Rocket League success story: successful mechanics, viral promotion, early release on Steam. Just bought Rocket League? Any advice?
An hour-long lecture at the GDC 2016 developer conference.
He talked about how a studio that used to outsource came up with the wildly successful game Rocket League. Corey also shared development details, the vicissitudes of launching on several platforms, and told what mistakes the team made on the way to release.
The DTF editors publish a translation of the speech.
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My name is Corey Davis and I am a Senior Designer at Psyonix. I have been working in the company for 10 years, at first I was a programmer, but now I have moved to the design team. In the studio I monitor the development of our projects, including racing game Rocket League. You probably want to know what the word Psyonix even means. Blame Dave, he's the one who came up with the unpronounceable name for us.
We are an independent studio located in California. Dave brought us together, taught us how to work, and we began performing contract tasks for other developers. Prior to the release of Rocket League, Psyonix was involved in the creation of the canceled shooter Nosgoth, and previously our hand touched Mass Effect 3, Gears of War, Bulletstorm and XCOM. We worked with such large projects, but no one had heard of us. And when people in Once again When people ask how our company immediately achieved such unexpected success, I point out that this is not our first day in the industry.
So here's what's going to happen today. Let's start with the history of the company: from 2008, when we released our first independent project, until the release of Rocket League. Then I'll talk about the key decisions that influenced the development. During the creation of Rocket League, we several times encountered problems, the solutions to which seriously affected the direction of the game's development. I'll go into more detail about these decisions and explain why I think they're one of the key reasons for Rocket League's success.
Then we'll talk about certain subtle details and interesting mechanics that make up the game. I will explain why they work the way they do.
Then I will try to analyze our success. I'll try to pretend that I at least somehow understand why Rocket League has become so popular.
Finally, I'll share with you the lessons we learned (or didn't learn) after the game's release. 9 months have passed since then, but they were completely crazy. And I will tell you what we, as a studio, have learned.
Story
This video is not a trailer for the N64 version of Rocket League. It's actually Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars, the game with the worst title ever. And I regret that we came up with that name every time I have to say it.
This is our game, we didn't steal anything. We released it in 2008 on the PlayStation Network, and most people had never heard of it. People learn about it by reading articles about Rocket League. And here's the thing: it has a score of 67 out of 100 on ratings aggregator Metacritic.
The game is almost the same as Rocket League and it has such a low rating. And when I took a closer look at the Metacritic page, I suddenly noticed that our Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars was in the list of the 100 best games on the Playstation 3 console in 2008, at number 92.
You will say that we simply had to make a second game after such success. But then we did not understand this, and did not know what mistakes we had made, what could be done better. It was our first game, and we were just a small independent studio that was also working on the Gears of War game at the time.
But we learned that the people who got into Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars really loved it. Few people knew about it, but those who knew wrote letters to us, spoke very highly of it, and some are still playing, which is quite impressive for a 2008 project without any advertising.
Even then, we introduced support for uploading videos to YouTube into the game, and an innumerable number of cool video montages appeared on the Internet, just as is happening now with Rocket League.
And even then we realized that we had made several mistakes during development. We, like many players, loved this game, but almost no one had heard of it. Therefore, it was worth investing in marketing and bringing it to mind.
We also realized that the Playstation 3 players were playing a completely different game than we were playing in the office. We played it on computers at 60 frames per second, connecting via local network, and they - God forbid, at 30 frames per second via the Internet. What led to constant delays signal and frozen image on the screen. Such problems can turn off many people.
In general, several years have passed. It's 2011.
It's World Battle Car League, great name, isn't it? Restarting the game, born of greed. In 2011, everyone did this. But, in fact, then we noticed that many games like Monday Night Combat began to go into that steppe, which is now called e-sports. And we understood that our idea would be perfect for this. But it's hard to do anything without a publisher and an adequate budget.
I wanted to make the second game better and more realistic. Many hours spent developing the concept and thinking through the scope were wasted. We even come up with realistic stadiums.
Then there were too many changes with the game, it moved away from the original concept, but we were never able to create a normal and interesting prototype. And in Psyonix it's almost a death sentence. Working on the game was just boring: we made changes, changed cars, changed the physics model, and just got confused.
We tried to find a publisher, but no one accepted the game, and I can't blame them for that. Plus, as time passes, I realize that the game was trying to be ahead of its time. In 2011, eSports was gaining momentum, but had not yet reached the level that we see now.
So we did what all developers loved to do at the time: we started developing an open-world game. Our lead technical artist is a real wizard who could create an open world, which we decided to take advantage of.
We envisioned the player being able to do a lot of different things. He, of course, could go to the stadium to play football, but that was one of the options. The idea is good, but perhaps too much for a small studio. There were only 15 of us then. We started coming up with different races and mini-games.
The scale of the game grew, we could no longer stop it. We had to pay attention to every element and mechanic, and as a result, no aspect of the game reached the desired level of quality. And physics, which was great for playing football, was not very suitable for other activities. We made it specifically for jumping and flying around the arena - when with the same physics the car started jumping over the hills, nothing good came of it.
Rocket League
Finally, we came to the development of Rocket League. At that time, however, it was not called that way. We decided that we wanted to make a game that would be SARBPC - yes, that's the official acronym. Possibly the worst acronym of all time. We allocated a small team that could work without distracting the entire studio at once.
We abandoned unnecessary mechanics, we just wanted to bring the main idea to mind. It was supposed to be a car football game that people would play on dedicated servers. Our goal was to create the first alpha prototypes as quickly as possible. And we were going to make the game free-to-play.
It was 2013, the shooter Team Fortress 2 and team game Dota2 was riding a wave of success; no one had ever made the mistake of making a free game on personal computers.
We thought that if we created a free-to-play game, money would pour in buckets to our office doors.
What changed?
People often come to us and ask: “You made almost exactly the same game, but got a completely different result. So what exactly is the difference?”
Firstly, this time the matches are taking place on dedicated servers. This is a very big change. But in 2008 we could not afford anything else. The signal delay between players was really big problem. From the very beginning, we needed dedicated servers for Rocket League.
