Project L developers talk process and challenges of turning a MOBA into a fighting game as Riot lays off over 500

Although it was first publicly unveiled in 2019, Project L still isn't in the hands of players outside of a few special events (or even have a full title yet), but those developing the League of Legends fighting game are continuing to work hard to bring it all together.

The new channel EvoFGC just released a new video showcasing the developers of Project L discussing the challenges and processes of their work just as the unfortunate announcement dropped that Riot Games themselves is laying off over 500 employees.

On the nicer side of things, we get to see some familiar faces from across the fighting game community (both players and devs) working together including Senior Producer Patrick "PatTheFlip" Miller, Director Shaun Rivera, and Lead Champion Designer Alex Jaffe in this video though we know there's a ton more FGC veterans at the studio too.

A lot of what they have to talk about here are things like sound design in fighters, how to balance the game around both tag and solo play and of course how to take a MOBA character from League and turn them into a real fighter.

"A lot of people, their first impression is okay take the character and cool they've already got moves and you just put them in the game," says Jaffe. "We find that doesn't make a very compelling fighting game character. What we really care about is the essence of the character and what makes them [who they are]. And we don't just mean the lore. We mean when you're playing that character what does it feel like to play as them? To Dunk as Darius or Spirit Rush with Ahri?"

Finally, they talk about bringing out Project L for basically the first time at Evo 2023, how they're approaching the community and what feedback they're taking from the players.

Beyond that, however, Riot Games released the unfortunate announcement that they're laying off around 11% of their workforce or 530 employees, which brings the total of layoffs in the video game industry to a staggering 3,800+ in just the first three weeks of the new year.

They claim that the majority impacted are not core video game developers with no direct impact being mentioned for the Project L team, so that likely points to a focus on cutting jobs in areas like community management, marketing, eSports and other roles — which sadly also hit the great Caytie Cosplay, who we've featured many times on the site.

Riot did have this to say about their upcoming fighting game, however.

"Project L has been making great progress and we're looking for more opportunities for you to try out the game (stay tuned for more updates coming later this year)."

We've yet to hear anything official about a beta test or any way to play Project L at home, so hopefully we'll hear more news before Evo 2024.

You can check out the developer spotlight for Project L below.