League of Legends Apologizes for Sexy New Champ

It’s always a bit exciting for the millions of people who play League of Legends when a new champion comes out. One just came out recently, in fact, a woman named Kai'Sa who wears a giant semi-parasitic alien monster on her body that give her powers. Sort of like Kill la Kill, if that helps whoever in the audience happened to watch that show to the end.

Spoiler alert, I suppose:

Anyway, in an open Q&A last week, one player had a question regarding her design - specifically, that her low v-neck and form-fitting outfit made her look awfully sexual (even though there’s not much sexy about her character otherwise), which in itself wasn’t a big problem, but it did contradict a statement Riot Games made earlier about putting a stop to those kinds of practices within their company. Focusing more on making girls who have visual personalities beyond just T&A.

And the answer Riot gave was actually very interesting.

“We’ll be the first to admit that Kai’Sa’s neckline didn’t land well with players and that it made her look unnecessarily sexualized, even if it that wasn’t the intention.”

As for why they did it, it’s actually a case of “function over form.” As they describe it, they wanted to clearly communicate that she was a normal human in a monster suit, and not a monstrous human. In early designs she had no v-neck, and when combined with her hair and occasionally-obscured face (and the fact the in-game models are quite small), people thought she herself was the monster. Adding that extra bit of skin helped people tell the woman from the suit she wore, so… they stuck with it.

“In retrospect, we recognize we should’ve prioritized searching for other ways to solve this problem, especially because the end result didn’t land well for many players. Even though we had good intentions, we could’ve done better, and in the future, we will be even more conscious of these decisions.”

Interesting, but by the looks of it, they’re not going to redesign her anytime in the near future, so it looks like we’re stuck with another conventionally attractive lady in League of Legends. Oh no.