How the soundtracks for Arcane and League of Legends are made

League of Legends is one of the world's biggest video games with more than 100 million players and esports tournaments that attract millions of viewers each year.

The online multiplayer game developed by Riot Games has expanded to multiple tie-in games, virtual K-pop bands and the breakout television series Arcane.

But probably the most impressive aspect of this universe is the collaboration between the music teams behind the game makers and the television series that delivered a cohesive soundtracks between worlds.

At the Riot Games headquarters in Los Angeles a team of composers have direct access to the developers of the video games and together they work on major updates for the games each with their own thematic and narrative ideas.

Sebastien Najand, one of the in house composers at Riot, told ABC Classic's Game Show that having everyone under the same roof makes it very easy for creativity to flow.

"Being able to talk to the artists, the narrative team, sound designers; there's a real community and culture, we're all in the same boat together, trying to make the cool things for players," Najand says.

"People might think that it's always just writing music, like the romantic view of making music, but it's a lot of detail-oriented work and puzzle solving."

Collaborative composition

J.D. Spears was a freelancing composer for many years, a model that is the norm for most musicians who contribute their scores to video games, film and television.

A client would approach Spears and ask him to develop the musical landscape for their project and there was always a little bit of back and forth as they settled on the right sound.

Spears says that working by himself most of the time meant he felt that sense of 'imposter syndrome', always worried he'd be found out.

"When I was freelancing, it was just basically me in a room by myself all the time and people would reach out to me when they felt like they needed something," Spears says .

Spears says working in-house at Riot Games is a model that's relatively uncommon for the industry.

Spears and Najand sit in adjacent offices in the Los Angeles headquarters, with that proximity allowing them to immediately collaborate when they face creative challenges.

Together they work on the incredibly popular strategy video game series League of Legends, its spin-off games Team Fight Tactics and Legends of Runeterra, and tactical shooter Valorant.

"So there's this little hallway that we share, we can bounce ideas off of each other more easily and kind of get a gut check, reality check, whatever you want to call it, on something when we've lost objectivity," Spears says .

Najand says that while that feedback is essential to the process, there is a risk of losing that initial inspiration as well.

"The challenge is taking lots of different feedback, while keeping the inspired part of what you've created there.

"You could try to serve any feedback from everyone but what ends up coming out is maybe something very generic and basic.

"How do you keep the fun and the interesting part of music while navigating all that?"

Building on existing motifs and delighting with something new

Spears says that as one of the newer composers in the team he's always conscious of what has come before when writing new music for the games.

This year League of Legends opening season was 'For Demacia' and Spears was deeply involved in its music, a location that players are very familiar with.

He describes the sound of Demacia as being regal, almost liturgical, but reconfigured the musical ensemble with vocal and brass choirs as the "main ingredients of the score."

"We wanted to lean on some like early church ensemble stuff, as well as make our own modern version of like a brass choir, plus we recorded a real chamber choir in London," Spears says.

"As far as the brass goes, we put the horns dead in the centre of the room.

"We had a euphonium ensemble in there, we leaned on solo euphonium a lot, and then instead of trumpets, we [used the] cornet."

For Spears it was the first time he had recorded any live vocal ensemble, saying that it was a powerful experience.

"I wasn't shocked that [London Voices] sounded amazing, but having done a lot of live recording of brass, strings and percussion at this point, I think I underestimated how transformative live choir is."

From computer to television screen

One of the biggest breakout media from League of Legends is the animated television series Arcane, which expands on the back stories of the world and characters of the games.

Najand worked closely on the music for Arcane with Christian Linke, the showrunner on the television series, who started at Riot as a composer.

He also collaborated with different musicians for the soundtrack of Arcane, allowing them to be "musical chameleons," sometimes contributing the initial idea or working to reshape an existing sound.

Najand says sometimes the musicians on the Arcane soundtrack would deliver the song ready to go, but there were other examples where he was much more involved in every stage writing the initial piece.

"With Christian [Linke] being the showrunner, his attention to music is really high from the start.

"Fortunately Fortiche, the French animation studio who animated and directed the show, looked to internal music team at Riot to help bring something new to that as well."

And Arcane's season 2 soundtrack worked exactly like each of the video game expansions, with a colleague pulled into Najand's office to share their expertise as he moved around different elements of the music.

"One day when I was working on episode nine of season two of Arcane, there was a song called Come Play, featuring Stray Kids,"

"One of the vocalists in that song is Spanish. Both Christian and I were like, we're sure it sounds good, but did we butcher the language?"

"So he went out a few doors down to the open area of the office and found someone who spoke Spanish. Brought them over, they checked it out, told us it was cool, and then we moved on.

"We get that kind of interaction really easily, everyone's here trying to make the best thing possible."

Catch the full interview with J.D. Spears and Sebastien Najand tonight on ABC Classic on Game Show, 11:00PM Friday 3, July 2026.

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