Secondly, we're almost at 60 frames per second even on Playstation 4. For a game where every second, every fraction of a second matters, a high refresh rate is a must. The first game on the Playstation 3 played at such a low frame rate that it simply felt bad, too wooden. Much more wooden than the version we played on PC.
Thirdly, we have greatly improved the matchmaking system. But I won’t go into details, I’ll just say that we made a rating system that matches the player with opponents with the appropriate skill level. The system turned out to be very flexible.
And, also, we have expanded the possibilities for customizing cars. This is very important for any competitive sports game. And besides, everyone loves hats.
And of course, we spent two years perfecting all our ideas and mechanics. There's nothing groundbreaking here, but when discussing development, people often forget how important this is. And not everyone can afford to spend two years improving every aspect of the game. But we could: contract work brought the company enough money so that we could calmly work on the game.
Our experience as an outsourcing studio played a very important role at this stage. We saw how other companies work, we understood a lot - what is worth doing and what is not. We have seen more than once how development teams get tired of endless stand-ups and meetings. We have also honed our knowledge of the Unreal 3 engine to perfection. We seemed to know everything about him: all the stupid things he sometimes does, all the dark magic he worked on.
We've also honed our own development process. Before Rocket League, we made a game on the iOS platform called ARC Squadron. Then a lot of effort was invested in bringing it to mind. And critics praised the game, it was well received, but it sold poorly.
Many people come to GDC and talk about their successes, but few mention their failures. We personally started developing and abandoned a huge number of projects. There were a lot of them, but that's completely normal.
Game development is a difficult business. Everyone makes mistakes, but if you can learn from those mistakes, then everything is fine.
Two problems were especially acute for us.
Firstly, while the development team was growing, we often lost control over the situation, everyone had their own opinion, their own wishes, which were difficult to satisfy. And this is a big problem.
Secondly, due to big size teams, we often could not understand and decide what exactly we were creating. But in the case of Rocket League, it was clear from the very beginning what we were working on and where we were going. Therefore, everyone clearly understood what needed to be done at each specific moment in time at each stage of development.
Key decisions
Firstly, our game is quite simple in its essence. Somehow we decided that in Rocket League cars would not have characteristics. And many, coming to the game, ask the question: why do cars have no characteristics? “I want my car to have performance, I want a car that is more suited to being in the gate.”
But the fact is that we did not have characteristics in the first game, and we are, as it were, fundamentally against this approach. Rocket League is a simple but very dynamic game. In 3 seconds, a player can leave the goalkeeper position and attack the enemy goal. And if the cars were separated by characteristics, it would interfere with such an important concept. We just felt that it was wrong to introduce different types of machines.
We decided to abandon the characteristics, but for us it was not an obvious decision. We were really worried about this because reviews of the first game said it lacked depth. But we simply didn’t have enough time to test the version of the game with different machines with different characteristics. That is, in the end, our “brilliant” solution was born out of lack of time.
Secondly, we were very concerned that players might simply not be impressed with a game with only one mode. Making only football mode was dangerous. But again, we didn’t have enough time to work on anything else. And at the time the game was released, if you think about it, we had already been working on football for more than 7 years. We later released additional modes as special events, and it worked out well. However, at the development stage, everything did not look so obvious.
Thirdly, there was a long debate within the studio about the number of stadiums. In the end, we decided that we would leave one type of arena. SARPBC had different stadiums, right down to the “donuts”, along which you had to drive the ball towards the opponent’s goal. But when we started interviewing players, we realized that most preferred to play on a map called Urban, which became the basis for the playing field in Rocket League. Therefore, we decided that we would not waste effort and resources on creating different maps if players still prefer our version of de_dust.
This decision gave us several advantages: we were again able to concentrate our forces on one thing, we worked on every corner, every meter of the field. We spent a lot of time creating the map, and if we had to create multiple maps, we would not have achieved this level of quality. Some veterans of the series did not like this, they did not understand why the second version of the game had less content than the first. But everyone had to come to terms with this disadvantage.
Not a free game
People often come up to us and ask where the studio got the courage to make the game paid. And this is a very good question.
We were originally going to release Rocket League as a free-to-play version. Then everything was logical, this approach seemed like a logical solution for a strange game about cars kicking a ball. We also needed to gather a large player base as quickly as possible so that the matchmaking system could work properly. We looked at Valve and thought that everything would be simple.
Here is a real screenshot from an early version of the game
At that time, Rocket League had a whole crafting system. Players could collect parts and use them to create parts for cars. And we threw it all away when we decided that our game would not be free-to-play, although we spent a lot of effort developing the system.
In the summer of 2014, VP of Marketing Jeremy Don convinced everyone that this approach would be a mistake, for which many thanks to him. We realized that developing a full-fledged paid game would have a better impact on both the game itself and our reputation. We were able to focus on the game, and not on thinking through a free-to-play system. We then almost turned from game designers into monetization designers. We had to work not so that the players would be better off, but so that they would be paid more.
Freedom: Finally, we can think about how we can make Rocket League as good as possible.
We were also worried that if we went the free-to-play route, Rocket League would have a hard time luring people away from big games unless they were a little invested in the game in the first place. If you think about it, it's a very interesting psychology.
And, unexpectedly, calculations showed that making the game paid, rather than free, would simply be more profitable. The average profit per user of free-to-play on PC is from one to four dollars. And we thought, based on the popularity of the last game and hoping for help from Sony, that we would be able to sell at least 50 thousand copies at 20 dollars. Even according to calculations, betting on a paid game seemed more profitable. In the case of free-to-play, selling enough hats for the cars would be difficult.
Here is a slide from one of our meetings
Please note that we ended up spending twice as much on development. But based on these estimates, we realized that for the game to even pay off, it was necessary to sell at least 2 million hats, or at least 56 thousand copies of the game.
Required mechanics
The game was originally scheduled to launch in November 2014, six months earlier. But we knew that there were mechanics that needed to be completed before the game was released.
