Rocket League
Rocket League is a 2015 vehicular soccer video game developed and published by Psyonix. A sequel to 2008's Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars, Rocket League features up to eight players assigned to each of the two teams, using "rocket-powered" vehicles to hit a ball into their opponent's goal and score points over the course of a match. The game includes single-player and multiplayer modes that can be played both locally and online, including cross-platform play between all versions.
Psyonix began formal development of Rocket League around 2013, refining the gameplay from Battle-Cars to address criticism and fan input. Psyonix also recognized their lack of marketing from Battle-Cars and engaged in both social media and promotions to market the game. Rocket League was first released on the PlayStation 4 and Windows respectively in July 2015, with ports for Xbox One and Nintendo Switch being released later on. Physical retail versions for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One were distributed starting in 2016 by 505 Games and later by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. Versions for macOS and Linux were also released in 2016, but support for their online services was dropped in 2020. Rocket League is developed under the games as a service model; later updates for the game enabled the ability to modify core rules and added new game modes, including ones based on ice hockey, gridiron football and basketball. It has been offered as free-to-play since 2020 when Epic Games acquired Psyonix.
Rocket League was praised for its gameplay improvements over Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket Powered Battle-Cars, as well as its graphics and overall presentation, although some criticism was directed towards the game's physics engine. It has since been considered one of the greatest video games ever made. The game earned many industry awards and saw over 10 million sales and 40 million players by the beginning of 2018. Rocket League has also been adopted as an esport, with professional players participating through ESL and Major League Gaming along with Psyonix's own Rocket League Championship Series.
Gameplay
Rocket League gameplay is largely the same as that of its predecessor, Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars. Players control a rocket-powered car and use it to hit a ball that is much larger than the cars towards the other team's goal area to score goals, in a way that resembles indoor soccer, with elements reminiscent of a demolition derby. Players' cars have the ability to jump to hit the ball while in mid-air. Updates in 2024 introduced new features that allow players to view the remaining boost amount of their teammates, and how much time was remaining on the game clock when specific comments were made in the chat.Matches are usually five minutes long, with a sudden death overtime if the game is tied at that point. Matches can be played from between one-on-one up to four-on-four players, as well as in casual and ranked playlists. The latter serves as Rocket League competitive online mode, where players compete in various tiered ranks within game seasons, with victories or losses raising or lowering a player's rank, respectively. The game includes a single-player Season mode, with the player competing with computer-controlled players. An update in December 2016 introduced Custom Training sequences that can be created by players and shared with others on the same platform. Players are able to specify the ball's path and the presence and skill of opponents on the field, which enables them to practice specific shots or maneuvers.
A few months after it was released, Psyonix released an update that added game modes known as mutators, modifying some aspects of gameplay, such as increased or decreased gravity, ball size, ball speed and bounciness. For the 2015 holiday season, another update replaced mutator matches with an ice hockey-inspired mode, played on an ice rink and the ball replaced with a hockey puck with different physics. Positive reception to the ice hockey mode led to it being extended for a few weeks after the holiday season. Snow Day was permanently added to the mutator settings for private matches and exhibition games on February 10, 2016. Hoops, a game mode based on basketball, was added on April 25, 2016. A separate Rumble mode, which incorporates unusual power-ups, such as the ability to freeze the ball in place or cause a single opponent to have difficulty controlling their car, was added on September 8, 2016. An update in December 2016, known as Starbase ARC and based on Psyonix' mobile game ARC Squadron, added support for custom arenas for Windows players supported through Steam Workshop, along with other new content.
A new game mode, Dropshot, was added in a March 2017 update. It takes place in an arena without any goals and a field made of hexagonal tiles, and uses a ball that becomes increasingly electrified after successful strikes or passes. The more the ball is struck by players without touching the ground the more electrified it becomes, and the more tiles it damages once it finally does hit the ground. The goal of the mode is to damage the opponent's floor enough to break a hole into it, allowing the ball to drop through and score. When a team scores, the floor on the opponent's side of the field resets to normal, while the floor on the scoring team's side retains any existing damage.
Psyonix also released a number of limited-time modes for the game. Spike Rush, released as part of the Radical Summer event in 2019, resembles rugby. The spikes power-up will attach the ball to a player's vehicle once it is touched. Players must avoid contacting any opposing player as it results in instant demolition. In celebration of Super Bowl LV in February 2021, Psyonix released a limited time gamemode called Gridiron, which functions similar to gridiron football with the normal soccer ball being replaced by a football. A new game mode was added called Knockout was added in 2022. It is played Free-For-All, without teams, in a set of newly added arenas that have no goals. The object of the mode is to knock opponents into Hazards, features that destroy the player on contact, in order to take away one of three lives. This can be achieved using the three actions the player can take, Attack, Block, and Grab, operating similarly to Rock, Paper, and Scissors respectively in Rock Paper Scissors. After a 6 minutes, if a winner has not yet been decided by being the only remaining player with one or more lives, the match enters Sudden KO mode, where all actions are much more powerful and exiting a safe zone around the map removes a life.
