical expertise – and it’s also why Riot esports creative director Carrie Dunn has been a little stressed lately. “Every time you hoist a cultural superstar into the air for your finale,” she says, “there’s anxiety in there.”

Worlds is the culmination of Leagueof the competitive calendar, with the finals pitting two teams against each other who have worked all year to try to clinch the trophy. This year’s edition featured the return of legendary Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok – known by the incredible nickname “Invincible Demon King” – and his T1 team against fellow Korean DRX. But as engaging as the games themselves are, often the opening ceremony steals the show.

In the old days, League developer Riot employed holograms and augmented reality for its live events. Over the past few years, with covid restrictions, the team has had to get a little more creative. 2020 featured a mixed reality scene to make competition without crowds more excitingwhile last year completely avoided a live show for a gigantic music video related to the release of Esoteric on Netflix.

This year, with the promise of a return to a packed arena at San Francisco’s Chase Center, the team wanted to create a show that would work for both spectators and fans watching at home. This ruled out AR, which is only really cool when looking at a screen. Instead, they decided to use multiple technologies, including a massive ground-level jumbotron-style screen and a stage covered in thousands of LED tiles. The highlight, however, is arguably the insanely huge holograms.

In 2019, Riot used a technology called Holonet 3D, essentially a high-tech gauze onto which images can be projected to create a holographic effect. This is how the members of the fictional hip-hop group True Damage were able to perform on stage in Paris. This year, the team is using the same tools but on a much larger scale. There are three Holonet panels, which extend up to 48 feet, which is how they were able to pull off the massive mech moment.

But it has also been used for much smaller and more complex moments. At some point during the opening ceremony, League the character Pyke introduced himself and appeared to use his trademark move, the “bone skewer”, to lure a real person to him. It was an effect that required multiple elements: a hologram to bring Pyke to life, precise lighting cues to create a sense of movement, and multiple performers who could hit those cues perfectly. “This year’s technical complexity and ambition is, in my experience, a new high,” says executive producer Nick Troop.

In addition to all the holographic meshes and the LED stage, this year’s ceremony required 55 cameras, a nine-story lighting truss, 24 30K projectors, and a media center setup “capable of driving up to 600 million pixels”. according to Troop. In total, over 470,000 pounds of equipment was needed for the event. “It’s more than double our last Worlds final in an arena,” says Troop.

It also needed the right people. According to Dunn, even before the team secured Lil Nas X, they knew he was exactly what they wanted. “Lil Nas X was the mood board,” she says. “He was the vision. It took us a while to land it, but we knew we wanted it for a while. So we built the vision around the hope that he would fulfill it. She adds that she “definitely cried a little bit” when he finally signed. “It was both a relief and an excitement and also the realization that we have to get to work because he’s actually on board.” Fans Got A Taste Of What To Expect When Lil Nas X Releases the single “Star Walkin'” in September, which he performed on stage at the Worlds. This video included a mechanical version of the League character Azir, the same one who would appear to lift Lil Nas X on stage during the performance.

The Worlds opening ceremony has been split into three “acts” this year, each with its own song. It started with “The call“, the anthem of the 2022 season sung by Edda Hayes, which led to”The fire in the wick“, performed by Jackson Wang, with Lil Nas X closing things out. Finding a performer for this mid-section was especially important due to its complexity. Dunn says she saw Wang perform at a festival and was immediately realized that it would be a perfect fit.

“His charisma and stage presence are so undeniable,” she explains. “His choreographic ability is unparalleled, and that section of ‘Fire to the Fuse’ is very nuanced and very technical, and we needed someone who…it’s not just that they know how to dance, it’s is that they can dance unrestrained at a fast pace while hitting very precise and technical cues.His section is so intertwined with technology and Holonet that there is no room for error.

The other star of the show wasn’t a person or in-game character: it was a brand new trophy. Ahead of the Worlds Finals, Riot has unveiled a new version of the iconic Summoner’s Cup, created by Tiffany & Co. It was a big feature at the ceremony and, as Dunn points out, the team was lucky because Mech Azir’s eye turned out to be a very Tiffany shade of blue, which makes the reveal nice. visually adapted. She says it was a moment that required a lot of thought and attention.

“It’s not like it’s the Summoner’s Cup until he has that moment on stage in the finals and then gets lifted by our pro players,” Dunn said. “We took this moment very seriously as our chance to introduce him to the sport.”