Rickey McCoy, @riotgames

Thank you for tuning in to today’s full episode of the Breaking Changes podcast. I’m your host and chief evangelist for Postman, Kin Lane. With Breaking Changes, we explore topics from the world of APIs, but through the lens of business and engineering leadership. Joining me today we have Rickey McCoy, senior delivery manager at Riot Games. Rickey blew my mind with their usage of data from their API to develop the characters for their award-winning Netflix series, taking API first to a whole new level.

Hey everybody, I’m Rickey McCoy, I’m the delivery manager for Riot Games. Pretty much I’m one of the liaisons for product management, project management when it comes to gaming support, and just a pleasure to be speaking with you all. But I know we’ll get into a little bit more of my context and my background, but yeah, I’ve been all over multiple verticals, all the way from city government doing development all the way up to Riot Games and development management and product management. So yeah, definitely a pleasure to be here, thank you.

Yeah, so I want to explore that journey, I want to learn, we’ll get to Riot Games, it’s definitely, I think it’s very interesting to talk to you because of your current role, but then, and we did a brainstorming session and kind of walked through where you’ve been and how you got into the game, I found just as interesting. So what got you into tech? Let’s start there.

Yeah, so I’ve been in tech since, I guess you can say, early 2000s, more so 1999. So when I was in high school I was part of one of those business clubs, I guess you can call it, and they had a contest where you can basically go out and build a prototype of a business plan. Well, at that time they had an option where you could build a sample website. So I was like, hey, that seems easy enough, I can drag and drop, and that’s how I got into tech, that was in high school. But when I left high school I spent a few years in college, I did some freelancing for a few years, from I would say about anywhere between 2001 up until 2005. Freelance for a few organizations, churches, non-profits, you name it, barber shops, if it was a business I would build a website for it. But I got my first big break in 2006 for a city called the city of Frisco. It’s about 30 minutes north of downtown Dallas, it’s a suburb, it’s more familiar now with the Dallas Cowboys, they’re headquartered there, PGA golf has moved their headquarters there. But that was a city that is now, but when I was there in 2006 as a web developer it was a very, very small city, gave me a lot of opportunity to build my craft, things of that nature. I was a .NET developer back then, but yeah, that’s kind of how I got started in tech, until I moved over to Yum Brands in 2013.

What’d you do at Yum Brands?

Yeah, so Yum Brands, for those that may know us by our product names, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, and KFC, that is the Yum Brands umbrella. When I moved over to Yum Brands I actually moved over as a .NET SharePoint developer, but there were some people at Yum Brands, they were like, hey, we know you’re a tech guy, but you have some qualities to lead teams, organizations, you’re kind of outgoing, you’re not a typical developer. What they were leading towards is that I might be a good fit for product management at the time. At that time I really didn’t know what it was. When I was doing development it was more like team leads, development leads, people like that. But I was on the international side of the house, I was doing Yum International for .NET development, but then I got a break across the hallway. We had two halls in Yum, so there’s international and then the other side is Pizza Hut US domestic. There was a team from the pizzahut.com team, they said, hey, Rick, we’re interested if you would be willing to work with us directly on pizzahut.com as a product manager or product owner at the time. And I was like, well, I’m not really familiar with what that is, but I’m willing to learn. So that’s honestly how I got started in product management. Turns out most of the things I was doing as a developer or team lead is pretty much what I was doing as a product owner, I just had to hone the craft a little bit. But ultimately, when they felt I was a little bit better at what I was doing in product management, they allowed me to be the product owner for the Hut Rewards. So for those that are familiar with the loyalty program at Pizza Hut, that was one of my products, still use it to this day, I’m still a Hut Rewards lover, man, I love Pizza Hut. So I use that to learn so much about pizza, about product management, and then I moved over into Fannie Mae a few years later. So if you all notice, I’ve crossed verticals and industries quite a bit. But when I was at Fannie Mae I was an API gateway product owner. When I went there it was really all to increase my API gateway knowledge, I wanted something that would really stretch me a little bit more, but I wanted to do that with product management. In my previous experience it was all tech-oriented, but I really loved Fannie Mae because that was one of the first opportunities that I had where I was able to stretch my technical acumen but then also bring forth my product management side of the house. But then, you know, PlayStation came calling, and yeah, when PlayStation calls, you leave. So that’s kind of how that story happened. It was a goal of mine always to be able to work at PlayStation, I’ve been playing PlayStation since ‘94, and everybody say hello to my son, but of course, you know, this is how it is in the day that we live in. But yeah, I was a global product owner for PlayStation for the PS5 release. So pretty much in a nutshell I was responsible for what we call globalization, which was kind of getting to all of the different regions on similar systems, and that was a blast, man. I would never forget the first day, which is November 12th, when the PlayStation shipped, and it was already on my door, and I was like, man, I’m glad, but I feel kind of bad for those who are really going to have to push hard to get that system. So that’s kind of how all that happened. I did PlayStation for a few years, and then when I was at PlayStation I felt like I was enjoying the console level, but I really wanted to get my hands on the next element of how are games made. Because sometimes people get a misunderstanding thinking PlayStation is where the games are made, it’s like, no, no, that’s the hardware and some of the publishing, we just give the players an opportunity and a system to play the games. But the cans on keyboard concept, concept art, game design, game development, all that happens on the game studio level. And that’s when I saw an opportunity with Riot, with League of Legends, and now of course Valorant, Teamfight Tactics, Legends of Runeterra, all of that, and then of course you all know now Arcane, the Netflix series. I had an opportunity there in LA and I basically jumped in and went full throttle there, man.