As part of a means to monetize the game beyond downloadable content, Psyonix has tried a few different approaches. In September 2016, it introduced a loot box system known as Crates, where players could purchase them with a random selection of in-game customization items, opened through the purchase of Keys using real-world funds. Due to increasing governmental concern over loot boxes, Psyonix replaced the Crates system with Blueprints in December 2019, which offer a known specific item with potential modifiers as potential end-of-match drops. These Blueprints can then be crafted using the game's new premium currency, or purchased with real-world funds, if the player so chooses. A new rotating Item Shop was introduced in December 2019 as well, with Featured items available on a 48-hour timer and Daily items on a 24-hour timer. The Item Shop includes all types of in-game items, such as Painted Cars, Exotic Wheels, Goal Explosions, and many more. Each item has a listed Credit value that will show the item's cost, allowing players to purchase the exact item they want, instead of relying on RNG to attain a specific item previously available through loot boxes. Separately, Psyonix added a battle pass feature to the game in September 2018, known as the Rocket Pass. Each pass, which lasts a few months, has challenges and other opportunities through playing Rocket League that allow players to increase the tier of the Pass, from which new unique customization options tied to that pass can be unlocked. While the Rocket Pass is free to all players, a flat-cost premium option that accelerates the level up rate and unlocks additional items at certain tier levels can be purchased.
Development
Psyonix had previously developed Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars in 2008 for the PlayStation 3. That game itself bore out from previous modifications that Psyonix' founder, Dave Hagewood, had done for Unreal Tournament 2003 by expanding out vehicle-based gameplay that Epic Games had already set in place in the engine into a new game mode called Onslaught. For this, Hagewood was hired as a contractor by Epic for Unreal Tournament 2004 specifically for incorporating the Onslaught mode as an official part of the game. Hagewood used his experience at Epic to found Psyonix. Among other contract projects, Psyonix worked to try to find a way to make racing the Unreal vehicles in a physics-based engine enjoyable. They had toyed with several options such as race modes or mazes, but found that when they added a ball to the arena to be pushed by the vehicles, they had hit upon the right formula, which would become Battle-Cars. Further to the success was the addition of the rocket-powered cars; this originally was to be a simple speed boost, but with the physics engine, they were able to have the vehicles fly off and around the arena, furthering the possibilities for gameplay.As Psyonix finished development of Battle-Cars, the studio had tried to gain access to a publisher by selling their game as "soccer, but with rocket-powered cars"; none of the publishers seemed interested. Ultimately, they opted to self-publish the game on the PlayStation Network with almost no marketing. Though it was downloaded more than two million times, it was not considered very successful even after the studio cut the price. The studio continued on to other projects, though kept the idea of building on Battle-Cars as an option, recognizing the game had a small but dedicated fan-base that provided them with ideas for expansion. These other projects, which including contract work for AAA games, including Mass Effect 3, helped to fund the development of Rocket League.
Full development of Rocket League started around 2013 and took around two years and under $2 million to develop, though they had tested various prototypes of a Battle-Cars sequel in the years prior, including an unsuccessful attempt at pitching the game's idea to Electronic Arts in 2011. Psyonix used some of the feedback from Battle-Cars to fine-tune the gameplay in Rocket League. A key requirement for Psyonix was to increase the game's frame rate from 30 to 60 frames-per-second, a known criticism from Battle-Cars and essential for newer hardware, according to Corey Davis, the design director at Psyonix. Hagewood recognized that Battle-Cars was considered "too hardcore" with the game becoming too inaccessible to novice players against skilled ones. They eased up on some aspects to make it more approachable, such as by slowing the pace of the game and allowing players of all skill levels to reasonably compete against each other while promoting team-based gameplay. Though they tried to add elements like power-ups, they found these to be too distracting to gameplay. They also explored other changes such as making the game more gritty, akin to Monday Night Combat, developing several mini-games related to handling of the car, working on making the graphics give a sense of scale to the players to give the impression they were controlling full-sized vehicles rather than radio-controlled cars, and creating an open world structure where the player would drive between stadium and stadium to participate in matches. Instead, the team opted to strip the game to its core, focusing on more visual elements to enhance the title. From Battle-Cars, Psyonix recognized very few players actually went online, and developed Rocket League single-player season mode to encourage players to try online matches once they completed it.
Psyonix's team were aware of past difficulties that they had with Battle-Cars and other racing games with online play and client-side prediction, and the issues that would arise from that with Rocket League fast-paced play style. To solve this, the physics in the game are based on using the Bullet physics engine within the Unreal Engine 3's PhysX engine, which tracks the movement of all the cars and actors, allowing them to periodically re-synchronize the game state across players based on the stored physics states, which enabled players to have quick reactions from their client. At the time of Battle-Cars, Psyonix could not afford a dedicated server network and were forced to rely on individual hosts, which could lead to poor performance with slow Internet connections. With Rocket League, Psyonix was able to put a dedicated server network in place, writing their own service protocols to interface with Sony's and Valve's online services so as to enable cross-platform play, as well as improving matchmaking capabilities. Psyonix's previous experience in contract work for AAA games had exposed them to the larger developers' approach to release and quality control, and they were able to apply those principles and aim for the same level of quality requirements in the final release of Rocket League.
Psyonix had at one point considered having Rocket League as a free-to-play game with microtransactions, inspired by Team Fortress 2 and Dota 2 models. Though they had put in efforts to establish a free-to-play model, Psyonix decided instead to switch to a traditional sale method, and offer only cosmetic elements as downloadable content, assuring that no players would have any additional advantage beyond their own skill. The name Rocket League was selected in part to reduce the size of the game's title in order to appear fully in digital storefronts, and also served to be an easier to remember name as well as a more mature-sounding title than Battle-Cars, according to Hagewood; speaking on Rocket League development in March 2016, Davis opined that Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars was "the worst game name of all time".