QUICK NOTES: SHOWMATCH SHOWDOWN
A behind the scenes look at how we make showmatches.
Hey NA LCS fans! Dave “RumbleStew” Stewart here—I’m the Executive Producer of the NA LCS. To continue our Quick Notes series, I’m here to talk about why we do showmatches, how we picked this year’s theme, and go behind the scenes of how we make showmatches.
WHAT IS A SHOWMATCH? WHY DO WE DO THEM?
A showmatch is a specialty game where we usually mix pros and casters to face-off in celebration usually around the First of April. It may or may not contain memes, bad jokes, and over-the-top antics in celebration of our pros and fans. Examples include the 2015 URFitational Grand Finals, League of Draven Showdown, and most recent the NA LCS Civil War.
It allows all of us (pros, fans, and NA LCS staff) to take a break from serious competition and let our hair down to have some fun during the year. Each week, we aspire to deliver a really high professional broadcast to support our sport. You’d be surprised how fun it can be to not only accept bad production value, but embrace it. Does that camera shot suck? Yes, awesome, let’s hang on it a bit longer. Dash is a really great actor? Let’s double down on that. Captain Flowers and Zirene, you want a challenge? Great, tonight your job today is to be Pepper Brooks and Cotton McKnight from Dodgeball. Riv, you’re going to dress up as the statue of liberty and hype up the crowd. Huni, guess what? You’re Canadian for a day. It’s fun to do ridiculous stuff, and our pros are amazing to work with. This year, the LCS crowd that stayed for the taping was amazing and we tried to include a lot of them.
WHAT INSPIRED THE SHOWMATCH THIS YEAR?
Something was missing. When we looked back at 2017, we felt that we really missed doing a specialty show, and we really missed engaging with NA LCS fans and pros in ridiculous and super fun ways to celebrate our community. So we decided, let’s do some show match(es).
We targeted the first of April as a date we wanted to do one. Next we needed a story. This is where it gets a little murky, because there’s a very old meme on the NA LCS Broadcast team, “the show writes itself.” This storyline was fairly obvious to everyone. Jatt and Kobe argue on The Dive, Azael is torn between his allegiances as a friend and allegiances as a Canadian, The Canadians claim Huni, and Phreak resorts to illegally recruiting the most apex predator in the world, LCS Pigeon. Pigeon wreaks havoc on Canada and we’re gold. This was all fairly obvious to everyone, voila! Show writes itself.
Only, there’s a curve to how much cringe you have. One of the learnings we took from Draven Head mode is that you gotta play the game for real, and you gotta live cast it. Who could have known that this angry group of upstarts from Canada would pull off the greatest upset in Esports history? We should have seen it coming since it’s the year of the upsets. C9, CLG, TSM all don’t make finals weekend. TSM doesn’t make a final for the first time ever. And LCS Pigeon, the most fearsome aviary beast the world has ever witnessed goes down against Canada in under 20 minutes… ON ANIVIA!!!! He had never lost on Anivia in his career! No wonder he rage quit.
WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO MAKE A SHOWMATCH HAPPEN?
Energy drinks, a sense of fun, and a lot of buy in and trust. Pigeon and Dark Dash aside, because their agent (definitely not pr0lly’s side gig) is a little difficult to deal with, everybody who takes part in a specialty show is doing it because of their sense of fun. But getting people to align around a vision when the vision is bizarre can be daunting. A few weeks ago, I was walking in the hall with Jensen explaining his back story, some people speculate that when he didn’t Zhonyas or Ulti in Vancouver a little part of him was reincarnated into the LCS Pigeon.TBH I’m not actually sure there are a lot of people speculating about this, and there’s a moment when you tell somebody something like this and you’re waiting to see how they respond, and it’s actually quite anxious. Then Jensen starts smiling and laughing because he gets it, and it’s the greatest feeling in the world. That dude’s awesome. There are a lot of conversations like this behind the scenes, between a lot of parties, and when we get collective buy in it’s a great feeling for the team.
WHY NO URFITATIONAL?
While we love the URFitational, we feel we hit a really high bar with that in 2015. The game rotation team wanted a little more flexibility with URF mode to let players enjoy it at different times throughout the year, so it was decoupled from April Fool’s after 2015. When it’s the right time for the URFitational to return, we’ll bring the tea and crumpets.
WHERE WAS THE NA VS. EU? WILL NA VS. EU BE BACK?
We’ve loved working with EU and they have a lot of fun. Who could forget Krepo and Froggen putting the ham inside the machine? Or Deficio doing curls with his pölsa? Or Sjokz as Yamatocannon? We love what EU brings to the table and we’re excited to work with them again. Sometimes it can be complicated arranging cross-Atlantic show matches, and since this one was an NA LCS project about an NA LCS Civil War, it didn’t make sense to do a combo. We’re sure an opportunity will present itself in the future especially with Rift Rivals in July. Besides, didn’t you see Sjokz cameo when LCS Pigeon flew past her dabbing with Aphromoo in Shanghai. LCS Pigeon, that dude gets everywhere.
CAN WE EXPECT MORE FUN SHOWMATCHES OR SPECIALTY SHOWS THIS YEAR? WHAT’S NEXT?
Speaking of EU, we’re trying to see what a fun show match would look like around this year’s Rift Rivals. Obviously the stakes for RR are extremely high in the West, NA > EU, so we’d want to try and find the right fit. No promises, but we’re working with the RR leadership team and considering some options.
Any questions about the NA LCS Broadcast? Future showmatches? Would the LCS pigeon care about such matters? Let me know in the comments below, share them on Twitter (@RumbleStew), and I’ll also keep my eyes out on reddit for them too.
Quick Notes is a NA esports series similar to Meddler’s where we’ll deep dive into topics that the community wants to know more about, discuss work in progress, and share our decision-making process. For more Quick Notes, check out:
Dave “RumbleStew” Stewart is the Executive Producer of the NA LCS. He leads the Broadcast team and is the casters’ most trusted source for insights about low elo playstyles. He also supports Riot Esports broadcasts of international tournaments, like MSI and Worlds. He’s a proud UCLA alumni (Go Bruins!), a former Riot Rumble champion, and when he’s not at the NA LCS studio, you’re sure to catch him on the Rift with his sons. Questions about the NA LCS Broadcast? Reach out to him on Twitter at @RumbleStew.