Yeah, that’s what I was saying, like Riot Games, what you’re doing at Riot games, we’ll go a little deeper into that, but your journey is impressive, and just the skills you must have accumulated along the way. And before we dive into Riot Games and the deep API details behind the scenes there, I want to understand, what is a product owner, what does it mean to be a product manager in technology like this, whether it be at the gateway level or what you’re doing as part of the gaming industry?

Yeah, so that’s a great question. To be a product owner, product manager, sometimes producer in the gaming industry, they’re all kind of very similar disciplines. So really what you’re doing is becoming the ambassador slash liaison between business and tech. So it’s pretty much your job to set priority, set roadmap, set direction, along with your stakeholders. So product owners, you’re, I’m not going to say you’re a silent leader because sometimes you don’t have direct reports. You may have a development team that you’re working with but none of those people directly report to you, but they follow you because you’re a leader on the team. So product owner, if you split those two together it kind of gives you the context, so you’re the owner or the leader of the product. So you set the vision of what the product is going to be, and then you also kind of give direction from feedback from your customers. So whenever you’re looking at any product on the market there’s always these iterations or patch notes or release updates, like iOS or Android, there’s always updates where somewhere in the world there’s a product owner who’s listening to the feedback on Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, wherever, and what they’re doing is they’re taking that feedback through surveys or whatever the source may be and then they’re enhancing the product. Which is great, because that’s where APIs kind of come in. I love the name Breaking Changes. One of the things we don’t want to do as a product owner is make sure we get a breaking change, because as a product owner we’re setting vision, we’re always enhancing, but if something is a breaking change in our world, we want to make sure that the change that would happen for that API is backwards compatible. So a lot of our job is saying, okay, from a tech side, what are the requirements that are needed, what are the features that are available to the customer today, and then what are the enhancements that will be needing new API versions or whatever the case may be, so that it can consistently work for the customer or player or consumer. But yeah, whether that’s across gaming, mortgage and Fannie Mae MBS like Fannie Mae, whether it’s retail and restaurant such as Yum Brands, or government, the requirement of what you do, from gathering requirements, creating what we call user stories, which are basically explaining to the developer what the customer will receive when they see the product, that’s a user story, we’re responsible for that. But then we’re also responsible for stakeholder management. Everyone wants to have a go-to person for communicating status, that’s usually the role of the product owner, a product manager, and what that does is kind of goes back to the liaison role, you’re always being the bridge of communication and status, whether that’s with your development team or that’s with your stakeholders, and then also with your customers. So you have to be able to speak the language of all three of those audiences.