We realized quite late that we couldn't run the game without a command system. This is obvious now for multiplayer games, but back then we didn't immediately realize how important it was to allow players to gather with friends. When it became clear that we needed this system, it turned out that there were not even any basics for its creation. I had to develop it from scratch, which took a lot of time.
We knew that developing team mechanics would force us to delay the game's release, but we decided to take a chance. And the risk paid off in the end, even though we spent a good chunk of the extra budget and pushed back the release date.
The second mechanic was the opponent selection system. When we were still trying to release it in November, it didn’t work the way it does now. I won’t go into details, but we decided to change it, and now the system directs all players to one server, which selects a worthy opponent for everyone. We had to build the infrastructure from scratch, it turned out well, but, of course, it almost burned down after the game was released.
These two mechanics became an integral part of the game, allowing players to gather with friends and fight against opponents of a similar level. But just for the sake of them, we had to postpone the release and seriously inflate the budget. It was a risk, but it was worth it. I understand that not everyone can afford to take such a risk, but if it is possible, then do not be afraid.
Platforms
What many people don't know is that we originally intended to release Rocket League on Playstation 4 and Playstation 3. When we were developing the game, the latter was still selling quite well, but we soon realized that we simply could not optimize the game so that it would work properly on the old one. console. And on the Steam site we were going to launch the game “later”. But at the last minute, the decision was made to make Rocket League for personal computers as soon as possible.
And it was the best decision we ever made. If you've been looking at Rocket League's sales figures, you'll know that the game was free on PlayStation+ in its first month, with 6 million downloads. We were afraid that we wouldn't be able to pay for enough servers to last, but sales of the game on Steam paid for all the costs of maintaining the infrastructure. And besides, Steam pays very quickly, which is very important. And I can’t imagine how we would have managed if we had launched the game only on PlayStation 4 and attracted such a number of users.
Unobvious facts
Special physics
The interaction between the ball and cars in Rocket League does not work according to standard physics rules. We didn't use Unreal's built-in physics. The problem is that “real” physics works too randomly and unpredictably, which already sounds strange for a physics-based “esports”. But in reality, from such a game you would expect a certain consistency in the machine’s hitting the ball, but the real physics behaves too strangely.
We wanted the system to follow the player's original intent rather than actual physical rules. That is, if a player places the ball between his car and the goal, hitting the projectile should send it into the goal, and not in a random direction - depending on how it bounces off the car.
But this is not obvious; it would seem that if a game is based on physics, it should work clearly and according to the rules. However, with our physics, the game was calmly balanced the way we needed. If real physics were used, it would behave accordingly - very complex and confusing. If you hit the ball high speed, he flies away from you with great force. And if the ball and the car are flying quickly towards each other, then we do not always need the entire force of the collision to influence their interaction.
Now take a look at the picture of the car's incredibly well-designed hitbox.
Yes, it's just a box. And this is also strange, it may seem that in such a serious competitive game you need to strive for absolute accuracy. But, in this case, you again have to sacrifice predictability. It is very important that a player hitting the ball at a certain angle always gets more or less the same result. And we realized that although the box-shaped hitbox (the area around the object model, entering which registers the fact of a collision between two objects - editor's note) seems strange and inaccurate, it gives clear and predictable results during a collision.
Here is an example of how fake physics works.
On the left is an example of real physics. Where the ball goes depends on the speed of the car, the angle of impact, the speed and direction of the ball. There seems to be nothing wrong, such a system sounds quite predictable. But our system, an example of which is shown on the right, works more clearly. The vector between the ball and the car is always directed towards where the player's camera is looking. That is, in order to score a goal, a player must look at the goal and hit the ball towards the goal. Everything is simple and clear, and experienced players know what to expect in certain situations.
When development first began, we did not yet have this simple model. In fact, we wanted to make Rocket League more realistic than the first game. And realistic physics has its advantages.
For example, if you imagine a large soccer ball hitting your car, you would assume that it should roll up the bumper. And then, having picked it up with the bumper, you will be able to bypass your opponents. But in the final model, the ball will simply bounce off the car - this is more reminiscent of ping pong than real physics. But we thought a ball-pick system might be cool and interesting, so we showed it to our alpha testers. They didn't really like it.
They remembered how physics worked before, and could not get used to the new model. She was different, and different is always bad. But partly, their dissatisfaction was understandable. The system has lost the predictability it had since the first game. We read the reviews and realized that at least the result was comprehensive and interesting system- Constancy and predictability have been lost.
And now I want to show you my favorite quote. These words were spoken two months before the game's release.
This game is built on greedy developers and lazy design. That's exactly what it is, and I really hope it fails. There are too many good independent games out there whose developers think about and respect their customers. And because of that, Rocket League simply doesn't deserve to succeed.
Ironically, the veteran ended up competing in and winning Rocket League competitions. So he apparently retracted his words.
But this is what we encountered shortly before the game's release. Now everyone says that Psyonix is a great studio that listens to its players, but then even our longtime fans were not sure whether they should trust us. They didn't know if we were doing the right thing.
Here's one example of the things players can do with Rocket League's weird physics. When we see something like this, we are always very surprised, because none of us is capable of this. This is simply incredible. Videos like this keep popping up on Reddit, thanks to the predictable physics system.
Unexpected skills
If you haven't played Rocket League, I'll explain. The player can perform a double jump by pressing the A button twice. And if during the second jump he holds down the button in a certain direction, the car will somersault in that direction. That is, the player can jump back, forward or sideways.
And we almost accidentally changed this mechanic so that the second jump uses a sharp decaying momentum, rather than a gradual acceleration, as it was in the first game, the name of which I will not say. And our decision had an unexpected result.
Here's an example of how I'm using this trick incorrectly.
I approached the ball correctly, but used my second jump too early. As a result, the ball flew past the goal because it lost its initial momentum before it was hit.
Here's how it should have been done.
Ignoring the slightly different trajectory, this time I used the momentum from the second jump in time, so I hit the goal.
