Fixing the Fiddlesticks problem – 2XKO’s Shaun Rivera speaks on tricky champ transitions to the 2D plane

May 9th was a dark day in the 2XKO official Discord. A conversation on could-be characters begam harmlessly, as it has for years when there’s been no news to discuss. But this time, debate devolved into arguments, as the intricacies of how Fiddlesticks – a lanky horror-inspired scarecrow would make the transition. League of Legends is packed full of champions that find themselves in a tricky position where a fighting game moveset can be derived.

I have dubbed this the Fiddlesticks problem. How do you take a weirdo – someone without direct links to the genre – and bring them over to this genre in an exciting fashion. The balance between keeping a character loyal to source material and keeping them fun to play is a perilous tightrope.

It’s a problem that the 2XKO team has surely had to tackle with characters like Ahri, which had her moveset overhauled between public builds. Designer Alex Jaffe spoke to me a little about this balance back at Evo 2023, and here I was back at Evo again asking similar questions.

Because much like Fiddlestick’s presence in the wilderness of Demacia, this topic is a curse that folks like my interviewee Shaun Rivera will be doomed to talk about for as long as 2XKO is supported. Every time a new character comes to the game, someone will ask “how did you take the League kit for [champ] and bring it to this fighting game”. Shaun, or someone else, will then smile and nod and provide insight into the design process, as is their fate, forever. With Ahri reworked and info about Jinx being brought back to the drawing board being discussed publicly though, I felt less guilty about combing his mind. How does one fix the Fiddlesticks problem?

“League champions are popular for many reasons.” Rivera states, sitting at a table near the 2XKO booth. “Sometimes it’s the mechanics of that champion, and sometimes it’s the thematic. For us, it’s like, what would make a sick fighting game character? I really believe we could create a sick fighting game character for any League champ – that’s how confident I am in our team.”

“Let me ask you this. Let me flip it on you. When you look at Fiddlesticks, that character is a horror character. Scary, creepy, a menace. Also the skins are delightful. We can definitely deliver a character that’s weird and has lots of strange horror aspects to it! 100%! Players have told us champions have immutable properties. Sometimes that’s a mechanic they have that has to be there, otherwise it’s not that champion. Or, it’s thematic. Sometimes if a mechanic is in the fighting game, it wouldn’t be fun to play! So it’s a combination of both, and it’s our job to elevate the champion from there.”

A follow up question, and one that likely hasn’t been asked a million times, is how players will be able to showcase their character loyalty! We spoke to League of Legends game director Pu Liu earlier this year about the future of that game, and he noted the importance of letting players express their love for their chosen main. 2XKO is in the same IP, created by the same company. Does it share a similar emphasis on player expression?

“Whenever we decide what champ to put into the game, there’s a lot of things we consider. One of the major things is, what part of our players is an underserved audience we could really do a good job serving. What I mean by that is, we want you to find a main you can fall in love with in our game. People fall in love through their thematic – meaning how they act, what they identify as, their signaled ethnicity, what clothes they wear, their attitude… Even their taunts! All this as well as, hey this mechanic looks fun! I want to do this mechanic in this game. It can be one, or the other, or both. So that’s how we choose what to put in the game – and hopefully we’re expanding the number of chances people have to go, that’s my main! That’s what I’ve been waiting for.”

“After that, we want to do a lot of different things in allowing people to represent the characters they love in our game. You’ll see a little bit more about that in the future, maybe in the Alpha Lab, but we absolutely think it’s cool to have a character you’re excited to play, but show off that character.”

So perhaps there’s hope, that even your most absurd, oddball main can make it in. The odds for Yuumi, Taric, Corki, and Fiddlesticks may be low, but it seems there’s a chance. If you’re anything like the folks who’ve been hanging around the 2XKO Reddit or Discord for the past three years, even the slimmest hope is enough to sustain you forever. Hang in there.