By Dr. John Gøtze, Chair of the awards jury

Founded in 2006 and headquartered in Los Angeles, Riot Games is a global video-game developer, publisher, and esports organizer best known for flagship titles such as League of Legends and VALORANT. With more than 4,500 full time employees, known as Rioters, and more than 3000 contractors, known as Woriors, across 20-plus offices worldwide, the company builds player-focused experiences, from live-service games and animated series to some of the most-watched esports leagues on the planet.

As a finalist of IRMUK’s Enterprise & Business Architecture Best Practice Award 2025, Riot Games stands out as a world-class enterprise architecture practitioner. We have interviewed Dr. Gama.

The Challenge

Riot Games’ rapid growth had produced “fragmentation in strategy execution, mis-aligned investments, and limited architectural visibility,” Dr. Gama recalls. “We needed a living architecture that could connect our player-focused business strategy to every initiative and technology choice.”

Dr. Nelson Gama, Principal Enterprise Architect at Riot Games, leads the company’s enterprise-architecture practice. With deep expertise in cloud architecture, digital transformation, and technology governance, he is known for mentoring cross-functional teams and translating strategy into scalable solutions that deliver measurable business value.

Executives asked Enterprise Architecture (EA) to:

• • • Link strategy to execution through clear capability models.
  • • Establish governance rituals that spanned central and distributed functions.
  • Provide data-driven insight into where to invest—and where to stop investing.

The Approach

Dr. Gama framed the assignment as a business story, not a technical one.

“Architecture has value only when people can see themselves in it,” he emphasizes. “So we co-created every artifact with the teams who would use it.”

1. 1. 1. Capability-based Planning
   1. Capability Delta Mapping

“I asked each domain to describe its target state,” Dr. Gama says. “Then we visualised the ‘delta’ between today and tomorrow and mapped projects directly to those gaps.”

3. 3. 3. A Purpose-built Metamodel
         supports our Financial Planning objectives’—instead of forcing them to dig through static diagrams,” he explains.
   3. Dynamic Tooling
      is evolving into a living platform, progressively synchronised with Jira for roadmap tracking. Dashboards, heat-maps, and an “EA-on-a-Page” view made architecture consumable for non-technical audiences.

Early results and ongoing transformation

Sustaining the Impact

Governance rituals can now embed EA in Riot’s yearly and quarterly rhythms:

• • • Annual strategy reviews use capability heat-maps to set investment themes.
  • • Quarterly portfolio reviews validate that initiatives still close priority deltas.
  • • Domain ownership—every capability has an accountable manager who keeps the data fresh.
  • Continuous sync between the EA repository, Jira, and other “sources of truth” ensures architecture reflects reality, not aspiration.

“Our model is scalable because it’s participatory,” Dr. Gama notes. “The people closest to the work steward the data, so architecture stays relevant—and alive.”

Key Takeaways

1. 1. 1. Co-creation beats enforcement. Engaging domain experts from day one built trust and ownership.
   1. 1. Visual language matters. Heat-maps and one-page views turned architecture into a decision tool.
   1. 1. Link money to meaning. Traceability from strategy to spend reframes EA as a value driver.
   1. Make it living. Continuous data integration keeps architecture current and useful.

Riot Games is moving EA from theory to practice—demonstrating how a capability-centric, collaborative approach can is aligning global teams, help rationalise portfolios, and, ultimately, serve players better. As Dr. Gama puts it:

“When architecture speaks the language of the business, everyone listens.”

Indeed, every EA practitioner who wants to learn how to practice enterprise architecture should listen to Dr. Gama.

About the IRM UK Awards and the Conference

Riot Games’ enterprise architecture journey is just one of the exceptional stories being recognised at the IRM UK Enterprise & Business Architecture Conference Europe 2025, co-located with the Business Change & Transformation and Service Design conferences.

As a finalist for the Enterprise & Business Architecture Best Practice Award 2025, Riot Games is joined by a global line-up of organisations setting new standards in strategic alignment, capability-based planning, and enterprise-wide collaboration.

📅 Awards Presentation
Monday, 16 June 2025 | 🕘 09:50 – 10:05 AM

🏆 Finalists – Enterprise & Business Architecture Best Practice Award 2025

• • • The King’s Trust® – Ryan Preece, Deputy Chief Technology Officer & Jessica Smallwood, Enterprise Architect
  • • Riot Games – Nelson Gama, Lead Enterprise Architect
  • Tatra Banka – Peter Filip, Lead Enterprise Architect

The IRM UK Awards celebrate organisations that are not only advancing enterprise architecture practice, but also demonstrating its tangible value to the business — through clarity, collaboration, and measurable impact. From public service to global gaming, these finalists exemplify how architecture, when done right, becomes a vital enabler of transformation.

Let’s celebrate the stories behind the strategy — and the people making it happen.

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