Initially, we thought that it would be better to correct such a mistake. Because the game was doing something it shouldn't have been doing. But then we realized: the ability to pull off something like that is an indicator of the player’s abilities. Experienced users can hit the ball harder and more accurately, but this requires using the second jump very carefully and at the right moment.
And at the same time, beginners don’t know that this is even possible. During the development of Rocket League, our goal was to create a game that newcomers could understand. And for them the game seems slow enough that they can understand what is happening, but the same veterans play at high speeds.
This mechanic also adds tactical depth to the game. After all, in order to pull off a trick with an enhanced blow, you need to sacrifice the initial impulse of flight, giving up a double jump.
The magic of zero seconds
We almost accidentally added the zero second mechanic to the first game. The point is that when the timer reaches 0 seconds, the match does not end until the ball touches the ground. It may seem like something very small, but it is not. Because the mechanics again allow you to pull off very interesting tricks. And it also enriches the game on a competitive level.
The final of the first major Rocket League tournament.
We watched the end of that match live in the office, and it was something incredible. The magic of zero seconds has been in the game for a very long time, but it never ceases to delight us. But at first glance it doesn’t seem like something big, because it didn’t appear thanks to a design document, but simply thanks to the idea of one person. And I think it's small decisions and mechanics like these that give games flavor.
Machine destruction
Destruction is a very controversial topic of discussion. I don't have a video on this, but the gist of the mechanics is that if one car crashes into another at high speed, the second one explodes. Doesn't sound very good, right? In the first game, this mechanic was poorly balanced, it generally remained there as a reminder that initially we were making a game about car battles, and not about football.
The player is not punished in any way for blowing up an enemy car, and in some sense the opportunity to destroy the enemy breeds violent and aggressive behavior. But the mechanics remained in place.
Top players have begun to use the ability to blow up opponents as a strategic tool, for example against teams that are too fond of standing together in goal. And for less experienced players it became an outlet. We are often told something like: “I can’t score, but I can blow up opponents’ cars.”
I don't know how unbalanced this mechanic is, but even if it is, then perhaps such features should not always be removed from the game? Even if we weren't sure about the decision, we just started observing the players' reactions. And they liked it.
Quick chat
We added the ability to share quick messages during gameplay almost at the last minute, about one to two months before release. We cut the system before the game's release, but added it back a couple of weeks later. As you can see in the photo above, the prepared phrases became a meme. And we added quick chat only because we were worried that players would waste time on messages during the game.
And I like to believe that the quick chat has had a positive impact on the game's community because it makes it easy to praise a team member after they score a goal.
Success Analysis
Now I'm going to try to pretend for a bit that I know why we were successful.
The first reason is the state of the market. The way people now watch a variety of video content. In 2008, Twitch didn't exist and YouTube was a completely different place. I will always be proud of this: we somehow overtook League of Legends in terms of viewership for a short period of time. As for YouTube - I really like those terrible pictures on the covers of the videos. Just look at them.
But there are people: video creators, streamers who need our games to gather viewers. But for us it’s actually free advertising. We spent exactly zero dollars on traditional methods advertising. All of our advertising consisted of campaigning on Twitch, YouTube and cross-promotion.
Secondly, the Reddit forum was a big reason for our success. More specifically, the Playstation 4 subreddit advertised us during the beta test so that players paid attention to Rocket League even before its release.
Footage of the game filled the forum, where for a long time nothing other than Rocket League appeared. Streamers started contacting us, asking for beta keys because they saw the game there.
That's how it all started. And I can't even begin to explain how important it is to actively engage with your game's community.
cybersport
Esports is becoming increasingly important. Interestingly, the popularity of the first game in narrow circles gave us a ready-made professional scene for Rocket League. Previously, there was a problem that if you suddenly don’t know how you can even play football on cars, you won’t understand that it’s even possible. Some reviews of the game wrote that the ball and cars behave too unpredictably, and, accordingly, the game is not so interesting.
But since Rocket League's release, people like streamer Kronovi have been streaming on Twitch since day one, allowing potential players to see what kind of tricks a pro can pull off. And they wanted to learn the same. They saw that all this was possible and that the game could be an eSport. In addition, the audience is accustomed to watching cool videos from tournaments or simply interesting moments from a match. This is normal now, but it wouldn't have worked in 2008.
These days, even a small indie game can get a little publicity. People are interested in games like this. The market has changed, now small games have a much better chance of getting noticed.
Innate virality
It's a bit of a silly term, but Rocket League has something going for it that makes it very easy to spread across social media. It is very easy to cut animations from what is happening in the game, and even an ignorant player will be able to understand what is happening in them. He will be surprised and delighted. But, for example, in the case of the MOBA genre, a person unfamiliar with the game will not understand anything at all. Even if you haven't played Rocket League, you understand what happened in the videos I showed.
The game itself took over the subreddit, without a single cent being spent on it. We didn't give away keys discreetly from fake accounts or anything like that. The community organized an advertising campaign for us.
Rocket League is a game that's pretty easy to understand basic rules, but it will take years to fully master it. And it's fun to play at any skill level. We were initially afraid that new players might be put off by the difficulty and the perception that they can't do anything. But it turned out that even beginners find it very interesting to play while losing with the whole team. And thanks to the system of selecting honest opponents.
And seeing what good players could do inspired new players. Here's one of my favorite pieces.
But back then, when we only had the first game, people simply didn't believe that something like that was possible in some random indie hack. As you can see, as players' skills increase, they are able to do incredible things, not alone, but with a team.
Twitch
Twitch was another important component of success. We didn't do this on purpose, but Rocket League turned out to be a very suitable game for streamers. Battles between popular players happened spontaneously. One streamer could challenge another to a duel, and so on.
And we distributed the game to everyone, on the condition that they broadcast it. And they kept their promise. But we didn't pay them. We didn't buy anyone because I personally hate to think of these people as marketing machines. We simply gave them the keys if they wanted it, went to their broadcasts, answered questions.
Matches scheduled for Extra time, it was interesting to watch, the audience in the Twitch chat reacted very funny and enthusiastically to what was happening. We, as developers, challenged popular streamers to play against us. And the entire Twitch was up in arms against the developers.
