LoR Interviews #5 – The Passionate Advocate
A conversation with Callonetta
Editor's Pick
I first heard about LoR around two years ago and I'm pretty sure Jun [note: referring to The Skilled Roy] was the one who turned me on to the game.
LoR was just coming out "officially" and I had grown restless with the current card game I had been playing, Gwent, and wanted a change of pace.
I was very confused at first! A lot of people had a great idea of what the cards would do because of their flavor, but I had never ever played any Riot game in my life. I didn't know who Ashe was, Elise, Garen, Lux – all of these names and faces were totally new to me. I think that made it a little hard to keep up with everything I was learning, and I think anyone coming to LoR with a base knowledge of these characters will have an easier time remembering who does what.
The mana system is what hooked me, though.
I've played Magic the Gathering – both Arena and paper – but not for a very long time; I don't consider myself very good at Magic at all, I just loved the social aspect of it! But MtG often left me feeling "mana screwed", and the game itself was becoming far too expensive for me to keep up with.
Gwent, on the other hand, has no mana, and was extremely generous with cards.
LoR felt like a really cool way to try something new and, to this day, I genuinely think it's the best online CCG I've ever played.
You work as an editor, right?
Yes, I work in the publishing industry, in what we call “genre fiction” but almost everyone knows it as Science Fiction, Fantasy, Urban Fiction, etc!
My job title "Submissions Editor" is just a fancy way of saying that, when people submit their manuscripts to the publishing company, I'm the person that reads them over and sends accept/reject letters. Almost always it's a rejection letter, which sucks, but it's always a highlight when I get to send someone an acceptance letter!
I also help edit these works into something that is right for publishing, and it's something that I take very seriously.
That being said, I'm currently moving away from publishing and into games!
Publishing is not quite the right spot for me anymore, and I don't think I'm being compensated for the value I bring to a team, so I'm currently in college for Information Systems. Editing has given me so much experience and I'm so happy for the time I've spent here – I don't have children or anything, so it's easier for me to take a massive life switch into something I'm more passionate about and can hopefully make more money doing.
How did you start participating in video game scenes, and becoming someone that people look up to in gaming?
Honestly this one feels so hard to answer because I genuinely do not see myself as someone people look up to!
I don't mean this in a self-deprecating way, but mainly because I don't have accolades in gaming to speak about. I did relatively well in Gwent, and I joined some esports teams, edited for them, and helped content creators. Yet, for the most part, I've been behind the scenes, or just on the side of these games, hoping to help build a community.
I think people know me as the person that advocates hard for the casual player, as I think so much of the conversation tends to lend itself to pros or competitive players.
My "start" in doing all this was definitely Gwent. It was my first ever card game, and I was extremely bad at it, but wanted to talk about it with people. I ended up helping to found the largest community for Gwent in NA and we did a lot of cool stuff!
Eventually I joined Team Aretuza but I do things all over. I currently also mod for r/LoR, but mostly I just shitpost on Twitter, hehe!
I'm insanely grateful that so many different people wanted me around. I love card games, and I love the communities that surround them even more.
It feels good that people somehow enjoy me or want to hear whatever I have to say – but also surprising, honestly!
I think most people would say I'm extremely extroverted. The truth is, this idea of introvert and extrovert is about what recharges you, not what you're good at. I'm very good at being outgoing, talking to people, being a part of the conversation, etc. But the thing that recharges me is being alone! Taking the time to center myself, play some games, read a book – these things keep me feeling ready to be outgoing again.
I love talking to people and meeting them, and I try to be as genuine as possible. It's my core trait, just being very real and honest with everyone around me – I think it's a foundation that has never led me astray.
I try to be the warmest I can be to people around me. I want people to feel part of the group, part of the conversation, and using my ability to be outgoing gives me the edge to pull someone in and make sure their voice is heard.
How would you pitch LoR to a friend, or nudge them to pick it up?
I would tell them that it's the easiest card game I've learned to play, but also the most fun – lots of times these concepts don't go hand in hand.
And I would definitely talk to them about how insanely generous Riot is with card collection. Getting decks from scratch as a F2P player is far easier than anything else I've had to deal with and worth the time investment. But honestly I would just tell them to play it for half an hour – see how it feels.
The game is so strong in "fun" that it wins over most people on that alone!
LoR and Gwent
I think that LoR, in general, does more right than wrong in comparison to Gwent. The one thing I think Gwent does better is card art. That being said, I think that's more to do with Riot and their very strict IP on how champs and art will look.
Gwent has some of the best art in card games, and the best art in premium card arts – for those that don't know, Gwent's art is really beautiful, and the premium version turns the card into a moving artwork that also includes sound!
Is this exact thing possible in LoR?
