The story behind Rocket League - the sequel/refinement to an under-played PS3 indie title that's since become a multi-platform, 19 million player behemoth - is remarkable, but its biggest achievement may still lie ahead.
After Microsoft announced that it would allow for cross-platform play between Xbox One and potentially any other platform, developer Psyonix stepped up to answer the most obvious question - can Xbox One and PS4 players play together? The answer, it seemed, was yes - but it'd take the go-ahead from the console makers themselves to allow the historic connection to be made.
After several months of silence on the issue, IGN caught up with vice president Jeremy Dunham to find out where the project was at, his thoughts on what cross-console online play could mean for the industry and, most importantly, if it will ever happen at all.
IGN: First thing's first - you mentioned a little while back that you had the technology for cross-network play between Xbox One and PS4 "figured out". So where are you at with it now?
Jeremy Dunham: Well, right now we're literally at the point where all we need is the go-ahead on the Sony side and we can, in less than a business day, turn it on and have it up and working no problem. It'd literally take a few hours to propagate throughout the whole world, so really we're just waiting on the permission to do so.
IGN: You've mentioned previously that there was stuff to figure out "politically". Can you speak as to what that means? Is it a reluctance from Sony that's slowing things down, general bureaucracy or something else?
It was just as much of a surprise to Sony as I think the rest of the world.
JD: Well specifically it's really just a matter of going through the procedures. I think up until now it's never been something that was actually possible, and Microsoft made it a specific initiative - the Valve team has always been an open platform, so it was never an issue there. But when the climate suddenly changes and goes from being a completely closed-off arena to suddenly being an available opportunity overnight, it's really great for us, and something we can do right away, but Sony's such a big company that I'm sure it takes a while for them to figure out what it is that the roadblocks are, what sort of issues they might run into with other titles, any number of things that I can't even begin to speculate on.
We definitely ask them for updates often, and we're still very confident that they're eventually going to open those doors and welcome us in, but we also are really understanding that it's going to take a while especially given all the ramifications of everything. It was just as much of a surprise to them as I think the rest of the world when Microsoft said that they would do it.
IGN: Thinking back on that original announcement, Microsoft mentioned Rocket League specifically - did they come to you and ask you to be the flagbearers for this cross-platform initiative?
JD: So it was more of a mutual discussion, because if you remember when we released Rocket League originally on PlayStation and PC, we were cross-network from the beginning. When we realised we were going to come to Xbox, we asked Microsoft about that right away and said 'is this something that we can do, and is it possible?', and at that time it wasn't. But we would bring it up quite often, and they were intrigued from the beginning - a lot of the people there thought that it was definitely an interesting idea, but because the old policies were still in place it wasn't possible.
It could be tomorrow, it could be longer than that. We just don't know - we're anxiously awaiting that, just like the rest of our fans.
But then over the next several months as we continued to work on the game, they started to work out on their side what it is they wanted to do. They were setting up that initiative to go forward with the cross-network policy as a whole, and they brought us back in and they started talking to us more seriously about what it would take to make it happen and, man, the day that we sat in the conference call - it was myself, and our production staff and our design director, Corey - and they were like 'so this is something we can do, we like the design that you've given us and all these specific security issues that we might have and all these ways to ensure the users have the user experience similar to what they had before on just Xbox Live.' They were very happy with it, and said 'let's do this.'
It was an awesome moment - everyone was happy and we walked outside and let everyone know as a company, and the whole company started applauding - it was a really fantastic moment for us, especially being a small indie game in the beginning that no one was really aware of just over a year and a half ago. It was a major milestone for us. We knew then that the next step was how we make it so that everybody is onboard at Sony, Microsoft and Steam - but we didn't have delusions that this was going to be an immediate thing. We're doing whatever we can to keep it fresh in their minds and we know the fans are doing the same thing. We're addressing any questions they might have and we're hopefully going to get to a point eventually where everything works out - ourselves as a developer, we don't know quite how long that's going to be. It could be tomorrow, it could be longer than that. We just don't know - we're anxiously awaiting that, just like the rest of our fans.
