I have been more than interested in gaming for a very long time (which is quite a sentence to say that i've spent countless hours playing various video games), and since a couple of years i've had a thing for organizing multiplayer sessions on a couple of games not well known enough to have a big enough playerbase.
It all started with Rollcage - one of the first video games I played as a 8 y.o. kid. More precisely, I played the second opus, named Rollcage Stage 2. Here is a PC version recording that I did around 7-8 years ago:
The Rollcage games are directly inspired from that car. The first Rollcage was released in 1999 for PS1 (along with a very well done PC port), and was an absolute technical feat back then. The game pushed the PS1 hardware to the limits and beyond - while I haven't looked at the assembly code myself, I have been told that a lot of crazy optimizations were done, in particular for the 3D physics part. Back then the PS1 wasn't strong enough to support a full blown 3D physics engine like most modern game engines provide now.
Rollcage had its very own supernatural physics making it quite unique in the genre. It's one of the first video game on PS1 who had non-glued-to-the-floor physics, and with decent graphics on top of that. The framerate could get a bit low at times especially in split-screen, but it did achieve a steady 20-30 FPS most of the time.
It also had a fast gameplay, with bad-ass weapons, and the "flippability" of the cars made it quite awesome to play as a kid (but I must admit, even as a grown adult, it is still satisfying to drive :)).
As a kid I didn't play the first Rollcage, instead I played the second opus, Rollcage Stage 2, who came up a couple years later. I played it on PC - I had the chance to have my own PC, bought by my grandparents - and had tons of fun with it. However I had never played with someone else, even after Internet was widespread.
Rollcage Stage 2 is quite an old game. Most of today games have an integrated matchmaking - or at least, a global lobby system where you can poll a server to get a list of available sessions to join. It wasn't really the norm when Rollcage Stage 2 came out, so instead it was using direct TCP/IP connection: you enter the IP of the person you want to join, that person configures their router so that the Rollcage Stage 2 port is forwarded to their PC, and then you can play.
This supposes to know the person beforehand - and even if you do find someone to play with, one of you must configure the router which is something not everyone can do.
Back then there wasn't any significant community related to Rollcage but one, the ReCaged forum - an initiative to provide a modern Rollcage-like game. However there weren't a lot of people in it. It was still something though! That gave me motivation enough.
With the emergence of Steam as a platform for video games, came the "Steam groups". Anyone can create a Steam group, and it's a handy way to keep contact with a group of fellas for a particular subject (most likely related to games, but not always). So I had the idea to make a Steam group for trying to gather players willing to play Rollcage Stage 2 together. That Steam group was first named Rollcage Stage 2 Playing Group (later on, following Slinger's advice from the ReCaged forum, I recreated it with the more general Rollcage name).
To get the first few members, I did quite some digging. The kind of digging that brings you beyond the 15th page of Google Search. I sent Private Messages (and even sometimes making myself accounts just for that) to anyone I saw mentioning Rollcage, even on years old posts. This actually got the first few members - in particular unreal_2k7 with who I got to play the first (ever?) Rollcage Stage 2 multiplayer session over the internet.
Over the weeks more members joined, we gained more influence by words of mouth (plus those who were just reading my PMs ;)), and we also decided to setup a weekly game each Saturday night over the voice chat. We also eventually switched to Rollcage (the first) since the majority of us were preferring it over Rollcage Stage 2.
Great memories were had, along with names that I will remember forever. unreal_2k7, LustVanGoth, Dups, Broscar, Mik, t_n_o, Arx, landvaarder, Daphunkyzz, orgyia/pocoyo, WROB3L, tjgcrush, Uniwersal, and a few others. It might sound weird to form a friendship over a video game, but it's really what happened back then. Playing each week with the same folks, with DJbroscar broadcasting shitty and awesome songs (how is it possible for a music to be both shitty and yet awesome? Broscar told us the way), on the good old Mumble server. It was the wild days, we were reviving the game of our childhood, and we were more than happy to share our enthusiasm.
This video is actually quite representative of the atmosphere of our multiplayer sessions. Good times. (jump to 34:42 for an uncut music experience)
The culminating point of all this is surely when we talked about contacting previous Rollcage developers, and I proceeded to email them. We wanted to get the source code, so that we could improve the game by ourselves and contribute to its legacy. We envisioned a lot of possibilities - including fixing a nasty networking bug we had, but also we were dreaming of implementing some track editor, some way to expand the game.
I sent these mails out, not expecting anything in return. I mean, what's the chance of someone replying you about a game that was developed more than 15 years ago?
The reply I got was unexpected. Robert Baker himself (one of the core developers of the PC port) replied to me. He explained that he couldn't give the source code - the Rollcage IP is still being owned by Sony and he would risk to be sued by giving it. However, he offered to.. patch the game for us! On his free time.
And that he did, and more. He also improved the game in many ways, in particular by adding a new challenging mode called Neo mode, but also by making sure the game works on newest Windows (back then it was Windows 8 and 7). The result of his improvements can be found on his own personal website, Rollcage Redux and Rollcage Extreme.
This had a very positive aspect for our steam group who kept growing. Tournaments were held - no doubt the first tournaments of Rollcage to ever exist. Lots of fun were had.
Eventually, through the group, Rob met Chris, another Rollcage fan who had experience on UE4 modding.
Together, they made GRIP, a video game heavily inspired on Rollcage. This indie game is actually having a certain amount of success for the genre, and is out on modern consoles as well like the PS4.
This is most certainly a new era for Rollcage-like games. I remember joking with my online friends on Saturday sessions "Imagine if, somehow, out of our group, a Rollcage 3 comes up". Well, we didn't get a Rollcage 3, but quite close! Right now new players are discovering GRIP - some of them never even heard of Rollcage before. GRIP made the headlines of several gaming websites. And it's still growing now. What was the probability, when creating that Steam group, that it would eventually lead to a spiritual successor?
There was a time during the Rollcage-GRIP transition where I was the unofficial GRIP community manager, sorting out the feedback and suggestions from the GRIP forum with Broscar's help, communicating them to Chris. A lot of very helpful suggestions and feedback were given, and many elements of the game were discussed over. It was a hive of activity. You would wake up someday to find 10-15 more replies, if not more.
The GRIP story in itself should have an entire article dedicated. The failed Kickstarter followed by the Paypal campaign, the uncertainty of Early Access, the devs working crazy hours off-pay to meet the schedules.. And at last, Wired Productions helping the game to take its final shape of what we know now. Perhaps one day I will write an article about it. But the story is still unfolding itself today.
Unfortunately the rise of GRIP, combined with other elements (people growing up), indirectly brought an end to our mythic Saturday sessions. Playing over the same tracks over and over again, it couldn't last very long, and it was a surprise it lasted as long as it did. We could have transitioned to GRIP, but it took different directions from Rollcage. In fact, most of the Rollcage veterans (the regular folks from the Rollcage steam group) didn't get into GRIP because of these differences. Also, while Rollcage can be run on pretty much any modern hardware, GRIP is more demanding, which was another factor. The golden days of the weekly "Rollcage Saturdays" are now gone.
Eventually I also had to move on, my personal projects catching up. Though I'm still lurking on GRIP from time to time.
Regardless of me moving on to focus on other projects, this was quite an adventure. I've had this Rollcage related Steam profile pic for a while (it's actually a screenshot of Dups point of view chasing me), but I don't think I'm going to change it anytime soon. This whole Rollcage experience, it was hands down the best experience I ever had with a community online. And I can't thank enough all those who participated in it.
The Rollcage experience. Part of the Christmas card we sent to Rob in 2015.
Credits to Broscar.
Credits to Broscar.
