Riot Games continues vow to 'hyper-serve' fans in Philippines

MANILA, Philippines — When Joel Guzman was asked what he wanted to focus on during his first year as Riot Games' Philippines country manager, he said that he wanted to “hyper-serve” fans by focusing on three pillars: the community, esports foundation and marketing.

Since Guzman took on the role of country manager, Riot Games has had a stronger presence in the country: a Wild Rift Star Guardian collaboration café; taking part in the “Head in the Clouds” (HITC) music festival; and making their Philippine convention debut at the Esports and Gaming Summit (ESGS) in 2022.

This year, Riot Games was a platinum partner at the CONQuest Festival, with its booth drawing a total of 15,000 registrants, doubling the number of people who visited the game developer's booth in ESGS last year.

Serving fans

At the start of 2023, Riot Games took over publishing of League of Legends and Teamfight Tactics (TFT) in Southeast Asia, ending its previous partnership with Garena since League of Legends first launched back in 2010.

"Active users [for both League of Legends and Teamfight Tactics] have been going up since we got [them] back. In the matter of player sentiment when it comes to League of Legends, we did a study on PC cafes in the Metro, of course Valorant is still No. 1 but we also saw many people playing League and that's very exciting for us," Guzman told the media at CONQuest.

Looking back at his maiden year at his post, Guzman believes they have done a lot, but there is room for improvement to continue their vow of serving fans of Riot Games' titles.

"I would grade myself as seven. Mainly because, not only is there a lot of room for improvement, but in order for us to really hyper serve fans, we need the scale also internally. My focus for this year is to build my core team. and once the core team is completed then we can finally scale more events, scale more in game/off game moments, scale more brand partnerships." admitted Guzman.

He adds, "It was tough doing it alone a year and a half ago. It got a little better when I got my brand managers [last year] but at the end of the day, four people can't do everything. My focus as the country manager for this year is to really focus on the execution part. I'm glad to say that in terms of APAC, we have a lot of applicants, compared to other countries' there's a lot of interest in Riot Games. I'm looking forward to bringing in people to the team."

Guzman deducted three points from his performance because he believes, though Riot Games is more active in the country, the scale of their activities could do more.

"We had ESGS, Manila. We had Star Guardian Art School, Manila. Everything was done in Manila. The Philippines is more than seven thousand islands, it's not just Manila. I'm not saying that we have to have an event per island or per region. We've been doing great things in Manila but one thing that can be improved is how we can also be inclusive to others outside of the Metro. Offline events are still ok but from a sustainability standpoint, there's a lot of things we can do to be more inclusive of fans outside Metro Manila so that the whole Philippines can celebrate and enjoy the fandom." said Guzman.

In terms of their titles, Guzman shared that Riot Games plan specific activities for a particular fandom, but fans can also expect events that feature more than one Riot Games' title.

"We looked at what is the typical Riot gamer? We discovered, in a Philippine standpoint, that it's not one and the other. Not a lot of Valorant players also play League of Legends, and vice versa. We can actually see two target markets, two separate audiences. It makes sense to do product activations to be more specific to that particular target market. But we're still going to do encompassing events with multiple games. We're going to be doing both: pocket events targeting specific fandoms and maybe one or two events [like conventions] per quarter that encompasses all of Riots titles," said Guzman.