IGN: Of course, at E3 Microsoft announced Xbox Play Anywhere, which includes Xbox One-PC cross-platform play on a number of their major games - it feels as though an indie dev has laid that groundwork and influenced the policies of one of the biggest games manufacturers in the world.
JD: We like to think that! [laughs] It's definitely humbling if that's the case. Getting them to agree to it definitely one of our proudest moments, and we're glad now that it's opening up opportunities for other games too. It's always been our view that cross-network play is better for the industry as a whole. For example, one thing we didn't talk about publicly is that once we released cross-network as a working feature on Xbox and PC a few months ago, our sales actually went up by a considerable amount on both platforms immediately, and for several weeks after.
Once we released cross-network as a working feature on Xbox and PC a few months ago, our sales actually went up by a considerable amount on both platforms immediately, and for several weeks.
For us, this is proof that people get really excited by the ability to play with each other regardless of their platform, and as a result they no longer have that apprehension about buying the game to try it because Friend A is on PC and Friend B is on Xbox. Maybe before they were like 'well I know you play it but I can't play with you, and maybe it's not my type of game, or maybe I just don't want to try if I can't play with you.' Now that they can play together we think that it's- you know, we didn't survey everyone who bought the game, but for us it's at least some anecdotal evidence that it had an effect where people were now more confident to get behind the product and buy it.
Man, from our vantage point just imagine if we were cross-network on all platforms, how well that could be received and not only how that could help our game, but how that could help communities for all games, everywhere. I do think - and most of our development staff feels this way as well - that eventually the industry as a whole is going to move that direction, hopefully sooner rather than later. We think that it's inevitable - or at least we hope so. [Laughs]
IGN: Looking back at your previous comments, a few months back you touted the benefits of having a homogenised system of updates across all platforms, letting you streamline how quickly the game can be improved. Rocket League's recently had several major updates and changes - is that because of your more connected game?
JD: Yes, it's allowed us to approach the game from a more homogenous point of view. Before, when you're developing for all these different platforms, and there are all these different considerations to make for each one, there are certain features you might not be able to use on others - you basically have to go to the lowest common denominator. Certain machines might not be able to have the capabilities of other ones, so what is the best way to handle your game that's playable on all of them? What we've managed to do, luckily, is that the type of game we built is very multiplayer-friendly, and it's not huge on the amount of assets that go into the game. We're not telling a giant story, so we can focus on frame rate and little details and interesting things that people can see while they're playing without distracting them.
We don't want to stop until we give them everything they want, and then give them things they didn't even realise we could do in the game on top of that.
It's really allowed us to keep gameplay first and for technical things it's all about optimising, optimising, optimising. So now that we can do all these things on all these different platforms has allowed us to move away from talking about what we can't do and the schedules of having to try to line up all these different updates on different platforms and now move a more unified release schedule - which is what we've done this year. We've been much more aggressive in the last several months in terms of what we've released compared to our first six months of release, and that's going to continue to pick up. We have several major updates scheduled for the rest of the year - we're working on a lot of the stuff which we're planning to do for our next update right now. Then as soon as we're done with that, we're onto our very next update right after that - and these aren't just small updates, we're not talking about things where it's just like, 'oh, here are a couple of optimisation features and maybe one little extra'.
We're adding new content in all of these updates, we're adding brand new features, we're adding new modes in some of them. So it's a very ambitious plan but we're caught by this bug, man, we have this really hungry community and we love giving them things they don't expect or things that they've been asking for for a really long time. The feeling as a team that we get whenever we release something and the fans are really excited about it, it just drives us to want to do more. You know, we don't want to stop until we give them everything they want, and then give them things they didn't even realise we could do in the game on top of that. Especially our next update, which we're going to start promoting sometime in the next couple of weeks. As we get closer to the Rocket League Championship Series, around that time is when we're going to start promoting our next update, and wait 'til people see it. We've got something brewing that a lot of people have been asking for in different forms but is also very surprising. It's going to be interesting, but it's going to be cool too.
Continues
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