That is the most succinct, glorified, it really describes what it is, but in such a positive way, and I would say a lot of the companies I’ve been talking to, both on the show and as part of Postman customers, they’re trying to figure out how to train up the next generation of product managers, technical product managers, but with this API kind of focus and awareness. And so you just became the commercial for that next generation of them, is basically what that, that’s good, that clip is going to come from that. Wow, awesome, that was good, thank you for that, I appreciate that.

Awesome.

So let’s dive into Riot Games, get down to the API resource, capability, experience layer. What kind of stuff, what kind of resources are available by APIs that you see?

Yeah, I mean, in the gaming industry, and in particular even at Riot, I mean, APIs are the heart of our data, I mean really the heart of everything, man. If we look at it from multiple lenses, you have the actual games themselves, the League of Legends, the Valorants, there’s tons of data, whether it’s matchmaking information to actually align you with team members to play, like Valorant or League of Legends, but then also your opponent team. All that data is driven by APIs that are looking at validating the best match for the experience. That’s just on the actual side of the game itself. But then you also have to think about all the data that’s being passed while you’re playing the game. Every time you’re playing Valorant and you get what we call a frag or a kill, that data is being recorded, or it’s basically a status 200 that’s going back to say, yes, we actually captured that frag. So you can only imagine, millions of players, millions of actions, all day every day, 24 hours, data is being passed from here to there real time. And then from my side of the house, I work a lot with the support, so operations and support, knowledge management, and then also even on some of the entertainment side of things. So if you look at it from the lens of an agent that’s trying to support a player that may have run into an issue, well, the agents are able to use that same data through some tools that we have that can literally support the player to rectify their situation, to make them whole. So you can evaluate, APIs go the entire gamut, from playing the game to getting support to even us putting out certain information in social media, like, hey, we see that this one champion on League of Legends is getting a lot of respect, the players love this guy, or this lady, so that might be a good idea to market them. All of that data is API-driven, and it’s just one of those things where API is just the heartbeat. The way I like to explain APIs personally to some of my stakeholders or my business teams is that APIs are like, it’s like the hub and spoke model. APIs is the hub, and then everything that it interacts with is a spoke. So if you think about the wheel scenario, everyone has a tire and in the center is the hub, and then you have spokes, the API is the core of it. The APIs, they’re either giving data or receiving data, and it’s always an active living, breathing interaction between systems, but all the systems that are speaking to and from those APIs, that’s how they breathe. So that’s why I’m so excited to be on the show, because literally for the next generation of product owners, developers, API gateway enthusiasts, you name it, APIs is literally the heartbeat of tech today. Whether we’re going to be thinking about, in the future if we want to do something with IoT, internet of things, where we wanted to integrate some type of video game that now integrates with your house, I don’t know, just something random like that, well, we could do that through APIs. So the respect for APIs is so valuable, because, like I said, it’s the heartbeat, but if something goes south with the API it can impact a lot of players, consumers, and customers, hence breaking change. If you’ve been in tech for more than three months, or I would say six months, you may have experienced a breaking change. Breaking changes don’t happen intentionally, they’re always unintentional. Everyone’s like, hey, we built the game, and we thought everything was solid, but then, oh, that one small feature that was making a request, that’s something that we may not have covered in the requirements. And see, that’s how myself as a product owner, delivery manager, that’s one of the roles that I have to be responsible for, to say, hey, we’re going to iterate on the product, but let’s try to make sure that the foundational things, so that there’s no breaking changes, all the backwards compatibility. Because that’s the worst thing that can happen, the customers are excited about a feature and then you try to enhance it and then you cause a breaking change, and now the features they love doesn’t work. Yeah, it’s one of those moments. But yeah, the one thing about a breaking change honestly is that it teaches you, it’s one of those things where it’s like, hey, it’s going to happen in your career, but you only get stronger for it.