PS Plus
For many, this is a rather controversial issue. There is no clear certainty that the PS Plus service can somehow help the developer. But in our case, PS Plus turned out to be useful system. Rocket League was spreading across Reddit and Twitch, and anyone who saw the game and was interested in it could download it for free and look at it with their own eyes.
It really helped us. Rocket League remained paid, but managed to catch a free-to-play audience. At the same time, we made a profit using Steam and received a large number of free audiences.
Good timing for the game's release
There are factors that influenced the success of the game that we have no direct relationship to. Not many games were released in the summer of 2015. And we thank the marketing department, which specifically chose this time to release the game. There weren't many titles in the PS4 game catalog, and each new release became a real event. We didn't have to knock on the doors of news sites and blogs because they themselves needed a news story to write about.
The game was very noticeable on the console, which fueled its popularity on the Steam service. The press wrote about us completely free of charge and so much that it was already comical. If I'm not mistaken, Kotaku published articles about us for 19 days straight, as if the site had nothing else to write about. And all because we chose the right time for the release.
An indie developer might make the mistake of thinking that they don't have to worry about big games, to whom he is no rival. He may think that there is nothing wrong with releasing a game in parallel with giants like Call of Duty or Destiny, because they have a completely different audience. But this is not so. U social networks, news sites and streamers are limited quantity attention. And therefore, a good moment for release can help the game become a success, and an unsuccessful one can cause its failure.
Luck
Very often people come here and say that just make a good game and you will get the success you deserve. But this is not true, luck matters too.
I won't go into great psychological detail, but when analyzing your own success, it is very important not to succumb to the temptation of "" or anything like that. We tend to pay attention only to what brought us success, but perhaps somewhere out there there were already ten similar Rocket Leagues that failed.
We may have just gotten lucky and released the game at a good time. The success of one game does not mean that similar game made according to the same rules will definitely find success.
Even if we try to repeat the trick ourselves. Sometimes ordinary luck can seem like a sign of genius, even when it is not.
However, it is up to the developer to maximize the likelihood of his own success. You can carefully plan the release. And you can also build into the game the ability to share some information about the game, cool moments with friends, so that the game can spread on its own.
What do we understand?
Our biggest challenge was the scale we accidentally reached. During development, we assumed that a maximum of 10 thousand players would play it simultaneously. But the number reached 180 thousand, which is about 35 times the maximum number of concurrent players in the beta test.
Our server room was almost literally on fire. But I don’t know how you can even prepare for this; at the time of beta the numbers weren’t nearly as high. There was no way we could load our own servers that much, even for testing. I can't give any advice on this matter. Just try to get ready. And be prepared to stay up at night.
The second big problem was the need to release patches on multiple platforms. If you've ever had to do something like this, then you know how terrible it is. Different times for certification and patch release make it very difficult to play between different platforms. We hope this will become a more common practice soon, especially with Rocket League coming to Xbox One soon. But one way or another, your producers will go crazy about it, and things will keep getting delayed. We had to delay the release of patches on PC until Sony finished certifying patches on PlayStation. The same applies to the release of DLC: each time we had to wait 10 working days for Sony's approval.
If you've played Rocket League, then you know that we're not shy about throwing badges and cars into the game as advertising. We can put anything into the game if it also helps us advertise ourselves. Most recently, for example, we added the DeLorean and the Batmobile to the game.
Rocket League doesn't have any kind of rigid setting or plot, but we're afraid that we'll become not a game, but a platform for advertising cars. I can’t say that we have any strict internal restrictions on this matter, but we constantly monitor ourselves.
Growing Community
Another challenge for us was adapting to the game’s ever-growing community. We started with 10 thousand concurrent players, and it was easy and pleasant to interact with this number of users through the forums and Twitter. It's easy to answer questions, communicate with users, and so on. But as the number of players grew, this level of interaction became impossible.
It is simply physically impossible to answer the questions of 180 thousand interested players. And this can make you look bad: suddenly the developers are not as easy to get along with, they don’t communicate as much with the public. There is no universal solution to this problem, but it is important to make every effort to minimize the consequences. We cannot answer all questions, but we do our best.
Selling DLC
Initially, it seemed like selling DLC would be easy. We gave them the game for free, so we figured they'd be happy to buy the extra content. In fact, DLCs sell much better on Steam than on PS4.
And the point is that if a player has already bought a game, he is more likely to agree to spend a little more on it. And the one who received the game for free will not find a reason in his head to suddenly spend money on it.
What would we like to do differently?
WriteA detailed guide to Rocket League, suitable for both beginners and advanced users - “how to hit the ball and not be an idiot.” Everything is detailed and with pictures.
Rocket League Basics:
Each new player goes through several stages. It looks something like this:
1) The player chases the ball and rejoices when he touches it. When there are six such players, it looks like a pack of dogs rushing after the ball and touching it with their noses.
2) The player finds the boost button and quickly chases the ball and actively picks up boosts. This makes it possible to touch the ball more often, but you don’t always hit it. There is no need to think at this stage. MYAAAAAACH!11 ヽ(◉◡◔)ﾉ
3) The player begins to hit the ball with high probability. Sometimes the second point falls out of sequence and it turns out that the ball is touched, but it flies very slowly (aka “sluggish ball”). It's not very good.
4) Suddenly it turns out that just hitting the ball is not the best thing effective exercise, because you can unexpectedly ruin everything, and you have to think about where you’re hitting. Here a super-diagram comes to the rescue about which directions it is normal to hit the ball, and which directions it is bad.
And here she is:
It looks confusing, but in short - you are a player on the right team, if you hit the ball from any number on the arrow next to it, then you are an idiot if that arrow is red.
To summarize, the basics = the player moves quickly and actively, always has a boost, and hits the ball towards the enemy goal so that the ball travels quickly, and hits the ball (and sometimes the goal) well. Usually this is enough for your teammates to trust you and not rush to take the ball away from you because of your uselessness.
