{"id":4426,"date":"2017-11-03T19:41:00","date_gmt":"2017-11-03T19:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/308129"},"modified":"2017-11-03T19:41:00","modified_gmt":"2017-11-03T19:41:00","slug":"the-two-man-team-building-disc-jam-as-an-esports-platform","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2017\/11\/03\/the-two-man-team-building-disc-jam-as-an-esports-platform\/","title":{"rendered":"The two-man team building Disc Jam as an eSports platform"},"content":{"rendered":"

Games designed as an ongoing service have become the new frontier of development \u2013 the proverbial \u201cgolden ticket\u201d to drawing long-term success from a single product. The eSports model in particular has gained huge popularity among creators and players in recent years, as titles like League of Legends<\/em>, Counter-Strike<\/em> and many more continue to grow their player bases. One of the great things about this model is that it isn\u2019t limited to the AAA market; Rocket League<\/em> and PlayerUnknown\u2019s Battlegrounds<\/em> are both proof of that. But all of these games had to start with one crucial thing: a solidly designed foundation.<\/p>\n

As the first title to come out of fledgling studio High Horse Entertainment, Disc Jam<\/em> sets itself up with a simple but fun framework and big plans for the future. Conceived as a modern take on the competitive flying disc game in the vein of Windjammers, Disc Jam<\/em> has players frantically sprinting, sliding and throwing in high-powered, score-based frisbee. But after launching to some success as a PlayStation Plus freebie, the growth of its player base slowed.<\/p>\n

That might sound like a death knell for an eSports-focused game – but Disc Jam<\/em>\u2019s most recent update has added dedicated servers, skill-based matchmaking, crossplay between PC and PS4 and more. We talked with Tim Rapp and Jay Mattis (the two-man team at High Horse) about building a game with eSports in mind, sustaining that model with content, and how they plan to grow their audience further.<\/p>\n

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“As much as I would like to say we had a marketing strategy targeting a key demographic, it\u00a0really just came down to Jay and I playing a ton of old Pong-likes and saying to each other: \u2018Why aren’t there more simple, PvP-first games like these?\u2019 “<\/span><\/h6>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Disc\u00a0Jam<\/em> takes a lot of clear inspiration from other games, and the arcade classic Windjammers was the primary influence. While Windjammers never got a sequel, it did maintain a dedicated cult following. Rapp says this was an underserved market that they wanted to appeal to with Disc Jam<\/em> – despite not having an orchestrated marketing strategy.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe word \u2018underserved\u2019 strikes a chord with me because it\u2019s exactly how I feel as a PvP guy who loves arcade games.\u201d he said. \u201cAs much as I would like to say we had a marketing strategy targeting a key demographic, it\u00a0really just came down to Jay and I playing a ton of old Pong-likes and saying to each other: \u2018Why aren’t there more simple, PvP-first games like these?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

As experienced fans of the genre, they set out to create one of their own using Unreal Engine 4.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe struggle, of course, is modernizing the experience so that it resonates with today\u2019s gamers while hopefully capturing the excitement of those fast-paced coin-ops that make present-day sports games feel sluggish,\u201d Rapp said.<\/p>\n

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“Rocket League’s success was encouraging, but not because it\u2019s a self-published indie title. It\u2019s because it\u2019s an online PvP experience.”<\/span><\/h6>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Disc Jam<\/em> was in development before Rocket League<\/em> came out, but Rapp and Mattis still cite it as an example of how commercially viable a small game with an eSports model could be. \u201cRocket League<\/em> went on to conquer the world despite very little pre-launch coverage.\u201d Rapp said. \u201cIt was encouraging and even a little validating, but not because it\u2019s a self-published indie title. It\u2019s because it\u2019s an online PvP experience first and foremost.\u201d<\/p>\n

This, according to Rapp and Mattis, helped give Disc Jam<\/em> a better sense of identity: using core competitive gameplay to illustrate why simple teamwork and victory are fun, without the need to grind for levels or items that alter gameplay for some players but not others. \u201cI think a lot of games today still wrestle with that identity crisis.\u201d Rapp said.<\/p>\n

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Disc Jam<\/em> may be a simple game at its core, but that doesn’t mean High Horse isn’t planning to build on its foundation. Many eSports-focused titles in recent history, like Overwatch and Street Fighter V, survive and thrive by adding refinements, balances and content over time. This is crucial for Disc Jam<\/em> as well. \u201cBeing a team of two, we always knew that building games-as-a-service would be the best model for developing our IP and technology.\u201d Mattis said. \u201cIt enables us to be flexible and shift priorities to better serve our players.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the appealing things about sustainable games is looking forward to their content updates. This is how games like Disc Jam<\/em> achieve longevity, but it also means that these games are never truly \u201cfinished.\u201d Rapp says he doesn\u2019t have a problem with that.<\/p>\n

\u201cVery early in my career (I think it was my first game, in fact), my lead told me \u2018no game has ever shipped completely finished.\u2019 I remember being disappointed to hear that, but over a decade later, I\u2019ve come to embrace that simple truth.\u201d Rapp said. \u201cWith Disc Jam<\/em>, we have a pretty clear vision of what the game looks like 3, 6, and 12 months from now. We\u2019re focused on new characters, maps, game modes, and more custom content\u2026 so that players can expect to see a steady stream of content updates while we continue rolling out new features.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Disc Jam<\/em> originally launched as one of the free monthly games available to PlayStation Plus subscribers. Rapp told us about the idea behind temporarily offering their new game for free, and the methods they\u2019re using to gain players and concurrency.<\/p>\n

\u201cPlayer count is the lifeblood of any online game, and we knew that launching into Plus or Games With Gold would solve that problem and put the game in front of people without spending money we didn\u2019t have on a massive marketing campaign,\u201d he said. \u201cEvery business decision we made was guided by our main objective: build the largest player base we can. Launching into a subscription service was the best possible scenario given the project\u2019s humble beginnings.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mattis also spoke about some of their plans to expand Disc Jam<\/em>\u2019s influence:<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re just starting to get going with some of the promotions we have lined up. We had a Steam free weekend which was amazing because Amazon sponsored the server costs and we saw our concurrency jump in a huge way,\u201d he said. \u201cBut going forward, we have a bit of a \u2018kitchen sink\u2019 mentality. We\u2019ve been making games for over a decade but this is our first time marketing one, so we have a lot of different strategies to try.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Games designed as an ongoing service have become the new frontier of development \u2013 the proverbial \u201cgolden ticket\u201d to drawing long-term success from a single product. The eSports model in particular has gained huge popularity among creators and players in recent years, as titles like League of Legends, Counter-Strike and many more continue to grow […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4427,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4426\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}