Players creators on how they brought the world of esports to life

There is no relationship between the two League of LegendsThe relationship between ADC and support is less important than team. It’s a problem PlayersThe new Paramount Plus Show from American Vandal Tony Yacenda and Dan Perrault, creators of the film, are well-acquainted.

PlayersFugitive Gaming is a North American fictitious gaming site. League of Legends A team that hopes to be the first in its class. It all takes place through Creamcheese’s co-founder and veteran support, as well as Organizm who is a young hotshot prospect who has been hailed one of the most promising players ever. When Fugitive’s new NBA ownership demands Organizm gets a spot in the starting lineup from day one, Creamcheese is asked to put his ego aside and work with the burgeoning, quiet superstar. Fugitive can’t play as a team again when communication difficulties arise, and personalities clash.

It’s a lively mockuseries which effectively conveys drama and comedy of esports for audiences with all levels of familiarity. League of LegendsThe language is not lowered for die-hard viewers. The show’s cast is a mix of actors and real-life esports personalities, lending authenticity to the fictional series. Ex-esports reporter for the LCS, it was remarkable to see how well the show captured that microscene both in the present and back in the past.

Polygon had a wonderful conversation with Yacenda and Perrault about the topic matter they keep fresh for their experienced customers. League The casting process and the impact it had on players and viewers, as well as how pitching was made possible by sports programs Players It’s much easier.

For clarity and length, this interview has been slightly edited.

Polygon: From where did the idea for this project come? What was the catalyst that led you to decide this was your path? American Vandal?

Dan Perrault: Well, first off, we Love documentary, I think it’s fair to say that, like, not only do we love docs, but we love, love, loveThe subgenre of sports docs. And so we’re always on the lookout for other trends in docs. 2016 was a great year for true crime. Tony and I knew that we had to do something similar.

Stephan Schneider as Nathan Resnick, Alexa Mansour as Emma Resnick and Da’Jour Jones as Organizm in PLAYERS

Tony Yacenda: Not only did we like true crime — that wasn’t a trend [for us]. As if we loved it, we were enjoying the food. Serial Make a Murderer. And, like, Last DanceThis was our absolute favorite moment of the pandemic.

Perrault: After VandalWe both knew we wanted to make another mockumentary. Yes, it was a lot of coincidences. [brought us to esports].

It was there that I met my wife. League of LegendsAll-Star event for 2018. We were curious to learn more about esports. We were not, you know, fully invested yet, certainly didn’t know what we were talking about yet. However, I was astonished at its size and scope and the enthusiasm displayed by the fans. LeagueEsports has many similarities to traditional sports, including its structure and tone. The fact that there’s, you know, ESPN-like broadcasts of the games, that it’s a five-on-five matchup. There was much there that we could identify with as traditional sports fans.H, it would be awesome to make a mockumentary for the esports community. League Particularly. Let’s be real, it was the warmth and openness shown by Riot residents and others from the LeagueCommunity, who were happy to share their stories with us and answer all our questions.

Misha Brooks as Creamcheese and Da’Jour Jones as Organizm in PLAYERS

Yacenda:Dan, for me, was more interested in esports because he recognized comedy potential after attending so many LCS events. And he’s like, Tony, it’s your right, you have to go to Riot. We were a bit more skeptical. Like, I see how it’s interesting that this is like an alternate dimension, where, like, gamers are gods. But I didn’t really get what the show was until we were talking to a couple of esports writers. It was like they told stories about, you know, dramas within a team dynamic. They specifically focused on the ADC position and support positions and how interconnected.

This was my life. Oh, I get it. This is not a typical sports story. You don’t need to have any context or even appreciation of pro gaming to understand that these two positions need to work together. That is something I thought was universal, and that could serve as an incentive for people to support this team. It is the love story between an ADC (a support) that we discussed.

Absolutely. It would have been the much easier path out, and it’s something that we’ve seen a lot of other traditional media outlets do, to have the comedy be from the outside looking in, to be more focused on like, Look at all these stupid nerds!. Instead, you focus on the drama and humor of the situation, as they exist in traditional sports just like esports. Creamcheese is an example of this. He talks about how much he can get laid wearing unflattering Gucci.

