Riftbound director hints at its digital future, says it's "not a matter of if, but when and how" for the League of Legends TCG

"It's so nice of Riot to bring a Teamfight Tactics tournament to a Riftbound event," I quip while sitting in the press room at the TFT Paris Open. Riot Games' TCG has been flying off the shelves, and I initially thought that it was simply a case of scalpers finding the next batch of shiny cardboard to crawl out of their mom's basements for. But, to my pleasant surprise, the hype is real, as players lined up in their droves, both to snag a table to play on and in the hopes of procuring one of the incredibly limited booster boxes from the event shop.

Considering Riot's previous forays into tabletop (Tellstones) and card games (Legends of Runeterra) had hardly been glittering successes - I loved LoR, and miss it dearly - I initially approached Riftbound with a sort of giddy apprehension. Aesthetically, it's come a long way from those initial samples, and as part-magpie, I'm completely blown away by some of the art. As someone who primarily collects cards, though, it wasn't until I sat down for a tutorial session with game director Dave Guskin that I finally had the opportunity to feel just how good Riftbound is to play, especially with pals.

Following this session, I chatted to Guskin about all things Riftbound. I was particularly interested in hearing more about how Riot's approaching the issue of scarcity that's so prevalent across physical TCG, as well as if, following in the footsteps of Magic: The Gathering Arena and Pokémon TCG Live, we'd soon see a digital version materialize that would help alleviate the FOMO. The answers to both questions are promising, though it's clear this fledgling card game is going to need to run a little longer before the studio's labors bear fruit.

Speaking firstly on how Riot's trying to get more cards into the decks of players, Guskin says: "Some of my very smart coworkers put it most succinctly when they say 'You've gotta put that on a boat.' When you put the product on a boat, you're constrained by the timelines of boats crossing oceans and what happens when it gets to the port.

"We did our best to estimate how much demand there would be for the game and how successful we thought it would be," he continues. "I think we undershot, and that's okay, right? It's a new game. We're learning with everyone else exactly how many people want to play. People want to play Riftbound. I think we're doing everything we can. We've pulled all the levers we can to get the product out to players as quickly as we can. Reprinting: you can do some of it. Shipping it faster: you can do some of that. We're learning as we go from hearing from game stores, hearing from players how much demand is actually there, and that'll lead us to, I think, better and better estimates as we go through more and more sets."

With the market the way it is, many players, myself included, have found ourselves unable to really participate in Riftbound. Barring starter decks, I haven't been able to source a single pack from anywhere in the UK; at least, through online distributors. The singles market has allowed me to snap up a few chase cards, but the prices for certain meta staples are certainly beyond my comfort zone. Considering Riot already has extensive experience with digital TCGs via Legends of Runeterra, a game Guskin himself co-produced, I was surprised that Riftbound Online wasn't announced alongside the physical version. Guskin's reasoning for not having it on release, though, is sound.

"We've talked about digital representations of Riftbound a lot," Guskin notes. "One thing that's really important for us, as a new game, is we want to support in-person social play; we built Riftbound to be a game you play with your friends. It's a great experience to bring in people who maybe haven't played a TCG before […] so that really matters to us. We want to support that and make sure that, at the local game store level, at the kitchen table level, things are great."

In-person play has never been more important than it is today. As third spaces have eroded and social interaction has increasingly found itself constrained to myriad apps, fostering face-to-face interaction in this capacity can only be a good thing.

"That said," Guskin continues, "some people don't have access to a game store, or it's hard to get out every night of the week to go play. So we've been talking a lot about, 'what are the opportunities for us to make the game more accessible?' Maybe even make it more learnable via a digital tool, and then potentially talk about what happens in the future. Right now, we're really focused on the in-person experience, but I would say it's a question of not if, but when and how for what are we going to do with digital Riftbound."

While this doesn't definitively point to a full-fledged digital version of Riftbound, at the very least, it would provide the accessibility Guskin and Riot are working towards, so here's hoping. What is clear is that Discord nights with the homies in a potential Riftbound Online isn't on the cards anytime soon, but you can at least utilize a mod for Tabletop Simulator to get in on the action digitally. It's not a native solution, but for now it's pretty darn good.