League of Legends is still evolving nearly sixteen years after its launch. Riot's public materials have described the game's scale through landmark benchmarks, surpassing 100 million monthly active players and reaching 160+ billion total hours played, as a reminder that clarity decisions get repeated at a massive frequency. The IP's reach also extends beyond the game; Arcane has earned major awards recognition, underscoring how far Runeterra has traveled into mainstream culture.
For Sandy Zhou, a Riot Games sound designer, the work lives in a narrow window: combat audio must be readable in teamfight density, while still reinforcing character identity across thematics like Winterblessed, Star Guardian, Cafe Cuties, Anima Squad, Arcana, and Porcelain.
"Players absolutely have time to enjoy sound," Zhou says. "But in the middle of a fight, the cue still has to be immediately understandable."
Q: In League's high-density fights, what's the core problem you're solving as a sound designer?
Sandy Zhou: The core problem is clarity at speed, making sure players can accurately read intent, timing, confirmation, and state changes even when the screen is saturated. At the same time, those cues can't be generic. They need to carry character identity and thematic consistency so the world still feels coherent as content scales.
My goal is that players don't have to "decode" audio. The gameplay read should land immediately, and the signature should be unmistakable, without competing for priority.
A fast check for me is: does the cue still read correctly when you're not looking at it, and does it still sound like it belongs to the character when you are?
Q: What's your framework for balancing gameplay read and character identity in a single cue?
Sandy Zhou: I think about three layers.
First is gameplay read, the cue's truth: intent, timing, confirmation, and state change. If I'm doing my job, a player understands what happened even if they weren't looking directly at it. In practice, that maps to familiar combat moments: cast/windup, projectile travel, on-hit confirmation, buff on/off, and loops that signal presence.
Second is signature, the non-verbal stamp that says, "this is that character" or "this is that thematic." Iconic doesn't mean louder. It means recognizable.
Third is hierarchy, what survives teamfight density. Priority cues need room. If everything tries to be huge, nothing feels important.
Q: You've said, "Readability is cadence." What do you mean by cadence in practical terms?
Sandy Zhou: Cadence is how a cue arrives, its timing pattern, and contour. Players don't just hear loudness; they hear meaning. Over time, they learn families of cues through repetition.
A targeted warning often needs a sharper, more urgent front edge than a passive buff. Even two positive mechanics, like a shield versus a heal, benefit from different contour and pacing so they don't get categorized the same way in a fight.
With this approach, I'm not only asking "Can you hear it?" I'm also asking, "Does it read as the right kind of thing?" If a cue drifts into the wrong cadence family, you can get misreads even if it sounds great in isolation.
Q: How do you keep a thematic coherence across many champions without it turning repetitive?
Sandy Zhou: The misconception is that identity comes from one magic sound. In a live-service game, that quickly leads to repetition fatigue.
I start by defining a palette: materials, tonal boundaries, density rules, and what kinds of attacks and tails belong. That palette is a rulebook: it tells you what fits this slice of Runeterra and what doesn't.
From there, I construct a building-block library, a large set of source and processed variations which establish that palette in usable form. It's not "small chunks." It can be a shared library that
other designers can draw from over time. I've had single thematics exceed gigabytes of content, because variation is what lets identity stay iconic without being repetitive.
These building blocks become layers I can pull from across gameplay moments: cast, projectile, impact, buff activate, buff loop, buff deactivate, so the gameplay read stays stable while signature shows up in controlled, memorable ways.
Q: Star Guardian is a flagship thematic. How do you preserve that universe feel across very different kits like Sona and Rell?
Sandy Zhou: Star Guardian is a stress test because player expectations are strong. The "universe rules" must be clear.
For Star Guardian, I want it to feel luminous and magical, but never blurry. That means a clean, readable start on casts and impacts, and a tail that's beautiful but restrained, so you get the 'cosmic' space without it stepping on the next critical moment.
Then the kit tells you how that identity should behave.
Sona asks for elegance with clarity, supportive confirmation that still reads timing. Rell asks for weight and control. The engage moments land decisively, while staying within the Star Guardian rulebook.
The principle stays the same: the signature brands the gameplay read; it doesn't change it. Flagship thematics need coherence as a world and readability as a fight.
Q: Cafe Cuties Gwen has a very specific charm. How do you make that kind of identity survive a teamfight?
Sandy Zhou: The thematic fantasy is playful and bright, but the hard part is making that charm survive density without turning into clutter.
I treated the palette like a material rulebook: teapots, café utensils, light bell accents, tabletop ticks, then built a variation set so those materials could show up as quick stamps across casts, hits, and state changes without repeating the exact same gesture every time.
In playtests, the most common issues weren't "it's not cute enough." It was readability: a tail that lingered and masked follow-ups or a bright texture that collided with other high-energy cues. A lot of the iteration comes down to signature placement and tail control, keeping the identity present, but letting the gameplay read stay clean.
Q: What typically changes after playtests—and what are your most common fixes?
Sandy Zhou: Most readability problems don't show up in isolation. They show up in fights. In playtests, I listen for three failure modes:
- Spectral overlap: two cues compete in the same band, and one stops reading.
- Headroom issues: priority cues can't rise because everything is already taking up space.
- Tail masking: tails linger just long enough to bury the next important moment.
Sometimes you fail a collision check, and a cue lands in the wrong category or starts to sound interchangeable with another thematic or mechanic family. My fixes are usually attack-and-tail control, signature placement (put the stamp where players will remember it), and expanding the variation set so the signature stays iconic without becoming fatiguing. If it doesn't survive density, it doesn't ship as-is.
Q: Arcane pushed Runeterra further into the mainstream. Did that shift how you approached character sound?
Sandy Zhou: It raised the stakes for recognition. When more people are aware of the universe, consistency matters even more. Characters and regions need to feel like they belong to the same world.
After Arcane released, I worked on Jayce's sound updates. They're small decisions in isolation, but they matter. You're reinforcing what players think they know about a character while still respecting gameplay read. That balance is the job. Let the identity be strong, but never at the cost of clarity.
Q: When you know combat sound is working, what are you ultimately building for players?
Sandy Zhou: I'm building recognition that holds up in real matches, the kind players internalize through repetition. When a cue reads correctly under density, it becomes muscle memory. Players react faster, misreads drop, and the game feels cleaner.
I'm also building coherence. Great combat sound doesn't just communicate mechanics; it belongs to the character and the universe. That's why I put so much emphasis on thematic palettes: they're the sonic rules that keep Runeterra consistent as content expands, so new thematics feel like additions to the same world instead of exceptions to it.
Honestly, you can hear when it works through player feedback. When the community clips a moment, calls out a cue as "iconic," or describes a skin as feeling "instantly like that character," that's the signal that readability and identity landed together, clear enough to play, and distinctive enough to remember.
About Sandy Zhou
Sandy Zhou is a game sound designer whose work helps define how blockbuster live-service IPs sound in the moments players rely on most. She focuses on character building through sound, shaping thematic palettes and scalable systems that keep character identity recognizable without sacrificing readability in high-density play. Sandy Zhou is a game sound designer whose credits include League of Legends, Teamfight Tactics, Legends of Runeterra, Call of Duty: Mobile, Return to Empire, and Ruined King: A League of Legends Story (in-game cinematics). She has delivered game audio work for teams at Riot Games, Tencent Games, and ArenaNet. She is affiliated with MPSE and G.A.N.G.Her credited work includes major releases at Riot Games, and she is affiliated with professional organizations including MPSE and G.A.N.G.
