Some secrets are harder to keep than others, with one of those harder secrets to keep being spoilers for the biggest video game TV adaptation in recent years, as Teamfight Tactics developers personally found out.
As well as speaking about TFT’s position in the games industry, Teamfight Tactics game designer Julien Camaraza described in an interview with GamesRadar+ what it was like to see Arcane season 2 in development as part of developing their own Into the Arcane crossover.
“We got the script for Arcane season 2 around two years ago,” he begins, “but I would really say the set was entering active development until right after Remix Rumble finished, Set 10. The day that ended, we were like ‘great, time to work on Into the Arcane’.”
By the time Camaraza and the TFT team got to look, the episodes were already coming together but were still far from complete. “We got to watch really unfinished versions of the episodes, whatever they just had lying around at Fortiche. Some of the shots were just drawings, some of them had no audio. It was really fun. There was a lot of shots that looked almost complete, but the hair hadn’t been rendered yet, so all the characters were just bald.” he explains.
“And they have us those episodes fairly quickly. They were pretty protective, which totally makes sense. They didn’t want spoilers to leak. So the first three episodes were fairly easy to get. The second three and the last three, really you had to have a reason to use them.”
For Camaraza, the most difficult aspect of the show’s development was keeping everything under wraps, explaining “As for how hard it was to keep a secret? Probably the hardest part of the set’s development.” In a bit to keep everything as hush-hush as possible, codenames were introduced, which unintentionally made things even more difficult. “Every character had a codename internally – we were not allowed to call them by their real names out loud when speaking to each other, and that can get pretty confusing.”
Thankfully, the entire operation went off without a hitch, and not a spoiler was leaked, something Camaraza is desperately grateful for. “Oh my god, if we spoiled Arcane, it would have been heartbreaking. That’s just a line I did not want to cross. And so it was very, very stressful. But I’m glad we didn’t do it.”
If you’re after more tactical games like Teamfight Tactics, check out our list of the very best strategy games.