Yeah, so the hub and spoke and wheel model, I think that’s powerful in a digital sense, and you have this forward motion, you have this wheel, but it’s almost like with each version you’ve got new rims and new wheels and low profile, and it’s like, digitally you’re rolling down the road at the same time on these wheels, so you can’t have a breaking change that’s going to cause, you have to pull over and stop, you need to be going and then flashing and changing your wheels and perpetually having forward motion. And APIs are how we innovate and create the future in this world. And that rich data that you talked about that’s available in real time, you mentioned it earlier, the TV show that you guys have done with Netflix, can you dive in a little bit more there and talk about, like, what is the show, how did it come to be, but then talk about how you use this data to power that and create that show?

Yeah, so Arcane is the name of the show, and we’re so excited, it’s an animated series on Netflix and we just won a few Emmys for Animated Series, so we’re all so stoked for that, and a few Annie Awards, so we’re just really stoked. But Arcane basically tells the origin story of a few of the characters, or what we call champions, in the League of Legends lore. Two champions in particular, Vi and Jinx. It kind of shows you the upbringing from their childhood into their adulthood and a lot of the challenges that they had to endure from childhood up into adulthood, and then of course we also introduce a few new characters or champions along the path. And what we’re doing is literally now elevating our players, because when Arcane was built there was already 10-plus years of League of Legends hardcore fans out there. So when Arcane was built, we built it with the premise of, we just do not want to let our players down. So you can imagine the iterations that went with that, and we’re talking about years building this TV animated series. But when we evaluate some of the champions, yes, of course there was a lot of data that went behind who should we kick off this animated series with. Today League of Legends, we have well more than 140-plus champions in our game, so tons of different archetypes of champions. But when we evaluated some of the locations in the series, whenever you get a chance to watch Arcane, you will see two cities in particular, one is called Zaun, Z-A-U-N, which is where Jinx and Vi are from, two of the main characters, and then there’s also Piltover. Piltover is the nation that’s technically above, even in the visual sense it sits on top of Zaun. Zaun is kind of like the underground, grimy, hustle by any means necessary, just the grimy side of these two nations. Piltover is all about progression, very wealthy-oriented nation. And not to throw out any spoilers when you all see it, but you would definitely be able to see how both of these worlds interact. But then obviously, when you watch Arcane, one of the things, when we built Arcane it was to introduce League of Legends or Riot Games to an entirely different generational audience of people. Everyone doesn’t play League of Legends, which is a multiplayer online battle arena game, everyone just may not be interested in it or they’re just unfamiliar with the game. So when we came out with Arcane, it was to introduce, from an animated, beautiful art-type-style show that could build understanding about, oh, these are who these characters are, this is the actual background of the locations, and of course what that would do is showcase to new followers of the show, to build interest in some of the other IP that we have within the video games. So now we’re seeing a lot of people that are building an affinity to Jinx, to Jayce, a few new people like Silco, all these different characters, and so now we’re taking entertainment and introducing them to our video games, and people that were already familiar with the video games were just broadening their knowledge with the lore and the storytelling in Arcane. And all of that data, all of that was generated by what we’ve seen over the years on which characters, which locations we should be building, which is obviously API data, to be able to generate a show off of it.

Yeah, wow, impressive, man, that is, I mean, that’s this forward motion of APIs, this productization of APIs so that you have a feedback loop, you can move forward based upon these feedback loops and invent the future, but this is doing that literally but in a virtual sense, in a game world, like figuring out who these characters should represent, reaching out into new audiences, new generations. And so, not at that scale, but I’m doing that with this show, you’re part of this, for me with Breaking Changes is, we’re trying to break, because we’ve done Formula One, we’ve done NBA, we’ve done Boy Scouts of America, their API first, like we’ve gone through industries and got API-first conversations, I’m using you from the gaming industry to reach across the aisle into other industries and introduce people to API first, through stories that they’re going to care about, and so, yeah, I think, just demonstrates the power of APIs right there.

