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League of Legends (Riot Games, 2009) and Valorant (Riot Games, 2020) are both team-based competitive multiplayer games that do not feature any form of story-based game mode, but both feature a large cast of fleshed-out playable characters, each with their own design, backstory, and set of abilities. This study focuses on comparing both games’ approaches to characterization to understand how they incorporate elements of characterization in theircharacter design. This was done with the hope of informing future developers of multiplayer hero games, as well as identifying similarities in their character design despite how different both games are. This study compared two sets of two characters, one from each game, which featured similarities with each other. These similarities served as this study’s starting point to analyze, and then compare both games’ approach to characterization. Many similarities were found between both games in their approach to characterization, despite their core gameplay differences. But it also found many differences, both gameplay-dependent, and dependent on other factors.