No, I don't think so. But I do think prismatics, the "premium" equivalent, are really unappealing. I know that's harsh, but the borders are too thick, cover up parts of the card, and overall the implementation feels extremely clunky.
I purposefully turned all my prismatics off.
I think the idea of earning essence to prismatic your favorite cards is a great idea, but I think that prismatics themselves are underwhelming, especially for how long it takes to prismatic an entire deck. Either a rework of what prismatic borders look like, or a rehaul of what prismatics are would be great.
Now, about what LoR does better than Gwent, I think LoR has the advantage of being a Riot game.
Riot is extremely good about communication with the players – I believe anyone who has ever played a few other card games realizes how incredibly good we have it with LoR. Gwent devs, on the contrary, are terrible at communicating with the players, and it makes the overall experience frustrating.
In LoR you have various Rioters on Twitter, Discord, Reddit, popping in to give info all the time! They don't have to do that and it would be far more "normal" if they didn't.
Another thing LoR does better than Gwent are card updates and card drops. Lots of people playing LoR complain about Riot taking too long to drop updates, hotfixes, cards – this entire idea is so wild to me! Gwent gets a new card update and card drop every four months, and all told it's maybe twenty cards total. This is very difficult to deal with and makes the game feel horrible for months and months on end.
LoR devs do no such thing. They're highly communicative and we get updates incredibly often in comparison to other card games.
The last thing I think LoR does better than Gwent is the tutorial! Getting people in LoR is so much easier because the tutorial [note: the interview was conducted while TPOC was in its 1.0 version] is miles better than any other online CCG tutorial I've participated in. I'm not sure why it gets piled on so much, I have to imagine it's because people haven't gone through other card game tutorials. Try Gwent's one time and you'll realize it's such a dumpster fire that you'll think LoR's is perfect.
And while it's not actually perfect, it does a great job helping new players understand core concepts. The only thing I would suggest is Riot putting out a written guide for people to go for afterwards!
A Passionate Advocate
You are usually an advocate for the casual player. What does this mean and what does it entail?
The casual player is a huge passion of mine.
It started back in Gwent, but I've only gotten more connected to this conversation since playing LoR. I noticed early on that, in online card games, competitive and pro player's conversations were centered above all else, at all costs.
This really bothered me, because I was well aware of the fact that in card games, and F2P especially, the casual player's experience is 95% of what is experienced in the game. It's also the place where the most money comes from to fuel and grow the games we all love.
The idea that their experiences weren't as valuable was wild to me!
I not only think that casuals are just as important as pros, but more important. Without casual players – those people who just wanna jam one deck on ladder for a couple hours, the people who can only play on weekends because they have a job and family – we wouldn't have a game at all. Period. This is an indisputable fact.
This leads me to why I advocate so much for them!
I think pro players, or people who play online CCGs as their literal job, shouldn't be the only voices we hear concerning the "state of the game". To be frank, pro players and people who play these card games ten hours a day have no idea what this game is like for people who just play a few hours a week. And that is the vast majority of players.
Unfortunately, most of the time pros who talk about what will make LoR better are talking about what will make the game better for people who do nothing but play LoR all day, and I think that is quite detached from the reality of what will make this game healthy in the long run. I honestly think more casuals should be involved in the conversation of what will make LoR a better game.
I think people who aren't playing LoR anymore shouldn't be in the League Partner Program, no matter their level of skill in the past. I genuinely think those slots would be better served to people who play consistently, are deeply involved in the community, and can give a fresh perspective. There are new faces all the time in LoR! Why aren't there more new faces in LPP than we see? We should give them the chance to add to a game we all love so much.
All this being said, I very much value the perspective of pros. I think they give insight into things we can't really see at times – I just think their voices are heard so often, and amplified so much, that it won't hurt to see a shift in who we hear from.
Most folks seem to have an idea (or an ideal...) about what a competitive player is (MajiinBae, WhatAmI, FreshLobster...). What would a casual player be?
As far as what differentiates a casual player from a competitive player, this will always be a bit subjective. That being said, a few things seem evident. Firstly we can talk about what a casual player is not, and go from there.
Competitive players, just as you’d expect, compete. They enter tournaments, they join esports teams, they find scrim partners and dedicate time and effort into preparing for these competitions. Casuals don't do this.
Another type of player is someone who makes playing LoR their job. That can be streaming or YouTube, but generally it’s some kind of content creation angle. Casuals do not make entire careers out of a game. This would be the “time spent playing the game” factor.
Being casual has nothing to do with skill, rank, or interest in the game – nor does it have anything to do with the lack thereof. The difference here lies in intent and desire to compete or to play LoR so much that it’s a career.
What would you say we the players can do to make our community more welcoming?
