It’s been five years since Teamfight Tactics launched within the League of Legends client and quickly transformed into a standalone sensation, capturing the hearts of millions of players worldwide. Since League’s release in 2009, countless game modes have come and gone. But the TFT team knew autobattler would be different.
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“We knew we had something special on our hands,” Lynda Tang, TFT’s senior tech designer, said in an exclusive interview with Dot Esports. She joined Riot as an intern and helped create TFT with about 40 other people, including current gameplay director and one of the community’s most beloved figures, Stephen “Mort” Mortimer.
Mort said the early days of TFT were both challenging and exciting. After 11 years working on puzzle games at Nintendo, he initially had doubts about his ability to effectively contribute to gameplay design at Riot. His involvement with TFT quickly dispelled those doubts, however, and five years later he says it’s the game he can put his heart and soul into.
The game's early sets received mixed reviews and there was a period after Set Two, Rise of the Elements, where the number of players rapidly dwindled.
