GamesRelay

Psyonix: We were originally working on a vehicle combat game, where the existing vehicles would drive around and pick up weapons and try to knock each other off of the level. The weapons were silly, like a gun that shot a blowfish at you that inflated your target's car and made them unable to move for a few seconds, or a pickup that cloaked your car, others would summon environmental hazards. We developed "Soccar" as a side game, but when work stopped getting done because everyone was secretly playing "Soccar," we knew we had something special. Not an original idea by any means, but in the end we decided that it offered a more fulfilling experience than the other mode.

GamesRelay: Where did the inspiration for the name of your game come from, and why did you decide to name it as such?

Psyonix: We had a LOT of trouble coming up with the right name. It was known internally as "Soccar" but we didn't think that would work well for our European friends, and wanted something that was a bit more attention grabbing. We had other ideas, and flopped back and forth between them, before finally deciding to go with the silly name.

GamesRelay: What can we come to expect from Psyonix in the future, what with SARPBC being a cult classic, we have heard you are planning an expansion. Are there any juicy details that we can know about which haven't yet been announced?

Psyonix: I certainly hope SARPBC becomes a classic! We all love this game, and would love it expand on the idea more. We don't have plans for an expansion or sequel just yet, but we are looking forward to releasing some more DLC (in the form of an update) as soon as we have some time to finish it up. There is definitely a new map coming in the future, and there has been talk of more cars and possibly some more skins. It just depends on what kind of time we have in the coming weeks.

GamesRelay: With all the problems you had with the European release (No fault of you own I might add). Has this experience tainted your goals or ideas for further content on the European PlayStation network?

Psyonix: That was certainly an interesting experience, and one we did not expect. Everything else has gone smoothly with SCEE up until the time to release. However, the game is doing better than expected, and we are looking forward to being able to release an update that will work out the issues that people are having, and also adding some more content for people to play with. I'm sure future releases will be much smoother.

GamesRelay: With the game being based of the Unreal engine, and Unreal having it's roots in first person shooters, is there any chance of having guns on the cars?

Psyonix: As I mentioned before, the cars had guns in the past. Unfortunately, this is out of the scope of the current project, we strive to keep the gameplay "pure" and not have a lot of random things going on, like weapons firing. We especially don't want to split the community, the learning curve tends to be high, and we don't want a lot of crazy options available to deter new players from playing. As for the future, it's very possible that a new title could come one day that will feature weapons. Can you say "Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars shooting wiffle bombs and blowfish driven by scientist squirrels with lasers shooting out of their eyes?"

GamesRelay: Is there anything that you wanted to put in the game but were unable to from time/PSN contraints?

Psyonix: We ended up cutting a lot of options from the game, like spectator mode, and various play modes. A lot of those decisions came last minute, and a lot of the features that are in there now, like Replay editing and YouTube support, are there because a few of us fought so hard to keep them. We mostly missed out on optimizing at the end, so some of the Net code was less than optimal when we first released for the US. This has been dramatically improved in the first US update, and comes in the EU release, and we are continuing to work out the problems that we find. We plan on supporting this game as long as we can, as long as people still play it.

GamesRelay: Unreal Tournament III has it's own modification mode where users can make there own mods and play them on the PS3 by importing them. Would this ever have a chance of getting integrated into your game? Users could make there own maps and game modes.

Psyonix: We have considered this. UT3 is very different game, and has a very different architecture than we do. It is still very possible to make "mods" for our game, and in fact the maps that we release as updates sort of work as "mods" already. However, these kinds of changes would require a large amount of work on our part, including releasing a PC version, and all of the costs there. At this time I don't see mod support happening, but it's not a definite no.

GamesRelay: Will there be future releases for PSN or XBL?

Psyonix: As of right now the title is exclusive to PSN. The amount of work required to include an additional platform is still fairly high, as all or most of the online functionality is specific to GameSpy and PSN. A PC version is a possibility, but no plans have been made for this, and time is a huge limiting factor for us right now.

GamesRelay: The single player mode contains a few different modes of gameplay, for instance multiple balls and boxes. Are these going to be added for multiplayer use at a later date?

Psyonix: Possibly. We would at least like them to be usable in split screen, unranked is another possibility. It's a much requested feature, and so it certainly is something we are feeling more and more obligated to provide to our users.

GamesRelay: Empire or Rebel?

Psyonix: Rebel. We're a small, independent developer trying to make top notch games just like the big guys. We have a strong reputation in the industry for making "Onslaught" for UT2004, and are just trying to make games that we can enjoy playing with everyone.

Thanks to Jerad and the team over at Psyonix for taking the time out to answer our questions!