Teamplay (team play in Rocket League)
After mastering the basic skills, it usually suddenly turns out that the game is a team game and in 3x3 everything is very difficult, everyone gets confused and gets in the way.
In fact, the teamplay formula for a game without communication is very simple.
Defensive play in Rocket League
As soon as it becomes clear that the attack has stalled, the enemies have intercepted the ball and you will not be able to take it away, we turn around and ride the boost/somersaults into our own goal, collecting boost along the way.
The enemies bring the ball to the area of the wall/corner/goal and everyone begins to stall and flounder.
And here is the magic scheme - if you are standing in the goal and see on the screen next to the ball (or with you) your ally or two, you remain in the goal. The allies will take turns going to knock the ball out of the corner. If after this iteration the ball is still in the corner (i.e. the teammates screwed up and didn’t clear), you go to knock out, and immediately after the failure you return to the goal and the cycle repeats.
If you shorten the wording, you get something like: “whoever is closest to the ball kicks it out, whoever is second covers/helps the first one, whoever is last is the goalkeeper and waits for his turn, and whoever couldn’t kick it out returns to the goal.”
If everyone follows this pattern, then the result is a cycle of machines, where one player always makes a clear, the second prepares to shoot in case the first misses, and the third covers the worst outcome (the ball into the goal). This sounds difficult at first, but gradually, even with randomness in matchmaking, everything naturally works this way.
Attack in Rocket League
The enemies screwed up the attack, we took the ball and are leading into the enemy half.
Immediately a magical scheme - if you see that there are two allies on the screen in front of you, you do not go to rush in with them, but stay behind in the midfield, and rush in only when one of the allies has returned back.
If you are the first to the ball and there are no allies on the screen, your task is to push the ball until it either flies, or is not centered, or until you are out of position.
If you went first and screwed up, go back for a midfield boost (along the way you can rub the enemy goalkeeper if you screw up near the corner and the team scores), recalibrate and see which scheme to use next (whether they take the ball from you and rush to gate, or the attack continues there).
Again, in short: “the first one gets to the ball - he pushes through and makes a fuss in every possible way, the second one is a little behind/in the center in case of a pass, loss of the ball or misalignment, the third one is far behind in case of a strong kick into your goal, and whoever screws up comes back.”
If it’s still not clear, I have some more of these wonderful arrows. And here they are:
Here the left side attacks and the right side defends. The numbering of players and their behavior are described in the diagrams above.
Again, don’t be scared and try to manually establish such interaction with your team; it will begin to work on an intuitive level sooner or later. In 2v2 it's the same, but without the player with number 2.
Correct camera and button settings in Rocket League
Most people drive with default button settings. Everyone experiments with camera settings themselves, or watches what professional players use.
Two settings options used by veterans:
Kronovi settings - default settings with a slightly stretched background and a slightly distant camera, it turns out a little more tactical review and potentially more convenient to spin erials.
Lachinio settings - more “arcade” settings, with maximum fov, low and close camera, because of this there is a greater sense of speed. With them it is more convenient to ride without a ball cam and focus strictly on the ball.
The camera stiffness parameter is responsible for the stiffness of the rubber band on which the camera hangs behind the car - at a stiffness of 10, when accelerating and turning, the camera will not move away/move at all (fraught with loss of the sense of speed).
They usually play with the Ball Cam always on, turning it off when collecting boosts, when dribbling the ball in front of them, and sometimes on walls.
Regarding the choice of cars - all hitboxes are rectangular boxes, but they differ slightly in height. In visual terms, flat cars are a little more convenient when flying, while convex ones are a little more convenient when dribbling on the ground. On the official forum, a friend compares everything, but the general consensus of pro players is to use what you like.
Ball control and Rocket League techniques
Beginning players usually have quite a lot of questions about how to fly like Superman and do all sorts of cool things, but, no matter how boring it may sound, the most effective method here - do all the in-game training several times a week, restarting attempts if you fail, until you start to feel confident with the ball.
Key non-intuitive points:
All turns must be made with the drift button held down
When flying towards the ball, it is not necessary to hold the boost all the time; sometimes it is more useful to let go and redirect the car while it is moving by inertia.
The easiest way to knock the ball off the wall is to follow it along the wall, keeping the car parallel to the ground. In this case, rolling off the wall will send the ball into the center of the field (or goal).
When purple sparks fly from under your wheels, you have reached maximum speed - the boost can be released and not wasted. Maximum speed can be achieved without boost by somersaulting forward twice.
After flying onto the ball, use the drift button to align the car relative to your inertia so as not to lose speed when landing.
The fastest way to get out of an enemy gate if you drive right into it is to drive forward and then level the car in the air with the drift button. You can somersault forward when you start riding upside down to speed up the process.
The goalkeeper can reach the goal crossbar without a boost if he makes a double jump, raising the nose of the car in the process (the main thing here is not to tumble back by accident).
Game tested on PlayStation 4
At brief description The differences between Rocket League and regular football will be minimal. Two teams on a sports field - sometimes not without aggressive behavior - try to intercept the ball. Players work hard to pass and try to score a goal against the opponent. During dangerous moments, the stands literally explode with screams, fans sing the anthem in unison, someone curses loudly and raises their balloon. To compare the arcade game from Psyonix with FIFA 15, only two essential details are missing: commentators and the athletes themselves - instead of them, colorful cars cut across the lawn.
⇡ Score a goal with a bumper
The team from San Diego is making a project in its own genre for the second time - previously the guys have already released a similar Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars for PlayStation 3. Before the start of the match, we are asked to choose one of the cars available in the garage and decorate it to our liking. You can change the color and graphics, install different wheels, attach a flag and customize the type of acceleration. For example, instead of regular nitro, dollar bills or bubble. Alas, all this “customization” in Rocket League is very weak. The existing cars are no different from each other, there is no way to improve them, and the choice of stickers is very poor. There are also few competition modes - only four, and the difference between them is only in the number of players. One on one is a tense match with only one opponent. There are also two-on-two, three-on-three and four-on-four modes - in the latter case, natural chaos occurs on the field.