Yacenda and Perrault: [laughs]

This felt so real to me. And it’s very funny. But it’s also esports comedy from the inside looking out. Did you ever have a concern about this? What was the best way to negotiate the concept of “like”? We want to laugh at this silly thing without making fun the people who care.

Yacenda: We always believe that confident idiots are our favorite, even with mockumentaries.

It’s easy to tell.

Misha Brooks celebrates as Creamcheese, in PLAYERS

Yacenda: Even if we were making a show about the NBA, we would want characters who weren’t quite as cool and smart and funny as they thought they were. You should have some self-awareness gaps. That’s the kind of comedy we like to tell. We were drawing from all sorts of things, but we made sure we always felt that gamers were not making fun. This meant that our characters were inspired by real people and real events. There was also a variety in personalities within the world. Once we’ve got our characters in hand, the feeling of being able to create has never been lost. OK, and then we’ll make fun of gamers here. We were able to just play with the characters without worrying about them.

Talking about the character development, I’m really curious how you two approached that, because the cast is a mix of actors and esports personalities. Even within the esports personalities, it’s a mix of people playing themselves and people playing characters. Frugger or Guru are two of the archetypes in esports. And I think a lot of people outside of that world don’t realize that. What was your approach to designing characters that felt real? How did you get to the point where real people were cast in Esports characters?

Perrault: It was obvious that this TV show needed real people. This is a time-consuming concern. Casting in such a show takes about a month before you start filming, and probably less. It’s also called And [League of Legends] This is so complicated and intricate that it’s impossible to comprehend. It was obvious that it was important. We also feel that improv and being able to riff and really just making a scene feel as real as possible is crucial to the documentary tone we’re trying to create. And that’s only possible if you have people who actually know what they’re talking about.

Photo by Trae Patton/Paramount

Yacenda: There are streamers that can be quite entertaining to watch. On one level, Dave and I are kind of old men coming into this, where we’re like, Wow, it is crazy that you’re playing a video game but watching somebody else play a video game as you’re doing it. And [there are] some of these guys like Tyler1 where you’re like, Oh, I see the appeal of this, he’s funny, this is how some of these guys jumped to the top. Guru would be a part.

Guru then, however, was also taken away a little. And we’re like, No, let’s make him kind of a smug sort of podcast archetype too, which we don’t think there’s a direct comparison to in the world of esports right now. There’s a lot of esports podcasts and there’s a lot of like, bro-ier streamers, but the sort of pseudo-intellectual podcaster like Guru […] the alchemy behind him is there’s no direct comparison. We had more like an open casting for Frugger. [Matt Shively]We laughed out loud at him. He kind of brought it to the character.

Creamcheese consoles Frugger in Players.

You talked about being old men and out of touch with the scene a bit — I’m surprised to hear that, because both in American VandalThis show is a real eye-opener in your ability to portray digital culture and young people using social media. This is related to the previous. League of LegendsEsports also have their own language. This was discussed in the context of casting people and finding them who speak it naturally. How did you negotiate knowing that probably half of your audience is going to be fluent in that language and half won’t be?

Perrault: One important thing that you’re bringing up in different ways is we had to know what we didn’t know. Many people have participated in esports events. Some are quite well received, I’m sure. But there are a lot that are not, and I think it’s the ones that tend to come from a place — and you sort of referenced this yourself — of outside looking in with these “nerds.”

But even if you tried to make the more grounded, realistic version that we were trying to make, we’d be idiots to think we can craft that ourselves. You know what? To me, the biggest part of this was our. LeagueProduced by experts writers. [Riot Games employees and Players producers/writers]Particularly, Elias Inaty and Kien Lam were excellent translators of The League The world was amazing to them, but also creatively. [and]This authenticity could be a great asset.