Yeah, and that’s awesome, you know, because now that we, you know, at Riot, stepping into the entertainment sector of it, because that’s one thing we say, you know, for years, one of our missions, we want to be one of the best gaming companies in the 21st century, now what we want to be is the entertainment company of the 21st century, because now we’re mixing in the gaming and entertainment. But the beautiful thing about it is that we can grow each, it’s like a handshake, where we’re learning from entertainment and now we’re learning from gaming. So one beautiful thing about when Arcane was released back in November of 2021 is that we had a lot of integration pieces between online experiences and games you can do online. We had a lot of integration with streaming platforms like Twitch, and that was honestly the first time that Netflix and Twitch, so long story short, Netflix allowed Twitch to stream Arcane’s first three episodes on Twitch’s platform. That has never happened. Normally Netflix will say, hey, come watch it on Netflix, that’s it, but the partnerships that we had with Netflix and Twitch, it was two giants in the streaming industry coming together to expose a new animated series. And then with that came a lot of API integration. The APIs with Netflix to Twitch, Twitch to Netflix, giving out what we call props or gifts, like loot boxes through Twitch, that’s all integration. So whoever was able to watch the show, Twitch would obviously be able to capture your viewership, then they would say, oh, okay, it’s a loot box or a loot giveaway, so whoever watched and then you logged in to, say, League of Legends later that evening, you would have free content. That’s all API-driven. And that’s why I love the API-first model, because it just bridges the gap for everyone, multiple systems talking and expanding more than what you can do by yourself with APIs.

And it feels like, so what I’ve kind of mapped out across the companies I’ve talked to, because we’ve had eBay, we’ve had Amazon, quite a few older but newer tech companies, and really, APIs, the first wave was about defining your digital resources, so all your RESTful web APIs that you need to do things, and then the second wave was really about strengthening your capabilities, like as a platform, what are we capable of doing with these resources. But then what we see now across, you know, the NBA talked about this, is, we got to create experiences with this, so we’ve got to be able to rapidly do this, respond to these partnerships, and they’ve got like 30-some teams and then they have to deal with all the mobile apps, all the partnerships across that. So like these experiences, these future experiences that we’re going to need to create, are all API-driven, and this world building literally that y’all are doing is all API-driven.

Yes, that is exactly correct.

So I mean, what’s your future hold, just more world building? Like, what excites you and keeps you coming to work every day?

You know, the thing that excites me, that’s why I actually really enjoy working with operations, because with operations I can touch so many different parts of the gaming ecosystem, whether that’s the game development, the agent support side, and everything in between. Like even on the Arcane, in operations you get to see a lot, which broadens your product management scope from a lot of different lenses, and you can leverage that knowledge to multiple initiatives. And that’s what keeps me going every day. The gaming industry is so diverse and so large and wide. Sometimes when you think about the gaming industry you immediately think about the end result, you have the controller or the keyboard and mouse in your hand and you’re executing, basically trying to solve the puzzle of what the game is putting in front of you. But there are so many things, you have the finance, the accounting, the concept of art, you have the purchasing, publishing, I mean, it goes on and on, enterprise ops, DevOps, Live Ops, esports, a little music production, video production, it goes across the gamut. And being in product management and then having that foundation in APIs, I literally can go from this role to that role within the same organization or in the gaming industry or whatever you want to call it, and just continually grow my skills. It’s basically like every day in the gaming industry it’s a new adventure, it’s like, that’s one thing I will say, sometimes you can get a position at a certain organization and you wake up, it’s like a monotonous checklist. It’s never like that in gaming, ever. It’s like you basically complete one mission, like a game, and then you go to the next, it’s a continuous cycle. So yeah, that’s what really keeps me going. And then just interesting to be part of an industry where I really feel that video games, especially during the pandemic time frame, it was a huge escapism method for a lot of people. There’s a lot of people out here on some hard times, and some people didn’t know where their income was going to come from, a lot of things happening, but it just felt really good to be part of an industry where we were able to allow people to take their minds off of reality for an hour or two and just focus on something different. And that’s really why I really enjoy the gaming industry in general, because it allows you to be anything you want to be, you can venture into any world you want to venture into, and you can just dream, and then being able to be part of the background behind that stuff is really cool, man.

