Rocket League-The E-sport

The sales pitch must have been absurd. A video game where cars play football? In the age of FIFA and NFS, this merger of two unrelated concepts sounds like the mumblings of a madman. But Dave Hagewood and his company ‘Psyonix’ turned this delirious notion into a game which is likely never to have another like it. Originally called ‘Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars’, the game was released in North America in October 2008. While it received a mixed reception, it still managed over 2 million downloads on the PSN network. It served as the rough draft for the now household name. Psyonix announced a sequel to the ridiculously named ridiculous game in March 2011, and after a number of difficulties regarding pitching, financing and publishing, the game released to Play Station 4 and Windows on July 7, 2015.

The game consists of 5-minute matches in a close field where two teams of various sizes maneuver their cars to get the ball inside the other team’s net. As stated before, the game was simple. Football. With cars. But it took the world by storm. By the end of July, the game had over 5 million downloads and 179000 concurrent players. And so, their ascent into the industry began. After recognizing the popularity of rocket league matches on streaming sites such as Twitch, Psyonix announced the first Rocket League Championship Series in March 2016. And soon many realized that the game was built for e-sports.

The game had basically no luck factor, aside from which side of the net one would spawn after being demo’ed. With controls such as air roll and double jump, there was an endless sea of mechanics waiting to be explored, such that we are still discovering new mechanics at the time of writing. What followed was a few years of great discovery, sportsmanship and competition. Pro players from those times discovered and popularized mechanics and techniques that are now a must even in lower ranks and the game had a huge spotlight on it. The game seemingly catered to every audience. The competitive ones could play ranked in the most cutthroat and sweaty lobbies. Casual players had lobbies where they could join and leave any time, and if you ever felt like switching it up, one could play the rumble and other extra modes. Additionally, it was popular in friend groups since you could accommodate 8 people in one custom match and even more in tournament mode.

While it has lost much of it’s popularity since then, in-part due to the aftereffects of going free-to-play and subsequent poor decisions, it still remains an amazingly simple, yet vast and enjoyable experience for many. And there is no doubt that a game such as this will be hard to come by again.

This article is written by Gaurav Advit.