Matt Keezer On Rocket League
Oh, rocket league, the vehicular soccer video game everyone loves to play. Published and developed by Psyonix, Rocket League is the perfect eSport title for football and racing game lovers. First released on Microsoft Windows and the Playstation 4 in July 2015, it immediately rose to the limelight. Late releases for the Xbox One and Nintendo Switch were also launched.
The distribution of the physical retail version for Rocket League was led by 505 Games, for the Play Station 4 and Xbox, with copyright by Warner Bros. Until the end of 2017, Interactive Entertainment took over these duties.
Rocket League became free-to-play at the end of September 2020. However, before then, the macOS and Linux versions were released in 2016, and later in 2020 Epic Games dropped online support for these operating systems.
Matt Keezer likes to describe Rocket League as “Soccer, but with Rocket Powered Cars”. And certainly, a lot of gamers and pundits agree. Rocket League has 8 players in a team of two while using rocket-powered vehicles to pass the ball around and try to score at the opponent’s end. Rocket League packs both single-player and online multiplayer mode and allows for seamless cross-platform play regardless of whichever version you choose.
The prequel to Rocket League, Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars Phew!.. What a name! Was released in 2008 to the PlayStation 3. The game received a mixed review from a lot of platforms and Matt Keezer suggests that it is fairly difficult to call a controversial game a success especially when it does not generate enough sales as it should. However, one thing remained constant about Battle cars. It was loved by a lot of fans worldwide. The company, Psyonix continued to grow and develop as they partnered with other game studios to release more indie titles while also looking to drop the prequel which we now know as Rocket league.
The formal and official commencement for the development of Rocket League began in 2013, and the concept was fairly straightforward, to refine the gameplay of Battle-Cars while taking into account constructive critics and major popular fan input.
And during the development phase, Psyonix found out the major reason behind the flop of Battle-Cars was a sheer lack of marketing strategy for the game as regards social media promotions and campaigns.
Rocket League was free to get on release for PlayStation Plus members as a brilliant marketing strategy. Matt believes gamers who pay a premium for services deserve to get the best gears firstly. The first major improvements a lot of gamers and pundits noticed with Rocket League were its massive gameplay improvements over the initial Battle-Cars and a much better graphical overhaul to its visuals.
The game has received over ten million sales and about forty million players since the beginning of 2018. Rocket League became adopted as an eSports title and having a lot of professional players participate. Major league and ESL are some top mentions. However, the downside to the success of Rocket League has been the persistent complaints of its physics engine which quite frankly, could use some massive improvements.
Revenue Model For Rocket League
Downloadable content has been the primary model for revenue generation for Rocket League, however, over the past few months, Psyonix has attempted a lot of different models. In 2016, Crates was introduced, as a loot box system. The idea is simple, players can purchase them and get randomly generated items that are essential for leveling up in the game.
Conclusion
Rocket League had a whooping $2million development budget and it is safe to say they have lived up to that as a successful eSport title. With over 40 million active players all around the world and thousands of Twitch Accounts dedicated to streaming Rocket League, Matt Keezer says it is indeed a game to play and to love.