Yeah, so your 16-year-old self and your 16-year-old mind, have you made it, are you like where you thought you’d be?

I never expected to be here. I’m honestly just so grateful. Like, when I originally got the call from PlayStation, even to this day it seems like a dream, like I’m about to pinch myself and wake up. But even from just being able to work with those organizations, Pizza Hut, Fannie Mae, Riot, I would have never imagined that I would be at this level when I was 16. But the thing now, man, is the sky is the limit. Now that I’ve been able to get to this level, I can’t stop, it’s always like, okay, this happened, now what’s the next barrier we can break, as a team, as a people, as a world, what’s the next thing we can break and then accomplish that and go to the next.

So yeah, love it, I love your passion, love your drive. How would you recommend folks become product managers like you and achieve some of the success that you found? What recommendations do you have for them?

Yeah, first off, I will say this, there is a great book, it’s called The Lean Startup. They came out in 2010, 2012-ish, great read. It gives you a great foundation on how to iterate, basically how to constantly improve on a product without it being perfect, but being lovable enough for the customers to say, hey, this product has some feet, and it’s not running yet, it’s crawling, but it has vision. Because that’s the one thing I would always recommend anyone looking to get in product management, you have to be comfortable building in blocks, small chunks of work. There’s no product out there, whereas Elon Musk invention, even the Tesla, they started out with the basic concept of, this is how a car works today on gas, but then how can we iterate and modify that to be fully electric over time. If you’re someone who loves to do that, if you’re someone who loves to have conversations and is basically intrigued about how things work, product management may be for you. You do not have to be completely tech-oriented or tech-minded, but I do highly recommend that you take a few tech courses. I’m an avid follower, I’ve been following this website since I was, man, 17, 18 years old, but W3Schools, it’s a free resource, man. I had an opportunity to talk to the CEO about a year ago, they’re based out of Sweden, but I tell you, passion, heart, and then I began to realize why the website teaches you so much, because you can hear it from the founder’s heart. It’s a free resource, everything’s out there, if you want to learn everything from HTML to C++, it’s a free resource, it’s out there. And then of course you have your Udemys, Skillshare, there’s a lot of people teaching product management in general, Product School is another one, there’s a lot of resources. But everything’s free. There are a few boot camps out there, but I honestly would say, dive into maybe a few courses on Udemy, udemy.com is a great resource, just kind of get a few different viewpoints on what product management is, see if you kind of like the context, and then, hey, worst-case scenario, you can always reach out to me. I love to provide, share what I know, that’s my way of giving back.

So yeah, you heard that, folks, you need a mentor, you want to figure out this space, it’s, we’re going to need, all I know is we’re going to need thousands of you to do world building, what we’re going to need for the future, like out ahead of what’s happening right now. So definitely really enjoyed your story today, and like hearing your journey, I mean, super impressive, what you’re doing right now is impressive, but really I think your appetite over your career for change and embracing larger scope, different scope problems, is impressive.

Awesome, thank you so much, Kin. This is just an honor to be on Postman, I mean, to be talking with Postman here. I think everyone who’s listening to the podcast, you all know, it’s like Postman, we’ve used the tool, this tool has saved our lives, especially when you’re talking about even basic auth, authentication methods, you don’t want to have to do everything manually every time. Postman, the tool, is just amazing, and it’s definitely one of the heartbeats of the API ecosystem for sure.

I appreciate that. I really enjoyed today, Rickey, this has been great, thanks for joining us.

Awesome, thank you, you all have a great day.

Thanks again to Rickey for stopping by. You can find more about Rickey on LinkedIn, and Riot Games at riotgames.com. You can subscribe to the Breaking Changes podcast at postman.com/events/breaking-changes. I’m your host Kin Lane, and until next time, cheers.