I think it just comes down to making sure we try hard to lift voices that aren't the majority. BIPOC, women, LGBTQIA+ – I do think cis men tend to run the conversations regarding LoR. While that isn't just an issue LoR has, but one that all of gaming has, I think LoR could really be the community that goes the extra mile to make it less uniform in that way.
Would you say that CCGs, due to their single-player nature, can be more welcoming for those that would be discriminated against in other game genres?
Also, I have a hunch the content creation space (in any game) is specially well suited to different voices (as in, those that are not cis males) -- in some cases due to anonymity (folks can write under a pseudonym, for example), in other cases by expanding our points of view. How wrong/too optimistic would you say my hunch is?
I think your hunch isn't very founded in reality. CCG's are just as unwelcoming to women as any other competitive game out there, but because CCG's are a relatively niche kind of game, it's easier to overlook.
I've put 1,339 hours into FFXIV, 476 hours into Lost Ark, and played many other MMOs besides those. I've played shooters, every kind of online CCG you can think of, paper CCG's, Tabletop RPG's, etc. The one thing all these gaming spaces have in common is that women, as a general rule, deal with being unwelcome far too often.
The number of times I've had to leave a card shop because I was being told, to my face, that women aren't as skilled at card games as men, or because I was being hit on repeatedly, is ridiculous.
The number of times I have streamed a card game and been backseated, and told how to "actually" play the game – while the pop-up rules in my chat say no backseating – is too high to count. And while backseating in this way happens to men, it happens to women far more often.
Comments on my appearance, my sex life, etc, while streaming happened plenty. Unwarranted DMs would come from strange men after my streams. My mod team is excellent and I have a great group of people, but it doesn't fix reality. It's a major reason I decided to quit streaming for fun altogether.
The number of times I've felt forced to get Grand Master or some fancy title in a game when I don't really care about rank is sad. As a general rule, men who are mediocre at a card game can state things as a fact and generally it's accepted or chatted about. If you're a woman you tend to get called out instantly, and if you don't have "Master btw" or "5 time Grand Master btw" as something in your backpocket, you're told that you really can't have an opinion. Again, while it's possible this happens to men, it happens to women more often strictly because they are women. There's nothing more criminal in gaming than a woman who is mediocre or even bad at games. For men, it's accepted. For women, they're mediocre specifically because they are women.
Your hunch about content creation is also not really rooted in reality. There are more successful men in gaming content creation than there are women. Anonymity isn't something that can save women in this because there is no real anonymity. Youtube videos have voice-overs, Twitch usually has a face-cam and/or your voice. And if, as a woman, you manage to go your entire career without anyone figuring out your gender, which takes an insane amount of effort and work, which translates to time away from getting better at a game, you will eventually compete fairly publicly.
Not to mention the fact that your content creation success takes a massive dip without adding a camera or voice-over to your content – something women shouldn't have to bite the bullet on because of rampant sexism.
This doesn't even take into account the societal stigmas and pressures that keep women from being as likely to become competitive in video games as men, which is a massive topic unto itself.
Would you say this kind of unfounded optimism (as in, not well founded in reality, either a bit or a lot) may be part of the problem?
I think that viewing progress with women in games as something that has "fixed" the issues is definitely an issue itself. Just because something is better doesn't mean it's good, or even halfway acceptable.
I think good people with higher privileged places in society (white, male, cis) can do a lot! Most of it involves using their voice when it's important to add to the validity of women's struggles and claims, such as sexual assault and abuse. The other way is to lift minority voices! In gaming that mostly consists of women, LGBTQIA+ people, women of color, etc. Doing that is massive.
Also, just have conversations with your friends, call things out when you see something that isn't right, or fair, or is inappropriate. I think men don't realize how far a simple "Hey bro, that's not cool," goes. It's simple but all of these things go a long way!
How would you pitch the LoR community, so to speak, and what could we players do to make that pitch even better?
I think pitching the LoR community as a whole is really even easier than pitching the game itself.
I would consider the Devs to be a big part in that, as they are so communicative with the community that it feels very tight-knit.
For one, there are a ton of women in LoR!
I've been in lots of card games and there are many women that play those games, but the LoR community goes above and beyond to support women in our space.
This community also has so many different types of communities! We have LoR Twitter, LoR subreddits (everything from competitive, circlejerk, CustomLoR, or just regular ol' r/LoR) and we even have countless Discords for these same things, plus more. Some of these LoR discords are just friends playing, some are for casuals, some for try-hards, and tons in between. There really is some niche in this community where people can find their place. For me, that's the draw of the LoR community – the fact that no matter what kind of player you are, you have a home somewhere in this really cool family.
To close this interview, we have a traditional request – care to write and share a Senryu with the RIWAN family?
I game far too much
with the bit of time I have
coffee sip, its fine