Let me then address your query about creating a show that is compelling for non-fluent viewers. I think in any great sports show — Last Dance, Friday Night Lights included — you can get people to invest in the characters enough so that the actual literal details of what they’re doing will not matter as much as the emotional journey they go on. I’d like to think there were certain themes that if you know LeagueYou just need to enjoy authenticity. If you don’t know League, it is an interesting world that you are first discovering, and in an alien language to you — but hopefully, the emotion reads true enough that you can follow the at least the emotional journey easily enough.

Creamcheese burns his jersey in Players.

Yacenda: It was really important for us — I think a lot of writers rooms, when they do something like this, what is customary is you have the resident League of LegendsExpert in the writer’s room. You ask them about the world. But then, I realized, it was always important that there were multiple people at every stage that had this background, so we weren’t just telling Elias’ point of view or Kien’s point of view of gaming, because that’s a mono point of view.

Fugitive Gaming uses real players as our actors. That’s another reference point for like, No, we wouldn’t do this. We wouldn’t do thatAs well as teaching actors. At any given point on set, we had half a dozen people who really knew the scene, arguing about what is real and what isn’t real. And hearing actual discussions from them is way more valuable than just what they’re telling us because it’s not just mono, it’s not stereo point of view. It’s a full 7.1 surround sound. This was extremely helpful.

When we pitched the show, it was also a lucky moment. That concern was shared by many. You might also likeIch habe beobachtete League of LegendsI didn’t know what was going on.. And we were so fortunate The Queen’s Gambit It had just been released. They don’t dumb down that language at all, and it feels like the chess is super accurate. It was all new to us! I still don’t know what a Queen’s Gambit is, or what a Sicilian Defense is. But it’s the fact that they didn’t dumb down the language that it felt like the real thing, even though I didn’t know what they were talking about. This attention to detail was something I as an audience could easily appreciate. And we’re hopeful that a general audience will feel the same way. Because every time we’re talking about something League-related, it’s backed by something emotional and personal for the characters that I think should be easy to follow.

The period-piece aspect of the show that I found particularly memorable was your flashback sequences in the very early stages. LeagueThe middle stages of esports League esports. The attention to detail there in terms of the costuming, the set design, the hairstyling, the logos that you’re using, the Gravity Gaming bomber jackets that were brought out. How does that recreation look?

Yacenda:Riot was also instrumental in building the client for 2015. You were, It’s impossibleHowever, they spoke with engineers. Some of the flashbacks were taken from engineers who could make this possible. It was very cool.

We wanted to share the origins of Creamcheese. O was really set up by this arrogant, smug guy.h… he’s posturing. He is an insecure man. And what better way to do that than to show where he’s come from? That was truly the source of all this. This is evident, Last DanceAs a structural inspiration, we found the use of economy to evoke a lot of energy in the documentary. And there’s something kind of funny about using that artful approach to a bunch of kids drinking hot sauce in their apartment.

The Fugitive Gaming lads chug hot sauce in Players.

Creamcheese eats a chip while his teammates celebrate in Players.

Perrault:This is the way [The Last Dance] told Dennis Rodman’s story, for example, where he’s an opponent with the Pistons, and then let’s bring it back to ’98 [when Rodman was Michael Jordan’s teammate on the Bulls]. Let the past guide what you know now. The Defiant OnesAnother example is how your past stories can inform the future. That was something we thought was very interesting.

There’s been some version of this idea for three and a half, four years now. COVID delayed it slightly. It taking so long to complete is the only hidden benefit. Last DanceTony mentioned that this was an extraordinary reference. It came out thankfully within months of Tony pitching it. It certainly changed the way we told our story.

Yacenda:The pitch was hilarious. It’s this thing that has the scope and scale of a 30 to 30series but the voyeurism The Hard KnocksThe personal and emotional stakes Cheer.And so on Last DanceWe might be like Oh, it’s Last DanceThere are many esports players.

The finale is where things end. What’s next for Players?

Perrault: There is no shortage of stories.

Yacenda: Yes, this is a beautiful world.

#Players #creators #brought #world #esports #life