The pedantic answer is that you have to pass a job interview, so I’ll skip right to the kinds of things that will help you pass an interview.

The interview steps are:

Someone (probably a recruiter) has to notice your application

We send you a written design test

You do a phone screen with 1-2 designers

If that goes well, we’ll fly you to the LA office for a day-long interview with 6-10 Rioters (broken up over one-hour interviews)

If you pass that interview, we’ll make you an offer. Sometimes you don’t quite pass the interview, but we ask you to keep in touch, and we often end up hiring these folks when the right position comes along.

Getting past that first step can be challenging. We can get over 100 applications a week for game design spots at Riot, and like many companies, there really isn’t a feasible way to give every application several hours of scrutiny. Therefore, it really helps you to stand out. You do not want to stand out because you use a weird font or color on your cover letter and resume. You want to stand out because of the content of your cover letter and resume.

If you don’t have professional game experience, then your resume will probably be on the slight side. And that’s fine. However, it is appropriate to take credit for any game-related accomplishments that you do have. If you are a raid leader or streamer or wrote a strategy guide or made a Starcraft mod or have been a Dungeon Master for 10 years, you should include that!

If your resume is on the lighter side, then you’ll have to lean more on your cover letter. So let’s talk some about what you can put in that cover letter:

First, you have to love games. I’ll assume that’s a given here. We get a lot of applications that argue we should hire them because they love games. That’s important of course, but not nearly enough.

The three things you will do as a designer at Riot the most often are: analysis, problem-solving and creating things. So the advice I often give is to demonstrate that you have experience in those areas. It doesn’t have to be professional experience, and for many of our designers, that was not the case. We are one of those studios that will hire a promising candidate right out of college/university. We do it all the time.

Problem-solving and analysis are hard to demonstrate in a cover letter, though you’ll have a better chance if you make it to the design test phase. You could mention if you have done a lot of theorycrafting for a game and even provide the link. This kind of thing may need more explanation in a cover letter than you’ll be able to get through or present in a resume.

In terms of creating something, we’re much more interested in someone who has taken an idea through the entire start-to-finish process than someone who can just brainstorm a bunch of cool ideas. Idea generation is honestly the easy part of this job. It’s the iteration, prioritization, hard calls, feedback, compromises, and playtesting that really make up the day job of a game designer. Demonstrating that you can make — and finish — something is super valuable.

So what can you make? If you have technical competency (or friends who do), then building a game on your own using a package such as Unity is outstanding. Bonus points if you put your game up for sale on a mobile app store or Steam. If that scale seems impossible for you to consider, then make a mod or a map for a game. Bonus points if other players play and enjoy your content. If that scale is still too large, then make a board game or a card game. My colleague Stone Librande always says that if you don’t enjoy making a card game then you probably won’t enjoy making Halo either.

Worst case, you could submit a purely theoretical design, like coming up with a new class for XCOM or a new champion for League, but assuming you haven’t actually tested those concepts out, then you won’t have experienced the full gamut of creating something. Depending on the scope of what you’ve made, you can either describe it in the cover letter (and offer to send if we’re interested) or you could just include it with your application. I sent some D&D campaigns that I designed with my first application to Ensemble Studios.

Finally, I talk to folks who desperately want to break into game design all the time, and I know it can be really frustrating or just feel impossible. I know that feeling is tough. I know it sucks. Believe me, I remember very well when I was on the other side and wanted to be a designer more than anything. The good news is that the gaming industry continues to grow, so there are more opportunities than ever to get your foot in the door. Your first job may not be at Riot (or Blizzard or Infinity Ward or Bungie), but maybe you can leverage a first game job at a smaller or indie studio to eventually get to your dream studio.

Best of luck! Let me know when you land it.