However, the arcade does not become less fun because of weak content. The five-minute competitions here give no less emotions than big football. There are no rules as such - the main thing is to score more goals than the opposing team in the allotted time. If you come out at the end of the match with the same score, then overtime starts until the first goal is scored. That's all. There is real madness going on on the screen, and the intensity of passions is such that it is extremely difficult to refrain from shouting at crucial moments. Cars can jump, perform various flips, ride on walls and - with proper acceleration - even fly. To replenish your nitro supply, just drive through one of the points located on the field. At the same time, learning to drive in Rocket League is very easy - cars instantly respond to commands, go into a controlled drift, and abruptly changing direction is not difficult.
Any action on the field is emphasized by rich effects from the collisions of participants with each other and with the ball. A goal scored is accompanied by such a powerful explosion that everyone near the goal scatters in different directions. But in terms of graphics, this is a low-budget indie game that can hardly be called beautiful.
⇡ Dry in the tank
Psyonix has implemented cross-platform multiplayer between PlayStation 4 and PC users, so there is no shortage of players. But even if there is no one online, you can always go through the main campaign. The championship offers a standard scheme for this genre: we enter the field with one team, win, grow in rank and move further up the career ladder. Much more boring than online battles, but good for training.
Rocket League's shortcomings don't come from the process, which is excellent. It’s just that after a few hours the available maps get boring, I want fresh cars and used O greater differences in behavior between existing ones. You won’t be able to endlessly decorate six stickers, and the new flags and wheels given out when you level up quickly become unsatisfying. However, fun is guaranteed for several evenings, and if you remember that PS Plus subscribers will not be asked for a penny for the game this month, then that’s absolutely wonderful. We can only hope that the developers will keep their promise and support Rocket League with new content.
Advantages:
- fun gameplay;
- cross-platform multiplayer between PC and PS4;
- pleasant music.
Flaws:
- need more content.
| Graphic arts | Rocket League looks nice only due to the special effects. Bright explosions, thick exhaust smoke and good weather effects do their job. However, it is better not to look closely. | 7 |
| Sound | Good sound and a catchy soundtrack in the main menu - in general, nothing more is needed from such a game. | 8 |
| Single player game | Boring single races are only suitable for training and during a lull in the online world. | 6 |
| Group game | IN collective game There is an acute lack of a clear lobby, voting for the next map and some kind of championships. However, this is enough to have fun for a couple of evenings - online competitions are very fun and intense. | 8 |
| General impression | Rocket League is the best among arcade games on PSN and Steam - it is a bright, fast, interesting and, most importantly, simple game. If she had more cars, fields and customization options, it would be absolutely wonderful. | 8 |
player HoraryHellfire.
Erials are not an indicator of skill. Study the physics of the game. Go into the “free play” training mode and just hit the ball, pay attention to the acceleration and deceleration of the ball, and the bounces. Over time, you will feel the gravity of the ball and learn to “read” the game. Complete all tutorials in the game (Basic and Advanced). Thanks to the tutorials, you will understand the mechanics of double jumps, stopping the ball, flying, sliding, playing with the Ball Cam turned off, etc. and so on.
Change the camera settings, first try the settings of other players, and over time adjust them to suit you.
In the game, cars have 4 impact surfaces and all of them, when hit, give different acceleration to the ball.
- Wheels. The weakest striking surface of the machine. If you need a weak shot, perhaps even just stopping the ball, use a cartwheel kick.
- Roof. Has better impact properties than wheels. If you need a medium impact, then the roof is your “friend and comrade”.
- Bumper. The front bumper has with a strong blow. If a strong, fast blow is needed, hit with a bumper.
- Bumper angle. The most powerful hitting surface in the game. The only problem is to accurately hit the ball with the corner of the bumper.
Sliding (drift, powersliding). Used to quickly turn the machine. By default, the same button also has the lateral rotation of the car (air roll) installed; the game tutorial is silent about this nuance, but nevertheless, the use of Air Roll is one of the main criteria for a high-level game. Rotating the car will not allow you to gain an instant advantage over your opponents like the same double jump, however, in general, it will allow you to use the physics of the car more subtly, adapt to impacts, always land on wheels (like a butter sandwich or a cat, for example), and of course This is the basis of freestyle, which is not a necessary playing tool for a beginner. Try using Air Roll and Powersliding on different keys to give you more control over the machine.
Boost management. Always select a boost without sacrificing an advantageous (necessary) position on the field. The ball is in the opponent's court, is your goal in danger? Well, pick up the boost, it's yours. When you go for a boost, turn off the Ball Cam, however, do not lose the game situation, control the game.
Use walls. You can drive onto walls and hit the ball. Such strikes are difficult to perform without training, however, they allow you to gain an advantage over your opponent.
Supersonic. This is the maximum speed in the game, on the ground and in the air. As soon as you reach maximum speed, purple tracks appear under the wheels of your car. By continuing to use boost, when you reach supersonic speed, you are wasting the boost, your speed will not become faster, it is already at maximum. Use boost wisely. As long as you press the acceleration button, the car will drive at maximum speed, until sudden maneuvers or braking. At supersonic speed, your impacts are much stronger.
Dodging - Double jump to one side. The so-called “somersault”. Allows your car to gain speed without using boost, also Dodging good way hit the ball hard, however, for this you need to calculate the jump so that the ball touches the bumper.
Only after mastering all the above mentioned tools of the mechanics of the Rocket League game, you can move on to training the Aerials. Increasing control of the car in the air is the main criterion for progress when performing air strikes. First try to jump into Erial without speed, i.e. By standing still, this will allow you to gain greater control of the car during takeoff, although you sacrifice dynamics in this case. However, the dynamics on initial stages(Prospectus 1-3) The game is not as important as accuracy. Do not fly towards balls that fly close to walls or are in the corners of the field, because with such shots you lose position and, most often, give a pass to your opponents.
Land on wheels, this way you save time.
Keep an eye on the boost, if your tank is full the entire time you play, you will be faster than your opponents. Try to avoid short accelerations, in which case the boost is consumed faster than the acceleration occurs.
