Why Rocket League blew up (and its predecessor didn't)

[Administrator]

Rocket League launched in the summer of 2015 and seemed to be everywhere at once. If you owned a PlayStation 4 and enjoyed having a nice time, you were likely one of six million players who downloaded the game within its first month on PlayStation Plus. Or perhaps you purchased a PC copy instead, in which case, you actually kept the whole thing afloat, whether you realised it or not. It turns out running a successful online multiplayer game is an expensive process.
"I didn't know if we were going to cover server costs," remembered design director, Corey Davis at a recent GDC talk. "Steam covered everything and they pay very quickly, which was important. I can't really imagine what we would have done if we'd shipped only on PlayStation 4 and got that many users."
For most of us, this excellent game of cars and football arrived as a complete surprise. It felt like an event. Out of nowhere, Rocket League was suddenly demanding lunch breaks and converting even the most adamant non-football fans. You only had to see it in action - three friends shouting and laughing together at a TV screen - to get what all the fuss was about. Of course this was going to be a hit. How could it not be? But that's the interesting thing about this story: Psyonix had actually released a very similar game back in 2008, and by comparison, almost nobody noticed.
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