If the ball flies too high, use a double jump when taking off, this will give you an advantage in the air. There are 2 more tips when performing Erials.
- The player who is closer to the ball and in a better position will always be the first on the ball in the air, do not try to fly into the air to block.
- An exception may be an opponent's mistake when you take off first. However, most often, in such cases it will be 50/50 (equal probability of winning or losing the ball).
So, the main message:
Dodging and Double Jump are limited in time between the first button press and the second, approximately 1.5 seconds. Thus, while in the air, you can use the second press of the jump key within 1.5 seconds.
The “somersault” depends on the direction you choose and does not depend on the orientation of the car in space. Those. Regardless of whether the car is upside down or upside down, by pressing double jump to the left, your car will somersault to the left - it’s simple.
Rolling backwards always slows down the speed, regardless of whether the car is on the ground or in the air. The remaining directions allow your car to move in a given direction by adjusting its trajectory.
When the game timer freezes at 0:00, play continues until the ball touches the ground.
You can mute the sound and messages from any players in the match by using the game menu by clicking on pause, there is also a “Complain” button. You can also globally change the in-game Chat settings in the game settings.
A player icon with the word Psynet means that this user is on a different gaming platform from you.
In-game XP ranks are rarely indicative of your level of play, but rather indicate how long you've played Rocket League.
Amateur Rookie (1-9), Semi-pro Semi-pro (10-19), Pro Pro (20-29), Veteran Veteran (30-39), Expert Expert (40-49), Master Master (50-59), Legend Legend (60-73), Rocketeer (74-75).
Why is football the most popular sport? It is easy to learn and understandable at the most basic level: here is the ball, you need to drive it into the goal. You can change the rules and conditions as much as you like, and there will still be something in it.
If you go a little crazy and instead of the players of your favorite club, you drive indestructible cars onto the field, equip them with turbo acceleration and reinvent all the laws of physics - it will work out. Shamelessly unrealistic and endlessly beautiful.
Turbomessie
The idea of car football is far from new. Presenters have indulged in similar eccentricities in the past Top Gear- however, it’s unlikely that anyone else can afford to chase the ball in Volkswagen Fox and Toyota Aygo small cars, as Hammond and May did. It's expensive, and the sport turns out to be contact and unsafe. But in the virtual world...
Among the games Rocket League also not the first - this is a direct successor to a game with a name that cannot be reproduced from memory from the same developers. Surprisingly, on the second try, Psyonix brought the clumsy and little-noticed arcade game from the PlayStation 3 to shine.
Once the ball hits the goal, it explodes with colored paints and scatters players in different directions.
A team of several riders (from one to four) needs to drive the ball into the opponent’s goal. The task is trivial, but the methods are simply crazy. Heavy cars easily obey any commands, spinning almost like karts from, almost freely drive up steep walls (as in, only here you don’t even need to take acceleration for this), jump on the suspension and literally fly on the impulse from the accelerators.
In addition, the “athletes” are at their peak physical fitness and are able to spin somersaults in the air with the wave of a stick - in any plane, at any time. With the help of such tricks, you can give the ball additional acceleration or twist it, especially if you accelerate well beforehand.
You understand the basics in a couple of matches, and then the unbridled fun begins. The cars fly, jump, rush around, circle the stadium along the axis, try to hit the ball - and it is three times larger than them! - at the gate. The games last only five minutes, but the intensity of passions here sometimes surpasses football here. With live players (4x4 is a bit much, but 3x3 is just right), the game is revealed in its entirety: in team matches, in addition to simply controlling the ball, real tactics are revealed, players begin to take on specific roles and perform epic maneuvers in a few touches.
Let's say "No!" laws of gravity.
Pure skill
From the outside Rocket League looks like a passable downloadable arcade game about radio-controlled cars, but it conveys better than many the good sports excitement and joy from both football and racing without rules. Not a single sports simulator will show you so easily, on your fingers, why rolling the ball into the goal is so great. The closest analogue is the courtyard area under your window.
The only problem Rocket League(not counting the not always stable cross-platform servers, which failed a couple of times at the start) is that there is not enough of it. There's single player play in an ersatz career (you, a few made-up AI teams, a leaderboard, that's it) or friendly matches, a few practice challenges, two- to four-player split-screen co-op, and online multiplayer.
This is the absolute minimum, and it is more than enough... but still you always want more. More training modes - in addition to strikes, interceptions and sword control in the air, it never hurts to practice, for example, dribbling. More experiments and all sorts of unexpected nonsense in additional modes. You can develop the game with the insane plot of “a pack of cars kicking a ball” as much as you like.
On more or less high level During the game, someone will have to take on the role of a defender or goalkeeper. But we still don’t recommend just standing like a pillar at the gate.
No settings other than appearance(the developers are strongly against inequality in the main modes), no levels other than the rating for matchmaking, no skills other than your natural one. The tools it gives Rocket League, are studied inside and out in a couple of hours, and then all that remains is to hone your skills. However, getting to know real football is pretty much the same: it’s easy to start, it’s easy to enjoy, but there’s a lot of training between professionals and beginners.
Watching those who masterfully master their machines is a great pleasure. The ESL esports league recently included Rocket League among the disciplines. By and large, this is exactly what eSports needs: a vibrant, balanced game with simple rules from which you can get an incredible amount out of. But at the same time, it is important to remember that ESL also held tournaments on mini-games for ICQ - not that this obliges us to do much.
When professionals play, even one-on-one matches manage to be exciting.
The main thing is that Rocket League It's not trying to be eSports for the sake of eSports, it's just a crazy, fresh, and catastrophically fun game. That's why it's beautiful.
The game can be purchased on PSN for 999 rubles or on Steam for 419.Until the end of July, the PS4 version can be downloaded for free with a PS Plus subscription.Multiplayer supports play across platforms.
Pleased
Upset
- understandable and, in a good way, exuberant fun;
- simple rules, but a high limit for improvement;
- a successful combination of the basics of football with a car arcade;
- cross-platform multiplayer between PC and PS4.